Vitacora

The Ministry launched the Bicentennial project the blue-haired girl has been working on for a while now. She is in charge of the whole gigantic project and has done an awsome job so far. Thursday there was a 1 hour TV show about the project on almost every channel. All thanks to her! The project is amazing. I love it. How could I not when it started with a few drawings on my living room window and now the woman I love is leading it!

Here's what it is about, in a nutshell <--Translated from Colombia Aprende-->:

[The project aims for students] write and learn histories...

• that develop scientific thinking and competencies in social studies, language, citizenship...
• in which they are, along with their teachers, the protagonists of the research process and the project...
• in which, acting as historians, they follow all the steps of research in the social sciences...
• in which they describe processes, instead of focusing exclusively on dates, people and memorization of contents...
• that bring history, as it is produced in academic research, to the history taught in schools...
• that makes boys and girls identify with and appropriate their past...
• that don't stay in classrooms and books, but remain in different kinds of places of memory...
• that are coherent with new paradigms in pedagogy and historiography...
• that are democratic, diverse, created from multiple experiences and from diverse points of view...

The project will run until 2010, the Bicentennial celebration:

Stage 1: Students Ask

• Students from all over the country will send questions (via web and snail mail) in all official languages --(that's about 68, last I heard in my linguist days ;-)-- about the period between 1774 and 1830 (the Independence). University students and experts will pick the best 200 and publish them: so, we'll have "200 years and 200 questions".

Stage 2: Constructing Answers

• Students (1-12) from all around the country will try to answer the questions, initially, using only history and social studies textbooks from today and the past made available online. They will learn to what extent the knowledge that schools have traditionally provided, can answer their generation's questions. Meanwhile, university students will research and digitize primary and secondary source from around the country to enrich the upcoming research.
• Students research using primary and secondary sources made available through public libraries, school libraries and online, and will submit answers to the 200 questions. They will send them via web and snail mail for the expert commitee to choose the best and publish them.

Stage 3: Local histories, Diverse Memory

• Students (1-12) research about the histories of their towns and regions in the Independence, using the skills and competencies they have developed during the project.
• Studentes read the local histories written by other students in other regions and create a diptic monument (a poem, song, mutlimedia, movie, dance, sculpture...) in their town to celebrate the history of an OTHER, hopefully from a town that has traditionally been considered an opposite or rival.

 I will post a video about the project as soon as it is available online...

Outr school will, of course, be a part of this project. I hope one of our students comes up with a wonderful question that gets selected and answered by thousands of other students around the country. We will approach it as a Knowledge Building project, using Knowledge Forum for all the research.

Terminó la primera semana de trabajo de los profesores en el colegio, no con pocos pocos problemas de parte de mi Departamento... los sistemas no estuvieron listos a tiempo para la planeación (y aún no lo están) y todavía hay muchas cosas pendientes.

Me cayó de sorpresa, aunque venía fraguándose hace tiempo, darme cuenta de que pocos trabajan como lo hago yo, la mayoría de mis amigos y los directivos del colegio. En el Ministerio era normal trabajar 80 ó 90 horas a la semana (sólo los funcionarios se limitan generalmente a las ocho horas), llegar a la casa a seguir trabajando hasta media noche todos los días y trabajar más los fines de semana. Para mí, este ritmo ha sido normal hace muchos años.

Quienes trabajan conmigo y dependen de mí no tienen esta costumbre. Trabajan sus ocho horas y se van. Rara vez lo hacen en horario extra o los fines de semana. Nunca había pensado mucho en esto, pero ahora que lo "sufro" (y Laura también en el Ministerio con su equipo), empiezo a generar hipótesis sobre los logros en el trabajo, similares a las que formuló en algún momento Larry Summers (ex-economista en jefe del Banco Mundia y expresidente de Harvard) cuando habló de por qué creía que las mujeres no podían triunfar en ciencia. Según Summers, una de las razones es que para ser un científico (ganador de Nobel, etc.) hay que trabajar mucho más de ocho horas diarias y las mujeres suelen tener otras prioridades: la familia, los hijos... Yo no lo ato al género, pero estoy cada vez más convencido de que quienes logran los mejores resultados (y por lo mismo los cargos más altos en empresas públicas y privadas) son quienes no tienen esos límites y trabajan lo necesario para tener el trabajo listo, no lo que el horario indica. No puedo pedirle a mi equipo que trabaje tanto como yo sin pedir horas extra... en parte por eso el trabajo no rinde. Hay mucho y poca gente.

Alguna vez, en la Secretaría de Educación de Cartagena, hicimos, con el Secretario y el equipo de asesores cubanos que trabaja con el Ministerio, una evaluación informal del trabajo de sus funcionarios. Una medidad que utilizó el Secretario fue esa: quienes trabajan más de lo que el horario obliga. Quienes no lo hacían eran calificados como funcionarios poco comprometidos. En el momento me pareció descarado medir así el trabajo de la gente... ahora no sé... es una medida interesante, tal vez no de la calidad del trabajo o la habilidad, pero sí del compromiso.

Me pregunto... ¿debemos trabajar lo que el horario indica o lo que la cantidad de trabajo obliga? Yo, overachiever y workoholic que soy, opino lo segundo y así ha sido toda mi vida: como estudiante universitario, leía todo y más y trasnochaba estudiando la literatura opcional; como profesor trasnochaba preparando materiales para mis clases, calificando, escribiendo guías y exámenes; como consultor, me encerraba en jornadas de 12-18 horas todos los días (con Camilo, quien me empujaba a trabajar más cuando estaba pensando en jugar Tactics Arena -¿todavía existirá?- sacando solicitudes de financiación de proyectos y propuestas para grants; como estudiante de posgrado, estudiaba 80-90 horas semanales y hasta más solo tratando de alcanzar a leer lo que era obligatorio y responder a todas las tareas (insisto en tratando pues nunca logré leer todo lo que asignaban Fernando Reimers y James Honan en sus clases)... Quienes estudiaban conmigo tenían hábitos similares, aunque algunos, especialmente mujeres, eran más juiciosos para empezar a trabajar temprano y así tener tiempo libre en la noche. Overachiever y workoholic... viene desde el colegio, ¿no?

Image taken from Doug Belshaw's blog.

Bienvenidos al nuevo sitio. Me tomó un tiempo organizar todo para que funcionara con la nueva plataforma, pero parace que todo está listo. De pronto hay errorcillos... me cuentan. No migré los usarios, así que si estaban registrado en alguno de los blogs anteriores y quieren registrarse en este (para comentar, por ejemplo), deben hacerlo de nuevo. Siento la molestia, yo también detesto crear nuevos usuarios en todo lado.

Intenté guardar las direcciones de los feeds RSS, pero no estoy seguro de que funcionen bien, así que puse unos cuentos enlaces en la barra derecha para que actualicen sus lectores o agregadores (¿sindicadores? ¿Cómo se dirá en español?).

Welcome to the all new site. It took a while to set things up, but I think I'm pretty much done. Everything that used to reside in the old site seems to be here... just go ahead and navigate. I didn't migrate users, so if you want to, you will have to create a new account. Administrator (me) authorization required (to fight spam, sorry).

I tried to keep the URLs of the RSS feeds, but I'm not quite sure it's working, so I put up some links to various feeds on the right navigation bar. Please update you readers or aggregators. I hope you enjoy the new look and feel.

My dad's blog, www.reflexionesdsi.org, broke today. It has all updates and was fine yesterday. I had to completely reinstall. Thankfully fue database was intact. Dunno what happened. -Posted from iPhone via Wordpress app.

So, I just dowloaded the latest release (today) of iPhone Dev Team's pwnage tool for mac. It was released a few hours ago. My iTunes acted up even before tryig to pwn the phone, so I had to reinstall it and do a full restore of the phone. Then I went throught the tool and my phone is unlocked 2.0 now (1st gen. iPhone). I am getting my stuff back via sync on iTunes and will reinstall apps as soon as that is done. You can get the tool via Pirate Bay torrents. I am seeding now help a bit. Get the one with the file called PwnageTool_2.0.zip, 19.7 MB. GL, and thanks iPhone dev team! Edit: Mail problems with iPhone 2.0 firmware (pwned): Mail was acting funny on the phone after the update and sync. It stayed blank and then crashed when I opened it. I could see a log of a crash report that seemed to be related to corrupted preference files. I restored from the custom software and before letting iTunes sync I created a mail account on the phone. Then I synced. I even synced mail accounts. It is working wll now. There was some info about this in the Apple support forums.

Last night I messed up my iPhone. Playing around with SSH I tried to change the root password via passwd, disregarding something I'd read and was in the back of my mind. Nothing really happened, but this morning Springoard just kep restarting itself and the phone was pretty much useless. I decided I would restore from a 1.1.4 image and jailbraik-unlock again if I had to.

First restore went fine (alt-click on restore, selected file, etc.). After it, the phone seemed to be unlocked but not activated. So weird. I tried to do a full restore by control-clicking and thought it all went well (since it didn't download anything). I didn't realize I already had the 1.2 (2.0) image in my iTunes folder and installed that without me realizing. Should have seen it coming since it didn't ask me to select a file.

I then tried to jailbrake-activate via iLiberty. It hung and I waited seeing code on the iPhone display. After a few hours (yeah, I was at work doing other stuff) I decided to force quit iLiberty... the phone still was just scrolling console text.

After several attempts at HomeButton+PowerButton I managed to put it in recovery mode and tried installing the 1.1.4 software again (not yet realizing I had the newest upgrade on). I got an Error 20. Weird error. Several times and restarts later I came home with an unactivated locked phone. But as usual, Google and good searching skills gave the answer... it took a while but worked. It involved downgrading iTunes to 7.5, pwning and neutering, but finally went well. I just finished syncing, now I need to install all the cool apps again.

Here's what helped:

• 2.0 to 1.1.4 Downgrade at Sleepers: http://sleepers.net/news/?page_id=216
• pwnage Tool instructions at hackint0sh: http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=36686

In case you hadn't unblocked your phone before and you come across the same stupidity as me, this might also help: How to erase any baseband: http://iphone-freak.com/en/page2/page2.html

In case you're wondering, 2.0 will soon be hacked. Check this out: http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

I've been reading about the nice images people have created with Wordle, and finally, after seeing some on Jay Cross' blog, I decided to head over and see what the fuzz was about. It's fun. Just type the URL of blog, RSS feed, a delicious user name or some text and it will create a nice cloud representing word frequency... or something. This is one of El Tiempo, at 12:35AM... could say something about what's news, huh? I did some others and here's one more to show... from my dad's blog, Reflexiones D. S. I.

Through a friends' blog about another friends' graduation (congratulations!) I got to J. K. Rowling's speech at Harvard Commencement. I'd read somewhere she was the speaker, but hadn't got to try and find it. I confess that in my own Commencement I didn't attend the "afternoon" speech some famous actor (forgive my memory) gave, the "afternoon exercises" I think they call that part of the ceremony.

Rowling gave a great speech that weaved her life story with ideas of failure, imagination and somehow compassion. I didn't quite get how she linked the latter two.

She started by remembering her own Commencement and life at age 21. Then came failure and it pushed her forward. She doesn't invite Harvard overachievers to fail, but invites them to think of themselves as a lot more than academic achievement or a CV. This definitively resonates with my doubts about going for a doctoral degree... I doubt it so much, I think I just admit I don't want it or really need it.

Then came imagination... somehow connected to compassion. I didn't know she had worked at Amnesty International. She talked about this stage of her life and invited the graduates, privileged citizens of "the world's last superpower" with an elite education to work for those who suffer war, torture and discrimination. No one (and Rowling herself said it) expects a commencement speech to change someone's life, and a few will probabaly just remember the mention of a "gay wizard" in 20 years, but the speech is wonderful example of her witty writing and the life lessons someone who has been in the "rock bottom".

You can watch it, read it or download it here: http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

I saw this video last year in the ICA in Boston. It's incredibly funny. That squirrel from "The Ice Age", Scrat is so much fun!

Thanks to the two friends in Boston for the invite about a year ago.

Aprovechando que estoy estrenando horno (y para calmar la fiebre de panadero) hice el ponqué de la abuela con la recete que me dio Luisa hace rato, pero con escencia de almendra en vez de vainilla. Creció bien, desmoldó sin problema y parece que quedó bastante rico... ya veremos; no lo he probado. ¿Será que publico la receta familiar?