Summer Time...July 08
And so...what is new out there? I have just come back from a wonderful conference in Boston. A number of things made it wonderful. One, I went with my sister. We haven't had a chance to just hang out, sans enfants, for ages!! We both LOVE our kids like CRAZY but every once in a while, it is nice to put the Mommy hats to the side and pick up the SISTERS hats! I swear, she's a bad influence. I found myself at the bar two out of five nights we were in Boston. I forgot how yummy a rum and coke can taste!!! Hee hee!!
What else made this a grand conference? We learned so much! We learned how much we DON'T know!!! For instance, have you heard of the micro lending agency called KIVA? No? You should check it out!! I know I want to learn more. And have you a Flickr account? Me neither...but it's in the offing! I've got Facebook. But that's about as current as I get, aside from this Blog, an unused Skype account, and a Bebo account that is missing me terribly! At any rate, coming home on the plane, my sister Monique and I decided we will create our own on-line presence. We will adopt the name that our wonderful teacher, Marco Torres, and his former students and owners of Alas Media gave us: The Border Sisters!
Among other things, Marco Torres is a Social Studies teacher who uses technology and video production in his teaching. He has had enormous success as his former students can attest. He led our two-day (cramped, jam-packed 2 days!) pre-conference workshop where the participants learned the "grammar of film-making" (short films, under 2 minutes!!) and went on to make our own. In the end, I actually took 4 days to complete mine. What a lot to take in. At any rate, I am sold on Mac and look forward to purchasing one of my own...as soon as possible!!
It was also wonderful to be surrounded by people driven to use technology effectively in the classroom, make learning student-centred, fun, active, and meaningful. We met a number of people who we will keep in touch with and look forward to going next summer.
On the home front, our two older people, Alexander and Kaisa, have been keeping busy at Art Camp, this week. They are loving it. Last week, Brent took the three kids to Sudbury while I was in Boston. Loved that, too. In one week, I missed Kaisa riding her bike with no training wheels, Alexander catching his first AND second fish, and the two of them learning to canoe! ACH! I guess I can't be there for all their firsts. It felt absolutely wonderful to see them again.
Alexander will do a week of hockey camp and Kaisa has another week at art camp in August. In the meantime, our next few weekends will be taken up with visiting friends we made up North. It's amazing how the bonds formed in the North are everlasting. In fact, the influence the North has had on me was the subject of my little film. Imagine how much happened in my life up there!!
I am still working, bit by bit, on developing PEARL Literacy. PEARL stands for Producing Empowering Accounts of Real Life. Our objective is to facilitate the recording of people's stories in a variety of formats - writing, video, photos, multi-media, etc. Once it takes off, it will be a lot of fun!! The woman leading the kids' art camp and I are hoping to get to work together. She is a lot of fun and I believe we would be able to do some really enjoyable workshops, etc.
I must sign off. I have been asked to work at the public library tomorrow. I do that here and there. It all fits in with what I want to do..."when I grow up"!!!
Take care, everyone!
night...Gabrielle
What else made this a grand conference? We learned so much! We learned how much we DON'T know!!! For instance, have you heard of the micro lending agency called KIVA? No? You should check it out!! I know I want to learn more. And have you a Flickr account? Me neither...but it's in the offing! I've got Facebook. But that's about as current as I get, aside from this Blog, an unused Skype account, and a Bebo account that is missing me terribly! At any rate, coming home on the plane, my sister Monique and I decided we will create our own on-line presence. We will adopt the name that our wonderful teacher, Marco Torres, and his former students and owners of Alas Media gave us: The Border Sisters!
Among other things, Marco Torres is a Social Studies teacher who uses technology and video production in his teaching. He has had enormous success as his former students can attest. He led our two-day (cramped, jam-packed 2 days!) pre-conference workshop where the participants learned the "grammar of film-making" (short films, under 2 minutes!!) and went on to make our own. In the end, I actually took 4 days to complete mine. What a lot to take in. At any rate, I am sold on Mac and look forward to purchasing one of my own...as soon as possible!!
It was also wonderful to be surrounded by people driven to use technology effectively in the classroom, make learning student-centred, fun, active, and meaningful. We met a number of people who we will keep in touch with and look forward to going next summer.
On the home front, our two older people, Alexander and Kaisa, have been keeping busy at Art Camp, this week. They are loving it. Last week, Brent took the three kids to Sudbury while I was in Boston. Loved that, too. In one week, I missed Kaisa riding her bike with no training wheels, Alexander catching his first AND second fish, and the two of them learning to canoe! ACH! I guess I can't be there for all their firsts. It felt absolutely wonderful to see them again.
Alexander will do a week of hockey camp and Kaisa has another week at art camp in August. In the meantime, our next few weekends will be taken up with visiting friends we made up North. It's amazing how the bonds formed in the North are everlasting. In fact, the influence the North has had on me was the subject of my little film. Imagine how much happened in my life up there!!
I am still working, bit by bit, on developing PEARL Literacy. PEARL stands for Producing Empowering Accounts of Real Life. Our objective is to facilitate the recording of people's stories in a variety of formats - writing, video, photos, multi-media, etc. Once it takes off, it will be a lot of fun!! The woman leading the kids' art camp and I are hoping to get to work together. She is a lot of fun and I believe we would be able to do some really enjoyable workshops, etc.
I must sign off. I have been asked to work at the public library tomorrow. I do that here and there. It all fits in with what I want to do..."when I grow up"!!!
Take care, everyone!
night...Gabrielle
posted by Gabrielle @ 10:47 p.m.
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