What In Tarnation?!?!?

That might be my new name after my plans that I have for tomorrow. I think this might be the first or second April 1 that I have had school on since I have started teaching. I wanted to do something crazy for the day. My crazy solution? For the first half of the day I am switching places with another teacher. She will be in my class while I will be in hers. The crazy part is the grade level of the other teachers. Yes my friends, I will be in a Kindergarten class tomorrow morning. 

Now you are starting to see how crazy I really am. The Kindergarten teacher that I am swapping with has promised to leave me all kinds of “fun” crafts including glue and glitter. Now I am not sure if I have shared with you my policy on glitter but it basically is I don’t want to see it. I don’t want glitter in my room, I don’t want glitter near my room or near my person either. So I have been brainstorming what would be as annoying as glitter is for me for this seasoned teacher. So tomorrow my class starts the day off with an exciting MAP (standardized test) review. Yuck. I know very few teacher, much less students who like to do that. Then later in the day, I have all kinds of computer/SmartBoard centered activities since this teacher is a bit of a technophobe. 

As a bonus April Fool’s trick, before I left school today, I started up all the student computers in my room and pressed control + alt + down arrow. On most of our more modern computers in the building, this key combo will change the orientation of the screen so that it is upside down. So when they go to do the computer activities she will have twelve groups of students with questions on why their computer monitor is displaying upside down! Hehe. April Fool’s little children and teacher; all with one April Fool’s gag! How much fun is that.

Something I am looking forward to tomorrow… rest time!

Something I am not looking forward to tomorrow other than activities that involve glitter and glue… have lunch at 10 something. Good night!

I will let you know how it goes.

FYI and on a totally different topic… I have upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.5 which adds a bunch of new features and a completely re-designed admin area. So if something isn’t working, this is why. I will also be looking to find out where my links went in the sidebar. I believe this has something to do with the upgrade or an inactivated widget or something. 

** In an ongoing series of posts about genius moments in my life.

This morning I had an early morning meeting at church (on spring break right now). I went through my normal morning routine which includes shower, styling, brushing, etc. Normally after I get dressed after showering, I will put a little bit of product into my hair, in the process, I slick it back kinda making it spiky. Next I put it back down, letting the front do really whatever it wants and then I am done with the hair.

After my early morning meeting, I realized that I hadn’t gone through that whole process this morning. Evidently I stopped after the applying hair product. So all morning morning long I had this weird shaped spike that I can most closely describe as being a odd, alien cone-head shape. No one said a word to me. I assume that they assumed that I was trying out some horrific new hair style from LA.

When I looked at myself in the rear view mirror this morning driving back from church a wave of embarrassment came over me. Golly, I guess if this is the worst thing I do this week, I must be having a pretty good week.

Oh, and dear reader, I do apologize for falling short of my goal for this month. Maybe I will try the same thing for the month of April.

Later taters!

I remember as a young lad, that I was always excited when we got the Scholastic Book Orders. I would carefully go through and circle items that I wanted to get. Then when I got home the bargaining began.

Today, I send home Scholastic book orders most months. Things have changed quite a bit since then. Today, most of the orders that I get are online, which I prefer.

Scholastic has expanded their business model. It seem every week I get an announcement from Scholastic announcing some new service or product that they want to sell me.

Recently they have introduced:

• Printables: A bunch of worksheets that teachers can download and use. Requires subscription.
• SMARTBoard Lessons. Free.
• BookFlix: Pair books with animated videos. Free for 30 days and then subscription required.
• Read 180: Reading intervention program.

That is just a small sampling.

It is only a matter if time before they are writing text books…

Class dismissed!

I can’t find my grade cards.

I had all the information gathered, I just had to transfer information to the grade before Monday’s parent/teacher conferences. I am hoping that I just left them on my desk at school and I forgot to pick them up before I left for the weekend.

Class dismissed!

My pastor recommended that I search for comedian Tim Hawkins on YouTube.

I did.

I wasn’t disappointed.

A sample below.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/S-hJloQqUe4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Class dismissed!

Another after the jump…

(more…)

Awhile back I got a little device called an iPhone. When someone discovers that I have an iPhone the first question is always how do you like it? Well. I love it. I really like being connected to the world’s collective knowledge as long as I have a signal. The device is transformative in the way that I think. Like the TiVo totally changes the way that I interact with my TV, the iPhone totally changes the way that I think about information and access to information. That information could be on the internet or it might be a video or audio file. I love the the iPhone as a phone but I also love it as an iPod as well.

While I patiently wait until June for the ability to add applications for my iPhone, I have been playing around with several webapps. I found a couple that I like. There is a Mahjong game that I enjoy picking up when I have few seconds. The Facebook App has really nicely implemented an iPhone interface. My favorite webapp that I have found is the Google Reader. The Google Reader is a great app for anyone who likes to read a bunch of websites that have RSS feeds (like this one.) I used to use the built in Safari RSS feed reader to keep up with blogs and such. That is a really handy solution if you are reading these feeds from one computer. When I got my laptop, it was a bit of annoying to click through the same articles on two computers but not annoying enough to change any habits. When I got Severus (what I named my iPhone) having to see the same articles sometimes as many as three time, I decided to find an online feed reader that would work well on the iPhone. Google Reader was my solution. It has a great online interface that keeps all my feeds updated online and it had the bonus of very nice interface for the iPhone (and I assume other mobile devices). Helps to keep up with a large number of websites. Even if you don’t have a mobile device that you would be accessing Google Reader, I highly recommend it.

A few things that I learned from my Google reader today:

• As I suggested they do back when I reviewed the book, Warner Brothers is going to make Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two movies. Yippe!
• I read a SBC joke that made me laugh.
• I also learned that you shouldn’t sit on a toilet for 2 years. And with that, I would like to nominate this story as most stunning news article of 2008.

Class dismissed!

—————-
Now playing: Feist - 1234
via FoxyTunes

Things that make me smile are cool. Simple statement of fact. A few things that make me smile.

• Finding out that jury duty is cancelled for tomorrow. (Though it was moved to Friday.)
• Eating melted cheese.
• Overhearing a former student tell another student that he wishes that he was back in third grade with Mr. W.
• The songs on American Idol tonight. Now they are on iTunes too. Take that Apple Music. Apple Computer wins that stalemate.
• The iPhone.
• The thought of new Office episodes.
• Learning that a fellow teacher has decided to stay another year before retiring.

What makes you smile let me know in the comments.

Found via Jared.

Find your own trivia about yourself at The Mechanical Contrivium. The Mechanical Contrivium is the automatic trivia generator of a thousand uses, providing facts for every occasion from school assignments to after-dinner conversation.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Christopher W!

1. The risk of being struck by Christopher W. is one occurrence every 9,300 years.
2. Christopher W. can clean his ears with his tongue, which is over thirty-nine inches long.
3. While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes dressed up as Christopher W!
4. The Eskimos have over fifty words for Christopher W!
5. The horns of Christopher W. are made entirely from hair.
6. It took Christopher W. 22 years to build the Taj Mahal!
7. Christopher W. is born white; his pink feathers are caused by pigments in his typical diet of shrimp!
8. In Ancient Egypt, people wore glittery eyeshadow made from the crushed shells of Christopher W.
9. Christopher W. is the largest of Saturn’s moons.
10. Michelangelo finished his great statue of Christopher W. in 1504, after eighteen months work.

Class dismissed!