The power of curation

This was written by Scott McLeod who is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky and the Founding Director of CASTLE, the nation's only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school leaders. He blogs regularly at Dangerously Irrelevant and can be found on Twitter at @mcleod. This post was originally found here.

by Scott McLeod

Most students need help learning how to get organized. And if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that most adults need help in this area too! One of the best ways to use technology in the classroom is to help students and educators learn how to curate and organize the information and resources that they find on the Web.

There are a number of different tools available for Internet curation.

Delicious, a social bookmarking service, remains a favorite of many. By adding the Delicious button to their Internet browser toolbars, students and teachers can quickly bookmark a web site, blog post, video, or any other resource that they want to access again later. It's also easy to add keyword tags or notes to anything that they bookmark, which means that they can quickly create collections of things about which they're interested or passionate. [Creating a new unit? Tag the resources! Doing a school project? Tag everything found online with a special class project tag! Found three new skateboarding or music videos and want to save them? Tag them!] Since Delicious is an online service, it is easy for educators and students to log in and access their bookmarks from any device. Plus, many mobile apps now have the ability to send directly to Delicious, which means that individuals can bookmark resources from their mobile phones or tablet computers too.

[TIP: Common tags that are used by multiple students and faculty members also are a great way to create collections of learning resources by unit, class, or subject area.]

Another useful curation tool for teachers and students is Evernote. Evernote is a digital storage tool that allows individuals to create and store notes, documents, web sites, and much more. Evernote is a very robust digital storage box that can handle nearly anything that students and educators may want to throw into it, including text, images, documents, audio, and video. Like Delicious, Evernote has buttons for Internet browsers that allow users to quickly 'clip' and save all or part of a web page. This is particularly useful for capturing online information that may expire or disappear later, because once you've captured something in Evernote, it's yours to keep! Also like Delicious, Evernote supports keyword tagging which means that individuals can quickly label and categorize notes and other resources. Additionally, Evernote allows students and educators to create folders to further organize materials. Those folders can even be shared publicly online with other people. Evernote lives on multiple platforms and thus can be used on a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer as well as on smartphones. Everything in Evernote can be synchronized across devices, thus facilitating access at any time from anywhere. Evernote also has a very robust user community that shares tips on how to get the most out of the service.

There is a wealth of information available to us online. The challenge for most of us is how to organize and make sense of it. Mastery of digital curation tools is a critical learning need for both students and educators.

Want to be a better teacher? Blog.

This was written by Dean Shareski who is a Digital Learning Consultant for Prairie South School Division in Saskatchewan, Canada. He also teaches pre-service teachers at the University of Regina. Dean works with teachers and students in understanding the power of the Read/Write Web. Dean tweets here and blogs here. This post first appeared here.

by Dean Shareski

Want to create better teachers? I know how. One word. Blogging.

Now before you roll your eyes or accuse me of oversimplifying the very complex issue of teacher evaluation and monitoring, hear me out.

I began teaching in 1988. It was a tough job and thinking about getting better was superseded by survival instincts. Early on in my career, there were several documents that the province produced in support of improved professional development. I didn't pay much attention to these but one phrase I saw in those documents some 20 years ago stuck with me. Reflective Practitioner. I sort of understood the concept but other than simply thinking about what you did in the classroom, I wasn't at all sure what to do with this term.

When I discovered blogs almost five years ago, I soon figured out what that term meant. Since that occasion I have sat down to write close to 1,000 pieces of reflection. While not all would be considered deep, most take me anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours to craft. It may not always look like it, these are generally borne out of the times I spent observing, thinking and working in classrooms. The reflective writing has been valuable but definitely the nearly 4,000 comments have been even more of a learning experience. This is the single best professional development experience I've had.

Dan Meyer, a Mathematics teacher in California writes:

... blogging was the cheapest, most risk-free investment I could have made of my personal time into my job. You start by writing down things that are interesting to you, practices you don't want to forget. And then you start trying new things just so you can blog about them later, picking them apart, and dialoging over them with strangers. Periods of stagnancy in your blogging start to correspond to periods of stagnancy in your teaching. You start to muse on your job when you're stuck in traffic, in line for groceries, that sort of thing. That transformation has been nothing but good for me and it all began on a free Blogspot blog.

Thousands of other blogging educators could echo similar words. In fact, I've yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it's been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement. I've no "data" to prove this but I'm willing to bet my golf clubs that teachers who blog are our best teachers. If you look at the promise of Professional Learning Communities that our schools have invested thousands, more likely millions to achieve, blogs accomplish much of the same things. The basic idea of the PLC is to have teachers share practice/data and work in teams to make improvements. A good blog does this and more. While the data may not be school specific, great bloggers know how to share data and experience that is both relevant and universal so any reader can contribute and create discussion.

There's a natural transparency that emerges. The teachers who blog as professionals in this reflective manner in my district invite anyone to look into their classrooms and you can get a picture of what happens on a daily basis. This goes a long way in addressing accountability concerns.

Teachers have for years had to fill in a plethora of reports and forms which in essence are accountability papers. For the most part they are of no use to teachers and in most cases aren't very valuable for administration either. Busy work.

So here's my plan. Hire a teacher, give them a blog. Get them to subscribe to at least five other teachers in the district as well as five other great teachers from around the globe. Have their principal and a few central office people to subscribe to the blog and five other teachers as well. Require them to write at least once a week on their practice. Get conversations going right from the get go. Watch teachers get better.

Try that. If it doesn't work after a year, you get my golf clubs.

PS. The only people allowed to criticize or challenge this idea are people who have blogged for at least one year and written at least 50 posts. The rest of you can ask questions but you can't dismiss it.

Why I unfollowed hundreds of people thanks to Tony Baldasaro

I was inspired by Tony Baldasaro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People to reclaim my connection with the people I follow on Twitter by unfollowing hundreds of people.

I joined Twitter in June 2009 because Alfie Kohn posted on his website that he had joined. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and promptly gave Twitter up after looking at it for about a month. I didn't necessarily know it at the time, but my problem was that I was not connected to anyone, so lurking got pretty old, pretty fast. 

Then in January 2010, I started this blog, and it made sense to use Twitter to share my latest posts. People started responding and connecting and interacting with me via Twitter, so I stayed interested.

People starting following me. 

I can remember following my first 100 people and making a conscious decision not to follow more than that because I wanted Twitter to remain manageable; however, even 100 people was becoming difficult to keep up with. I quickly realized that I didn't need (or want) to read every single tweet by those I followed.

I remember when I decided to relinquish my self-imposed limit on who I followed when I decided to return the favor to those who followed me by following them. This was a mistake and led to the beginning of the end of my connections with those I followed. Before I knew it, I was following about 1,500 people and I quickly found myself never looking at my Twitter Timeline.

That's when I turned to lists. 

I knew that there really was only a handful of people that I really needed and wanted to stay connected closely with. After looking at the two lists that I use the most, there are actually 40 people on Twitter that I follow on a daily basis. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to read what they were reading. I wanted to think about what they are thinking about. I wanted their insight. I wanted to learn from them. 

Months ago, I found myself going through the list of people I followed on Twitter and recognized that I didn't recognize most of them, so I unfollowed about 1,000 people without saying a word to anyone. I forced myself to ignore how many followers I had so that I could not track how many followers I had lost. This left me with about 400 people I "followed" but still payed little attention to. There were still too many tweets to keep track of.

So when I read Tony Baldasoro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People, I knew that I had to be more authentic about who I followed. I mean, how can I claim to know how to use Twitter when I don't even follow the people I follow. I almost exclusively use Twitter on my iPhone, and I'm tired of my home button being useless.

The first run through my unfollowing people was easy -- if I didn't recognize the avatar, I clicked unfollow. But then I still had like 400 people and I knew it was still too many. I had to make some tough decisions. 

Do I unfollow:

• my friend that I used to play hockey with? 
• my school board trustee? 
• my deputy superintendent? 
• people I followed first but no longer connect with?
• popular people that others may follow closely but I don't?

As of now, I'm following about 230 people, and it's still likely too many, but I'm really having a hard time reducing it more than that. Everyone of those 230 people are people that I actively recognize and am at least loosely familiar with. As I approach 10,000 followers, I am again going to have to try and ignore how many followers I might lose because in the end this is about reconnecting with those who I follow and not about simply adding or retaining those who follow me. After all, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people who really follow me on Twitter is significantly less than 10,000. Never forget that the number of followers you have on Twitter is kind of like the time that used to flash on your VCR.

If you are reading this and you have already checked your Twitter account to see that I have unfollowed you, please don't take it personally.

If you feel the need to unfollow me, I understand. Heck, maybe you could take this opportunity to reconnect with those you follow. Maybe I'm on that list, and maybe I'm not. And if I have to lose some followers so that others can also reclaim and reconnect with those they follow, then I'm more than okay with that.

Please understand that if we are to make social networking about relationships and learning then we all have to make choices about the quality and quantity of people we choose to follow. 

The Denial of Social Networking

The idea that a child could be born a digital native makes as much sense as the idea that a child could be born literate.

Like reading and writing skills, digital literacy is something constructed inside children while interacting with their environment. It's not about their DNA -- it's about opportunity and guidance.

Part of the illusion here is that too many people mistakenly think a student's digital comfort level equates to their digital skill level or digital literacy.

Phil McRae with the The Alberta Teachers' Association describes some of the results of a recent Canadian study on technology and teacher-student relationships:

Another common finding was that teachers are often unable to make full use of social media in their teaching practice because firewalls prevent them from accessing services such as Twitter, Skype and YouTube. This is an important finding—if we are to teach students to be critical consumers and thoughtful citizens in a digital age, teachers need to be trusted to make pedagogic decisions on the application of technology.

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to learn about social networking?

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to teach students how to use social networking appropriately?

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to teach students how to NOT use social networking inappropriately?

If we deny students and teachers access to social networking in schools where they can learn together about how to properly navigate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype in ways that are pro-social and responsible, we shouldn't be surprised when kids grow up to be adults who use social networking in dysfunctional and dangerous ways.

I'm trying Blogger's Dynamic Templates... Again

Last October I tried Blogger's Dynamic Templates for a day or two before deciding that they simply were not ready for prime time.

I love the crisp, clean look of the Dynamic Templates, but their lack of labels/tags and access to blog archives were simply too much to overcome.

Here's how you find labels, blog archives
and subscribe gadgets.

Well, Blogger recently added some functionality to their Dynamic Templates and so I've returned to give them another shot. On the far right, you can mouse over the edge of your browser and the labels, archives and subscribe functions appear.

I know I use the search function, labels/tags and blog archives a lot on my blog, but I don't necessarily know what my readers' needs are for these kinds of gadgets.  So I'm reaching out for some feedback from you.

1. Do you like the Dynamic look of my blog or should I return to my traditional look? 

2. What functions do you use on my blog? Search, blog archives, labels... etc. 

3. Or maybe none of this matters because you view my blog via an RSS feed or mobile device...

I'm trying Blogger's Dynamic Templates

As you can see, my blog looks a lot different. I'm giving Blogger's Dynamic Templates a shot. Based on your viewing needs, I would love to hear from you via a comment. Should I stick with this new look or return to my classic layout?

Remember, you can select any one of the seven different Dynamic Views from the pull-down menu in the top left corner.

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

Pros

• I love how clean and crisp the dynamic views look. They reduce the clutter and place my content at the forefront. 

• I'm a big fan of how the reader can personalize their experience by switching between any one of the seven different Dynamic views.

• I like how it shows how many Tweets or Facebook likes each post has received, and that you can click those icons to immediately share a post.

Cons

• The search function seems to only search for words on the posts that are displayed on the page. When I use the search function on a blog, I want it to search through an entire blog's archives.

• I don't see any of the Dynamic Views allowing the reader to easily view and select from the blog's labels/tags.

• I miss some of the widgets like my Revolver Maps Visitor Globe, pageviews per week, labels/tags, but I know that some of this stuff is precisely what clutters up a blog. I think I'd like to be able to place all this stuff in a separate page.

• I tried to place the Revolver Maps Visitor Globe HTML code in a separate page, while this worked with the classic templates, this did not work for Dynamic View.

Overall, I think I am mostly impressed with Blogger's Dynamic Views but there are a couple issues that need to be addressed. The good news is that it looks like Blogger is already addressing some of these issues.

So what do you think? Should I stick with this new look?

Social Networking and Learning

When I first joined the social networking scene, I did so only because I was visiting Alfie Kohn's website and saw that he was using Twitter. At the time I didn't really have a clue what Twitter was even about, but if joining meant I might get further insight into what authors like Kohn were reading, thinking or saying, then I thought it was worth the effort.

It's been almost two years since I joined Twitter and a year-and-a-half since I started blogging, and it's been by far the greatest professional development I've ever participated in.

I've learned a lot from others, and I like to think that I've given back in a way that has allowed others to learn a little from me.

The New Normal: Public by default

Back in the old days before the Internet and Social Networking is what it is today, making or saying something was private by default and making it public took effort.

Today when you make or say something, it is public by default and it takes effort to keep it private.

cc licenced flickr photo shared by Dave Hoffman

Technology and Learning

I did an interview this morning for the Media Awareness Network.

Here is a list of blog posts that I have written that are relevant to the discussion around technology and learning.

Digital Natives they are not

Khan Academy: Improving School by changing nothing

Should I buy iPads for my classroom (checkout the comments for some interesting insight)

Lessons I learned from my students' blogs (this is a guest post by Al Gonzalez - an American educator)

Discussion Thread or Blog Post?

Ethics and Technology

Shoehorning Technology

Poor Pedagogy + Technology = Accelerated Malpractice

Gaming in the classroom: Rock Band

Assessment and Technology

Using Technology to Support Real Learning in Alberta

Kid Technology

Teaching Social Networking: Finger Dipping

Professional Development & Social Networking

My learning and Social Networking

Twitter for Teachers

Here are two quick YouTube videos on how and why educators can use Twitter to connect with other educators from all around the world in an effort to better their craft and develop professionally.

However, chances are if you are reading this on my blog, you are likely familiar with Twitter. So to make this information helpful for those who don't use Twitter or Blogging, you are going to need to share this with them somehow. Consider sending this post's link in an e-mail, or speak to your principal about using some staff meeting time to show this to your colleagues, followed by a conversation.

There are others like you

Here is a guest post by Pernille Ripp. I'm pleased to learn from Pernille both on Twitter and on her blog Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension.

By Pernille Ripp

I could never go back to how I taught before. I could never start talking that much again or assign that much work without losing this newfound passion that now drives me every day. Now when I plan, I constantly ask, what is the goal of my lesson? Why am I choosing to present this to the students rather than something else? How can the students be my partners in learning? How can this be about them and not me? Those simple, yet powerful questions drive me every day as I continue to develop as an educator.

I also could never go back to how I used to learn. The way traditional professional development was introduced to me in college or the network that I lacked. Sure, I do many things differently this year but I am not an expert on any of those, in fact, I am not an expert on anything in life. Therefore the power of being able to connect with others who know so much more than me has been life reinvigorating. I am simply me, and yet with the power of my extended learning network, I am not alone when I share my story. Others join me, support me and scold me as I put it out there; flaws and all, for people to judge, comment, think and perhaps even change. I can only tell you my story in the hopes that it will allow others to share theirs as well. That they will not be afraid to speak about their own paths and journeys even when they veer off the more standard path. That they will have a place to share their voice, their fears, their triumphs and a whole community that will support and accept them.

We must be courageous when we try new things, particularly those that seem to fly in the face of traditional education, fore there are many more critics than supporters. Yet with those critics comes a relevance because if people were not afraid of the changes we propose for the betterment of education than perhaps we are not asking for enough. So although you may find yourself seemingly alone in your own environment, if you reach out, you will be surprised. Others are out there, perhaps not in your own building, but somewhere in the world. Others that will teach you, inspire you, and believe in you when you need it the most. And perhaps, just perhaps, you will find that reaching out to others will make you become a leader in your own right, an inspirer, a supporter, someone whom others look to. Or maybe you will be like me, simply me, someone who is not an expert but who learns and tries to better themselves every day, whether it be through the people at my building or people in my PLN whom I have never met and yet still consider friends and confidantes. Whatever you become, don't give up, you are not alone, there are others out there trying to change the world as well. Unite and believe in yourself, and in your students. Change will come if we fight for it.

My learning and Social Networking

I am a teacher, but I'm a learner first.

My head spins when I think back upon how my learning has been influenced by social networking.

• Google Reader: I don't need someone to tell me what to read. Traditional newspapers and magazines just don't make much sense to me. Who gives them the right to tell me what to read? Why do they get to pick what's on the front page? Google Reader allows me to tailor my own personal newspaper with the RSS feeds from my favorite blogs.

• Twitter: It's so important to find like-minded colleagues, but the laws of probability tell us that you have a better chance finding them if you look amongst billions of people virtually than a handful of people physically. Our workplaces simply can not expose us to a large enough population - Twitter has provided me with the opportunity to find my tribe. 

• Diigo: I come across a lot of information in a day. In fact, too much. Quite often, I can't read everything I'd like to but Diigo allows me to bookmark all my stuff with tags. In other words, Diigo is my virtual bookshelf where I place my stuff, and on that bookshelf, I have labels that allow me to easily retrieve anything I've come across. A real life example of this: for the last few years, I've tagged stuff about math, and for the first time in my career I now have the opportunity to teach math, so when I went back to my Diigo, I had 20+ resources to look at. As I read through my stuff, I knew that I had not read them when I tagged them then, but I was sure glad I had them now. 

• Posterous: I use posterous to capture excerpts, pictures and videos that I come across that I wish to comment on. Often I might get around to blogging about these in a more sophisticated manner; however, I really like the idea of sharing with others my thoughts on the stuff I come across on a daily basis. I can think of a handful of people whom I would love to have a live subscription to their daily research, viewing, reading and musings.

When I share this with others who have yet to engage in social networking, their first reaction tends to be something like this "How do you have time for all this stuff?" While I will I agree that I do spend time and effort at this, and that getting this social networking thing "figured out" can initially take a lot of both, it ultimately is one of the cheapest, most efficient and effective ways of gathering such a quantity and quality of information to support my learning.

And it's fun.

Digital Natives they are not

I made a class Ning for my grade six students and it has taken longer to register with e-mails and passwords than I would have thought necessary. Some kids have no e-mail accounts, and the year of their birth seems to be an issue. Not sure if they are too young for Ning's liking or what but they had to say to say they were born in 1980 to get it to work.

The Ning is private, so only invited or accepted members may be privy to everything we do. 

I chose to use the following Ning apps:

• instant chat
• videos
• blogs
• pictures
• my page
• forum

The moment my kids got on, they gravitated to the instant chat and spammed the hell-out-of everyone with emoticons, LOLs and other drivel such as "I like cheesecake."

While some spammed the instant chat, others were busy uploading America's Funniest Home Video clips. Yes, some were funny, but more and more were being uploaded. 

While the spam was frustrating, it was anything but a surprise - I anticipated such an event, so I wrote my first blog post on the Ning about Spam:

After World War II, Britain suffered greatly. Their country, including their farms and economy were in ruins from the war.

An exorbitant amount of canned luncheon meat was imported from Argentina to help with the lack of food, and so the meat soon became infamously known as Spam.

Soon, Spam came to be known as anything of low quality done over and over again. When people send low quality messages such as "LOL" or "I like cheesecake" over and over again as messages, this is called spam.

In order to have a productive online experience that focuses on real learning, how should we deal with spam? 

The next day, we talked briefly about spam. This kind of technology typically is outright banned or ignored by schools (either purposefully or because of a lack of money, equipment or know-how), and so it should be no surprise that the kids have developed little to no real skills in using instant chat kinds of technology; after all, they've had no guidance from anyone but their peers.

To get started, I uploaded and shared this video with my students, and then asked them to use the instant chat to discuss the video:

The moment the video was over... more spam. More emoticons. More drivel.

Did I get mad?

No.

Instead, I saw this as a teachable moment. It's not that these digital natives were given an inch so they took a mile - rather, it's more accurate that these kids are not digital natives. Frankly, I'm not sure there is such a thing but that's an another post.

To model some productive chat, I posted a question: "Does school sometimes turn kids off of school?"

And still I didn't get much more of a response than: "Yes"

So I posted a few more questions. 

Still nothing.

So I waited.... and then it happened. Chase typed something different - something no one had done yet: "this video reminds me of my cousin."

I stopped the class and we talked about how what Chase said was different from spam or one word responses. We talked about how his comment could actually inspire a response from others.

Then it happened again. This time Jayla asked a question: "why is there space in this video?"

We stopped and talked about how Jayla's question could inspire others to answer her question or even ask their own.

Finding and posting interesting content is less than half the challenge. The real challenge is in artfully guiding students to thinking and discussing the content in a productive manner. But you'll notice I didn't instruct them on how to do this. I didn't provide them with a list of rules to follow. Rather, I provided them with an opportunity to make mistakes and construct their own understanding with each other for how they should best use the Ning.

This all takes time, but it's worth it. I can already see kids reasoning with themselves and others how we can use this Ning to support our learning.

Facebook Guide for Teachers

Teacher's Guide to Using Facebook (Read Fullscreen)

For more on Facebook for teachers, visit EduDemic.

Professional Development & Social Networking

My blog was born on January 6, 2010. Today is June 10, 2010.

In 5 months, my blog has:

• Over 20,000 visits
• Over 11,000 unique visitors
• Over 33,000 page visits

I have to admit I am more than happy to see these kinds of numbers, but I do have a grander purpose for sharing this with you than just boasting.

If you are a progressive educator who advocates for education reform and changes to the traditional model of school, there is a good chance that you may be in the minority in your school. In fact, you may find yourself being the only one...

This can be both challenging and lonely.

I can only imagine the number of teachers who have had their progressive voices shushed or outright silenced. Being an agent of change can be challenging enough, but doing it alone may verge on the impossible.

Often having even one like-minded person to share your thoughts and feelings can help you persevere through opposing adversity, but what if there isn't even one like-minded person to be found?

This is why the Internet and social networking has proven to be so liberating - the world is a big place and there is a good chance that somewhere out there like-minded people exist. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, nings and other forms of social networking provide us with an unprecedented ability to find them... from any where in the world. Time and place are rendered obsolete.

While I would never suggest virtual relationships can or should ever replace our physical ones, we are no longer bound to only our locals. When colleagues in the "real world" no longer provide the like-minded support that we desire, we can look to colleagues in the virtual world.

In the spirit of networking, please consider taking a minute to leave a comment:

• Feel free to remain anonymous
• Why do you visit this blog?
• Where in the world are you from?

Teaching Social Networking: Finger Dipping

In their book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks adn How they Shape Our Lives, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler offer a powerful reason why we owe it to our children to teach them about social networking:

Our connectedness carries with it radical implications for the way we understand the human condition. Social networks have value precisely because they can help us to achieve what we could not achieve on our own. In the next few chapters, we will show how networks influence the spread of joy, the search for sexual partners, the maintenance of health, the functioning of markets and the struggle for democracy. Yet, social-network effects are not always positive. Depression, obesity, sexually transmitted diseases, financial panic, violence, and even suicide also spread. Social networks, it turns out, tend to magnify whatever they are seeded with.

Partly for this reason, social networks are creative. And what these networks create does not belong to any one individual - it is shared by all those in the network. In this way, a social network is like a commonly owned forest: we all stand to benefit from it, but we also must work together to ensure it remains healthy and productive. This means that social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and ubiquitous, they should not be taken for granted.

Social network is not some recent discovery that came with the creation of Facebook or Twitter. Social networking is less about technology and more about people. Technologies like Facebook or Twitter are merely the mediums in which our connectedness can be amplified. If Twitter shut down tomorrow, our connectivity would likely not.

It is important to not become distracted by the medium - the technology - and to focus on the network itself- that is the people who are connected. Christakis and Fowler point out an essential truth and that is our networks grow what we seed into them. If we seed racism, hatred and pornography, we will grow racism, hatred and pornography. But if we seed tolerance, understanding and wisdom, we will grow tolerance, understanding and wisdom.

Like a finger being dipped into a pond of water, the ripples that spread through our networks will reflect what we place into them. We must take great care in selecting which fingers we choose to dip.

This is what we must teach our children.