A Learning Week!

Well, this week sure did disappear on me! It was quite busy. Today I had a culminating event for my "Team Bluebonnet"...a group of sixth grade students who have been reading 20 books that were nominated for the annual Texas Bluebonnet Award for children's literature. Students across Texas read these books and then vote for the winners. Now that I'm not in the classroom, it is a little more difficult to connect with kids and recruit them to these kinds of things, but I did have a nice little group participate. We had a reading campout this morning, a hot dog lunch, and then voting. Here are some pics:





Tonight I will be taking a few girls from my book club to see Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail." If you have never watched Tyler Perry movies or plays, they are quite humorous and usually have a positive message or theme. We are going to the theatre in Lancaster which is only $4 for even new releases...quite the bargain in this day and age of $11 movies. If you go before 6:00, it's actually only $2! Amazing! Of course, it's not exactly convenient, but the extra drive is well worth it in my opinion.

I got the official date for my grant site visit this week. Next Friday at 11:30am it is. As a result, I have been furiously scrambling to polish up details and documentation that will hopefully convince the committee that we're a worthy cause. However, I've got a few other irons in the fire and the flames are getting mighty warm, folks. In other words, your girl is starting to get a little overwhelmed. So far it's still manageable, but there's just a lot on the brain.

For example. In addition to my six hours of graduate work (one of which is an educational technology class), I have agreed to attend 12 hours of technology training with the district in order to receive a very awesome package of technology to be used in our media center. This package will include a mobile cart of laptops, a desktop computer, a document camera (Elmo...very cool invention!), a eInstruction Student Response system, a SMARTboard air slate, and data projector. Now if you are like me and just now getting brave enough to dip more than three toes in the ocean of technology (those toes being email, word processing, and Facebook), then you probably don't know what half those things are, but let me assure you, they are amazing (and very expensive) pieces of equipment that could be powerful tools for instruction and learning! I plan to rant and rave in another post about the appalling lack of decent technology in this school, but let me save that for now. Let it suffice to say that I am beyond thrilled for the opportunity to procure these items for our media center, even though it stinks to have to go to 12 hours of classes to try to get stuff that should be here anyways. (On the other hand, I need the classes to learn how to use the stuff.) Well I'm rambling. Onward to the point. Last night I attended a podcasting class, which was very interesting. I learned all about Audacity and Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story 3 and more. I am very excited to use my new knowledge to work with the PEARLS on creating a fantastic video with which we can dazzle the grant people next week! I actually already created one about Team Bluebonnet which I tried to post above, but it was too large or something so I'm going to have to keep playing with that. My ETEC 562 class is requiring me to experiment with some other innovative things so by the end of the semester I should be quite techno-savvy. Or at least for me. I know that I'm probably a good 3-4 years behind on this stuff, but it's exciting to me right now. You all may be my test mice on a few projects, so please be patient with me and don't laugh at my valiant attempts to become more technologically proficient.

In other news, Holly and Aaron and I are going to be undertaking a new venture at the Dallas Life Foundation in the next week or so. Awhile back, I posted about the importance of early childhood education and promoting literacy among pre-school kids and their families. As I stated then, it is just something I feel strongly about and wanted to get more involved in advocating. Around Christmas, I had a book club girl (Dezeray---such a sweetheart!) have the idea that she wanted to organize a toy drive. Although I am not always a huge fun of such endeavors, I was encouraged by Dezerary's heart and genuine desire to do something positive in her community and so agreed to help her. She did a great job of facilitating the toy drive and then together we took the toys to the Dallas Life Foundation a few days before Christmas. I was surprised at the number of very small children who are living there at the shelter. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Later, I had the idea that maybe I could start going to the shelter periodically to read to the kids and work with them on literacy-related activities and games in order to just be a small part of laying that crucial foundation they will need in a few short years or months when they arrive at kindergarten. I know that books and learning opportuniites are probably few and far between in such a dismal setting, so I thought maybe this would be a good place to start. I hadn't really acted on it though, until Holly contacted me last week about ideas for places she could do some work toward her service learning hours required for one of her classes at DBU. I suggested the reading class idea and she agreed! I'm excited about it! It looks like we will be going on Friday evenings from 7-9 while the moms shower. Eventually it would be nice to have a time where the moms are there too so we can share some ideas with them on how to work with their kids, but we'll try this time and see how it goes! I think next Friday will be our first week, so hopefully we can get together this weekend and make some plans and preparations!

My final random thought in this blog are congratulatory shout-outs to some of my friends who have announced exciting news in the past several months and I would like them to know I'm thrilled for them and they're in my prayers! Crystal who is now engaged! LynnAnne, who is now engaged! Natalie and Daniel who are expecting baby boy Clayton! Woo-hoo! Rachel and Braughn who are expecting baby Curtis! Woo-hoo! And of course it's just a few short weeks until Maddy will be here! Woo-hoo! And not too much longer until Brandon and Amanda are chasing after a little one! So there are a lot of big changes in the works, but an exciting time for all! Love ya'll!

And now I think I have far exceeded my length limit and probably only the dedicated few have reached this point in the blog, so I shall desist. Have a great weekend to all!