Why I hardly use my car any more

One of the more dramatic, unforeseen changes that has come from moving from the suburbs to downtown: I actually resent my car now. Back in the suburbs, I had to take the car everywhere. Driving was sort of like breathing: Need a gallon of milk? 10 minute drive each way. Want to go out to a movie? 20 minute drive. Restaurant? 10 minutes in the car.

I knew that moving downtown would allow us to walk to more. But I did not realize that I would come to just resent getting in the car. "What? I actually have to drive in order to do that? Oh, never mind then, it can wait."

To illustrate my point, I chose just one type of business, restaurants, and then did a little Google mapping. The total number of restaurants within a two-mile radius of my former house = 8.

The purple mark in the middle shows the location of my old house in the suburbs. The closest
restaurant is .5 miles away, and it's the concession stand at Long Lake Park (open seasonally,
fine selection of sunflower seeds and bottled sodas.)

Here is the same search for my condo downtown. Total number of restaurants within a two-mile radius = 174. See why I just sort of hate the idea of getting in the car now?

More about college for your kids

My last post regarding paying for kids' college expenses seemed to generate some interest, so I thought I would follow that up with what I hope are a couple of helpful resources. In the last two years, when our sons were seniors in high school, we learned A TON about researching various colleges, applying for college, and then paying for college.

I have to say, before we went through this with our boys, my wife and I THOUGHT we knew all about it. After all, I've been a high school teacher for over 20 years, and we have 4 (soon to be 5) college degrees between the two of us. But the landscape of college applications and financing is very, very different from what it was 10 years ago, as we found out.

And as much as I hate to say it, the Boise State University online degree program in which I am currently enrolled is...not a good indicator of what students just out of high school are going to go through regarding applications and financing.

So, based on everything I learned over the past 2-3 years about researching, applying, and financing college for your kids, these are the THREE BEST RESOURCES I have come across:

• College Confidential Just about any question you could EVER ask about researching, applying, and financing college can be answered on the hundreds of thousands of discussion forums at CollegeConfidential.com. Staggering amounts of honest (sometimes blunt) commentary. An absolutely invaluable resource.

• Cappex This is a great website for researching colleges. Easy to read, accurate data about admissions, majors, etc. for just about every college. The graphs, charts, and comments from current students and faculty are very helpful.

• US Government's easy-to-use "Paying for college" worksheet This is a great tool from the federal government's consumer finance department. You input the colleges you are interested in, and it gives you a comparison of how much you will pay to attend each college. If you know them, you can also input your sources of scholarships, aid and savings, and it will figure those into the calculations. 

There are other websites you will need to know about: the common application website, the FAFSA website, collegeboard.com, and the websites of the colleges your children are interested in. But those are sort of obvious. The three I listed above are a little lesser-known, and infinitely more useful.

The two photos at the top of this post, by the way, are where both of our boys ended up going, which is Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University.

Rehabilitated old buildings, Part 3

One of my favorite examples of urban renewal and making great use out of old buildings: the Distillery District in Toronto. Some great footage here of the old buildings put to modern uses.

Poll: Paying for kids' college

I've been told that parents are never truly empty nesters. Acquaintances who have children older than ours say things like, "They still need us even after they've moved out," which is fine, and "We spend a lot of time babysitting the grandkids,"  which is also fine, and "They keep moving back home!" which I'm not so sure about.

But in a few short weeks we are going to have a very, very empty house.

And on one hand, I kind of feel like our job as parents is mostly complete - it's their life now and they will have to make of it what they will; hopefully we've taught them well. But on the other hand, we're still their parents and we still love them and want the best for them. So we worry about getting them through college.

Of course I realize that college is not for everyone - a lot of people do just fine without it and I have no problem with that. But many parents want to see their kids get a college degree, and in case you haven't been paying attention, college costs have been going through the roof. Our kids were looking at tuition costs of anywhere from $10,000 to $26,000 per year, with room and board at most colleges being another $12,000 per year.

So, just as a way of generating discussion, here's a poll for all parents or parents-to-be regarding how you paid for, or are planning to pay for, your kids' college expenses. After answering the poll question, feel free to leave comments!

Good morning!

It's a beautiful summer morning, and in the spirit of renewal and new beginnings, just thought I would provide you with a little wake-up music today. Enjoy!  -Dan

Rehabilitated old buildings, Part 2

A couple weeks ago, I posted some links to photos showing the progress of urban revitalization in downtown Tacoma. Here's another entry in that series, but I'll just show a few photos here rather than give you the links.

This is the Waddell Building in downtown Tacoma. It was built in 1890, although unfortunately I can't seem to find any photos of it prior to the 1970's. These first three photos are from the Tacoma Public Library archives:

Here's a closer view of the building's front in about 1979:

And here's a shot from a corner angle:

Needless to say, downtown Tacoma was pretty seedy in the 1970's and 1980's. But that's the great thing about urban revitalization: when it's done well, entire neighborhoods and cities get turned around. Today the Waddell Building houses one of Tacoma's nicest restaurants, the Pacific Grill. The first two photos are from Flikr, the third is a marketing photo by the restaurant:

Inside the building, they make very good use of the old  exposed brick:

EDTECH 597 - Generational differences revisited

In case any readers missed the genesis of this blog, this is a "learning blog" initially established as a project for my EDTECH class at Boise State University. So, I'm going take time out from my usual themes and address an issue pertinent to educational technology- the notion of generational differences with regard to technology, and the question of whether or not technology has changed the way students learn in the last decade.

This issue was addressed in an earlier blog post here.

Tonight I pulled the latest issue of Newsweek out of my mailbox. And while Newsweek, of course, is not a scholarly research publication, this week's cover story does cite numerous instances of legitimate scholarly research. According to the article, there still is no clear evidence to prove that student learning - in general - is any different now due to the prevalence of the internet and mobile technology.

However...

If we are to believe the researchers at UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, and M.I.T., then the widespread use of the internet and mobile technology is making people (almost all of us), more depressed, more obsessed, more cynical, more addicted, and more prone to sleeplessness, suicide, and anxiety. Don't believe it? The article is pretty convincing, and pretty scary. Naturally, we must account for the fact that Newsweek, like most media outlets, thrives on scary as a way of selling their content and making money. Still, the research in the article is compelling.

And if the research is solid, then we need to be prepared to confront the idea that these negative effects of technology must have corollary implications for how students arrive at school, and indeed how they learn.

I'm still not going to back away from a statement made by Jaime McKenzie - a statement I quoted in my last blog post on this subject, and one I still believe to be true. McKenzie stated, "Real fifteen year old humans are quite different from each other, a fact that [Marc] Prensky did not take the time to study or notice. Some love things digital. Some are more interested in a horse or a dog or a walk along the shore" (McKenzie).

After considering it, I believe that yes, there are some 15-year olds who love horses or walks on the shore more than video games or texting or Facebook. But damned few of them.

References:

McKenzie, J. (2007). Digital nativism: Digital delusions and digital deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). Retrieved from http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants – Part II: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6). Retrieved fromhttp://www.marcprensky.com/wri...0Part1.pdf