The funny, interesting, and just tragic…

September23

Around the Corner v2 – MGuhlin.net – Mudflaps and Libraries

  • Public Libraries in Wyoming have a new campaign featuring the mudflap gal. Now there’s an advocacy campaign! This reminded me of back when I did work advocating for public libraries. Truckers are apparently big library users (they like audio books). For the record, I consider this funny and interesting.

Math and Science Education is Important, but Not for Me

  • Public Agenda has a new study on parents’ views of math and science education in Missouri and Kansas. Seems they think their kids science and math education is just fine. What’s your answer to this:
    1. Is knowledge of Algebra essential to get into college?
    2. Is knowledge of higher math (Calculus) essential to get into college?

Learning and Blogging

  • I quizzed Miguel during a chat at Teachers Teaching Teachers, about his indefatigable blogging. He is one of the most prolific people in my feed reader. He says it’s all on the way to learning. I think it’s his position. He spends a good part of the day online researching for his job, so he can run across things worth sharing. I’m keeping up a very ambitious blogging schedule doing 3 posts a week. Other teachers in the classroom are not even at that level. There’s a reason for this, we’re teaching not surfing during our workday (and this is not to knock Miguel, that is his job). We want teachers in practice to blog, but really, given the U.S. teaching schedule, where is the time? I think you’re more likely to end up in Dy/Dan’s situation where he is working so much perfecting his lessons, it’s getting in the way of his life. Looking at becoming an administrator leaves me scratching my head, because most of the good ones work even longer hours than teachers. The Internet changes some things about time and place, but it can’t make up time out of air.

News – Berkeley student gunned down outside Oak Park shop – sacbee.com

  • This is the barber shop across the street from where I work. The workers and owner volunteer in our school. An oft-neglected fact of living in a neighborhood that is a shooting gallery is that not all the folks that get killed when bullets fly are drug dealers who “deserved it”. This was probably a robbery, the young gentleman was closing the shop for the night. What price can you put on the promise of a life like this? That is something that is truly priceless and all the MasterCards in the world ain’t gonna make this right.
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Here, There, Everywhere

September17

Lisa’s Lingo: My “Little” Circle of Friends

Wow, I’m part of a social network. Nice words from Lisa.

dy/dan » Blog Archive » NYT-Quality Charting Using Dumb Ol’ Excel

Dan has a video showing a really cool way to create decent looking graphs on Excel.

Kobus van Wyk – Blog

Wow! Another awesome piece of analysis from Kobus van Wyk who goes to the metaphor of a multilayered onion to describe differences in access to technology breaking it down to access, usage, and quality of use.

Re-visiting the topic of changing policy on technology in your district:
Here is where I discuss solutions to Sherry for her technology woes last week, but I also wanted to update readers on the “Teacher Tube” blocking situation at my district, which I talked about here. Apparently others in a position to effect change at my district think this is silly. My site will soon have a T5 line, so bandwidth is considered a non-issue. Apparently CIPA blocking decisions in my district can best be analogized as using a IH combine harvester to prune your side garden, rather than the more measured approach that Doug Johnson talked about. Apparently, I’m not the only one who is not pleased about this where I work, and I have some allies to work with on these issues.

And I’d like to propose that we try to archive the discussion about changing tech policy by adding links and resources here.

Tiptoe, through the tulips…

September9

In the New York Times: Margaret Spellings thinks NCLB is just fine, thank you very much!

Rick Scheibner » Soccer education

Definitely worth reading. His powers of observation are awesome.
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL » Blog Archive » Carnival of Education

A great idea, doing a carnival of posts on ELL/ESL/EFL topics. I’m going to pick through the archives, and maybe do a new one on what I’m planning in the new year?

dy/dan » Blog Archive » Geometry – Week 1 – 2007

As sometimes happens, Dan misses his own genius. Buried in his slideshow he uses a really witty, but effective way to define geometric terms. He defines a point as “It has location and nothing else. No size. No height. No depth. No friends.” This use of personification shows how using “storytelling” paradigms (metaphor) can make math instruction more effective. Keep it up!

Around the Corner v2 – MGuhlin.net – Bookmark Meme

Miguel catches me with my pants down (or my skirt in my knickers) by sharing the bookmark for the planning wiki used to start out In Practice, the fantastic new group blog I’m working on with a bunch of other great teachers at Title One schools (there, was that a shameless plug, or what?) Including my use of the word cr*p. He felt it added spice. I feared it looked unprofessional. I doubt it will hurt my employment (I’d have to use worse language than that). Well, at least his blog will no longer rate as G. As I tell the kids, I hope it was worth it Miguel.

Around the Corner v2 – MGuhlin.net – Taking Action

Okay, this subject string on the robodial is CURSED for me. First, Wes Fryer credits Maria with it (understandable in an audio only context), now Miguel compliments it, and calls me Liz Mercer.

I foresee two potential scenarios. One has Maria continuing to be credited, and eventually getting an award from the Gates Foundation. Since she’s a Mac user that would be ironic, but since she’s a damn good teacher, It’ll at least be well-deserved.

In the next scenario, the name corruption started by Miguel will continue with the credit going to Liz Purser, Larry Furser, etc. until CNN finally carries it as “Larry Flynt using school robodial system” At that point, my credential WILL get reviewed, and I’ll be reprimanded for using the word cr*p online, and chastised by my district for a non-authorized use of the robodial system.

It’s Too Darn Hot!

July4

How hot is it? Too darn hot! Here is the five day forecast:

july4th.jpg

which comes with a severe weather alert.

Here in Sacramento, we judge our summers by how many days the temperature is in “the triple digits” (over 100). A bad summer is where you have more than 20 days of this. The season usually begins in July (hello) and goes into August. My, brief, survival guide follows:

Use a clothesline, not the dryer. When it’s really bad, you can only run the dryer after midnight (unless you enjoy using your kid’s college fund for your SMUD bill). I rigged this one in my garage for our swimming clothes. My neighbor is on the HOA, but has considered rigging one up below the fence line in her backyard. Aesthetics be damned, this is a necessity. You’d be a fool to use an appliance when Mother Nature will bake your wet stuff for free.

pool.jpgThe pool is your friend! But it’s so hot, it’s almost better not to go in the heat of the day. Don’t worry, it’s still hecka hot at 7 p.m.!

Sunscreen is also your friend. I have to use two layers (zinc oxide for physical block, and a spray on chemical block). My upper chest is still lobster red for most of the summer. UGH, I’m going to look like one of those scary old ladies in Florida/SoCal at this rate.

AC in a bottle. Sacramento is blessed with lots of recent development, so AC is ubiquitous, but if you are outdoors at all, these little puppies are great. Load it up with ice water to make it really cool.

Head covering, very essential. Mine even has ventilation.

These tips are suitable for anyone moving here from say, the Bay Area, England, Iceland, etc., or to other hot spots like Arizona, Texas.

Weekly Reflection

April13

I spent a lot of time online the week before (Spring Break). Unfortunately, I have been doing more work for myself (stuff on professional development, job hunting, etc.) and did not get much planning and other work done. Not sure if it will be worth it, and I probably should have gotten out more often. The result is my new blogfolio. Part of this was probably because the week before break, my mother had fractured her leg in a biking accident, and spent a chunk of the week at my house.

I was tired, cranky, and ill-prepared coming back to work. In addition, it was not a “textbook” week, but instead I was having them do work on closing our current language arts unit, and doing review in math in preparation for the upcoming state testing. I felt both rolled/pulled thin, and crispy. Like deep fried wasa bread. Not good.

The light at the end of the week, was not an oncoming train. I had read the kids an opening story for our new unit on the preparations of the Corp of Discovery, and showed them the GoogleEarth kmz on the trip. They loved it, but were still hyper, so I had them write down at list of things they would need for a cross country trip. THEY LOVED IT! So I asked, is this what you want to do for your next unit project. YES! was the unanimous response. Now, I should have spent my Spring Break figuring out, hey what am I going to have them do after testing? I didn’t, and I discovered I won’t finish the final language arts unit as quick as I would like. Now I have a quicker start on the unit, and my project is underway. I’ve started a Google Earth map and I’ll add info/layers as it goes on.

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