Robert Fulghum's "It was on Fire When I Lay Down on it."

A close friend and colleague (from whom I have learned much these past seven years) shared this copy of Fulghum's writing with me in the spring of 2009 as we were planning for the fall opening faculty meetings. Part of this piece figured into our introduction to the simulations and workshops we did that September. 

In an effort to reduce the amount of paper I have in file drawers and loose leaf binders, here is a pdf of the article. If you haven't read a pdf online before, try reading it in full screen.

Digital Wave Scavenger Hunt

Feel free to share your results in one long comment to this post.

NING
How many pools in Fred's Seussland SketchUp? HINT: Visit Fred's Ning page.

How many members in the isenet.ning? HINT: Find the appropriate button in the menu bar.

Who created the isenet logo? HINT: Search within isenet and check with the Librarian in your RCDS PLN if you need appropriate search terms.

Find the names of two books around which there are discussions. If possible, at least one of the books you list has to be different than one of the books listed by someone else in Digital Wave. Also, if you have read any of the books around which there are discussions – jump in and add a comment. HINT: Find the appropriate button in the menu bar. SECOND HINT: Within the Books discussion is another discussion: What are you reading?

TWITTER
Find the RCDS faculty who have Twitter accounts and list their Twitter names. HINT: Pool your talents to do your searches and also ask your growing PLN.

Find the names of two books around which there are tweets. Add a tweet of your own about a book you have read. HINT: Search for the #books hashtag.

POSTEROUS
The CAIS (Connecticut Association of Independent Schools) Tech Retreat took place in early May of this year. Who do you know who attended the retreat, and what did they do while on the retreat? HINT: Search all of posterous for this, and don't give up till you find it! (Which means you might have to search twice.)

Meet Louie

Louie recently came home with us to stay through the summer. The Science Department Head kindly volunteered him to be our guest, making it a lot easier for the department to pack items for storage in preparation for summer construction.

I am thrilled to have Louie home, as he is making my study of human anatomy come to life! He hangs out in our dining room and perhaps you can tell from the second photo that it is a nice place for me to read, especially on a sunny day.

CAIS Tech Retreat #caisct

This overcast Thursday morning began with drizzle and morphed into glorious warmth and sunshine – just perfect for lunch on the deck and afternoon outdoor walking tech sessions.

Outdoor tech sessions? Oh yes! Walking and talking (excellent learning mode for the brain!) about Google Apps vs FirstClass, and brainstorming scavenger hunt ideas for introducing faculty to online PLN-building tools. Then there was the geocache session where 18 of us added our mugs and a note to the box of goodies found along the banks of the Housatonic in West Cornwall, CT.


Ah, a social learning retreat complete with technology, digital and otherwise :-) (And thanks to @BethRitterGuth (http://twitpic.com/photos/BethRitterGuth) for the pic with people.)

Making a pen

This weekend we visited my brother-in-law, who lives about 40 minutes west of Philadelphia and has a well stocked wood working shop in his basement. He has recently started crafting pens and pencils out of wood and other materials. The kits that contain all the assembly pieces are purchased, but the bodies can also be made from collected woods, and make no mistake, wood collecting and wood working are hobbies that run deep in the family!

Once the wood and pen or pencil style has been selected, the jigsaw is used to cut the wood a little longer than the length of the cylinder.


Using the appropriate sized drill bit, a hole is then drilled through the center of the wood.


Super Glue is then used to glue the cylinder inside the recently drilled hole.


The ends are squared using the sander.


Now the pen is ready for partial assembly on the mandrel.


The partially assembled pen is then placed on the lathe for turning.


The trick is to apply equal pressure as you move back and forth, left to right and back again.


As the lathe spins, the casing of the cylinder is gradually whittled away.


The idea is to whittle off enough of the casing so that there is just a very slim coating of material remaining. You definitely do not want to reach the cylinder that is enclosed!


The turning continues until most of the body has been stripped away. After turning but still on the lathe, 15 different sandpaper grids are used (ranging from 150 to 12,000 grain) to sand the body. Following sanding, the body is waxed three times. At this point the pen is as sleek and slim as it is going to get, but because I didn't actually take pictures while we (yes, we :-), my husband, his brother, and I!) were making my pen, my brother-in-law used various scraps for these photos.

The rest of the pieces are then added to the cylinder for final assembly.


The pen is placed on the press.


And the final assembly is pressed nice and tight.


The result is a hand made pen or pencil! The lighter pen is made of bamboo and is a ball point pen; the darker pen (which is the one we made) is a roller point (like a gel pen) and made from a small grain wood. It took us about an hour to make the pen on the right, which my brother-in-law said was a typical time frame.


This is the pen parts and assembly table.


And this is the basement wood working shop complete with a vacuum system in the back by the lathe.

Take 3 on posterous experiment

In my continuing experiment with posterous (which also could be called my discovery of all the wonderful possibilities that posterous provides) a slide show that accompanied a presentation I gave last April, 2009, has been posted. The presentation was given at the annual CAIS Tech Retreat, and here is the description from the CAIS wiki:

Three Pounds that Packs a Punch
Link to index card brainstorm - [I deleted the link because it did not work from posterous.]
We are all adults and we all spend part of our jobs helping other adults make use of technology. What can we take from the realm of adult learning and the brain that can be useful to us as learners and teachers? We'll touch on brain basics, adult brains, aging brains, memory, learning, and professional development. Be prepared to think as much about yourselves as about your colleagues! Laptops are fine to bring with you, though they won't be our only tools.

My slides were created in Keynote and then saved as PowerPoint, since that appears to be the file preference of posterous. I noticed only two issues when saving as PP – the font was changed, and a separate folder was created for saving the animated clock. The clock file, which is a .mov QuickTime file, is also posted here just to see how posterous handles it. Turns out the .mov file did not play properly so I deleted it. As for the font, it appears to have reverted to the original once it was posted, though two or three slides have size issues when displaying the text.

While I think SlideShare is still a better place for posting slides, am currently thinking that a posterous blog may be a viable tool for hosting my Presentation Communication course next fall.