Gmail mini presentation
May 13, 2008
My mini presentation on Gmail for MaricopaTech 2008.
Posted in gmail, maricopatech 
Google Calendar mini presentation
May 13, 2008
My presentation on Google Calendar for MaricopaTech 2008.
Posted in google calendar, maricopatech, online
Basha High School has a new principal
May 4, 2008
At the end of the week I had a sit down with my new boss, Ken James, who is a pretty cool guy. I wanted to talk to him about American Studies and the trip to Boston. He explained how team teaching has and has not worked in the past, and the successful scenarios are similar to how I now teach with Mrs. Crabtree. We also briefly discussed how school policy and rules work, and overall, we just had a nice discussion for a couple of minutes. I am pretty stoked about the change.
Posted in AP Lang, American Studies
Help! Jailbreak me from the Brig of the Stinky Alltel Pirates
April 26, 2008
Alan Levine has been having terrible customer service with AllTell. Here’s a link to his original post, and he really hopes you forward this to everyone you know. This is not a joke. Let’s prove the power of the Internet, by forwarding the link to everyone.
Posted in reviews
Lost Boys 2 & War Games 2
April 26, 2008
I’m sitting here in the lobby of Day’s Inn since the wireless on the fourth floor is horrendously slow. Across from me Goonies is playing on the TV, and I am rather stoked reliving my earlier years. This movie is a classic like John Hughes’s films. It reminds me of when HBO was new, and it was odd to pay extra money for television channels and not everyone had cable. 21″ tv screens were huge, and people were still fighting between Beta and VHS.
I’ve been procrastinating getting this work done, and I was checking out various news sites and WIRED caught my eye. I could not believe it! Two titles of new news include “WAR GAMES Sequel Goes Direct to DVD” & ” Trailer” LOST BOYS 2: The Tribe”. I thought I was either sucked into a time warp or people were still playing April Fool’s jokes on me.
These two originals are classics. The Coreys in the original Lost Boys with a hot hot Jami Gertz, some eye candy for the ladies in terms of Jason Patric & Kiefer Sutherland (before they got old), and a killer soundtrack! Then you have War Games with Matthew Broderick changing Ally Sheedy’s grades (while she was still in movies!) so he could get with her. Both total classics, and I am shocked when today’s students have never seen (or even heard of!) these films.
So here comes the sequels. Frankly they are B movies and both will probably go to DVD (War Games 2: The Dead Code) already will (the execs probably saw the title and that was enough). Who knows about Lost Boys 2. The reviews said both Coreys are back (that’s Feldman and Haim for you neophytes!) but I only saw Edgar Frog (can’t beat that name!) in the trailer. As for Haim, who knows. I know he’s fatter than he was, so maybe I missed him. War Games doesn’t seem to have any of the old players, but it still looks cool. This time they’re blowing up Philadelphia and I chuckle as I sit here an hour from the center of that city.
Here’s to reliving my past over and over again, or as Mark Twain once said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does Rhyme”. Let’s hope the rhythm is in these two films.
Lost Boys 2: The Tribe
War Games 2: The Dead Code
Going to travel
April 22, 2008
In 1999 my wife and I began traveling with students. Our first trip was to England, Ireland, and Wales the summer we were married, and we’ve been doing it since. The longest trip was to London, Paris and Rome, and the coolest trip was to Central European Citites, and now that we have Claire we decided to go on these trips every other year, instead of every summer. This summer we’re not doing a student trip, so next summer we wanted to do Greece & Italy but discovered another teacher is doing that tour for spring break. We tried to get him to wait until June but he chose not too. Spring break trips just seem to quick to us. We decided to not conflict with them and we’re considering going somewhere else.
Our initial idea was Spain & Portugal but some people don’t like Portugal. Then the tour company suggested Costa Rica, but I for one never considered that. It sounds interesting, and our Spanish speakers would be able to communicate. A couple kids were disappointed we weren’t doing Italy & Greece anymore and mentioned they’d like to do Scotland. I know my wife has always wanted to go there, and she’d like to pair it with Stonehenge & Bath so I was open for the suggestion. I looked through the book today and found a cool Scottish tour that included Northern Ireland. I swore I would not go back to Ireland until Claire could come, but I’ve never been to Belfast. We were reviewing that and flipped through the Australia pages. I always said no to Australia because of price, so I was shocked when I saw we could do that trip for under $3,000.00 base price. So now we have a decision to make. Do we head to Scotland, which will be cheaper? Do we head to Spain, which may be cool? Or do we go Down Under? Worse case scenario, we go nowhere. Not my idea of cool.
Posted in travel
Here come the Googlers!
April 21, 2008
We’ve begun going to talk to the current Sophomore Honors students about AP English & American Studies. Mostly the course curriculum they disregard until we get going because there’s just too much, and typically they can’t wrap their minds are AP vs American Studies vs AP Exams vs Dual Enrollment. I get a lot of the same questions each year, and I should start an FAQ or something! Anyway, this year we decided to start them on the technology early early… Like Now. Students are required to log into Gmail and create an account. My goal is then to reply immediately so my email is in their address book. I then add them to gTalk and open their contact book where I add them to my APES 0809 mailing group. Some of the students are also NHS now, so I add them to that, too. This way in July, I don’t sit for hours doing this. I’ve begun finding some on chat and one even thanked me for forcing the classes to use this set up!
This student also wanted to know when I would set up a Google Group for the 08-09 APES. I told him to remind me tomorrow night and I would do it. The group’s main purpose is to be a space where the students can begin dialogging about the course, the summer reading, the teachers, etc… I think it’ll really help.
Posted in AP Lang, American Studies, Summer Reading, google docs, google groups, nhs
ASUS EeePC 900 Release Date
April 20, 2008
On May 12th the ASUS EeePC 900 hits the US Market. Now some people won’t give a damn, but there’s definitely a niche market who will. My friend Coop has one of these (an older model) and really loves it. It’s a bare bones midget machine that flies on Linux. It’s flash memory only and most of that is detachable, but I bet as SDHD becomes more readily available the storage will increase (does it even read that type?). This ultra-portable weights just over 2lbs and has a 9″ screen. I wonder what sort of ports it has. I understand that most people who want an ultra-portable won’t want to carry around a 2.5″ HDD, but I don’t mind doing so. I always carry a ton of stuff anyway.
We may go to Europe in Summer 2009 and my wife has been considering taking a computer like this with her. Her graduate degree is all online and she can’t go without working on it for 2 weeks. Such a machine is pretty much an internet computer. It’s like a cheaper MacBook Air with a lot less oomph. Yes, of course only a certain audience would appreciate this machine, and I would, of course, never ever get this with XP (go Linux!), and yes, people will complain about the price, but it’s still a cool little machine. Check out Endgadget for more info!
Posted in gadgets, macbookair, online, technology
Web 2.0 defined
April 19, 2008
Alan Levine recently had a post on his blog that clearly defined Web 2.0 for us all.
‘No one has “forgotten” or “left out” anything. You just haven’t added it yet.’
Posted in web2.0
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