My Attempt at Living a Life

  Inspiration Through Social Media  I first encountered ACAP Saint John through Facebook . A friend of mine, who enjoys volunteer work, posted about the Marsh Creek Cleanup , in 2018. I saw it as an opportunity to get out of the how and make a meaningful impact. It was low-risk and high impact. I could get garbage out of an important waterway, and it took such a small time commitment.  Things like that clean-up make it easy for people to get involved and feel like they are having an impact and that is what drew me to the organization in 2018.  It's what draws me to them as a source of vigor again today. Overview According to the ACAP SJ website, they seek to create change by providing environmental solutions: "Since 1992, ACAP Saint John has become known for partnering and working with the community to help provide solutions to existing and pending environmental problems." (ACAPSJ, 2022) Programs ACAP Saint John engages in a variety of projects Saint John Harbour Cleanup

 The Consuming Hope and Sadness of Consuming I have kept a journal of my consumption habits for a week. The feeling I get is a mixture of hope and despair. At one point this week, I was sitting at my dining room table, with my head in my hands, wondering if it was possible to make all of the changes I would need to make, in order to live as sustainably as I wanted.  The amount of product knowledge I need to accumulate is staggering. It is helpful to know what I do not know. But it is also scary. With that in mind, what follows is a week in my life as a consumer – the ads I see and how they influence me, the way I use water, how I travel, the products I use, how I spend money - everything I could account for. A Note About Reading This Sustainability Reflective Journal I will make general statements about daily habits and products I use here, to avoid repetition. That way I don’t have to write about brushing my teeth each day with the same toothpaste, or about travelling to work each day

Developing Understanding What you will need to understand is that I'm living in a house with no trees, suffering from erosion, fighting with the builder, and reading about sustainability. Because of all of those things, I found Netukulimk, Land Ethic, and Biophilic Design to be a beautiful mix of ideas. Here, Netukulimk is Our Definition of Sustainability  Trying to talk about sustainability with clarity can be difficult. There are a variety of definitions which can be interpreted in as many ways. One example is the way in which The Brundtland Report can be interpreted: To avoid this ambiguity, we will look to the concept of Netukulimk, as explained by Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall, and Kerry Prosper. ( Netukulimk | Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources , n.d.) The video is short, but full of beautiful and clear explanations of the concept of Netukulimk. In it, Elder Albert Marshall explains that the concept of Netukulimk is the Mi’kmaq word for sustainability. He furth

 Should we be more concerned for teens? Our kids are constantly connected and they are searching for privacy. But not in the ways that I thought.  According to Danah Boyd's book It's Complicated  (Boyd, 2014), "As teens encounter particular technologies, they make decisions based on what they’re trying to achieve." (Boyd, 2014, p.65) It is pointed out that teens are making decisions about how to post and trying to create a version of privacy that is different from past convention.  Our default settings are no longer set to private. "When participating in networked publics, many participants embrace a widespread public-by-default, private-through-effort mentality." (Boyd, 2014, p.62) For teens, that means that the parts of their lives that they want kept secret will remain that way, unless they make mistakes. And mistakes do happen. Young people are sharing compromising images of themselves, and the intent would be for those to remain private - between them a

 Can you spend less than 2 hours on screens? That is the guideline for children in Australia. ( 24-hour Movement Guidelines ). And, it seems impossible for most of us today. I spend on average 3 hours a day on my phone, and that isn't including any other media. I watch TV for about 2 hours a night too. And sometimes I fit in an hour of video gaming with my friends too.  The Australian Government indicate that any more than 2 hours of screen time is detrimental to our physical and mental health.  I wrote that last sentence 4 hours into doing my course work for a masters course. But there may be some lee-way. I'm doing this blog entry for school. (Image:  Australian Government, Department of Health, 2022 ) It's great that they don't include school work. You can be on screens for as long as you want, as long as it's for school. It seems like a strange thing to say, but it implies that not all screen time has the same effect, but it seems like I'm in the clear.  The

  So, what can we do? In my last post I was writing about the addictive nature of technology and how much of our lives are wasted in doom-scrolling and Snapchat streaks. We are new creatures, in a new environment... McLuhan Can Teach Us Some Important Stuff Remember Marshall McLuhan's laws of media? The blessing, the improvement to our life, it is also a curse. It creates a new society. "The "Laws of the Media" are observations on the operation and effects of human artifacts on man and society, since, Hass further notes, a human artifact "is not merely an implement for working upon something, but an extension of our body, effected by the artificial addition of organs;... to which, to a greater or lesser degree, we owe our civilization." ( McLuhan, M., 2017 ) Because the things we create are extensions of us, they alter us. They alter society. And because of that, when we created the internet, and smartphones, we created new versions of ourselves, and a new

  The New Tech Experiments We Do We never stop to ask if we should do a thing. As teachers, we experience this every day. New policies and procedures, programs, and mandates. But it is a larger problem than that. It's a human problem. We experiment without a control group. We get a new technology and we just start using it.  We just do it. We just adopt new tech and think it's the best thing ever, and we don't stop to think of the consequences. Marshall McLuhan was writing and speaking about this phenomenon for years. He discussed the tetrad of new media and how it was a blessing and a curse.  New tech always makes life better, it always replaces and obsolesces something, and it calls back to an older tech. But the biggest part of this is what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. It is a curse. Image: Columbia.edu We never stopped to think about cars, factories, suburbs, pesticides, coal, or cellphones.  Let's stop and look at one long-ago example, to illustrate the p