Jake

I am so sorry for the loss of a nephew of mine named Jake.  My utmost sympathy and condolences go out to my brother in law, John, Jake’s Mom, Tracy, and Jakes sister, Rylee. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to spend some of Jake’s last days here on earth with him.  This was my experience.

I teach Mine Craft to kids in Great Falls, or should i say, they teach it to me.  John asked my wife, Joan, if I would show Jake how to navigate and play and create in Mine Craft, when he came to Great Falls over Christmas break, because John and Tracy and Rylee just didn’t get it.  They didn’t understand how it worked and why Jake and other kids were so fascinated with it.  I thought it might be helpful to them if I tried to explain kids’ fascination, Jake’s fascination somehow.

First of all, a Mine Craft world is huge, as big as the planet Uranus.  And when I say that…my students always say “you mean, YerAnus”.  They can travel and teleport and fly any where they want in that huge world.  There are forests and jungles and deserts and huge caves and mines and oceans and rivers and lakes. There is rain and snow and thunder and darkness and light. It really is a beautiful place.

When I was showing Jake some things last Saturday night on Mine Craft, he looked up at me with his big excited eyes and said, “Look, Jeff! I can fly right up into space, and I can almost see forever!”

Another cool thing in Mine Craft, is that kids have access to any kinds of blocks they want to build with.  There are diamonds and gold and coal and obsidian and any kind or color of wool u need.  There are foods like cake and roast beef and porkchops.  Jake told me he was gonna learn how to build an Oreo.  My students can raise chickens and cattle and pigs and have dogs and cats and entire villages of people who are willing to share what they have with them.  They create farms and grow and raise crops like carrots and potatoes and bamboo.  Jake started building a house on our Mine Craft server out of gold.  He was building a little dog house right behind it out of Lapis Lapuzi block.  I am not sure what that is, but Jake liked its name.

Jake and I starting on his gold house. His dog house is behind us.

Jake was so excited when i showed him how to wear his armor.  He asked, with that enthusiasm so unique to him, “Can my helmet be gold and my legs be diamond and my chest be iron?”  I told him that in Mine Craft, you get to make your armor however you like and his face lit up in joy.

You sometimes need that armor to protect you from scary things, like creepers and spiders and zombie pigmen and endermen, even a dragon.  But what is really cool about Mine Craft is that the creepers cannot hurt you when you are in creative mode, which I think is the mode that Jake liked to be in the most.  And if they do try to harm you, you can slay them and get really good loot.

I think the most important reason why kids are so fascinated with Mine Craft is that in Mine Craft, you are never alone.  There are always others there with you, exploring, building, creating and having fun.

I think that some people don’t get or understand Jake’s fascination with Mine Craft is because for them, what I just described is not, could not be a real place, but for kids like Jake, it is as real and beautiful and fascinating as places out here are. I was so looking forward to exploring with, learning from, and playing with Jake in Mine Craft.  I am disappointed tremendously that I will have to wait.

I imagine, believe, and hope heaven is little bit like the Mine Craft I described above.  I believe Jake’s soul was ready for a place like that.

My students built a shrine by Jake’s build.

Maile

I attended the first GED Graduation in my new position as an Adult Education Math teacher a few weeks ago.  One of my students, Maile, addressed everyone with the following speech.  She did an outstanding job and has many good things in her future. The coolest thing about teaching adults is watching the tremendous amount of obstacles many of them, including Maile, overcome in finally finding some success in their own education.  In her speech, she talked about the biggest.  I was very lucky to be able to help Maile overcome some of her obstacles.  This was her presentation:

“Graduation means different things to different people.  For me, graduation is something I have pursued on and off for my entire adult life.  It always seemed just out of reach for one reason or another.  I always could come up with an excuse as to why I couldn’t study, or why I couldn’t go to class.  To tell the truth, one of the biggest problems I had was fear.
This fear kept me from working toward what I wanted, and it would have stayed that way unless I had made a conscious effort to put my fear aside and take a risk on myself.  I made the decision earlier this year to attend classes, study what I knew I was miserable at, and finish my education.  To do this required me to sacrifice time with my family, to get to class when I would rather take a nap, to try to understand things I had no desire to even look at, namely math.
What this all boils down to is that there is one person responsible for the earning of this achievement: me.  Granted, I was supported by family and friends as I studied and tried to work my schedule around.  But the one person who is truly responsible is the person standing here before you, now a graduate.

Maile and Me

I think one of the biggest obstacles I faced wasn’t scheduling or learning the material, it was motivation.  I wanted to be here in front of all of you, I wanted to have that diploma in my hand, but I lacked the motivation to do what was necessary.    Wayne Dyer, a motivational speaker and author, is quoted as saying “Be miserable.  Or motivate yourself.  Whatever has to be done, it’s always our choice.”  To me, that is one of the truest sayings I have ever encountered.  Once I chose to pursue this diploma, nothing was going to stand in my way.  When I took the final portion of the test, I was exhausted, and had been sick for the previous two weeks.  I could have easily decided to put off the test considering how I was feeling, but I made the choice to go forward and take the risk, betting that I would overcome the obstacles in front of me and succeed.  And now here I am.
Don’t be concerned if you are working toward a goal and you stumble.  There were plenty of days that I stumbled, but rather than let these bumps in the road knock me off track, I chose to use them as examples why I should redouble my efforts.  When life knocks you down, get back up, dust yourself off, and say ‘you hit like a little girl’.  By doing this, not only are you making progress toward your goal, you are also redefining the way that you deal with life’s issues.
There will always be problems in attaining your goals.  But how you deal with these problems can and will have a significant impact on how successful you are.  If you let things like a flat tire or having the flu stop you from reaching your goal, how will you ever attain anything in life?  The only way to do something, to do anything is simply to do it.  If you spend all of your time considering why something can’t be done, you will never have a chance of doing it.
To have reached this goal, there are some things I have realized.  First, it is an amazing thing to see myself here, doing this.  I had hoped and dreamed for so long to be here, and now it almost seems surreal.  It truly is one of the best feelings in the world.  Second, now that I have reached this goal, I am setting new goals for myself.  By doing this, I will be working toward the things that I want, rather than sitting back and accomplishing nothing, and now that I have realized a goal, it will make it that much easier to realize more of them.  Finally, I feel like now I am ready to see some success in my life where before there was only the dreary day-in day-out routine.  This graduation has opened many doors for me, but what has opened even more doors is the fact that I did this, and knowing that I did it means that I know I can do other great things.
In conclusion, I would like to thank my parents, my husband, my children and my friends for their understanding and support.  I would also like to extend a special thank you to the people here at ABLE who made all of this possible by providing the materials and guidance necessary for me to succeed.  Without the ABLE program, getting this diploma would have been much more challenging.  They were truly a light in the darkness during a difficult time when it seemed I barely had a chance to catch my breath.  Thank you all, goodnight.”

You did an outstanding job, MAILE…YOU ROCK, LADY!!!

Thanks Lindsay

I have been going through some feedback I ask students for at the end of each quarter I teach them.  Here is one of my favorites from my first year as a GAT Specialist…Thanks Lindsay:)

I enjoyed this quarter and the whole year of ECS a ton! I knew everyday when I drove to school that I had something fun to look forward to. ECS was definitely the most fun class I had this year.
I liked the Animal Farm unit we did because it is a great book, and even though I had read it before, I never understood the symbolism. Now I know what the book means and I feel a lot smarter. The vocab quiz was tough, but I was fine with all the other work for the book. The thought questions really made me thought (are they suppose to do that?) and I thought the word webs were really good. I learned what the word meant, it’s part of speech, how to use it in a sentence, and a lot more.Next, I had a lot of fun with the Dean Groom activities. I learned how to be really creative and fun, but at the same time became a better writer. I loved how funny you were when we were having a hard time with them. ie ‘Lain by the bunny, the eggs were deliciously chocolate!’ It was a lot of fun.
I also had a lot of fun writing by tales of Utopia story. I basically got to be creative and have fun writing a story, and show my understanding of Animal Farm by incorporating the theme of Utopia. I thought it was great that Dean did the webinar conference with us where we were able to practice presenting to an audience. He also helped us make some little changes that really helped.
Now, the Perfect Classroom projects. I thought they were fun and I liked working with a partner to createour own Utopia. I liked being able to share what I thought about school and what I thought would make it a Utopia.
Last, I would have to say my most favorite thing to do was play Quest Atlantis. It was a video game and a learning tool at the same time,which I would have to say really helped. I liked how I had my missions on QA and it made me feel really important. I learned a lot from Scoop Perry and his persuasive writing tool. You need to have a thesis, reason, and example. I also learned how to argue with something I don’t necessarily agree with in the articles and it helped me to learn how to keep an open mind.
Over all… ECS was amazing!!!! I am going to miss it so much during the fourth quarter and the summer. I look forward to it next year. and.. Thanks soooo much Mr. A!

Legacy

I am in my third year as a Middle School Gifted Education teacher and fifteenth year overall as an educator.   I recently learned that the program I am the teacher of has been cut.  I will still have a teaching position, but I will no longer be teaching gifted kids and I will no longer be teaching in middle school.  I have gained many things from teaching gifted kids, most of all, is that many gifted kids need to be less hard on themselves and not take life as seriously as they do.  I hope that somehow my students have learned this lesson along with me during the past three years. As a teacher, I often wonder is anything I am doing with my students going to stick with them when they leave school and move on with their lives.  I wonder if most of them are just biding their time until they no longer have to be forced into coming to my class or any other class for that matter.  I wonder if they will use what they have learned from me beyond my classroom, when they start a profession, go to college, begin a family, and start living their own lives.  After all, the biggest reason I became a teacher is that I wanted to have some kind of impact beyond my classroom, in my students’ lives.  Did any of them learn anything from me that they will use to make themselves a better person somehow? Or was my class just a way they could pass the day a little faster?

Please reply below in a comment, if you can answer this question.

Dean Groom on Connectivism

Time is flying. I remember when Dean first talked with me about connectivism while showing me around various places in Second Life. I think he needs more pictures.

Dean Groom on Connectivism, posted with vodpod

Scoop It and Flipping a Classroom

Via Scoop.it – Flipping my Classroom

I learned a new program last night in this morning called Scoopit.  It is a content curator application.  I used Scoopit to find and start my own content curation page.  I am still a little bit confused about what content curation is I believe it is a way to manage the huge amounts of content that are flying at us everyday.

Any how I used Scoopit to post this article to my wordress blog as I am able to share my Scoops with a variety of other types of Social media.  This article is a terrific explanation about what a flipped classroom is and how a teacher might begin flipping their own classroom in small ways.
Click here to see the article

Thank You Jishou – 视频 – 优酷视频 – 在线观看

We made this video to share with and thank our Jishou Pen Pals some of our talents and also to share some of the Chinese Language we were learning.

Figuring out how to use You.Ku was a bit of a challenge as I only know about 50 Chinese Characters…but as you can see I managed.  And if you wait until the end, you can hear us having a little bit of fun trying to learn a very difficult language.

First Day of Summer

Originally uploaded by teacherman79

Here we are on the first day of summer. The bus is more ready for camping now than it was before we went. It is organized and can now leave our garage to go camping in a moments notice. I slept in the bottom and Adam and his friend, Trew, slept in the top. They said they heard a bear in the middle of the night…but I think I am just starting to snore.

My Chinese Name is 刘 文轩

刘 文轩 is my new Chinese name…It was given to me by my new friend, Howeiyan, whom I met on a farm in the middle of North Dakota.  We are attempting to connect our classrooms using a variety of web tools.

Agamenoni didn’t translate very well into Chinese, so Mr. Howe had to change things up a bit.  The first character is the family name, Liu (pronounced with a rising tone). It is a very old, and distinguished family name. The next two are my given name (what they use as our first name) 文轩 is a name that describes a man who is full of knowledge and kind, very scholarly. Wen (the first character of the given name) is pronounced with a rising tone and xuan, the second character of the given name is pronounced with a slightly elevated pitch. It literally means high, but together with wen is what I described earlier.  Howeiyan told me not to ask why and that he would explain the name and the pronunciations sometime on skype.  I will enjoy the new name!

I have no idea how this will work, as networking with a classroom in a country as different from ours as China might be a bit difficult.  Mr. Howe and I are going to try though, and probably LEARN a ton in the mean time.

Twittering and Blogging from 31,000 feet…

It was only recently that I began using a cell phone…less than two years.  It is amazing to me the things that a cell phone can do.  As I was flying 31,000 feet over Montana, I wondered if I could send and receive twitter messages.  So, I sent a tweet out requesting that twitterfriends  send me a direct message and received several responses.  I am continually amazed at what is possible with new technologies.  On the second leg of our flight, I discovered In Flight Internet.  WoW did not work very well as I was continually disconnected…but gtalk and skype worked very well and I was able to talk to several members of my PLN about our trip to Australia.  I even was able to log in to Second Life and have a cool conversation with Louise Borgnine.

I usually spend time on a plane thinking about crashing into the ground in a huge ball of flame.  On these flights, however, I was thinking more about how awesome it is to have a PLN (Personal Learning Network) and how cool tools like Twitter, Skype, and GOGO InFlight Internet are.  Man…I love technology…I hope I can blog from Los Angeles to Auckland too…

more about “Twittering and blogging from 31,000 f…“, posted with vodpod