So I tried to write about New Orleans.

About what it was like to see azaleas blooming in March. About the rich muddy waters of the Mississippi, who “ain’t never gave us no trouble,” said one lifelong resident to me, as if the river is a quiet neighbor who keeps the grass cut. About the cabby who recommended a local’s restaurant so far out of the tourist center that it amazed the second cabby who picked me up there. And about the feeling, as tangible as breath, that emanates from the citizens who talk about Katrina– every last one. It took me until the flight home to realize why I felt like it was familiar to me. It is the exact feeling that comes from European family members when they speak of surviving World War Two.

I was nursing a seven month old baby and managing a toddler when Katrina hit in 2005. My sympathies were abstract, my mind elsewhere. My lip service didn’t do it then, and it doesn’t now.

So I gave up on writing about New Orleans. This came out instead.

It’s my first experiment with digital movie making, so any clumsiness, glaring errors or omissions are only mine. It is intended for a local audience– for example, the Blue Cross Arena is a local landmark. Most of the photos after the initial segment are ones I took myself.

There is no criticism implied in it of the good intent or expertise of Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. In fact, Scott himself generously located and shared the music from “Do You Know 2.0″ for this project.

However, I also cannot deny that for me, the experience of New Orleans, and the questions it raised about the responsibility our society has to answer the basic needs of its people before anything else, do stand in stark ironic contrast to the juggernaut spread of “Do You Know?”.

I have seen “Do You Know?” four times in unrelated contexts in the past year and a half, one of them at the ASCD conference itself. And while the questions it asks about the technological proficiency of schools are useful ones, I also can’t help but pin them up in my mind against whole streets of storm-ravaged gutted homes, where schoolchildren no longer live.

Thus my choice to model the video after “Do You Know?” is deliberate.

Here is the original, for comparison.