School starts one month from today. August 12. That is strangely and unfairly early.
I’ve looked up and down our calendar and can’t figure out how exactly we’re going back we’re going back so early, and yet our last day is only three days earlier than it was this past year. Yet supposedly we aren’t working any more days that we always do. I don’t see any major breaks scheduled in there…
So now we’re almost halfway through July. All my organizational issues remain untackled. I have, however, been somewhat productive. I signed up for a total of four online classes offered by my district this summer. The remaining two are:
- Web 2.0 for Teachers, a “live” online class
- Blogging in the Classroom, a self-paced class.
The Web 2.0 class has been great, although I’m allowing it to take up a little too much of my time. We are learning about all the sites, tools, and services offered by Web 2.0 that can help improve teaching and learning. We’ve covered social bookmarking, for example, and visual search engines, and this week, we’re discussing social networks, like Myspace and Facebook, and educator-created networks on Ning.
One of the tools we looked at is Voicethread, an audiovisual presentation maker that stores your projects online, where others can view and comment. I created a Voicethread about my autistic stepson, Caleb, attending the Rockies and Broncos ABILITYcamps:ABILITYcamp Voicethread
(don’t know if the embed below will work…)
Those camp days were one highlight of the past month; the other was attending a total of three Rockies games: a makeup game against my hometown Braves on June 16, and the Marlins on July 4 & 5. The Braves game featured the specter of black helicopters circling downtown and very close to the stadium.
Reports were that it was an Army counterterrorism exercise and it had “nothing to do” with the upcoming Democratic National Convention here. Hmmm… Apparently they didn’t bother to inform any civil authorities here, including the mayor, that these exercises would be occurring; thus many residents were a bit freaked out by the omnious presence.
Also on the subject of the DNC, there was a report that the official catering menu for the convention would not include “any fried foods.” I have one friend from back home in Atlanta who feels this is discrimination against Southerners, but hey, we can’t have our own local delicacy, Rocky Mountain oysters, available either. The official word is that it’s part of an overall effort to make this the “greenest” convention ever, but I think it’s just part of Howard Dean’s diet plan.
The July 4th game of course featured fireworks, but the explosion happened first on the field– the game final was 18-17, one of the highest-scoring games in baseball history, featuring a comeback by the Rockies, who were down 13-4 in the 4th inning. The nine-run deficit was the largest overcome in team history, and they won in dramatic walkoff fashion in the bottom of the 9th. When the game finally ended (after just short of 4 hours), we waited another 40 minutes for the fireworks show to begin, but it was well worth it!
Rockies July 4 fireworks
That game, we brought all the kids… the next day, it was just Maria & I, and we snagged our Matt Holliday bobbleheads. (Pic once I can get the bat properly attached).
Off to the Renaissance Festival tomorrow, so there will no doubt be entertaining stories to report.
I wish people would call it by its proper name, instead of the so-generic “Fourth of July.” Every country on the Roman calendar has a Fourth of July… it comes after the 3rd and before the 5th. But in the USA it is our INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Just to stand on my soapbox a minute: There’s a lot of people, especially in an election year, who are full of doom and gloom about the state of our nation. But this nation has survived a lot in its 232 years, including being literally torn apart. However bad our economy may be, it’s been worse. However misguided, ineffective, or simply corrupt our leaders in government may be, there’s been many who were more misguided, even less effective, and even more corrupt. However much power you think we’ve lost in the world, there was a long time when this country was much, much weaker.
I for one am proud to be an American today and all the other 364 days of the year, I hope you are too. No matter our disagreements, we all have that in common. What happened to that one brief shining moment of unity after 9/11? We need to recapture that. Stop focusing on what divides us and start to believe in what unites us. And…
May all have a fun and festive Fourth. (for the sake of alliteration =)
Attention-grabbing first line goes here.
It’s occurred to me that in order to get casual surfers to visit your blog, you need several things: 1) use popular tags; 2) have a catchy title; 3) have an even better opening line after the title, because (2) and (3) are what people will see on the Preview page. I think I’ve generally failed to do any of these things in at least the history of this particular site. And then, of course, comes 4) post regularly, so that anyone who was initially interested will keep coming back.
Hard to believe the first month of “freedom” is already gone. With July arriving, the sense of urgency is already setting in. The dozen or so boxes & crates of materials I brought home are still crying out for organization. Ah, the “O” word– probably the most controllable key to successful teaching, and yetsofar one of my greatest liabilities.
June was not a month of complete slacking. We began the first full weekend of the month with a trip to Estes Park. We rode horseback through Rocky Mountain National Park:
(Clockwise from upper left: Shot of Long’s Peak, the tallest in RMNP, from the ride; elk in the woods along the ride; the family waiting to cross the street in downtown Estes Park; me & Jonah waiting to start our ride).
OK, enough for now, because I have to post something. Next time I’ll delve into Caleb attending the Rockies & Broncos ABILITYcamps, the Rockies vs. Braves game featuring scary black helicopters, and my online class work. I am amazed at how I can sit at a computer for most of the day and not really accomplish much to speak of.
