The Backyard

I have taken some pictures of my backyard. My wife and I just love summer and the countless hours of enjoyment the yard brings us. We have many annuals, perennials, a mixture of trees, and a water garden. The water garden is my favorite. We also have a swimming pool. In one of the photos you can see a bench near the pond. We spend time there reading and just listening to the water fall over the waterfall. I uploaded the pictures to Flickr, created a set, asked for a slide show. Here is that slide show. Hope you enjoy it.

Bleeding Green on a Saturday Afternoon

Just read this article about Tom Izzo. If you don't know he is the head basketball coach at
Michigan State University. A friend of mine and fellow Spartan (Tim Toth) posted it on Facebook. The article is called The Fire Still Burns. It is a great story about a great coach.

Thoughts in the Morning 724

I ate dinner last night at Mancy's Steakhouse in Toledo, Ohio last night. I have lived in Monroe my entire life and have never eaten there. They have some pretty good beef. It was my youngest son's birthday. The restaurant even let us bring our own cake. It was a 1-2-3-4 cake. A recipe from the James Beard cookbook. It is a great tasting cake. The dinner and dessert put a dent in my effort to diet.
I also played around last night with Google docs. I used the forms tab in an excel spreadsheet. It was pretty neat. I have been thinking about how I can use it more often in my job. If you have ideas let me know. I'm sure I'll figure out a few. In the form tab you can ask questions to send to colleagues. You then email it to them and when they submit their answers they are instantly put into your spreadsheet. As the instructional video said, no more waiting for lots of emails and then organizing it yourself. If you haven't used Google docs you should try it. Here is a short video on how the use forms:



You can find many tutorials on You Tube on how to use Google docs.

Continue to Blog

My intent is to continue with this blog. For anyone who is interested in the title it is an anagram. I use an Internet anagram maker to help with this. Almost all of the names I use in my fantasy sports leagues are anagrams. Hogtying Bath Newsletter is an anagram for "twenty three things a blog". I have read several good books this summer in addition to playing a lot of golf. My wife suggested I read Looking for Alaska written by John Green. It is a YAL book that is written in a more modern times. I felt it was along the line of Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, and Dead Poet's Society. It was an excellent read and very hard to put away. In addition, I also read Paper Towns by the same author. It also was very good. I am waiting to read his other book An Abundance of Katherines. I have also read a couple of educational books. One had to do with homework. An entire book about homework and the myths that are associated with it. What we can do with homework and how today's students deal with it. What are you reading this summer?

Thing 23

How will I use Web 2.0 in my position as an AP? I will have time to thought of incorporating videos into a powerpoint presentation that I have to at the start of the year. It is a presentation to go over various aspects of what is expected at MHS. I believe I accomplished everything that was required. Albeit, I took a tad longer than most people. As stated earlier there are a ton of things out there to use to motivate students and adults. I have some ideas and now I have the rest of this summer to investigate them. That is, if I don’t procrastinate. Or play too much golf. Or get tied up with my gardening. Or just about anything that keeps me from thinking of work until I actually start. I like the fact that you can stay connected to lots of people using Web 2.0. I really have done a better job of keeping up with others blogs. It has become almost a daily routine. My wife keeps asking, “What are you doing?”. We share a laptop and she is the infant stages of developing on online class through Blackboard. She has become somewhat consumed by it. I plan to learn more about Web 2.0 as I begin to use the features on a more regular basis. I hope to use my Wiki page for MHS administration as a tool to help each other. Although I have to admit with 3 of the AP’s in the same office it is many times easier to just “talk”. My goal is to finish some of the classes I have enrolled in on Michigan LearnPort. I have always thought of myself as one who continues to learn as time goes by. I can remember back to 1988 when Casio came out with these things called graphing calculators. Some professors at CMU and EMU took the technology to heart. They learned it and started professing its worth. I was in one of the first wave of teachers to learn this stuff. It was difficult but I embraced it and learned. I heart graphing calculators. Well, I am finished. I hope to stay connected with all. Thank you Jim Dornberg for a great experience.

Thing 22

I registered for Michigan Learn Port back in April of 2008. I have tried on multiple occasions while waiting after work for my wife to work on them. Very unsuccessful. However, it appears that it may be somewhat easy on my home computer. I visited MLP just a few minutes ago and got farther than I had ever been at work. That's good news. I have to have 18 SB-CEU's by the end of my fifth year of administration in order to keep my job. I have about 3 at this time. I better get moving. Here is a list of the online PD class I looked at:

Promoting Student Achievement in Culturally/Linguistically Diverse Classrooms
Building Teacher Leaders
Champions for Teaching and Learning - An MASA course
No Child Left Behind Basics for Teachers and Principals
Standards-Based Differentiated Math
Turning Data Into Information

My problem is that ugly word that always infiltrates my life. These will be especially good if I can work get myself to work on them. Online PD! What an idea. I can work when I have the time. Like when it is snowing out and we have a snow day. Oops I work on snow days. Nevermind.

With courses like this, and what I see on LearnPort, maybe I can get my SB-CEU's without having to pay a a lot of money. Or sit 6 hours in a chair and at a place I don't really want to be. This PD has been great. And I cannot say enough about Jim. He has been great and very patient with me. It has taken me months longer than it should have to do this PD. Another plus to this is I can now talk some "computer" with the students I work with.

An Answer

http://www.youtube.com/user/KnowHow2Go

This is the actual page that I found the videos for publication. Scroll down and you will see the links to the 4 videos I posted. Save the Frogs. Take a Foreign Language. Scary Math Teacher. Also a short introduction of the 3 is there, I can't recall the title.

I found out about KnowHow2Go while I was in Washington D.C. for the NCTM conference in April. The website gives various tips for 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students as they prepare for college.

Hope this helps.

Thing 21-A continuation

I did use Zamzar to see if I could use it. It worked. I downloaded a study skills video for my wife. It was just an experiment. I received the confirming email in less than 20 minutes. The email states that you must save the file within 24 hours. Unfortunately, I didn't get to the save part within the 24 hours. It was relatively painless to do. YouTube is blocked at MPS. If a video is found on Youtube that you like you can request the tech department personnel to "unblock" it by sending them the link. The problem with this is that all previewing has to be done at home and not during planning time. I will be trying to incorporate some videos into a presentation that I make at the beginning of the year to sophomore class. It will be in a PowerPoint so I will have to learn that thing. When I was in the classroom I always thought it would be fun to show video clips that showed math in movies or TV. The Simpson's had some great math moments and there are many movies that show math concepts. I know that there are some teachers that use video on a regular basis. Again, it is the time factor involved in getting the video approved in our district.

Question 1, not a thing

Does anyone know how to use Teacher tube with Mozilla?

Thing 21

The first video is not educational, unless you are not aware of MSU football. Then it is enlightening.



Here's a funny math video.



Use this video to show the unexpected.

Thing 20 Revisited

Podcasting is something I think students would enjoy. They are different places to explore regarding podcasts. Perhaps another way for students to communicate is through podcasts on blogs. Students might be interested in listening to others give an explanation, state their reasons they liked a book, etc. There are many ways to use podcasts. I believe students would enjoy creating them. I did not have a difficult time using drop.io. It was pretty simple. It is not the greatest speech of all time but it works here. I can see using podcasts in my capacity as an AP. If I could get people to view my blog. The first step there is letting people know I have a blog.

This is not one of the Things

This is not one of the things. However, I did find it very good. There are four videos from the the KnowHow2Go program. It is a program that stresses to kids that they should be preparing for college by taking the tough classes. Here is the link to their site: http://www.knowhow2go.org/

Here is the first video. It introduces the three main characters Algebra II, Foriegn Languages, and Biology. The last three are the characters describing who they are.



Algebra II



Foriegn Languages



Biology

Thing 20

I will answer the other parts of Thing 20 in another post.

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Thing 19

I listened to the following podcasts:
1. Video Math Tutor
2. Teaching with SmartBoard
a. The Virtual TI-83 Calculator and SmartBoard
b. Math, Math, Math
3. The Princeton Review
a. Hemi, semi, and demi
b. English words that came from Spanish
c. Jerks
d. Common Mistakes
e. Uni means one
f. Festival of lights
g. Happy Holidays 2007

Podcasting is listening. Some have video, others don't. For me I need to see the podcast. I learn better visually. If you learn better with just audio than this could be for you. There is a large amount of material on iTunes in the Education section under podcasts. I think teachers need to pick and choose the casts that they would use. We will need to teach our students how to use podcasts. I think some students might not want to download a podcast to their IPOD. However, they might listen to it from a computer if they have a computer readily avaiable. Some teachers out there have done some fantastic things with podcasts. Look, listen, and learn.

This is not a Thing

This is a 3 minute video of the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Fireworks. They are sponsored by Target. And in my opinion the best fireworks in the country. Happy Fourth of July.