Shake It Off

I showed all of my students the video of Michael Bay walking off the stage at CES when his teleprompter broke.  I asked them to think about what they would do if they were hosting a panel and the guest walked off.

The most shocking thing to me is that as a director, Michael Bay probably makes dozens of decisions on the fly every hour.  It seems like ad libbing a Q&A session would be a million times easier than what Bay does for a living.

Learning Inkscape

From: fsdn.com

Over our (2 week) long Christmas break, I stumbled into Inkscape, which a feee vector graphics editor. I've always wanted to learn about vector graphics and I'm hoping I can pass that on to my future Multimedia classes..assuming I'll teach it again next year.

An Hour of Code

Our instructional technology head asked for photos and videos of students doing Hour of Code exercises last month.   I figured the number of teachers that would provide video would be small, and I was right: our work was featured in our department's blog.  Yay, us!

Bad Math

From: hercampus.com

At my first school, I generally would have one bad class and two good ones each semester.  One of the reasons I changed schools last year is to get better kids, but five weeks into my third semester at school #2 I have found the ratio to be two bad classes for every good one.

I'm not really liking that math.  I just turned 40, which means I would have to teach 20 more years to get full retirement.  I don't use the word "can't" much, but I know I can't teach that long.  I'm not sure I can last to the end of my National Board certification, which ends in 7 years.

And yes, it is the usual reasons: I'm burned out from working all the time for kids who are disrespectful.  I've had good jobs outside of teaching before, and if this economy ever turns around, I'll be taking hard look at them, even it comes with a pay cut.

End of an Era

From: illinoisstate.edu

From: wikipedia.org

Just finished watching the series finale of Breaking Bad.  I would like to say that I was watching this outstanding show from the beginning, but it was only due to a friend's urging that I started watching it prior to its last season.  It's great to see a show go out on top.

Another show that just ended was Burn Notice on USA Network.  I started watching it prior to its second season.  I liked it because it really reminded me of the A-Team: former government operatives use their training and skills to help the powerless.  Burn Notice started off as a procedural-like drama, where each episode could stand on its own, but in later years it turned into a serialized show.  It got hard to keep all of the spies and double-crossing that went on.

What do you do when a series is over?  I guess you have to clear its scheduling history out of the DVR, or reflect, or something.