Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: travel

  • Reflections on Comancheria, Identity and Frontier Terrorism

    I never thought much about my own family bloodlines and ancestry until we moved to Oklahoma in 2006. As I got to know teachers and school staff members in my role (at the time) working as an “education advocate” for AT&T, I learned that all public schools in Oklahoma have “Indian Education” programs and students…

  • Mobile Media Scavenger Hunts with GooseChase

    Thanks to Peggy George (@pgeorge) sharing GooseChase* (now also available as GooseChaseEDU with discounted educator pricing) my wife and I have helped lead three different mobile media scavenger hunts this summer! All three have been very successful and met with rave reviews from participants! Like “The APPmazing Race” at iPadPalooza each year in Austin, a GooseChase…

  • Learning About Early Pottawatomie County, Kansas History

    Today I had an opportunity to share several presentations at the Kaw Valley Academy of Technology and Education (KVATE) in St. Marys, Kansas, 30 minutes from Manhattan where I grew up and my parents live. On the way back, I saw a sign just west of Belview for an Oregon Trail historical marker. Often when I’m…

  • 10 Highlights from our Offline Colorado Vacation

    The past week following ISTE and iPadPalooza, our family has been camping in the mountains of Colorado. While I’ve been completely offline (including Twitter) the same can’t be said for everyone in our family, since the times we drove into town for a grocery resupply or to catch the local drive-in movie (playing “Grease”) a flurry…

  • Lessons Learned on our Family’s College Journey (April 2016)

    I’ve been needing to write a post for many months sharing some of our family’s lessons learned and where we are on our collective “college journey” with three kids heading to university respectively in the classes of 2020 (Alex), 2022 (Sarah) and 2026 (Rachel). Part of me has been waiting until we “arrive” at a milestone…

  • Don’t Use an AT&T Phone Overseas Without an International Calling Plan

    I’ve been in Brazil for a few days this week leading a 2 day STEM Institute for K-12 teachers at Graded School in Sao Paulo. From my past experiences traveling overseas to China, I know it can be a VERY costly mistake to simply use your cell phone in another country if you don’t arrange…

  • Batting 1-1 With Three More Pitches Coming

    I’ve been wanting (and perhaps even NEEDING, as other bloggers might be able to understand) to write about our son’s college application journey for a long time. This isn’t just his journey, although it certainly is principally his decision to make and entirely HIS life to live. It’s also a journey for our family, and…

  • 3 WiFi Hotspots in our Car

    It’s Thanksgiving holiday time here in the United States, our family is on a road trip, our son is driving and we have 3 WiFi hotspots active in our car. This is a sign of the times. I’ll explain what functions each hotspot provides in this post.    by  Wesley Fryer  HotSpot 1: iPhone Tethering It’s…

  • Traveling with Airbnb? Consider Checking Crime Maps First

    Last week and this week several members of our family have been and are visiting Philadelphia and Washington D.C. We were in Philly to attend part of the 2015 ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, and are visiting friends as well as sightseeing in D.C. for the 4th of July weekend. We’ve used…

  • Upgrade a Verizon Hotspot for $22 Without a New Contract

    Mobile, cellular hotspots can be money pits, but they also can be lifesavers if you’re presenting about educational technology in a location with spotty connectivity or draconian Internet content filtering. After considerable research in the summer of 2012, I opted to start paying $50 per month for 5 GB of wireless data from Verizon. At the time…