nothing more american

Major Otis invites us to dream a little:

The worldwide leader in multibrand two-for-one restaurant locations, Yum! Brands can satisfy your combinatory culinary cravings, however discordant...What's your dream Yum! Brands restaurant combination?

Me? Too easy:

um...Dunkin Donuts & Taco Bell.
Uh, yes, I'll have the Coffee Taco.
Oh, and a small box of Burritokins.
Drink? Yes, of course.
How 'bout a Frappachalupa?

You?

Trans-fat options welcome.

crappy motivation

They clamored, We want to learn how to integrate the interactive white boards in our teaching.

I responded, I shall schedule a day.

They emailed, Great, we look forward to a meaningful day.

And the day came. Amazing participation. Actively engaged, one and all.

An email the following day, whittled down and paraphrased:

The day was great. I'm just not motivated to do any of this in my classes.

Here's hoping the Pennsylvania State Legislature approves funding for year three of the Classrooms for the Future grant.

attending a homeference

Remember that moment early in your career when you had to separate home life from work life?

Don't let that argument with your girlfriend spill over to your classroom.

Or work life from home life?

Yeah, that kid pissed you off, but check your frustration at the exit.

But how do your separate your living room life from your dining room life?

Okay, so he's crying because he wants you to read Fox on Sox. You'll read to him later. His 3-month old twin sisters are in the dining room, crying for a needed feeding.

There is no transition time. There is no 15 minute break between sessions. There is no vendor village, no blogger's cafe, no keynote.

But every moment is a spotlight session.

I'm living at NECC: the Never-Ending Childcare Conference.

question of an interim nature

The interim principal has left the building. In fact, he's fishing. But before he left, he met with each teacher. Standard end-of-year professional goal reflection review.

Here's my one memorable comment from my meeting with my interim principal:

I feel like we've been living above a fault line.

But then, just as the meeting was approaching its predictable ending, he asked:

What would be the first thing you would do to make this place better?

No one has ever me that. Has anyone ever asked you?

good ahead, be gluttonous

Joyce led me to the good, statistically-driven folks over at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. They put out The Internet Typology Test and it will, most likely, give you plenty of room to bend your digital self into any type of technophile or technofear persona you wish - replete with statistics to reaffirm your own sense of survey-driven identity!

Perhaps you'll find that you:

use [your] extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with [your] cell phone. [You] are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining [your] Web page, remixing digital content, or posting [your] creations to [your] websites, [you] are a creative participant in cyberspace.

You'd be an omnivore.

But would you be doing any of the above with your students?

damn you, PD days!

or, 'why are they in groups if they can complete the work on their own?'

The Event:

• 2008 Presidential Election

The Situation:

• Four weeks until election day
  

The Players:

• The Candidate
• The Travel Adviser
• Demographic Consultant
• Speech Writer
• Backdrop Artist

The Final Push:

• Visit four towns, in four separate states, as the last leg of 11th hour campaigning in hopes of winning the election.

The Questions:

• Who is your candidate?
  
• What is her political affiliation?
• What is her platform on Iraq? Economy? and one other issue?
• What are your four destinations?
• Why have you chosen these spots?
• What speech do you deliver at each location? Order of issues?
  
• What catchy background phrase/slogan do you paste behind your candidate at each location? (in Iowa - Planting Seeds of Change; in Pittsburgh - Forging a New Tomorrow)

There will be deeper questions. Ones that you pose, ones that you have in storage, or ones that you wait for students to develop. Every class breeds different angles, slopes, and vectors - you just need to read and react like a pro-bowl lineman.

Something hints at differentiation. Something about this says every individual in every group may need something different than his or her peers.

Something about this seems plausible.

Something about this seems difficult.

More for the teacher than the student.

Is there anything wrong with that?

production time > quality

The Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament Kick-Off video:



You can exhale now.

Probably a no-brainer for most of y'all, but the amount of time I put in using the following instruments:

1. Flip Video
   
2. Windows Movie Maker (antipathy continues to escalate)

insured that the end result would be blah hum-bug.

But I wanted to put something together for the staff. Something to demonstrate that this 'event' could occur, had the appropriate peripherals to make it seem 'real', and evidence that it could be 'fun'.

I've revealed something about my own skill-set, as well as my mis-guided selection process to produce the video.

And now I'm wondering if having students make videos for a class other than one specifically designed to teach the craft is an ill-informed, what-else-did-you-expect game plan?

The cherry on top: I'm 1-4 in the first round of the tournament.