What In Tarnation?!?!?

Sometimes I like to use video from YouTube in class. For example, recently I used a variety of old commercials that I found on YouTube to do a lesson on Main Idea and details. My district however, has blocked YouTube so I have to download the file and then embed it in a SMART Notebook file to show on my SMARTBoard. The Tech Savvy Educator points out a YouTube clone called TeacherTube that probably won’t be blocked.

I scanned a few videos there and this could be a really nice resource. This video was found at TeacherTube… I found it kind of interesting.

Teachers, have educationally related videos? Share them on TeacherTube.

How do the idiotic people who talk in movies know to sit near me? I mean every stupid movie! Any more it doesn’t even matter if I go to an early show to try and avoid people. Today Michael and I went to see Shooter. There weren’t even ten people in the theater but sure enough the Stoopid Family walks in late decides to plop their big, burping butts down behind me. WHY?

Well I am putting people like that on notice! I am going to adopt StrongBad’s attitude:

Yup, I am making a bazooka standard movie going equipment. Be ready for the big smoldering craters!

Watch Strongbad’s full e-mail here or read it here.

Class dismissed!

Conferences are almost done! Checking in with this Friday Feast. First an old one: 131.

Appetizer
What sound, other than the normal ringing, would you like your telephone to make?
I really wanted to find the iPhone ring tone that Steve Jobs showed off during his keynote. I read a blog entry that described it as “angles peeing from heaven.” I did find for free and I am using it now as my ringtone. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I found it.

Soup
Describe your usual disposition in meteorological terms (partly cloudy, sunny, stormy, etc.).
I would describe it as sunny most of the time. I mostly get in trouble for “having too much fun” or being too loud while laughing. I suppose there are worse things to get in trouble for.

Salad
What specific subject do you feel you know better than any other subjects?
This is a difficult question. I consider myself a Renisance man, you know good at many things. Therefore no one topic is jumping out at me. However, with as much as I have been looking at the Missouri third grade Math GLEs and answering questions about them to parents who think standards are too high, I am pretty well versed in that.

Main Course
Imagine you were given the ability to remember everything you read for one entire day. Which books/magazines/newspapers would you choose to read?
I would read the Bible. That way whenever I forget my Bible and say, “Don’t worry, I have it memorized,” I wouldn’t be fibbing. I would also read transcripts of funny, highly quotable movies and Strongbad episodes, so I would never be without a quip whenever I need it.

Dessert
If a popular candy maker contacted you to create their next confection, what would it be like and what would you name it?
It would be called The Mega-Yumalicious Super Fantastic Bar That has a Light Flavor of Coffee and Crunch with a Wafer. I think the name pretty much describes what is isn it.

And now the new one. Don’t ask me why I did too. It is too embarassing. 163.

Appetizer
Who is your favorite news anchor/reporter? Why?
I have always been a Tom Brokaw fan. I like the way he says things. Plus, I always have this sense that things are just a bit more under control if Tom is reporting on them. And I just like his voice.
Soup
Name 3 foods that are currently in your freezer.
BBQ Ribs, Pizza, Garlic and Herb buscuits.

Salad
If you were to have the opportunity to name a new town or city, what would you call it?
Salad seems to be the course I always get stuck on. It would be funny if I named a new city just City. Or we could go the Prince route and just choose to name it a symbol. In that case I would name it • or a star.

Main Course
What will most likely be the next book you read?
Could be any number of books since today is the first day of Spring Break. The sky is the limit.

Dessert
What’s the first thing you notice about the opposite gender?
Uh… Hair color.

Class dismissed!

The show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” is one of my guilty pleasures. I suppose it is partially because my background is in education and because a good portion of my job involves reading and using state curriculum standards; then again, it could be that it’s just a fun show. I pride myself in answering the questions correctly nearly all of the time. Most evenings, I am smarter than a fifth grader, or at least equally smart as those fifth graders (they are pretty sharp under pressure!). Tonight, though, was a different story. I spent nearly 10 hours today picking apart a first grade test, critiquing and analyzing and correcting it. My eyes now are bloodshot and my writing hand is sore…too much test today?

I believe I was doomed to fail tonight–I should have just flipped it over to SpongeBob. I got home late from work tonight and just saw the last three questions of “Fifth Grader.” Instead, I settled on the couch just as the lady (Avis?) was getting a question about how many letters were in the word ‘yak’. I started at the TV screen for a good 20 seconds just trying to process. A yak? What is a yak? The only word I could think of was ‘yam’, and I knew that was different. If I have never heard of a yak, how would a first grader have known what a yak was? And how was it spelled? Yack? Yach? Thankfully, when the question was answered correctly and my mind cleared, I realized I knew what a yak was all along. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the clarity until the question was over. Strike One for Anna.

The next question involved how many months had 31 days. I could hear the poem in my head, but perhaps I didn’t trust my memory, so I started counting my knuckles to determine the months like someone taught me on the playground when I was 8. However, my knuckles failed me.*sigh* I couldn’t figure it out on my knuckles. Finally, feeling betrayed by my own fingers, I decided that it was logical that half of the months would have 31 days. Let’s see…half of 10 is 5…5 months have 31 days. What? There are 12 months in the year? Sheesh. Strike Two for Anna.

The final question, the half-million question. First grade geography. Piece of cake–I’d been studying my first grade curriculum all day. Which continent is also a country? Hmmm….North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica. Well, since all the continents are inhabited by many societies and cultures (except Antarctica), the one continent that is also a country has to be the one continent that is sparsely inhabited (otherwise there would be multiple countries)…Antarctica. Dang. Strike Three for Anna.

Three questions, three wrong answers. Apparently tonight wasn’t my night. Therefore, readers, I must admit it:
I am not smarter than a fifth grader. Not tonight, at least.

But next time, kiddos, watch out!

Wow. It’s been awhile since I’ve been blogging (this is Anna of the now defunct Inkblots). I have been pondering what to blog about as Christopher’s substitute for the next few days, and I realized something: once you get out of developing blog posts in your head when things happen, blogging gets much harder!

But anyway, here goes. Please be patient with me; maybe I’ll get back into the blogging swing for tomorrow!

I work for Discovery. The same company that produces the Discovery Channel. TLC, Animal Planet, and the Travel Channel. Good channels, all of them. Mind you, though, I work in the education division, not the TV part. That means no random comments about Carter Oosterhaus (hubba hubba!), Steve Irwin (*sniffle*), or the Kombai tribe (fascinating!). I have nothing to do with any of it…the closest to that was when I made travel arrangements for my supervisor and the gal who answered the corporate travel line had just made reservations for the cast of Trading Spaces.

The only reason I even mention my employment is because since I work for Discovery, our office walls are plastered with all sorts of fun pictures from Discovery’s shows. One of my favorite pictures is a display of TLC’s Life Lessons. Basically, these are figurines with some funny (but painfully true!) sentiments on life.

I learned several life lessons in the course of my otherwise-typical today.

Life Lesson #694: Eating carrots in the car sometimes requires the self-administered Heimlich manuever. It was my own fault for trying to combine lunch with driving home over the lunch break to remove my gooey contact lenses (allergies are bad in Nashville this week!). I stopped suddenly because some idiot in front of me slammed on his breaks, I instinctively took a deep break, and my baby carrot got lodged in my throat. Thankfully it was not stuck firmly enough to require medical intervention…but it was terrifying nonetheless. And to make it worse, when I got home I could only get one contact out–so I had to spend the rest of the day with only one working eye!

Life Lesson #712: Sometimes it is better to just sweat or run the air conditioning instead of trying to enjoy the warm weather. On the way back to work from my ill-fated carrot transit (yes, I drove even though I only had one contact!), I was stopped at a stoplight with both front windows rolled down all the way. A bird flew in my passenger side, panicked, pooped on my seat, squawked, flapped frantically, and exited out my driver window. Great–I caused a nervous breakdown in a bird. I wonder if that was the same bird that was hopping around aimlessly on the sidewalk in the same place this afternoon while I was coming home…

Life Lesson #866: Driving with only one contact lens is one matter. Climbing stairs with only one contact lens (apparently not in the eye responsible for depth perception!) is something entirely different. Ouch. My legs are scraped up because I gracefully fell on the stairs after returning from lunch.

Though I don’t have any input into anything that goes on with TLC, I wonder if they would listen if I sent them my ideas on official letterhead for these Life Lessons. It seems like they would be particularly interested in them since I am affiliated with them…

I can see it now. The character driving with scraped legs, one squinted eye, and bird poop on her shoulder. Hmmmm…..maybe I will get some sort of raise if I suggest it?

After the rigors of the successfully completed February Blog Challenge, it is time to take a little week long break. Actually it has more to do with conferences than with the February Blog Challenge. This week is so exhausting. Tonight was the first night and things went reasonably well. As well as can be expected.

I have had some car trouble of late, complicating things. But I will survive and triumph. I will be rewarded with Spring Break. Yes!

In the meantime, I have asked the most tallented Anna to do some guest blogging.  I can’t wait. I hope that she make a post about Discovery’s Testing program. I am interested in hearing more. Details! And of course I need a fun post. Anna is good a fun posts.

I might occasionally post a brief update on my Twitter page… My posts will have the witty question mark seen below by them:

Class dismissed!

Interesting… I hope this displays correctly. If not, click Read my VisualDNA below.

Class dismissed!

We are always looking for new ideas for improving standardized test scores. Recently our Principal wanted me to look at something called Study Island.  It is a site that takes the Missouri GLEs (Grade Level Expectations) and created multi-guess questions that go along with each GLE. Students can log in and take online tests and do lessons on Study Island. All that information is then reported back to the teacher. After I talked to some teachers from another district just glowing about the site and the program at a science and math conference and after playing around with the demo and getting the thought from some fellow teachers, I recommended that we try it. Hopefully, the reports will be useful in targeting skills and GLEs that the students are having difficultly with before the MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) test.

Today was the first day that I have used it with the kids so I can’t really tell you how well the program is going to work but I can tell you the setup for 225 kids and 15 teachers was pretty painless after I got the roster from the student information system in a spreadsheet.

The site is user friendly. Teachers and students alike had no problem navigating the site. Students can access the site from home as well. I currently have the site setup to only allow kids to play the game if they are 80% or above accuracy on the questions.

After the MAP test I will tell you what I think of how the program worked with our school.

We managed to purchase the program when they were offering to extend the subscription through June of 2008. Cool for us.

Oh, and they do have alignment with other state standards, not just Missouri.

Class dismissed!