The specific day mentioned in the title above was last Tuesday, the day after a 3 day weekend. A weekend when my wife broke her wrist falling from her mountain bike that she was actually riding in the mountains … the Sierra Nevadas to be exact in a place call Cisco Grove (no connection to the technology company btw). She had surgery that Wednesday and is doing fine.

I managed to get to school a bit earlier than usual that Tuesday. I settled into my overstuffed desk chair and began checking email when I noticed a Twitter notification from Jeff Utecht asking me to Skype him ASAP. Within 1 minute I was talking to Jeff in Bangkok, Thailand (Skype is just too cool!). Jeff informed me that he had someone drop out from presenting at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai, China, and wondered if would I consider making the trip. He explained all the arrangements and requirements, and right after I picked my jaw off the floor I found myself saying “Yes!” He told me I wouldn’t know for sure until Thursday and that would still leave me plenty of time to prep 6 sub days, multiple presentations in Shanghai, visa applications and other arrangements and teach full time … Nooooo problem! : ) I mean that gives me 9 days. : )

So Thursday we confirmed it and the rest is (or will be) history. My principal has bent over backwards getting the required I’s dotted and T’s crossed and unless something falls through I’m Shanghai bound!

Later that same day I found out that the iBook laptops that were stolen a few weeks back will be replaced with new Macbooks … could be here any day … ho hum.

Just your normal day at school.

BTW I explained the next day to my students about the new laptops AND my trip to China. They were happy about the laptops but equally happy about my trip. I zoomed from the roof of our school to Shanghai using Google Earth (they never get tired of that) and answered a bunch of questions and dispelled some misconceptions about China. I only wish the time zone thing worked so that I could Skype them into one or so of my presentations. I will be able to share blog posts they’ll be posting though.

I have had this class of students for 2 years now and starting our 3rd year together. There are 12 of my original 28 – 4th graders left and 8 students that joined us last year in fifth grade that are still here. Celest tried to come back, but they moved further away and couldn’t get the after-school care to work so no Celest – but she has been leaving a few comments on blogs and I saw her the first day of school and she looks great. We’ve also heard from 3 other students that moved out of the area. These things happen in neighborhoods overwhelmed with poverty … lots of movement.

Well back to prep!

Learning is messy!

Tags: ChinaLearning2.008

So for the second year in a row we are camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the Labor Day Weekend. To me this kind of camping in these slots just big enough to park in (but we have plug-ins!) is not umm … real camping. But I was out voted so here we are.

Last year on our camping trip, as you may recall, we had a run in with a bear – but fortunately I came to the rescue and scared the bear away, saving one and all. My family doesn’t see it that way (why I don’t know – but you might want to follow the link above) so since we are once again in bear country (but northeast of where we were last year) they are afraid of a repeat performance. I’ll let you know if we have any bear sightings.

Learning is messy!

Tags: Bears, brooms, mountains

One of the neat perks of teaching and living in Reno (where the Hot Air Balloon Races will be soon), is that occasionally you have a balloon come in for a landing on your playground. It doesn’t get any cooler than that!

 

 

 

Learning is messy!

Precision?

Originally uploaded by BCrosby

Nothing more to say.

Photo_08.jpg

Originally uploaded by BCrosby

School begins next week and I’m busily preparing my classroom for my soon to arrive students. Tuesday I attended training provided by the textbook company on our newly adopted science program. I was putting away the teacher materials we received and realized what a load of stuff it was (various workbook pages, software, etc.). Realize all of this is for the teacher … the textbooks for students are not included here. The reading program we have has easily 3 times this much support material and EACH TEACHER gets this stuff. Our social studies program is a bit more than is pictured here. 1st to 5th grade math is at least this much. This is what adds to the extreme cost of these programs and helps keep the tree population in check.

Sheesh!

Learning is messy!

Photo_08.jpg

Originally uploaded by BCrosby

Maybe if we start to paint our laptops like this they won’t get stolen as often? Just a thought.

Learning is messy!

#1 – Unless you have to be there, spend as little time on the vendor floor as possible.  Last year I did a “walkthrough” for about 25 minutes and that was it … and I didn’t feel later like I missed anything. The glitz and freebies are tempting but what you generally find is you get bags of freebies that weeks or months later you realize you mainly just threw out. Most software trials are available online anyhow.

Some good friends of mine gathered so much “stuff” at the National Science Teachers conference years ago that they paid over $25 to ship it home because they had no room left in their baggage. They were ecstatic at all the “great stuff” they got. You guessed it, 99% of everything ended up thrown out unused over the next 2 or 3 years. Besides, there is so much else going on that you will miss a ton being collared by sales people that want you to see their stuff and listen to their pitch.

The vendor floor has always been where you went between sessions at any conference. If there weren’t any sessions that appealed to you during a time that is when you visited the floor. Well at NECC the Bloggers Café and various other venues are constantly abuzz and full of people to have conversations with and see Impromptu demos of software and techniques. When I would stroll into those venues after being at a session last year something was always going on. I also skipped sessions I had planned to attend because of getting caught up in what was going on in the Cafe.

#2 – Make a schedule of all the sessions you want to see … then be ready to ignore it … or at least a lot of it.  If you’ve been to any conference you know that figuring out which sessions to attend is hard because how a session is described too often isn’t what you expected, or it ends up being way over your head or so introductory as to be worthless to you, and by the time you figure that out it’s too late to get into another. 

Last year there were times that, via Twitter or Skype, someone already in a session that wasn’t even on your radar screen would Twit that they were in an awesome session with empty seats in room ____.

#3 – Don’t be afraid to hang out and put your 2 cents in. My experience last year was that all those people whose blogs you read are pretty approachable. Use common sense and if they look busy leave them alone. You could tell when someone had just been in a session or had a conversation they wanted to blog or whatever … they would sit off to the side and be obviously totally focused on writing on their laptop … get a clue and leave them alone. Anyone you see sitting with the group … mosey on over and look for your opening. Nobody was a bigger no body last year than me (or shyer), and I felt included throughout. I did read blogs from people later that stopped by and were afraid to inject themselves (understandable … it can be intimidating), but give it a shot. If you see me … come say hi.

#4 – Bring a cheap plug strip. I forget who exactly … it was one of the WOW2 women (Cheryl or Jen I think) had one last year and we would all moan every time she left the café and took her strip with her … there were only so many plugs. AND if you have an extra battery, BRING IT!

#5 – Don’t stress … YOU ARE GOING TO MISS SOME COOL THINGS YOU WISH YOU HADN’T MISSED! It’s OK … you will see and learn so much that you won’t be able to process it all … it won’t matter!

If I think of anything else I’ll pass it along. And those of you that have more experience than I … pass it along in the comments.

Learning is messy!

Tags: NECC08

Like many teachers I have my students keep copies of all their writing throughout the year in a portfolio (well really a file folder, but we call it a portfolio). This last week I told students to go through their portfolios and put everything in dated order and get all “drafts” of the same piece together. Understand I really did want them to get things in order … I plan to do that every few weeks … but somehow it hasn’t happened since January. However, my unstated goal was to have them notice writing they did early in the year  and note how far they have come since then.

Students quickly got to work. Some found floor space and spread the year’s work out to organize it visually, others grabbed the inch+ pile of paper (and we do most of our work now as paperless as possible – next year we should use much less paper now that students are comfortable composing on their laptops) and shuffled the pages. It took all of about 2 minutes before a student asked if they could re-edit a piece from October. As the minutes went by more and more students were laughing at work they had done just a few months ago. Papers were continually being pushed in front of me by astonished students that were easily finding errors that eluded them before.

Today I had them go through their computer files and find posts that haven’t been published for one reason or another. We didn’t have much time today, but the idea is with the support of peer editing they are going to publish as many as they can. They were really excited about doing this, and about 6 posts were submitted in the 20 minutes we had to work today.

In addition I found out today that just since the first of the year about nine of my students that have never had internet at home have had it installed. When we started our laptop program last year 5 students had home internet connections so now we are up to 18! (out of 28 students) We talked about blogging over the summer and I’m going to revisit that with them next week before school is out.

We were planning on finishing our blog video, some Voicethreads and an iPod project that we HAVE to finish before the end of the year, but a flurry of benchmark tests, reading, math and spelling evaluations put an end to those aspirations. This is very controversial in my school district right now, we’ll see what comes of it.

Learning is messy!

Got this in an email today … couldn’t resist:

Male or Female? –  You might not have known this, but, a lot of non-living
objects are gender specific, actually either male or female.  Here are some
examples:

FREEZER BAGS? –  Male
They hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

PHOTOCOPIERS? –  Female
Once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again.
They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed,
but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.

TIRES?  –  Male
They go bald easily and are often over inflated.

HOT AIR BALLOONS? –  Male
To get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butts.

SPONGES? –   Female
They are soft, squeezable and retain water.

WEB PAGES? –  Female
They are constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

TRAINS? –  Male
They always use the same old lines for picking up people.

EGG TIMERS? –  Female
Over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMERS? – Male
In the last 5,000 years, they’ve hardly changed at all, and are occasionally
handy to have around.

THE REMOTE CONTROL? –   Female.

Ha! –  You probably thought it would be male, but consider this:

*  It easily gives a man pleasure.

*  He’d be lost without it.

*  And, while he doesn’t always know which buttons to push, he just
keeps trying.