Tsuboniwa (A Little History Garden on Twitter)

When I first started this blog a decade ago, I realized that there was often information I would come across that was interesting but perhaps did not need an entire blog post to get across. Hence, "Tsuboniwa - A Little History Garden on Twitter" was born. 

A  tsubo-niwa (坪庭/壷庭/つぼにわ) is a type of very small garden in Japan, and I imagined my tweets would be smaller pieces of historical information to share with the online community. 

I was pretty excited when at some point in the last year I passed 500 followers and 4K Tweets! 😊

Twitter has changed since I first opened my account in April 2012. When I started I subscribed to the Twitter feeds of other educators and historians and most of my feed was filled with interesting tidbits of history and links to longer, also interesting articles and websites. Now my feed is mostly filled of useless and often intrusive ads, angry posts about current events and partisan bitterness, and only a tiny fraction of the cool history and education content I used to enjoy. I do not go on Twitter that much anymore unless I have something specific I want to post or I need to post something for one of the public history or educational non-profits that I operate the Twitter accounts for.

But today while I posting on the Tsuboniwa about the current lawsuit publishers are waging against libraries and especially the Internet Archive. trying to limit the lending of digital books (more about that in tomorrows post), I came across a series of Tweets from Cate Denial about the impending doom of a new school year, just around the corner.

 I will share what she wrote in the space below, and let anyone who cares to know, there is a link to her blog, CATE DENIAL, in the "Paths Through The Wood" blog rollcall in the right menu. It's good stuff!

I was already mulling over the idea of built-in "catch-up days" that could double for study prep before a major evaluation, and the idea of scheduled "grading days," especially for late work is also a good idea 

Kate's last suggestion to "schedule your lunch break ON YOUR CALENDAR" is great advice. But first it made me laugh, and then cry just a little... If I had a dollar for every time I inhaled my lunch at my desk while working. or two dollars for each time I skipped eating lunch all together because I simply didn't have the time to, and I put all that money from over 30 years of teaching into my retirement fund... I could retire already.