Last weekend our family attended the wonderful wedding of my cousin Devin Henley and his beautiful bride, Andrea. This evening as my wife and I watched “The Red Violin” (a great flick, btw) I caught up on my photo and video uploads to Flickr. I’m in the habit of limiting access to photos of our kids to family and friends (those designated in Flickr) and I did with the wedding photo set, but the video set is too adorable (and not really that identifiable like a photo can be) to not share.
Did we ever have a BLAST together at Devin and Andrea’s wedding or what? Boy this was a lot of fun! Clearly our family (led by our youngest members) needs to get out and go dancing more often!
Again I say “thanks” to the flash-based camera and camcorder I picked up several weeks ago for enabling me to capture these memorable moments.
As I’ve stayed up this evening writing a new blog post and working to coordinate the defense of my seven Travian villages (our alliance is currently at war with a stronger alliance) I’ve been watching a very strong line of storms make its way across our state:
I think we captured a few of the lightning flashes. WOW. This is a strong storm. The winds are arriving now, and the rain is just starting. Hopefully we won’t get any hail or funnels.
A couple of years ago when our family spent time in and around Jemez Springs, New Mexico, I met several local residents who aspired to “live off the grid.” By “the grid,” they meant the electricity grid to which most of us in the “developed world” are connected every minute of our lives, and without which most of us could hardly conceive daily life. All of these “green living” people I met had “unplugged” from the electricity grid, but several still used propane for cooking and other household power needs. They were not entirely “off the grid.” Yet.
Adventure journalist, NPR contributor and Cosmos-nudger Doug Fine speaks several languages, including suburban American, rural American and Alaskan American. He has reported and sent panicky emails from Rwanda to the Arctic Ocean. At last sighting he was living in New Mexico with too much livestock and just the right smear of stars.
In the article, Doug explains his motivation for wanting to live off the grid in as a public experiment. He relates:
I wanted to see if I could reduce my oil and carbon footprint but still enjoy the amenities that we expect as Americans. In other words, to continue driving a motorized vehicle and have power at my house—not live like a total Grizzly Adams. Can I enjoy Netflix and the Internet without fossil fuels?
Solar energy and a diesel automobile converted to run on waste vegetable oil from restaurants provide the energy Doug’s lifestyle requires. He raises and grows his own food, offering the following advice for those of us who might respond with a comment like, “I’m just too busy to do all of that:”
Growing your own food takes an hour or two a day. But I would suggest that if one doesn’t have an hour or two to work on one’s life, one might be too busy.
Certainly many people might read this entry and view this video with a noticeable air of doubt and even distain. “I could never do something like that.” “That’s just not realistic.” “How could our family ever take such a radical move?” There certainly are folks who take an even more extreme approach to green living than Doug, but personally, I like his approach. He hasn’t given up Netflix or Internet access! Are these life choices sustainable over the long term? Time will tell. I think, however, that technologies SHOULD provide us with options in our lives rather than dictate we live a prescripted existence. Doug Fine certainly is demonstrating that this ideal is not merely theoretical, it can be a lived reality.
Two metaphors describe my professional work environment of late: fast moving cheese and a rollercoaster:
If you are unsure about my allusion to cheese, I’m referring to Spencer Johnson’s book about adapting to change, “Who Moved My Cheese?”
I probably should be keeping a list of all the things I cannot blog about, so I will be able to recall and write about them later in life when I am less constrained in my prudent expressive possibilities.
For now I will merely observe that the world of business can be extremely dynamic. This can be exciting, but also disconcerting. Lately I have felt like I’m wearing a sign on my forehead which reads, “Please move my cheese today.”
Goal setting is VERY important, not only for academic or professional success but also for life in general. I am a firm believer that students who have a goal-orientation in life tend to think at least a bit more about their actions inside and outside the classroom during their teenage years than kids who don’t have any idea what they want to do with their life down the road.
In college I remember learning (and having to memorize) “The Six Dynamics of Goal Setting.” These included things like set high but achievable goals, be realistic, expect frustration, and persevere despite frustration. I can only remember four of the six items, so perhaps the other two elements weren’t as important. (Clearly they were not as memorable.)
I’ve been more recently acquainted with the S.M.A.R.T. Goals framework, which includes setting goals that are specific, measureable, aligned, realistic, and timebound. In order to set a goal, a person or a team needs to define the tasks, the targets, the time frames, prioritize tasks, and then coordinate resources to accomplish the tasks.
I like these guidelines for goal setting. As you set your own goals, and work with students in setting both personal and academic goals, you might consider using these elements as a framework. WikiPedia has an article on “SMART (project management)” which may also be of interest with respect to goal setting.
I took the following photos with my iPhone early this morning in my parking garage in downtown Oklahoma City, and web-posted them to Flickr:
Someone or some group (apparently last night) broke off the wooden barrier which controls entry into the 5th Street Parking garage, right across the street from the YMCA. This appears to be a signature by “TRAK,” note the arrow pointing from the name down to the broken barrier.
By 8 am the broken barrier had been removed but the graffiti remained. I am not sure if “TRAK” is the name of an Oklahoma City area gang, but that seems likely. This past July, someone threw a rock through my window as my car was parked in this garage, and no one ever discovered who the culprit was. I did file a police report.
The garage managers sent out a letter recently that surveillance cameras were being installed in the garage: Hopefully those were in place to capture last night’s vandals on film.
In November 2006 at our state health conference I heard representatives from the US Dept of Justice Anti-Gang Initiative for the Eastern District of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma City Policy Gang Unit address gang issues and problems in the Oklahoma City area specifically. It was an eye opener. Unfortunately at the time they would not grant permission for an audio recording of the session to be shared online as a podcast. I’d like to hear a similar presentation now, updated for our current situation.
Apparently, gang related graffiti and vandalism continues to be a problem. I feel pretty certain this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Rachel and I enjoyed making sausage balls several times for our family during the holidays this year. We took several photos (and had family members snap a few pictures) during the cooking process, so we could make a VoiceThread about cooking sausage balls. This reminds me of “how to” essays I helped my students write as a 4th grade classroom teacher. Rachel did pretty good with elaboration on each of her points. We used six images to make this VoiceThread. For the first one, Rachel recorded herself “live” on VoiceThread using a microphone, but for the others we recorded using Audacity so we could make some minor edits and then uploaded each recording as a mp3 file to VoiceThread. Here’s our story!
We used a different recipe this year than I’ve used in the past, and I REALLY liked this one not only because the cooked sausage balls taste great, but also because the ingredients give the mixture a better consistency that holds together better than other recipes I’ve used in the past. This is the recipe we used:
Ingredients:
3 cups Bisquick
1 pound uncooked Jimmy Dean pork sausage
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary leaves
1/2 tsp parsley flakes
Steps:
Cook the sausage in a pan, breaking it up into small pieces.
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl “meatloaf style.”
Form mixture into small balls, and place them evenly on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Share and eat!
Sausage balls can also be made in advance and warmed in the oven. They can also be frozen. Few things beat HOT and FRESH sausage balls right out of the oven, however!
I’m in Osage Beach, Missouri this evening, anticipating the start tomorrow of the 2007 MOREnet Instructional Technology Conference (MITC). (Actually right after finishing this blog post I’ll be drafting the narrative for a MacArthur grant on digital learning, but that’s another story.) The keynote speaker for the conference tomorrow is none other than the amazing Eric Langhorst, an 8th grade U.S. history teacher from Liberty, Missouri, who writes the blog and podcast “Speaking of History.” Last month, Eric was recognized as the Missouri state teacher of the year! This is not the state social studies teacher of the year, not the state secondary teacher of the year, but THE TEACHER OF THE YEAR for the entire state of Missouri!!! How wonderful this is– congrats to Eric! If you are regular listener to his podcast, you are likely to have a VERY good idea why Eric is the perfect choice for this recognition.
This evening prior to the start of tomorrow’s conference, I had the pleasure to eat dinner with Eric as well as Eric Nicklas, who is the K-12 Program Manager of MOREnet. In addition to a great meal we had a great conversation, which I am sure I’ll reflect on in greater detail later this week. Suffice it to say Missouri educators are doing LOTS of innovative things and striving to not only promote more collaboration among educators, but also the entire school reform agenda in various ways. Lots to think about and share.
This post is titled “the gauntlet has been tossed” not because of big picture conversations about school reform, but rather because Eric Langhorst and I are “avid” (putting it mildly) college football fans on opposite sides of a state border. Eric is a season ticket holder for Nebraska football, and I am a season ticket holder (albeit shared with my cousin) for Kansas State football. If you know much about the history of the Big 8 conference, and anything about the history of Kansas State football in the 1990s to the present, you will know why this is a big deal. If you’re still confused, these remarkable and stirring images from November 14, 1998 (which I took from my seat in the stands during and after that historic game) may help illuminate you.
Kansas State and Nebraska have a substantial football rivalry. This photograph from METC 2006 of Eric, David Warlick and I shows the reality of this rivalry in our everyday lives:
Eric is wearing a Nebraska Cornhuskers jacket, and I am wearing a KSU football tshirt.
This historic football rivalry has now entered the realm of the educational podcast. Eric and I have agreed on a friendly wager for this year’s scheduled KSU/Nebraska matchup on November 10, 2007. If K-State wins, Eric will play at least 30 seconds of the KSU fight song (the Washbash Cannonball) near the start of one of his podcast episodes. If Nebraska wins, I’ll do the same for the Nebraska fight song. (”There Is No Place Like Nebraska.”) This certainly raises the stakes of the game for me personally– and I’m looking forward even more to November 10th now!
If you want to check out the fight songs of all the Big 12 teams, I found this page this evening which includes mp3 versions of all of them. The gauntlet has been thrown, and the challenge accepted! It will be fun to see what happens.
It will also be fun to hear Eric’s keynote address tomorrow. I’ll be recording and sharing it here (with Eric’s permission of course) so stay tuned!
4. I was offered a position with the U.S. Department of State as a Political Officer after I got out of the Air Force, but I turned it down to become a fourth grade teacher.
5. When I was much younger I wanted to be a firefighter when I grew up.
6. My first dog was named Rufus.
7. I sometimes wonder if cats really taste like chicken.
Wow. Yesterday after picking up our two oldest children in Kansas (where they had both spent a week with relatives) we stopped by the remarkably creative Kevin Honeycutt’s house. We went to meet his family, but also to have a guided tour of the AMAZING treehouse Kevin built with his son Ben several years ago.
Expectations around our house of what a treehouse should look like (or even CAN look like) have certainly changed!
This was a visit enabled by 21st century technologies in at least one way… (besides iPhone Google Map directions)– I had emailed Kevin earlier in the week, but it wasn’t until we connected via Twitter on Sunday afternoon that we finalized plans for the meet-up! Woo hoo for Twitter - a great people-connector!
We had a relaxing and outstanding 4th of July in Edmond, Oklahoma! One of the highlights of our local parade this morning was seeing Darth Vader riding a Segway!   Besides enjoying the company of family and friends as well as some good food today, I was thrilled to have time (at last) to update my Wordpress installation to the latest version as well as find / tweak a new 3 column theme. (Thanks to my mom and son for perusing many options and giving me some good choices from which to pick!) I’ve been wanting to make these changes to my blog for some time, and I am not finished… I am going to restore an altered version of my original graphic to the top of my blog, and make a few other minor changes. Overall, I am pleased with how things are looking now. I’ll be interested to hear your feedback. The main things I was looking for in a new Wordpress theme were:
A 3 column layout with an expanding body section in the middle, depending on browser window width.
Something with a graphic at the top and predominantly light colors.
A blockquote stylesheet that includes quotation marks on the side.
Other things were considered too, but those were the main items. I am LOVING widgets! I’m sure I’ll be making more tweaks as I discover others in the weeks to come. My main frustration currently is that Ecto seems to have stopped working for some reason with Wordpress 2.2. I’m getting a “parsing failure” error when I try to post from Ecto, and I have not had luck Googling for a solution to this, yet. Any suggestions? Ecto is my main way of writing 99% of my blog posts, so I really need to get this resolved! For some reason when I edit a page and sometimes post a page from the WordPress web interface the resulting page doesn’t show up, it just hangs as a blank page… and for some reason I can’t delete several accidental draft “pages” as well. Not sure what is causing those problems, I’ve waited quite awhile to upgrade to the new version so I’d think bugs like this would be worked out. May be something to my local installation I need to change. Again, I’m not finished making changes, but I’d be curious if you have any feedback based on the theme changes so far.
I am very stoked! After waiting about 2 months, my personalized Oklahoma license plates have arrived!
I had waited till my Texas plates expired in March to register my 4Runner in Oklahoma. State law requires personal license plate holders to also carry in their vehicle their original, state-assigned license plate. Unlike Texas, which has mandatory license plates for both the front and back of vehicles, Oklahoma just issues back license plates. That leaves the license plate area in front of our vehicles open to show our tribal colors! (Or at least mine and my son’s– I think my wife’s tribal colors are still red and black, our daughters have yet to declare their tribal, collegiate allegiances.)
Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, my wife and the mother of my children, my mother in law, and all the other moms out there!
With my mom and dad at MACE in March 2007.
My beautiful wife on the beach in Holland, Michigan in April 2007.
With Clara (my mother in law) in December 2003, and newborn baby Rachel!
I will admit that I was (am still am) a bit skeptical about Second Life. It is NOT yet easy on the resources (I had to upgrade to 1gb of RAM and a new video card just to have it run on my pc – (grins) but my mac needed no upgrades), I was harassed and overwhelmed my first visit, and just learning how to walk in Second Life can be a real challenge……….so I fought it. BIG TIME.
But, because I was challenged by a friend to “Open My Opportunities†a bit……I wandered in and spent a bit more time there…….and I am seeing potential – FOR AN EDUCATOR. (I will continue to strongly state that Second Life is NOT for kids – but I do invite you to read more about the Teen Island Option.)
What I have found, at Second Life, is a new “watering-hole†for educators to share information. My “safe place†at Second Life is the ISTE building. (Click here for the SLURL.) There is usually almost always a docent there to help you out and on Tuesday and Thursday nights; there are both formal and informal gatherings to participate in. (9pm EST/6pm PST) There is a white board where presentations can be shown and there have been some very lively and also educational conversations occur. Each week is like a mini conference session – and it is worth your time to come check it out.
I decided to jump in with both feet and even “rent†an apartment in Second Life. Many other educators are doing the same on EduIsland and EduIsland II and if you wander around long enough you will probably bump into Will Richardson, David Warlick, or Kathy Schrock – all who are now home owners as well – and Discovery Educators just moved in too! The verdict is still out on whether I will keep the apartment – it’s a week by week lease – but it is interesting to see the connections that can be made and the conversations that ARE occurring in Second Life.
Wesley Fryer is the author of Moving at the Speed of Creativity. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer. I am wfryer on Diigo.
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