Cotter's Corner

2011 in Review

2012-01-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

On December 11, 2010, I had a stroke that put me in hospital for an undetermined amount of time and when I had another stroke two days later, things were not looking so good for any immediate recovery. Because I was in my second year of a photo a day group, I got my iPhone and managed to finish the year. I wasn't so sure about starting up again for 2011, but was encouraged by some of my online friends to give it a go, and not to worry about missing any days.

It was a great challenge and I believe the commitment to continue the photo a day was a good part of my somewhat speedy recovery, plus, it meant that I talked and interacted with many people at GFStrong Hospital that I might have otherwise.

On January first, I was still in St. Mary's here on the Sunshine Coast and that is where 2011 began...

January 1, 2011
Well I'm feeling stronger and more co-ordinated as I enter 2011. Thank to some offline urging I will make an effort to share this year. I see this sign a dozen times a day as I do my laps, chatting with staff as I go. So many good and caring people here. Because I have a long school based history on the coast I run into staff I have taught, principled, or coached. I see some of the patients who I first knew as parents and it saddens me to see some in such dire straits. The past three weeks has opened my mind to many of our health care issues, not simply the funding, the staffing plan, but the bureaucratic things as well. I have more testing to be done - it seems like one test leads to another and still in the middle of the referral process to get into consistent rehab in Vancouver.

February 4, 2011
Working out on this bike for 20 to 30 minutes a day is really great. It clears your mind as well as getting aerobic benefit. Today was a bit of a distracted day for me as I was told yesterday that going home today was not going to happen. I need more tests as a result of the brain MRI and obviously it makes more sense to do that here.

Also it was the last day for the students I have been working with. From having past experiences working with many student teachers, I had a different insight into their work than most other patients. I really enjoyed working with them as a "student" and also enjoyed talking with them a lot about their education and their goals. Both were in their mid twenties. It was a bit tough saying goodbye to them today and both thanked me for my efforts and wished me well, too.

So, I actually did three sessions on this bike today, and that was good for the spirit.

Another weekend to be here, another CAT scan Monday, and more work ahead. The reality is, though, I still know how lucky I am given the condition some of my new found friends are in.

March 4, 2011
Home again and still loving to cook meals for Judy and I.

One difference is that I use much less salt in my cooking, specially making soups! Looking good and almost ready to eat after simmering all afternoon.

April 13, 2011
I am waiting to go into Physio as an outpatient this afternoon, sitting in front of the open door. I decided to play with Camera+, a new iPhone app I downloaded yesterday.

May 15, 2011
I became a member of a very exclusive club today. That gives me a very special feeling.

One of the things I love about the 365 photo group is reviewing the shots the members have taken and virtually meeting people from around the world. One of those people happened to take an extended vacation this year and she and her husband had a stop in Vancouver. I footsied over to North Vancouver and met them there for a few hours. We talked, laughed, took some photos, had a nice lunch and as we were making our physical separation until who knows when, she presented me with one of the pens she makes as a hobby. What a special treat.

June 4, 2011
It was quite special watching my daughter perform tonight. I last saw her dance over 15 years ago. And, she last wore this costume when she was 17.

July 5, 2011
This week is bring a child to the course week and so we took Caia and Eibhlin and Caia loves to pose for the camera. We rented a cart and played a few holes with them. Caia also loved to sit on my knee and drive the cart.

I'm just starting to golf again, though my scores are a good 20 strokes a round more than what they were a year ago. It is good to get out with the guys and gals I play with.

Eibhlin has quite an interest in golf and so we signed her up for lessons again this year. It is interesting to watch her progress. It will be fun when we get to play with them more.

August 4, 2011
My Father in Law celebrated his 92nd birthday today and we had a bit of a party. It would be his last birthday as he passed away in early December.

He was a great guy and our two girls really did enjoy visiting with him.

We'll miss him.

September 17, 2011
Since getting our of the hospital I have found a new interest in walking / shuffling. I set myself a goal to do a 10K and on June 26, I achieved that goal, albeit slowly. I went 10.57K in 1:42:48 and according to my GPS map, I did the first 5K in 47:45.

Today I ran with my daughter in memory of my son-in-law who passed away 2 years ago from brain cancer.

My daughter has become an advocate for other widows - helping herself along the way - and was running today in support of the Liz Logelin Foundation, a positive support group for widows in need.

I set up the course for us and we did a touch over 5K in a time of 44:49. Am I becoming a runner again :)

October 15, 2011
I went back on the on call list to take the place of a principal for a day or so if he or she was sick or had to attend a meeting. I got a call to ask if I might be able to sub for the principal at the school where I worked for 4 years a half dozen years ago. I said I would and had the 5 day a week commitment to school again.

The sky looked pretty awesome this morning as I was driving to work for the day. I pulled over and used my iPhone and Pro HDR for this shot which takes two images and merges them… thus the ghostly looking car approaching me as I stand in the middle of the crosswalk. The driver must have been confused about what I was doing at that time in the morning, looking down the street with something in front of my face.

November 30, 2011
Well, I am still at school working for the principal and now it appears he will be off for an indefinite period of time.

November is a month that some folks grow a mustache in support of fund raising for prostrate cancer. I talked with our intermediate students about the reasons behind Movember and my personal reasons for participation having known some who have suffered from this form of cancer. Over 95% of the students joined me on Movember Friday and wore their home made mustaches in support of the effort. I was quite proud of them.

December 12, 2011
My wife and I have been fortunate to have had both our dads in the same care home for some time... my dad (pictured here) for three years and Judy's dad for 18 months until Saturday evening when he passed away at the age of 92.

Today, I went to see my dad in the care home where he has been for about three years. I don't take the opportunity to see him more than once or twice per month because of the travel commitment and visits with him are generally short ones, but I do think of him a lot and know there are many memories I have of his life as my dad that I will cherish for years.

One of my daughters looked at this photo and said, "Grandpa looks deep in contemplation." Maybe so.

December 31, 2011

And one final photo I must include, even though it did not make my top twelve list for the year. As I noted in the January 1 photo, I was in the hospital and unable to participate in our New Year's Eve tradition of having dinner with the fine folks in this shot. This year, they came to celebrate at our home and we loved hosting them for a couple of days. While I was in the hospital they came to visit, took me out for some time when I got a pass to leave, and we had our annual Spring wine trip to the Okannagan as well as what might be a new annual trip to Washington and Oregon in September.

Thanks to Jane, Marty, Lorne, Joan and of course my wife Judy for being a good part of my recovery in 2011.

And thanks to those in the 2011365 group, now 2012366 group, on Flickr for being a part of my completing my 365 challenge for the 3rd year due to my watching daily for your contributions to the group and comments on my photos.

Now it is time to make the commitment to 2012.

School Board Elections

2011-11-15T22:35:00.001-08:00

On Monday night this week there was an all candidates meeting for the school district in which I live and occasionally work.

Some months ago there was a public meeting to discuss reorganization of the way trustees are elected with a number of options presented for consideration. I was a member of the public who attended that meeting. I think there were less than 5 of us in attendance.

The meeting last night was well attended and I thank my Twitter friend, trustee Lori Pratt, for tweeting the questions asked. Lori is the only trustee elected by acclamation and I congratulate her for offering her services to the district and agreeing to run again.

There are seven trustees and they are elected to represent the district as a whole, but they are elected in quasi geographic territories. Fourteen candidates were at the meeting last night vying for six positions and listening to the candidates introduce themselves, answer questions and give closing speeches it was reaffirmed in my mind how unfair our current process is.

In Gibsons municipality we elect a single trustee. There at two very good candidates and both are up for re-election having run in different areas last year. It is a shame that one of them has to be unseated from the board next year. They do have different opinions about a number of things, but that is not a bad thing, and both have dedicated a good number of hours to represent the electorate of the past number of years.

In the southern part of the peninsula, excepting Gibsons, there are seven candidates running for three positions. Three in, four out.

In Sechelt, two candidates will be elected from a field of five. Two in, three out.

Will some capable candidates not get elected? I think so. Will we elect the best seven of the fifteen people who have put their names forward? While opinions vary, In my opinion the answers are Yes some capable candidates will not get elected and No we will not elect the best seven candidates.

Since all candidates are running for positions that require them to represent the entire district, there should be no concerns about regionalization.

I hope the new board will take restructuring of the district election policies in plenty of time to get ministry approval for a change in time for the 2014 election.

Back in the Saddle - for a while

2011-10-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

The modular classroom in the background is new to the school, built because BC now has full time Kindergarten so instead of a K morning and a K afternoon class, there are now two full day Ks at the school. The building isn't too bad… a far cry from the portable classrooms of the 80s, many of which are still in use.

You may have noticed that I have been at this school a few times in past couple of weeks. That has now changed for me as the district has asked if I will assume the duties of principal there for the next 6 weeks while the current principal is on leave.

I got my feet wet today with Bill 33 meetings, staffing discussions, maintenance and budget news ... lots to learn and get up to date with. Then there is a return to evening meetings and paperwork to go the board office. Certainly a lot more than being in charge for a day here and there.

So, no more ducking in to have some fun and ducking out again. Well, maybe not, I'm very excited about being there for the next 6 weeks. And, I am sure a lot of my future photos will revolve around that. As well, my twitter feed (@gibsonsgolfer) will move away from golf and cooking and more back to education things I need to learn from my network.

It's going to be great.

Job Action

2011-10-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

Wow... two posts today.

I just had to put up a comment I wrote in response to our School District #46 (Sunshine Coast) chair who is looking for some public commentary he can digest concerning a meeting he is attending next Monday related to the current job action being taken by BC Teachers. In his post he referenced Vancouver Sun article describing some options considered being taken by the BC Public School Employers Association (BCPSEA). One of the quotes from that article suggest that an option may be to:

Another option would be to reduce the pay of teachers since under the job action, they are doing less work.

For a response, I let Silas and other reading on Facebook know that this did not match with my day this week working as a principal on call at Cedar Grove Elementary school here in our district.

I said:

I can tell you that I met with teachers after school until after 5 pm working very hard on the redistribution of students that had to be done to improve things for students. The teachers did not refuse to take part in the process... they did not tell the principal this was an "administrative decision" and their discussion resolved around both the past experience of kids and their projected future for the next two or three years.
Every class I visited on that day showed signs of good instruction and not the kind of instruction that can be given without adequate preparation time. Some of the teachers there are teaching new grades so it is not like they are pulling the curriculum from past notes in their pockets. As for supervision... sure there wasn't the usual "assigned" teacher out there at recess and lunch, but I observed a good number eating lunch with their students, in the rooms catching up on emails, and enjoying the children. I've already spoken in another forum about the Terry Fox run and the work that was done in preparation for it.
There was a lot more I witnessed on just that one day, so don't even think teachers are doing less work during this job action. It may be different work on the whole, but it is not less.

Of course I hope this matter is resolved. Personally, I think the net zero mandate is wrong and that in some way bargaining should be allowed to return to the local level as it was in the olden days.

Happy Birthday Dinner

2011-10-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, September 30, was a special day for our family. It was the 4th birthday for one of my granddaughters and we had her sister and her mom over for dinner. One of the favourite dinners the girls love is macaroni and cheese, so I decided to work with one of my favorite celebrity cooks recipe to recreate his version of this dish. Given the day was a bit overcast, it was a great comfort food choice. One of my collection of his books is The Best of Chef at Home so I followed the recipe from there. While this recipe is not here with Michael's permission, I hope it is okay to reproduce and it entices you to look for his book or search online for more of his recipes.

Preheat your oven to 350* and put 450g of penne pasta on to boil in well salted water.

While the pasta cooks, make the sauce by melting 70g of butter in a large saucepan and stirring in a couple of chopped garlic cloves to flavour the butter. After a few moments, add 2/3 of a cup of flour and stir to make a roux. Let the roux cook for a few moments, and add a splash of white wine. Stir a bit more and when you have a smooth roux, add a 370ml can of evaporated milk and a litre of the type of milk you like to drink (I used 2%). Switch to a whisk and keep whisking until the mixture is thickened. I used a food processor to grate 450g of medium cheddar cheese and then added it to the sauce along with 2tbs of Dijon mustard, 1tbs of paprika, a pinch of cayenne, and 1tsp sea salt. By now, the pasta was cooked, drained, and added to the sauce. Tear up some Italian bread and toss with olive oil. Place the macaroni and cheese in a good sized casserole dish, cover the top with the bread, and place in the oven for about 30 minutes.

While this may not be the most precious photo of Caia enjoying her birthday, I think it stands as a pretty good indicator of how much she enjoyed the dish.

Since my granddaughters and daughters are vegetarians, it isn't always easy to design a meal that really hits the spot. This one most certainly did.

Finished

2011-09-17T11:26:00.001-07:00

Finished, a photo by gibsonsgolfer on Flickr.

It was nine months ago this week that I had two strokes that knocked me out physically and mentally. I felt I was in fairly good condition at the time and even today there is no final answer on what caused the strokes, only that they were located in my brain stem.

I had been doing some training at the time for the Vancouver Sun Run, an event I had often planned to enter, but only seldom had I made the trip to Vancouver to do the run. On December 10, two days before the first stroke, I completed a 5.41km run in 46:57, an 8:41 pace. Two days later, my ability to run was gone.

Since getting out of the hospital I have found a new interest in walking / shuffling. I set myself a goal to do a 10K and on June 26, I achieved that goal, albeit slowly. I went 10.57km in 1:42:48, an average pace of 9:43 and according to my GPS map, I did the first 5km in 47:45.

Today I ran with my daughter, Chelsea, in memory of my son-in-law Elias who passed away 2 years ago from brain cancer. She has become an advocate for other widows - helping herself along the way - and was running today in support of the Liz Logelin Foundation, a positive support group for widows in need. I set up the course for her and we did a touch over 5km - 5.05km - in a time of 44:49, not as fast as pre-stroke, but I was very pleased with the result.

Will I try the 10km in Vancouver next year? We'll see.

RIP Uncle Roly

2011-07-10T09:43:00.001-07:00

Questions, questions, questions, a photo by gibsonsgolfer on Flickr.

I just got the news that my uncle Roly passed away peacefully in his sleep last night at the age of 104. Yes, over 100 years on this earth.

Roly was not only my uncle, but a really special man to me. Some of the important firsts came to me via Roly.

His life was pretty interesting and I'd say he was the first "techie" I ever knew. His ham radio license was an old one, and it always struck me that it was VE7 RT ... Roland Tufnali, his initials. He had big antennas at his house.

I've heard the stories about his early days working for United Airlines. He sold you your ticket, took your bags to the plane, and guided the plane leaving the runway, yes, everything but flying the thing.

When I was young my parents weren't much in to sports. They were, and still are, wonderful parents, but my interest in sports was often shared with Roly when we visited his home. One day he took me to my first ever professional event. I saw the Vancouver Mounties baseball team play. The stadium, the green field, the lights, the crowd ... things I will never forget.

Once Roly had been away some place and he brought me back a gift. It was a two transistor radio. Two transistors! I listened to that every night. Baseball, boxing, and and introduction the "Burns Hotline" talk radio. I think that was one of the reasons I dabbled with UBC radio when I went there.

Another time, Roly brought me my first electronic calculator. No more slide rule for me. My math, okay arithmetic, skills were excellent, but I loved using that calculator.

Roly had the first television set I ever saw. He had it in the late 1940s, before I was born. In his attic and connected to some amazing aerials, I heard about how the neighbours used to come over to watch. I think the Indian Test Pattern was quite fun to see. Another first for me to see was the home computer he had, a Radio Shack model that used tapes. He would spend hours programming it and I had some fun with it as well. I remembering him making the challenge to me to write a program to calculate the third side length of a triangle if you knew the other two sides. That impossible puzzle kept me busy for some time.

Roly and his wife Muriel, who is very much alive today in her 90s, had a beautiful cottage in Boundary Bay, Point Roberts, WA. I can't count the number of special memories there... learning to swim, Ben's Store, Metcalfes, my cousins Wendy and Janice, and many more. Annual family picnics have been held there for years. Roly was quite inventive with things he did at the cottage too.

He was in the same home as my dad and while I don't get enough time to make the trip there, I did try to say hi and talk to him when I visited dad. In the past 6 months or so, the communication was pretty much one sided, but he always seemed to have a bit of a twinkle in his eye when we met up.

I'll most certainly miss "my favourite uncle" Roly.

The passing of a friend

2011-07-03T19:48:00.000-07:00

Today I attended and spoke at the Celebration of Life for a friend and former fellow employee in our School District.

Vicki spent about 2 1/2 of the last three years in the hospital.

She had a great love of painting her toenails and some of us painted ours. Each person sent me a photo and I put this collage together for a get well card for Vicki back in 2008.

Though I never was in a role to work directly with Vicki, I did work with her often (tech wise) in her role as an Admin. Assistant. We also golfed on the same team in the annual SD46 tournament, told each other lots of jokes ... before getting sick, she worked upstairs from my office. I've looked for some of the fun golf photos, but can't seem to locate them. If I do find them, I'll update this page.

She was good fun, and passed away much too early. She was an amazing artist but within the school system one of the things she was most relished for was her famous cookies. At the event today there were a couple of hundred people and everyone was given a cookie and a recipe card.

I was most proud to have known her and shared time with her over the past 15 years.

Checked off

2011-06-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

As many of you know I had a couple of strokes in December. The doctors are still uncertain why, but they hit my brain stem and sent me for a physical loop. I'm still in recovery mode, and likely will be for years ahead. Though I'm starting to play golf again, the scores aren't quite there, but that is not what this post is about.

Before my stroke, I was doing my annual thinking about and bits and pieces training for the Vancouver Sun Run, a 10K event. I was also dabbling with the idea of doing the April Fools Run, a half marathon here on the Coast. I do these things (thinking and training a bit) though I've only run the 10K in one year.

My time at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre was a real experience, meeting lots of folks with both interesting and tragic stories. I asked those working with me to push me hard and I would try being motivated towards recovery. When I left there in February this year, I could walk slowly, losing balance occasionally, and definitely not run. Today, I still can't run or really even jog smoothly, but I can do my shuffle. Today, I achieved a goal.

I have to say thanks to my friend Doug Rich. Dug is an internet/golfing/met up close friend. He is a part time musician and has written a couple of songs that are in my music file. Last month, I saw Doug on a trip we made down to their place in Washington and mentioned to him that sometimes when I work out, along comes his song, "Nasty Thoughts and Dirty Words" (it isn't really nasty or dirty) and that motivates me. It is written about himself and some members of our golf buddies going out to play a round.

Today I was about the 7K mark, just passing my this year's personal best, and thinking I should stop and phone home for a ride. Then the song came on and the next five minutes flew by. When my friend and IronWoman Kelly Newell's name came along in the song, I knew I had to keep pushing. I will never forget reading Kelly's journal of her first IronMan event.

About the 9km point, my iPhone stopped telling me the distance I had run, so I went right past the the road I would finally turn on to go home, instead finishing through the Inglis Trail. When I go home there was still nothing from my phone, but I decided I must have made 10K enough it was a bit more.

Half Marathon ahead? Who knows. Let's try and get the golf scores down the high 80s and low 90s first.

Our Community Centre Gym

2011-02-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago a referendum was held in our community to determine adding recreation complexes in our community. For Gibsons, this meant the addition of a community centre with meeting rooms, a "wellness" gym, a couple of racquet courts and an ice arena. I will admit to voting against this referendum for many reasons, but, it passed, and we pay for it through our taxes and fees if we should decide to use it. The fees bothered me since they were much higher than any of my friends payed over on the mainland, but they said it was necessary to charge that much because of the total cost and the lower population to draw from. Recently, I have found a need to use it, so I got over my negative opinions and went today for the first time, purchasing a 10 pack so I would be motivated to continue with much needed exercise.

Well, I was impressed. For what I need I can see this is going to work well. The gym is broken into areas to meet different needs. The Wellness component is comprised of machines which do not have weight settings. Now that may sound a bit strange, it did to me at first, but the machines use compression instead of weights and simply let you go through the range of motion for each exercise, be it chest presses, or leg lifts, or lifting. This working with the motions was advised for me to get some nerve endings working again and it does seem to do that very well.

Another area is the aerobic area with a couple of specialized bikes, regular bikes, treadmills, walking machines, etc. There probably aren't enough there to accommodate a lot of people at one time, but I had no difficulty in the time I was there.

There is a free weights area with more traditional weight machines for lifting using real weights. There were barbells as well so for someone wanting that kind of control with the weights, it was available. I used the bars with no weights and the barbells for some of the circuit I did.

As well there were machines where you determined the weight you wanted to lift by placing a small "bolt" in the correct place. Those worked well for me too. And finally, there was an area for stretching and it had bosu balls, large and small exercise balls, an assortment of other things.

Negatives - the scale weighed me at more than at home.

It will be good for me to continue on.

On to 2011 - but first a look back

2011-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

January saw me start the year with some great intentions and while I did not meet my goal, I did much better than the year before, putting in some work every month. Not sure what 2011 will be like in this respect as I have a few other challenges to begin the year, but we'll see.

February was the month that British Columbia welcomed the world to the 2010 Olympic Games. While not a fan of this event for social reasons (plus there not being track and field:), I did take the time to welcome the torch runners to our small town.

In March one of my lovely granddaughters found a love for golf thanks to the set of clubs we gave her for her birthday. Though too young to get out much this year, that will certainly change in the coming years.

Though retired from so many great years as an educator, I did get a chance to get back in the system from time to time. Here I was, in April, teaching the teacher an alternate way to demonstrate learning by using a favourite program, ComicLife.

In May we made our as annual as possible trip south to play golf with a set of friends I have met over the net. This get together is a highlight of the year. Thanks, Scotty, for your hard organizational work.

My daughter, Chelsie, had a dream plan start to come together in June with the signing of a lease and the beginning of putting together Giggle'N'Bloom, a maternity to age nine store in Gibsons.

In July while Eibhlin took some lessons, Caia went along to help me out retrieving pitch shots and stuff. It will be a lot of fun for us if both girls end up enjoying this sport.

In August I had a chance to watch a Pro event, moving around the course, keeping out of the way, and shooting some photos. This was part of a multi shot sequence or one of the competitors (and our club Pro) hitting and sinking a sand shot.

September marked a milestone with Eibhlin going to Kindergarten and becoming part of our public school system.

In October I worked a bit at Pender Harbour Elementary-Secondary school. With weather like we were having, travelling the Coastal Highway in my Miata with the top down was just plain extra special.

Those who know me will be surprised that I have waited to November to post a foodie photo. There were so many fine meals this year, and I had so many to choose from. I just love to cook.

December has been something else. Thanks to the love and support of Judy, not only showing it to me, but also to other members of the family. The month, the year, the past 39 years have been so wonderful for me. Here's to 2011 being a great year for us.

LensHero - a review

2010-12-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

Among Twitter, Facebook, and my e-mail I can't really say how many free offers, special gifts, and requests I get in a week. Yesterday I came across one that I though might be looking at because I had some respect for the sender. Disclaimer, I'm writing this review of the LensHero site, partly because there is something in in for me … a free shirt, and maybe even a free lens. Of of the lenses is the same one that I purchased for my daughter for Christmas last year. Having been to many conferences where I have received free shirts, I'm sure my wife will appreciate this.

LensHero is a site you can visit to search, or get recommendations, for a lens for your camera. One of the first things I liked about the site when I first went there was seeing the little Canadian flag that lit up to let me know pricing would be in my currency.

Input your model of camera, use a sliding scale to select your budget, and give a style or zoom range and the site will make a suggestion from a number of different lens makers that fit those needs. I input my camera type (Canon EOS Rebel Xsi) from a pop down which appeared as soon as typed the word Canon. I selected a budget of up to $600 and using a graphic selector indicated Telephoto for style. Pressing the Go button brought me to a choice of 30 lenses within that budget range, and a good description of each lens. I chose the 4th suggestion, the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, clicked on that link and got to a page with some reviews of the lens, pros and cons, more detail as to compatibility and specifications, and even an area for end user discussion of the lens. This page also made the recommendation that a purchase could be made on Amazon.com at a price of $598.34. Clicking on that link to me to the Amazon page for the lens.

I noted the little Canadian flag with respect to pricing. Because I did not place an order, I can't confirm that was the case - though it probably was. One thing I noted was that playing with the search functions seemed to bring me to Amazon or B&H Photo. I'm thinking that at this early stage of the development of the site they don't yet have a supplier in Canada, so cross border shopping would be required.

While I haven't covered all the search options at the site, I can say they are simple and fun to use. It does generate a lot of ideas for future purchases and I will most certainly return.

Risotto - a technique

2010-12-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

Cooking risotto is as much a technique as it is a recipe. There are dozens and dozens of ways I have made risotto over the years and tonight's was something new. However, the technique really doesn't vary.

I was having the grandchildren over for dinner and their mom was getting some time for her dance lessons. Yes, she has started to do ballet again, but that is another story.

Of course for them it had to be vegetarian in nature, and that is fine with me. Veggie dinners don't hurt ... besides, I had a bit of stir fry pork left in the fridge if I decide I'm needing that kind of protein later tonight. For this risotto, I roasted a butternut squash (cut in half, sprinkle with cumin, put in a baking dish, covered in foil, cooked at 400* for 40 minutes). While that was in the oven, I diced a good sized shallot and a single clove of garlic. In a large pot on the stove at a medium temperature, I melted some butter along with some EVO, added the shallot and garlic and let it cook softly for a few minutes. I then added a couple of cups of arborio rice - that is risotto rice - to the pot and stirred gently for about 5 minutes, allowing it to get coated with the butter/oil and turning translucent. When it was ready for the liquid I added about a half cup of white wine and stirred it to allow the wine to be absorbed. I neglected to say that I had a litre of organic vegetable stock (Pacific) simmering on the back burner.

The real trick with risotto is to add the liquid a bit at a time ... I have a small soup ladle that works well for this. A bit of liquid, stir until absorbed, a bit of liquid, stir until absorbed, etc. etc. for about 25 minutes. As it gets creamier and creamier, you will want to test for doneness (just as al dente is coming to a close). Somewhere in the middle of the addition of the stock, I added the orange juice from cooking the squash, and the squash was cooling. It took a minute or so to cut the skin off the squash, dice it roughly, and when I was happy with the consistency of the rice, I added the squash, some cilantro, a bit more butter, and some parmesan cheese to the pot, giving the whole thing a final stirring. Serving fresh upon completion with some more cheese, salt and pepper is necessary. Though Chelsea got home from dance later and well after we had eaten, she did devour a bowl, saying it was just fine reheated.

I hope you enjoy making risotto ... it is very easy to make and the hardest part is sticking with the constant stirring for about a half hour. Kind of like making my dad's fudge recipe... but, that is another story.

Cotter's Secret Sauce

2010-11-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I sent my mom an email along with a link to my blog posting about the Sweet and Sour Spareribs I cooked last night. I was wondering about the possibility of sharing the Secret Sauce. It was interesting to get an email back from her, with her recollection of the ingredient amounts, vs. the amounts I have in my paper recipe file. I wondered if over the years I may have made a few changes to the amounts. I sent a note back to that effect. It got her wondering, and though not too sure, she now has it on her list to look for when pork shoulder goes on sale and then try it out. She hasn't made it herself for quite some time. And, it was also good to read that she is making some chicken breast cutlets with butternut squash in a sauce for her dinner tonight. I must ask for that squash recipe.

So, here is the unveiling of the secret... Enjoy.

It all starts with spare ribs or port shoulder roast cut in cubes. When I find side ribs on sale, I will usually ask the butcher to cut them into smaller pieces down the middle or even in thirds. I usually get about a kilo (2 pounds or so) and have leftovers.

This would probably serve 4.

Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs - Cotter Secret Sauce

Two tablespoons melted fat (from browning the meat - so be sure to get meat with some fat content... don’t be tempted to use bacon fat, though, we have done that a few times)
One to two cloves of garlic (minced) or one or two teaspoons garlic powder
One tablespoon corn starch
Four tablespoons soya sauce
One half cup vinegar
One half cup sugar (white)

Brown meat evenly over medium heat. Reduce to low until cooked. Transfer the required amount of fat to a small saucepan. Stir in corn starch, vinegar, soya sauce and garlic which you previously mixed smooth in a cup. Add the sugar, keep stiring until thick and clear. You will know if you have made it right if you sniff it and it clears your sinuses, or, you put a bit on a spoon to taste and it makes you cough.

For the first night this is great served with rice - I use white rice for this and yes, I know brown is supposed to be better for me, but the sauce goes best with white rice. I also like to have peas as the vegetable.

There are usually leftovers which I have the second night (like tonight) with a vegetable stir fry and some noodles.

A family special

2010-11-28T23:01:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate to grow up in a family that was probably a bit above average in size for the day (4 children) and with parents who loved to have their children and their friends involved in many at home activities. My mom was a good cook - at least from what I can remember. We always had something good to eat on the table, even though times were tough for them in the early years of my life. For example, I've learned that horse meat was served during rough economic times and that "velvet steak" was something that I didn't particularly enjoy. There were some fabulous "low cost" staples we ate, among them our chile con carni - a recipe I have never seen anywhere else, spaghetti with or without meatballs and my dad's great sauce, and one of our absolute favourites mom's unbelievable sweet and sour pork. I've read through some of her recipe notes over the years and seen recipes she has contributed to church and other publications, but I can't say I have seen the recipe for the sweet and sour sauce in any publication other than the one I have acquired from an ancient email. I know my brothers and sister and daughters read my blog from time to time, and I am sure they concur that what I cooked tonight - and do so a dozen or so times a year - is the real deal.

As I write this, I am certain I can't give away the exact recipe, so let me make this a bit of a puzzle until I get mom's permission to share it fully.

Here are the ingredients ... though not in their exact quantity.

Drippings from the pork - don't use your favourite baby back ribs, but rather side ribs, hopefully on sale. Also, don't think that bacon fat will work if you do decide to use the less fatty back ribs.
Minced garlic
Sugar
Soya Sauce
Vinegar
Corn starch

Now, I'll see what I can do about getting the ingredients published ...

Cheers... Bob

The Science of Baking

2010-11-25T19:40:00.000-08:00

I've never had much success baking and the predominant reason is not being careful enough with measuring ingredients. I have tried to move more in my cooking to using mass as opposed to volume for some of my efforts. For example, when you measure a cup of flour a lot can depend on the weather of the day, how the flour is packed in the cup as you pull from the container, sifted or not sifted. So, instead I use a measure which I have found to be reasonably successful. That is, 1 cup of regular flour has a mass of 125 grams. The same principle applies to butter, another measure somewhat difficult to measure accurately. A cup is 225 grams, so calculate accordingly.

I have never made Cinnamon Buns. I have eaten them many times and always wanted to give them a try. Recently I read an episode of a friend's blog which had a recipe that could be used for either dinner rolls or cinnamon rolls. I felt this would be a great first start since I have tried other recipes from links she has provided. And, though the recipe she had contributed to another blog would be for a rather large number of pieces, she did indicate that it could be halved and so I would do that.

I got started, but, I immediately decided to wander off onto another field.

You see, I've never felt good about kneading. That is the primary reason why I purchased a bread machine. Perhaps the results of a bread machine don't quite measure up to "doing it yourself" but, I do appreciate the results.

So, I got going on the buns.

1 1/2 cups of milk. Since the milk carton had an ounce or so more, I just used all of it, so probably closer to 1 5/8 cup
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup (56 grams) unsalted butter. I did have a bit of salted butter left in the fridge, so I used it and measured up to the amount on my digital scale with the unsalted.
1 packet of instant rise yeast
1 egg, beaten

I put the sugar, salt, and milk onto the stovetop at medium-low to heat and melted the butter in the microwave. I then mixed it all together and left it off the burner to cool.

I stirred 3 cups (375 grams) of flour with the yeast in a bowl and set that aside.

I waited for the butter / milk combo to cool to about 125* using my digital thermometer and then whisked a bit with the egg. Finally I added the egg to complete the liquid portion of this part of the recipe.

I took out my bread maker - as I said, I don't knead too well, and diverted from Karen's direction. In it, I put the liquid and topped with the dry goods. I put the bread maker onto its dough setting, allowing it to the kneading and first rise.

When it was done, I realized how badly I had missed one of the steps of the original recipe! Although it rose a huge amount, it was as wet as can be. So, I dusted a cutting board, emptied the container, and started adding flour, "kneading" as I went to get a more dough like consistency. Believe me, there was no measuring here, but I would "think" it took about another 1/3 cup (no grams) to get it to what I thought might make sense.

I dropped the dough back into the bread maker and put it on the cycle again, but this time stopped after about 5 minutes - i.e. more mixing and a bit of kneading.

Following this, I continued with the base recipe by rolling it out to an approximate 18X12 rectangle.

On the stove, I put 1/2 cup brown sugar, 56 grams butter, an 1/8 cup corn syrup and about a quarter cup of chopped pecans onto medium heat, melted the butter and made a sugary sauce. If you are looking at Karen's recipe notes, you'll see that I goofed on that. I should have done the butter and sugar first, then put in the syrup and nuts. Oh well. I finished that and put it into a 9 x 13 pan.

Having rolled out the dough, I brushed it with 56 grams butter and sprinkled on about a half cup of brown sugar. Mistake … I halved the amounts in the recipe, forgetting that this part was not to be halved. I also completely forgot the cinnamon t(2 tbs) that was called for. Well, I rolled it up starting from the long edge and cut it into a dozen slices.

Just as I was about to add it to the pan, I realized I had halved the recipe for the caramel topping too, so quickly made another batch, added it to the pan, and dropped on the buns. I then put it into the oven with the light on to do its rising for about an hour.

It was when I took it out of the oven from rising and ready to bake, that I realized I had forgotten the cinnamon, so I made a quick mix of about 2 tbs of cinnamon and some brown sugar, dry, and sprinkled that on top of the buns.

I then baked in a 350 oven for about 25 minutes.

Without a doubt these were the best cinnamon buns I can recall eating.

And, the recipe will never be done again. At least not that way.

Thanks, Karen, for the kick-start.

Compelling use of an iPad

2010-11-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Last month I had an opportunity to work as Principal in a school in our district (Sunshine Coast) replacing the Principal who was away for the day. This was my first "POC" for this school year and this was a great school to work at.

A couple of months ago, I read an article, iHelp for Autism, and was impressed. I sent the link to my friend who is responsible for the Special Education Programme in the school district and she advised me that there was a teacher in the district who was using an iPad with her students. As it happens, this teacher works in the school where I was on that day and I had the opportunity to spend some time with her and some of her students using the iPad.

There are some really great apps she has found (and, I'll write more about that later) but I think you can probably tell from this shot that this is one hugely engaged youngster.

The teacher has offered to let me visit the class again and talk more with her about her use of the iPad (her own personal one, by the way) with her students. I'm certainly looking forward to visiting again. The application being used by this student is a very interesting puzzle called Geared, and, there is a free version. I downloaded it and am stuck on level 29, so I'll definitely be asking the student to show me that level when I get there next time.

And, thanks to Kyla and this student's mom for permission to use his image in this post.

Not too boring chicken

2010-11-01T19:05:00.001-07:00

Dinner
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

We tend to eat a fair bit of chicken and recently got a good buy on some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Tonight I thought I would give a go at a chicken roulade. To make this I took two chicken breasts and put them (one at a time) between a couple of sheets of plastic wrap and pounded them to about double the original size - not too thin.

I seasoned the side up with some fresh nutmeg, thyme, salt and pepper. I put some spinach leaves into the centre of the chicken pieces and topped the spinach with some feta cheese chunks. I rolled the chicken pieces and fastened each together with a tooth pick to keep them rolled for the cooking.

In my saute pan, I brought some olive oil up to temperature and stirred in some sliced onion, letting it get softened. Then I added the chicken portions, seasoned them with a bit more salt and pepper, and got them browned on both sides. Finally I added about 75ml of chicken stock, covered the pan and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

I removed the chicken pieces from the pan and deglazed it with another 100ml or so of chicken stock and added some milk which I had mixed with a bit of cornstarch. I also added some more feta cheese chunks and I used a bit of water to get it to the right consistency, then put the chicken back in to rewarm it.

In the beginning I had put a pot of water on to boil for noodles and about 10 minutes before the chicken was ready put on some egg noodles to cook. These would be served with the chicken.

The basic idea for this dish came from a recipe I had seen for using La Creuset cookware, though I didn't use one of their sauce pans for this.

For a side salad, I used more spinach, diced apple, crumbled bacon I had made while the chicken was cooking, and a dressing I made from unknown amounts of mayonnaise, lemon juice, lemon rind, vinegar, honey, and walnuts.

If you try this out, I hope it works for you.

Creating a GMail Account

2010-10-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Today we are going to create a gmail account so that you can start to use the Blogspot website to create a blog for education or personal use.

Creating a gmail account is quite simple, depending of course on the 'captcha' you are given ... more about that later.

Your first task in creating this email account is to go to the Google Mail page. On this page you will find an icon with a link to create the account.

This link will take you to the sign up page where you will enter information in a number of fields.

One thing you should consider when you choose your login name is that this will be your email address. For example, I chose bob.cotter for my login name. As a result, my gmail email address is simply bob.cotter@gmail.com. For a password, it is necessary for it to be a minimum of 8 characters. That is quite a number of characters and sometimes hard to remember.

Some suggestions I have recommended are your address ... for example 123MainStreet, or a birthday of a child, brother, sister, mom, dad, etc. For example Sep011924. Just make it something easy for you to remember.

You also need to have a secondary address. This is the address they will send your confirmation and other information to. Here you can put in any address, and I recommend you use your school district address.

The last step is identifying the 'captcha'. It is a set of characters that are very often hard to read and decipher. I've had experiences working with people who had to do this up to 8 times in order to get it right. No fun. If you click on the captcha link above, you can find out more about these and why they are used.

Steak Dinner

2010-10-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight I decided to try a different way of cooking my steak for dinner. The decision was based on an article I had archived from Cooks Illustrated, a magazine I like to read not only for the recipes, but also for the techniques that are explained in the articles. The idea behind this technique was to avoid the grey, overcooked part of the steak when it was grilled at room temperature (outside) but still quite cool inside, needing more time to get the centre to the temp you want for rare to medium rare.

So, what I did was to leave this New York Strip in the fridge until cooking time. I then preheated the oven to 275*, kosher salted and freshly ground peppered the steak which I had pat dried and placed on a rack above a rimmed baking dish. Into the oven for 20 minutes.

At the same time I was roasting my potatoes in a toaster oven and creating my salad based on one I have eaten a couple of times in a restaurant in San Francisco. The salad is a quarter of a head of lettuce sprinkled with one rasher of bacon crisped and crumbled, about 3 oz. of blue cheese, and a drizzle of blue cheese dressing. So, once the 20 minutes in the oven was up I tested the steak to find that the internal temperature was about 90* and ready for the stovetop. I wasn't up to bbq, so I had a heavy fry pan on heating up to a pretty high temperature, added some EVO and got it smoking. The steak then seared on both sides for about 2 minutes each side, then I used tongs to sear the fat cap for about a minute. I then put it back on the wire rack, covered with foil, to rest for about 10 minutes while the potatoes finished cooking. As I am sure you can see from the photo, the grey, overcooked band is not there and the steak was delicious to eat.

A positive result to this experiment.

Dinner salad and recipe

2010-10-12T15:24:00.001-07:00

Dinner Salad
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

Wild Rice and Quinoa Salad

Ingredients
2 cups cooked quinoa
2 cups cooked wild rice
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 cup dried fruit - cranberries, raisins, blueberries, etc.
1/2 cup chopped green onions

Dressing
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
2 cloves garlic -- minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Topping
1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds
1/2 cup toasted pecans

Directions
In a large bowl, combine quinoa, wild rice, tomatoes, cilantro, dried fruit, and green onions.
In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, sesame oil, garlic, salt, cumin, and coriander.
Pour over grains and vegetables; toss together.

*Refrigerate salad until cold.

Sprinkle with almonds and pecans just before serving.

Burger night

2010-09-04T19:32:00.001-07:00

Recently a friend of mine on Facebook was asking about how I had done one of the burgers I posted a simple comment online about. I love to do burgers on the bbq and as I said to her in my reply, I change my recipe almost every time I do. Tonight I made one of my favourite for this summer and it was based on a recipe of Michael Smith from Food Network Canada.

The recipe is exceptionally simple.

400 g regular ground beef. I use regular for the extra fat content.
1/2 small white onion diced finely
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 tbs Soya sauce
3 rashers of bacon, fried crisply and then crumbled
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

I combined the ingredients early in the day, covered and stored in the fridge.

When it was time to bbq, I put the grill onto high heat, cleaned and lightly oiled the grates.

I took the meat from the fridge and shaped into 3 (for this recipe amount) patties, fairly small in diameter and about 3/4 inch thick. I then used my thumb to create a depression in the centre of the patties as suggested by Smith to get a more even cooking. I had never done this before and I would say it worked very well. He had indicated that the depression would disappear while cooking and it did.

I grilled the patties for 4 minutes, flipped, and did another 4 minutes on the other side. I used my instant read thermometer to double check on the temperature before removing from the grill and they were just right.

Into the kitchen to rest long enough to put the fixings on the buns.

Great taste, and, as random as I am in cooking burgers, this recipe will be used again and again.

365 Photo project for July 2010

2010-08-03T14:34:00.001-07:00

365 Photo project for July 2010
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

Just the thumbnails for the month of July. This month started with Canada Day and ended with RSG Border Wars. In the middle Chelsea got her store completed and opened for its trial run (grand opening August 14); Eibhlin took golf lessons and played on the course one day with Judy and I; our garden showed off many flowers, the most lovely of all the roses; I played a fair bit of golf and lowered my handicap. August is just underway and the sky remains blue, continuing the beautiful weather we had all through July.

Mini trade show

2010-07-20T19:24:00.001-07:00

On display
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

Today was the first of two days of a smallish trade-show in our local mall. It is primarily for business2business types (i.e. insurance, banking, printers, etc.) but Chelsea made a great choice to display there to help market her new store (Giggle 'n Bloom). It really was the only retail focussed table and drew a fair bit of interest.

I loved as after the morning set up before it opened, Chelsea went to the store and I did the booth for the day. What a gas... seeing many folks I know who wondered what the heck I was up to with kids toys and such and I got to let them know about Chelsea's new adventure.

Awesome day for me, that's for sure.

The Giggle 'n Bloom website is almost ready for publication.

Surprise

2010-06-07T21:06:00.001-07:00

Surprise
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

Was I ever surprised this afternoon.

I was at the golf course for an event between our club (Roberts Creek) and the one in Pender Harbour. It was a really fun event and there was a late lunch afterwards.

I went to phone Judy to tell her I would be home later than expected for dinner as the event was running into overtime. I already had dinner planned and she was fine with the delay.

In the larger banquet room, I saw one of my Principal friends and she was decorating, so I asked her what was up. She said there was a group getting together to celebrate another principal's return to the classroom. She apologized for not thinking to invite me, but I said that was fine, I'd drop in to say hi to John after our luncheon before going home.

Well ... it turned out the the event was for me ... a surprise retirement event and there were teachers, support staff, principals, board office staff, the Superintendent, and a member of the board who all came to wish me well in my retirement. Here I was dressed in my golf clothes, with hat hair after playing 18 holes.

It was a wonderful time with some very nice things said, including some roasting stories that were fun to hear. This photo is one of the gifts I was given, partly to commemorate a little workshop I had done with the principals - and had done in many classrooms - on Wordle. They had solicited some words that would describe me, and then had it printed and laminated. It was a wonderful gift.

I feel quite humbled by it all, but wanted to take a shot of it to use as my photo of the day.

Daily images for May 2010

2010-05-31T14:25:00.001-07:00

Daily images for May 2010
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

May was not the most delightful month weatherwise (and I don't expect a change for the last 10 hours of today. That said, I find it interesting how many photos I have with ducks in them for this month. Here is hoping for a nice lead in to summer in June.

Teaching in 1952

2010-05-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

Just how much has changed in 58 years ...

I think I would enjoy showing this to students and then having a discussion about what in the video is still true today, and what has changed.

Good Fun!

April in Gibsons

2010-05-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

I followed the lead of another of my daily photo friends to create an Animoto Video of the photos I took for the month of April. Animoto has really made some great changes over the years and is so easy to use.

If you have an interest in seeing these photos, or others in my collection from other months, please simply click here.

Parental influence

2010-04-26T21:46:00.001-07:00

History
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

I got this sent to me the other day by my mom who was looking through some storage at her home. It was with some other small things my dad had kept from his working days. I suspect that is some kind of chip inside the plastic - the disc is 3 cm in diameter.

Dad spent some of his career programming computers, though he did not work for IBM. I remember growing up, sitting at the dining room table, talking with him as he wrote code. At one time he was in charge of a small comany and his programmers wrote the code for the first implementation of banking interest calculated on the minimum daily balance. This was adopted at first by the Credit Union movement in British Columbia. He used to joke about how the interest was rounded off to the lowest whole penny and how much "decimal penny" money there was on a daily basis.

Dad gave me my initial interest in computers and programming. He also gave me the idea that working at home, having a strong work ethic for your employer, was a good thing. Thanks, Dad.

What do you think?

2010-04-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is a bit of an unusual post for me ... more a question looking for feedback from my cooking friends.

In a couple of weeks I will be cooking a birthday dinner. I'll be cooking it in Naramata BC, not in my house, and I will be in a situation where I am not sure what kind of shopping I will be able to do that day. There will be 8 at the dinner.

I have a menu in mind, having found out that I will have access to a bbq. I plan to do pork tenderloin on the bbq, served with double baked potatoes, and a caesar salad. I know that I can do the potatoes in advance and freeze them, reheating on the bbq or in an oven which is in the rental house. I know, too, that I can take the ingredients for the salad dressing in advance (not so sure about the eggs) and probably cheat with a bag of Romaine lettuce that I take there in a cooler that has a long expiry date. For dessert I plan to do Grand Marnier parfaits. I know I can freeze these too for the trip as I expect there to be a fridge/freezer in the house.

What I want to do, though, is think about preparing the tenderloins in advance, doing my usual brine, coat in dijon mustard and my dry rub.

Do you think I can do that in advance and freeze the tenderloins at that point, or, should I simply freeze the tenderloins and hope for a couple of hours prep time to do the brining and coatings?

Your thoughts?

I know, a weird blog post.

One year

2010-04-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

It has been a day of thought.

One year ago today, I lost not only a good friend, but also a son-in-law, to cancer. Elias Minatsis was a young man and a wonderful husband and father. He left behind my daughter and two beautiful youngsters who are now 5 and 2 years old.

The last year has, of course, been a difficult one for Chelsea. She has kept an online journal of the events of the year in her blog, Letters to Elias. Many commenters talk about how meaningful her words are, sharing her experiences. And that, is a good thing.

I know that it is often said in a joking manner by many in-laws that their son's or daughter's spouse is not the person they think lives up to the parent's expectations. Sometimes it is not a joke. But, I can truly say that Elias and I had a good relationship and that I felt our limited time together was special to me. Whether it was the time he was so patient teaching me to cook, or the time I tried patiently to golf with him... it was always a good time.

I miss you my friend, but I also thank you for the sunshine today, the gusts of wind, the wisps of clouds, and the many happy memories I have of you and Chelsea in better days.

Please continue to watch over us from up there, eh!

To close in the way Chelsea does with you in her letters,

P.S. I love you,

~Bob

Very poor application

2010-04-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

I wrote a review of an iPhone/iPod Touch application just moments ago, but I have no idea if or when it might appear.

Here is what the review said:

I am sorry I purchased this application. There were no reviews, or I might have had a chance to pass. The description suggests ... "text zooming" (works as with any app), "landscape reading view" (doesn't work as it goes to landscape when iPod Touch turned on side and then just puts a bunch of white space on the side with the text still in a narrow portrait column), "auto-bookmarks" (if it is there, well, it isn't obvious as there doesn't seem to be a way to invoke this). There is an index, but no linking from the index to that section of the rules.

As a matter of fact, if this was a free app and I downloaded it, I'd delete it. There is no way to give this a 0 rating, but if you are considering buying it, I hope you read this and change your mind.

Furthermore... the link to the supposed report is bogus and does not go to any kind of a support page.

Positively useless and I hope that if you are looking for something to have on your device to take to meetings and such, you avoid this one.

I've looked at the "author's" website and see no real signs of support.

15 things you might not have known about the brain

2010-04-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

I found this on another site with the embed code allowing me to place it on my own page. I think there are some interesting bits of information here that students might follow up on with further research or as discussion points. Thanks to Online Schools for sharing this.

Via: Online Schools

Chicken Chelsea

2010-04-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a blog post by a twitter friend, @scatteredmom, that referenced a nice chicken dish from Jamie Oliver. I thought it would give me an idea for dinner tonight and it did. But, not that recipe. I posted on Twitter today that I was going to make Chicken Chelsea though I could not remember how it got that name.

In 1989 my wife and I went on a cruise and met a couple from Vancouver who were quite a bit younger than us, but whom we enjoyed sharing meals and conversations. We decided to have them over for dinner at our house a month or so after returning from the cruise and I cooked some dishes, including Chicken Chelsea which were served by our two daughters Bridie and Chelsea acting the roles of waiter and sommelier. I'm sure I used the recipe again over the past 20 years, but today I took a hard look for it through my collection.

Tonight, I accompanied it with twice baked potatoes and caesar salad. I'll have to share the amazing caesar salad dressing recipe from a friend some other time. I promise, you will thoroughly enjoy it if you like garlic!

I should note that a few moments after sitting at the table, I noticed that I had forgotten to put on the sauce before snapping the photo. I was also aware that my wife was letting me know not to let it get cold as her taste buds were super active watching me plate the dinner.

Here is the recipe. I did reduce it as tonight it was serving for two.

CHICKEN "CHELSEA"

Sauce:

3 whole chicken breasts

1 small onion, peeled

5 (at least - I use more like 10) peppercorns

1/2 tsp. salt

2 c. water

1 c. dry white wine *

1/4 c. whipping cream, at room temperature

1 tbs, or so, cornstarch

* (I use my own homemade white wine... if I have it. If you need to purchase wine, try a Chablis)

1. Bone and skin breasts reserving the meat for the main dish.

2. Make a stock using the bones, skin, onions, peppercorns and salt.

3. Simmer for a couple of hours and then add the wine.

4. Simmer for another half hour, strain and reduce to two cups.

5. Remove from the heat and cool.

These steps can be accomplished early in the day, long before your company (or family) arrive.

6. Shortly before the rest of the meal (see below) is cooked, add the cream and return to a simmer for a few moments.

7. Mix the cornstarch with a little wine and use as a mixture to thicken the sauce.

8. Check for seasoning - I have to add this, since all recipes say this, even though I rarely add anything afterwards.

Main Dish:

Reserved Chicken Breasts

6 slices ham, thin (I use Black Forest)

6 slices cheese (I usually chose Gruyere... I have also used Swiss or Mozzarella)

1 egg (beaten)

flour (enough for coating)

1/3 c. butter

1. Halve breasts

2. Separate each half into two portions (sometimes I don't do that... depends on the size of the breast piece... smaller breasts I will use the entire half, larger breasts I will cut)

3. Place each piece between two sheets of wax paper and pound flat ... I use a cast iron fry pan to pound them flat

4. Trim the ham and the cheese slices to size and place between two pieces of flattened chicken.

5. Brush the edges with egg and stick together. Don't worry too much if they don't seem stuck.

6. Flour lightly (I use a sifter) on both sides.

These few steps can also be done earlier in the day and the chicken portions left on a covered plate in the fridge. Take them out of the fridge a half hour to an hour before cooking to help them along the way to room temperature.

7. Saute in butter until golden on each side. I'd count on 7-10 minutes per side depending on the size of the breasts and the cooking heat of your skillet. I use the cast iron pan I previously used to flatten the pieces.

Serve the chicken with the sauce.

Fundraising memories

2010-04-02T13:01:00.001-07:00

Fundraising memories
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

One thing that hasn't changed over the years is the necessity for community based teams to fundraise in order to attend events.

The mom in the middle of this photo was a student in my class 35 years ago and for many years a player on the community Volleyball team I coached. She reminded me this afternoon about some of the great times we had travelling off the Sunshine Coast to attend so many tournaments and how often we did just this, sell cookies and cakes.

With a contribution to this cause, I enjoyed a nice late lunch dessert.

Colours

2010-03-26T08:14:00.001-07:00

Colours
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

This image was from step two of a three step process to have some fun at playschool. I watched this happen at the Jack and Jill open house in Gibsons the other night. The dish originally contained some whole (full fat) milk. Then the children (my granddaughter Caia here) placed droplets of water that had been coloured with food colouring. The final step was to add a few drops of dishwashing detergent to see the colours flow. It was quite fun to watch.

Here are some websites that describe the process (some use a little different method) and talk a bit about the science involved.

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000066

http://www.coolscience.org/CoolScience/KidScientists/tiedyemilk.htm

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/a/magicmilk.htm

http://wikieducator.org/Rainbow_milk

Herring Gull

2010-03-18T08:49:00.001-07:00

Herring Gull
Originally uploaded by gibsonsgolfer

This gull is 110 years old.

The date on the tag is December, 1900. It was given to my wife and I as a wedding present in 1971 and had been part of a collection of the person who gave it to us. We were living in North Central BC and he knew how much we liked the coast.

The taxidermist, as noted on the tag, was Francis Kermode who started with the British Columbia Museum in 1890 and it had been kept in Victoria BC for many years prior to us coming along as owners. It now sits out in the garage, but immediately came to mind with today's daily shoot challenge.

My favourite photo of 2009

2010-01-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

This was a difficult choice to make, but I have selected the following shot. My main reason for this is that I watched throughout the year various shots of the moon from many of the members of the 2009/365 groups to which I belonged, always wanting to get a nice one for myself. Failure after failure, none to post. And then, one day, it all seemed to come together for me.

Love this Poster

2009-12-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

Learning Today / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Facebook Status to Wordle

2009-12-23T07:40:00.000-08:00

I created this page in Wordle from the text of my Facebook status updates since August, 2008 - as far back as Facebook has archived the status updates.

To do this, I used a Facebook application called Facebook Status which captured the history. It has its own representation features you can use, but I wanted to put mine in to Wordle so I needed to slightly modify the text I had captured.

I pasted the text in to MSWord so that I could use a search and replace command to change the instance of the : to a tab. There are two colons in every line, used in the time and the date of the update.

After the replace was completed, I copied the text again and pasted it in to Excel which recognized the three columns separated by tabs. I deleted the time and the date columns, leaving me with just the column of text. That column I copied, went to Wordle, pasted, and voila - my status update wordle document.

I hope you enjoy this if you give it a try.

Working at home

2009-11-25T19:11:00.001-08:00

Working at home
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

The day started out pretty well with some problem solving for one teacher, getting a computer back started again for a board office staff member, and some work on an upcoming seminar. Then things started to get a bit more negative and since I had an afternoon online session to participate in, I decided to head home and settle into a more comfortable, quiet, environment. Even looking out on the rain was positive as I wouldn't be dreaming of playing golf instead.

That said, the course I was to take online had some issues with webpages not loading and I spent some time exchanging messages with tech support. Finally, I called it quits and just did a bit of other learning, exploring my google reader, twitter links, reviewing and dealing with backlogged email, etc.

Eventually it was time for dinner and hoping for the day to end on a much better note than it was at some points in time.

Saturday excitement at the mall.

2009-11-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

Because I belong to Flickr and a group in which I take a photo a day and post it on the net, I am most often with my camera.

This morning, I went to do some shopping for cooking dinner tonight and did not have my camera with me. In the mall there was a great collection of local artists, crafts people, food makers, etc. and so I had to immediately head home and come back with my camera! The photo above is the ingredients of a wonderful tea I sampled, and then purchased a "starter" set to make at home. Now one might think that being a resident of the Sunshine Coast and a purchaser of beverages at Starbucks from time to time, I might have experienced Chai tea before. Well, never. And, enjoying the sample, I spoke with the creator of this recipe, Annie, and learned a lot about the history of Chai and how it came to be that she produces this recipe. I'm looking forward to trying it out at home.

I also visited the booth of a parent who I met while I was a school principal. I see her goodies at a number of markets and she makes wonderful dips and biscotti and jellies. Always a treat to try out her samples and enjoy her products.

As well, I ran across a teacher I have worked with these past couple of years from time to time at inservice sessions. While I knew she has an interest in photography and that she has also taken up painting, it was wonderful to see her there with some of her work on display and for sale. As she noted in her write up posted on the wall, as a primary teacher with an interest in Art, she has loved to do many projects with her students, and now is extending those experiences with children into a small business opportunity.

Elphi Students work on iMacs and MacBooks

2009-10-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

Elphistudents
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

I worked with some Elphi students today, teaching them how to create a blog using Blogspot. I also visited another class where the students were using the computers to do research about universities, colleges, and other post secondary institutions to attend in the coming years.

The other day, a teacher had asked me how to get a jpeg from Pages for Mac. So, I decided to create this collage using Pages. Pages won't export as a jpg, but it will as a pdf. I then opened the PDF in Apple's preview program which allows files to be exported to jpg. Once I did that, I opened it in iPhoto, trimmed off the white margins, header and footer, and voila. Good practice for me, and now to post this on my blog for the teacher to see.

Morning

2009-10-23T14:43:00.001-07:00

Morning
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

Left early this morning to go to a school where I was delivering a blogging workshop. It is a non instructional day in our district and I was looking forward to introducing blogspot to the teachers. On the way, I was captured by the way this foggy morning appeared.

The workshop was a lot of fun for me, and valuable, I think, for the participants. At least they gave me some nice comments about how the morning went. There were about 8 attendees and that made for a nice class size. We explored lots of options for them to use their blogs both personally and as a classroom / teaching tool. Good day!

Bonjour

2009-09-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Testing a video ... working with a teacher of elementary French with some ideas of how little instructional videos might work. Using PhotoBooth on the Mac.

Assessment

2009-09-29T18:32:00.001-07:00

Grapes
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

Taken in macro mode, so not really as big as they look. Disappointing this year ... only this one bunch and no real growth. It kind of relates, though, to thinking I've been doing about assessment. From my perspective, the best way to look at assessment with students is growth ... how much have they grown during the year, not what grade they are in. And, what contributes to their growth. In the case of the grapes, environment is important, as is input from the grower, care, monitoring and adjusting conditions. In the case of students, are things much different? When a student shows little growth, do we think about why? As students are progressing, do we consider how the growth is affected by their environment both at school and at home, by their learning styles in comparison to the teaching style of the instructor, by the monitoring and adjusting of their work and assignments based on success or difficulty. Will this thinking make a difference for the grapes next year? I don't know. Will it make a difference with some of the students I'm working with this year? I hope so.

SmartBoard work at HMBay

2009-09-17T21:09:00.001-07:00

Smartboard
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

Working for a bit in a classroom today with a teacher and his math lesson delivered with his district supplied Macbook, his smartboard (this school has 6 new ones this year), and his math manipulatives. Kids loved working with the materials. The teacher had students come to the board and manipulate the electronic manipulatives while others in the class solved the same problem with the ones on their desks. Nice to see an active lesson incorporating the technology that I am fortunate enough to get to work with teachers and students in multiple schools.

New learning

2009-09-17T00:37:00.001-07:00

What a wonderful day today.

Our tech department has decided to upgrade servers to Leopard and has, for the most case, kept things pretty stable as to the way things operate. However, we did choose one school to pilot with using many of the wonderful features of the Leopard server. The school we chose was one that had a small number of teachers, a group of teachers who are not highly knowledgeable about networking, and who were willing (at least their principal was) to participate in a pilot program.

Today we (me and one of my fabulous techs) did an inservice training with them. Best part, my budget paid for them to get released during the school day.

It went, from my perspective, wonderfully and I expect to spend much more time, starting next week, with them going through the network setup for their students, special "Other" logins, etc.

Love it.

First week of 2009/10 done

2009-09-12T15:52:00.001-07:00

It was quite the week for our tech department, responding to numerous phone calls and email requests for help and fixes.

One thing about working in the summer on new and exciting projects for our schools is that we are relatively unencumbered by staff. Yes, we do have to work our way around the maintenance crews and this summer our work centre in Gibsons was closed for 6 weeks due to some issues. That said, there is nothing like having all your "clients", students, teachers, admin staff, etc. back in gear, trying out some of the things you worked on. While we felt that our conversion to Leopard servers was good, we did find some interesting issues that we now need to address.

My team works incredibly hard to support learning and I'd like to say a big thanks to Chris, Kim, and Layne. I'd also like to thank Kathy for coming in from time to time during the summer. Kathy is my admin assistant, but unfortunately she got bumped at the end of the year by someone with seniority when cuts came. That person decided not to take the job - went somewhere else - and now Kathy has to reapply. Decisions about the position will be made next week. Hopefully she gets the position back.

One other big job over the summer was getting ready for a new district wide library system - Destiny by Follett. Records have been converted for 9 of our 13 schools and training is next week. Should be interesting!

Back to School

2009-09-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

I know that for some of you, back to school has already happened. For us on the British Columbia Sunshine Coast it all gets back in gear on September 8, next Tuesday. What an exciting day.

For me, there is some nostalgia as for yet another year, I will not have a specific school to go to. Imagine... I think back 35 years to this first school day in September, 1974, as I was starting my career in this school district. Yes, I had already taught for three years, but this was a new, wonderful experience to come. Wow, 35 years ago. And today, I occasionally see some of my students from back in the early 70s and I have even taught, or been a principal, for some of their children.

I hope this is a good year for you and your children/students. And, I'll even try to write more this school year. Yes, I know, I've said that before, but maybe this year will be different.

Elias Minatsis Memorial Bursary

2009-06-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

How could I be any prouder than of my daughter, Chelsea.

It was a difficult task, but she did it.

Tonight the Chatelech Secondary School students celebrated their graduation ceremony. An exciting time for grade 12's, some of whom were there to receive awards beyond their school leaving certificates. Students received scholarships and bursarys. One of the bursarys, donated by a local business, the BlackFish Pub, was to recognize a student taking the ACE-IT Culinary Arts program, an apprenticeship program offered district wide for students enrolled who will come to Elphinstone Secondary to take the classes.

My son-in-law, Elias, was the teacher of that program. Up until September of 2008, that is. That is when he had to stop teaching to focus in on trying to beat the cancerous tumour in his brain. He fought hard, but passed away on April 22, two months ago. It has been very hard for many of us family members, but nothing compared to the grief being experienced by Chelsea. She has hardly been out in public since.

The Blackfish wanted to recognize Elias for his work by arranging for the bursary and Chelsea was asked if she was willing to make the presentation ... come on stage, shake a student's hand, walk off stage.

As we found out, though, she had to say at least the name of the student, so she decided to speak a bit, albeit somewhat broken up and with tears in her eyes. She thanked the donor, announced the student (one who Elias had a good feeling about) and hugged him rather than simply shake his hand. They both cried a bit.

At the end of the evening, Matthew (the student) and his mom sought us out and hugged us both, telling a bit of a story about how Elias had strongly encouraged Matthew to go on past graduation... go to post secondary, write a book, and become a teacher.

How proud can a dad be?

Social Networking

2009-06-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Last week I was invited to talk with a group of 3rd and 4th graders, ages 9 and 10, about internet safety. I've been doing talks to various classes and groups of students for almost four years now and my approach has changed over this time. I don't focus so much on the scary stuff, like a bad person meeting you offline and abusing you. I deal more with social responsibility issues, and the importance of maintaining control over your accounts and passwords.

This particular class had 18 students in it. They live in a middle class community, so it was not strange to find that 17 of the 18 reported having the internet at home. Of this 17 students, 14 reported that they are allowed to use the internet unsupervised by an older brother or sister or by an adult. I was very surprised to discover that 7 of them have a computer in their bedroom, with unsupervised access and that many of them use webcams to talk with friends as well as relatives. Five of the students said they have Facebook accounts ... and, of course, none of them are 13 or older.

We did talk for sometime about the importance of passwords and keeping them secure. Some had stories of MSN accounts being misused (not by them, but by people they knew) to send bad messages. Some of the activities I did with them pointed out things they still do not know or understand (such as identifying a good person to be a friend on the net based on an audio or textural clue). Recognizing that there are a lot of situations that can be presented to them that don't allow them to clearly understand who they are chatting or messaging with, they just didn't get.

I was very pleased that the teacher in the class took notes during the session and has followed up with parents on some of my thoughts about how to not only be safe online, but also the importance of being socially responsible, keeping themselves from internet bullying activities, and reporting things that just don't seem to be right online.

March through pictures

2009-04-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

My daily photo project continues and below you will find a slide show of things that caught my eye for March.

You will see some signs of Spring, though this morning on awakening we were greeted with some snow on the ground and snow showers falling. Nothing too serious, though, and most was melted throughout the day. You will also note some birthdays were celebrated as Eibhlin turned 4 and her dad, Elias, turned 33. Eibhlin shares a birthday with our other daughter, Bridie, and we were pleased to have Bridie, John, and Mira join us for the celebration. Two colleagues at work celebrated 60th birthdays as you will see in one of the photos, and, I did get out to golf a couple of days during the month. There are a few shots of "analog" events at the schools. Not all good learning is digitally directed, that's for sure. A nice couple of days was spent with friends in Vancouver and there are a couple of shots noting that.

I really need to spend a bit more time and effort recording some of the school / tech related things going on. Hopefully the next entry won't simply be my April slideshow!

A February of mixed events

2009-03-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

What a month. As January ended and February began, I was seriously involved with school district work. We are going to kick off BCeSIS in the fall for our secondary schools and there is no shortage of work to be done, but it comes in waves. As the first week rolled on, I was looking more and more forward to our week in Mexico. The week ended and off we went, arriving in Nuevo Vallarta on the 8th, the day before my birthday. No work computer with me at all, and next to no plans to visit any internet cafes. The resort was nice and the weather was almost perfect. I enjoyed my birthday and Valentines day as well. On the morning of the 15th, our day to return, I started not feeling so well, but fortunately the wait at the airport, the flight and ferry ride home were relatively uneventful. I didn't get fully into illness until that night.

The next 12 days would find me mostly in bed, the bathroom, or on the couch. By the 27th, I had lost 21 pounds. Though I had tests the results are not yet known, but obviously this was no flu. The past couple of days I've felt better, a bit weak, and plan to go to work tomorrow, at least for as long as I feel okay.

Here is my February collection of photos. I did manage to keep up with my photo a day, even though it meant a lot of them were indoors, shot out the window, or in the back yard.

I did get some shots of the grandchildren, subjects I noted I missed last month. When I feel better, I'll post more Mexico photos to Flickr.

2009/365 Project. January in the bag.

2009-01-31T13:44:00.001-08:00

I started the year with a goal of taking a photo a day for 2009 and so far I have not missed a beat. Not too much pressure yet, even though there are only so many subjects you can photograph with snow and fog dominating the weather pattern for the month.

Below is my January slide show ... all the chose pictures in one short slide presentation.

One thing that, in hindsight, stands out... where are photos of my grand daughters? I'll have to rectify that in days to come. Judy and I are going to Mexico shortly, so I watch for some February shots from there.

Are there guidelines for student publishing

2009-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Clarence Fisher is a teacher, Twitter correspondent, blog writer, and from what I can gather from reading his posts, someone who can generate interesting ideas to consider. Tonight, I read his latest entry, Of Opinions and Platforms, an article he wrote about freedom of speech and student writing within the context of school.

At one point in the article he notes:

Now, however, students have a global platform and the possibility of a global voice. What does this mean for students, teachers, and schools? While students are in our care, do they have the right to expect freedom of speech? Does the school have some ability to restrict this right if students are writing things that teachers or school administrator's don't agree with?

He raises a question that is not one highly applicable to our district, not because of the issues he relates to in his examples, but simply because we have so few actively blogging students or classes and the ones that are in place are, primarily in the elementary school where issues like abortion or suicide bombers seldom arise.

It did give me cause to look at our acceptable use policy for our students and examine where that written policy would stand in dealing with the examples in his article.

Keeping in mind that this policy statement is quite old and prior to Web 2.0 - it really should be amended - I can see some difficulties here.

The current policy reads:

1. The use of our system must be in support of education and research and consistent
with the educational objectives of School District #46.
2. Use of other organizations’ network or computing resources must comply with the
rules appropriate for that network.
3. Transmission of any material in violation of any national or provincial regulation is
prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, threatening or
obscene material, or material protected by trade secret.
4. Use of the system to access obscene or pornographic material is prohibited.
5. Sending material likely to be offensive or objectionable is prohibited.
6. Subscription to Listserv, bulletin boards and on-line services must be pre-approved
by the district.

I am thinking that it is #5 in this list that would be a discussion point for administrative staff if postings about abortion or suicide bombing were under discussion.

I think I need to review the policy in its entirety, and certainly have a discussion about our #5. I'm inclined to agree with Clarence ... if only our students were more prolific public writers from within the school walls.

Pay at the pump

2009-01-08T19:11:00.001-08:00

Pay at the pump
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

I took this photo as part of my project for the year and some questions i might ask students about it (depending on grade)

1) How much did I pay per litre for the gas?
2) I had to "pay at the pump" You can see the note in the picture. Why do I have to do this? What has happened to make some cities or other government bodies pass such a law?
3) I earned PetroPoints for this purchase. What are these? Can you name some other companies that give points for purchases? Do your families have any of the "loyalty card" programs? Why would a company have such a program?
4) If the gas had cost another 10 cents a litre, how much would I have had to pay?
5) Can you find a site on the internet that would let you input the number of litres I purchased and return the number of gallons?
6) What is the currency difference today between US$ and CDN$? How much would my purchase have been in US$? How much per gallon would that have been?
7) Can you think of any reasons why gas is so much more expensive in one country or the other? Where in the world do you think gas is most expensive.

I'm sure there are lots more.... have fun if you do this exercise and if you do, send me a comment to say how it worked out.

It takes a community

2009-01-07T18:14:00.001-08:00

It takes a community
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

One of my goals for 2009 is to upload a photo a day to Flickr and to write about some of them on this blog or in other places. One thing this project has done for me ... and we are only a week in to it.. is recognizing things I might otherwise not notice and, in the case of this photo, rediscovering something I had grown to take for granted. I was visiting one of the schools where I previously served as principal and seeing this mural and the maze table in front of it reminded me of the parent group who spearheaded its creation to enhance the foyer some years ago.

Though you can't see much detail in the image, the theme is that it takes a community to raise a child and as the road winds and moves through various mazes and twists and turns, there are wise sayings, and key words.

Under the table, on the floor, is a continuing representation of the road, much like the yellowbrick road, that leads to the hallways.

Thank you Cedar Grove parents for all you do for your children.

Looking outwards

2009-01-03T11:47:00.001-08:00

Looking outwards
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

I can't ever recall there being so much snow wherever I have lived in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. And, certainly not in Gibsons, BC. Although the precipitation is supposed to turn to rain by tomorrow, I have to wonder how the roads will be for the buses to run to schools on Monday.

Resolving a VoiceThread issue

2009-01-02T20:31:00.000-08:00

Off and on since I have been using Voicethread, I've collected links of projects I've thought were interesting to share with staff. Sometimes, though, I'll click on the link, the project will say loadiing, and then I'll be dumped to my own main page. This has been frustrating and I finally decided to look in to it.
In the Voicethread Ning group there is a discussion, Share your threads. Lori Feldman posted this link to what looked like would be an interesting project that I could share with our Special Ed teachers, but I ran in to the stall issue. I let her know, but it sounded like others were able to make the connection.
A day or so later there was another project I could not access - acting in the same way. I follow @voicethread on Twitter, so I asked a question about it. The response was that the project opened fine for him. Puzzled, I created a small screencast of what was happening for me and posted it to my Voicethread account. That smalll posting can be found here. Soon after posting and letting @voicethread know what I had done, he responded with a quick Twit back to me and also created a more detailed response to my issue. I know this solution will be very helpful as we get to the point of publishing more projects publicly and I want to ensure that the URL we give out is one that will work well with Safari as well as other browsers. I gather from his response that this is a bug that they are working on.

Oh yes... if you are using Safari, you can get to Lori's project with this link.

6 people 2 days good wine

2009-01-02T10:14:00.001-08:00

6 people 2 days good wine
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

For over thirty years, with only a few exceptions, we have enjoyed bringing in the New Year with friends who used to live in Gibsons. Over the years we have alternated who hosts and this year it was our year to host them. Two years ago, we met another couple who are friends of theirs and when the suggestion was made that they might join us this year, we thought that was a great idea.

All of us love wine, particularly wine from BC. For two days we enjoyed converstions, introducing one another to new web resources, great food (at least four of us love to cook), and wine.

It is a great way to start the new year and despite the consumption of significant numbers of calories, we know we have this gathering to look forward to next year.

Duffy New Years Day

2009-01-01T16:34:00.001-08:00

Duffy New Years Day
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

Thanks to many, including @shareski and @courosa I've decided to give the 365/2009 project a go.

Our house guests here celebrating New Years don't think I'll be able to complete this project .

This seems to be a much better idea than a resolution to lose weight - that's the one I usually make and then give up on by dinner time on January 1st.

Creative Commons Flickr Search

2009-01-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

@AngelaMaiers in my Twitter PLN, posted a link to this set of Flickr search tools. One of the tools mentioned in that article is Flikr Storm, a site which gives the user a very simple interface to search for Creative Commons licensed materials. I used this site for my last blog post to find an image that I could freely use that would give "fork in the road" article some visual imagery.

I've been encouraging students and teachers to use Creative Commons and to give attribution to the creators of the media. In creating the blog post and using that image I forgot to give credit!

I'd like to correct that...

Here is the source of that image. Thanks, SkyWhisperer for making this image available for free use.

The Road Not Taken

2008-12-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

One of my enjoyable finds over the holidays is the blog, The PrincipalsPage.
A recent entry started this way.

A big part of being a school administrator is working with students.

As a principal I've always known that by far the vast majority of students will like and respect you and that you will have many opportunities to see their wonderful work and watch them grow to become positive members of a community. This is particularly true if you teach and administer in a small geographical area for many years.

Today I was walking through the mall and met up with a former student. It has been a very long time since I have seen him close enough to talk with. I had a very brief, but enjoyable conversation with him today and walked away from it feeling pretty good.

Many years ago, when I was principal of an elementary school where this boy attended, we had lots of encounters, and the conversations were not always that friendly. I recognized in him an amazing talent that was not being fully utilized and spent a fair bit of time trying to get him moving in a different direction. This involved some negotiation with his parents as well as his teachers to try to keep him in class.

As his grade 7 year was drawing to a close, I decided to create a new Principal's Award just for him. I called it the "Road Not Taken". My rationale was that he had made some great strides towards making serious changes in attitude and behaviour. I think I was inspired by Yogi Berra and his observation about coming to a fork in the road and taking it.

Over the years I kept apprised of his progress as school became what appeared to be an unimportant part of his life. I never had the opportunity to talk with him about things and when I did see him he mostly grunted an acknowledgment that I had said hello. But, I kept saying hello when I did see him.

Today, his physical appearance was so totally different I almost didn't recognize him. We talked about how things were going. He asked if I was still a principal and I said I wasn't but was still working in schools with teachers and students using technology. "Still a geek, then." he said with a laugh.

He's been working in construction the past year and is enjoying himself.

It was a very positive part of my day, and a reminder that sometimes when you try hard with troubled students, the payoff doesn't come until many years later.

A list of lists

2008-12-28T13:48:00.001-08:00

I was doing a random walk from a link that was referred to me identifying the countries in the world with the greatest number of computers per capita, when I found that the source has a nice little pop down menu to choose other bits of comparative data.

I'm thinking that lists like this would be interesting for students to review and to perhaps speculate on why the order is the way it is. For example, has the North American (well Canadian) move towards banning smoking in public places led to the fact that Canada and the US do not appear in the top 25. And what about health care? We hear a lot about the amount spent here in Canada... look which country is number one on the list.

Collaboration

2008-12-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing I have learned this year it is the power of the internet to support the growth of one's personal learning network (okay, a group of folks with whom to collaborate). When I first registered with Twitter, I was underwhelmed. I let it sit in my bookmarks, visiting it occasionally only to find nothing there. Well, I wasn't really that dense, so I started to ask a few questions amongst my network of technology support friends. An invite to follow a peer in another city got me going and now I find the tool positively addictive. I've also met (virtually) a good number of new contacts and benefited greatly from the links and 140 character ideas they have shared. I'm now following 56 people and have 49 following me, a set of numbers above the norm, but far fewer in both categories from some of the folks I follow. Of course, they seem to share a lot more than I do, something I need to work on in the new year.

I also started to make more intelligent use of Delicious. I've set up some key, keywords, and plan to present at a conference in February on making the best use of this tool to build not only an easily accessed database of your own personal bookmarks, but also determining a schema for how best to share with others in your PLN.

Our district use FirstClass as mail/conferencing system and I have used a third-party application to build our school district website. Recently, with the approval of our laptops for teachers project, I've use the built in tool provided by the FirstClass software to develop a webpage for the 24/7 project. Over time I expect to use it to show teachers a simple way to use their FirstClass account to build personal or class websites.

The plan over the next four weeks is to get a good start on the professional development activities for the 24/7 project. It was unfortunate that the weather impacted delivery of the MacBooks to the teaching staff, only 155 of the 210 got in their hands before Christmas, but, for the rest, consider the laptop a New Year's treat. Can you tell that this teacher loves her MacBook?

A big job - first stage complete

2008-12-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday and today were big days for me and my department. Over the course of the two days, we imaged and marked 210 MacBook computers which are destined for the teaching staff in our school district.

A website for the project is in its initial stage of development.

I've posted a dozen pictures on Flickr that give a sense of what we accomplished.

The next step is to get the MacBooks into the hands of the staff and start on the professional development activities.

My thoughts about the current situation with government in Canada

2008-12-03T23:55:00.000-08:00

Quite frankly I get rather annoyed at the concern being expressed by the talk show call-ins and the news "man on the street" interviews that suggest that what is happening politically today in Canada is "treason" or "unconstitutional" or "undemocratic".

Far from that, what is going on is well within the constitution and well within the democratic processes we have in place,

I have no quarrel with folks who express the opinion that this is the wrong way about going about things... though I disagree with them.

I wrote a comment from a hotel somewhere (I'll plead oldtimers since I can't remember which one) where I was in a lounge watching the leadership debate. I recall commenting on the fact that the leader of the Conservative Party refused to comment on the financial state of the country and seemingly had no interest in presenting the plan for his party to address this.

Consequently the debate turned into what other commentators felt was an attack on Harper ... a ganging up of sort. Responses to my stated opinion supported those who said that Harper was unduly maligned in that debate. I continued to question his approach to the campaign and eventually voted against the Conservative candidate in my riding.

When Parliament was called, I was itching for some leadership from our Prime Minister. I had not voted for his party, but I have a clear understanding of government and recognize him as the country's leader. Needless to say, he disappointed me, and that evening I reflected on my opinion formed during the leadership debate.

For me the issue of the formation of a coalition government is a non starter with respect to the constitution.

For me, the issue is, What would I do if I was the Governor General?

I think the Governor General should not allow the coalition government to be formed... as legal as that might be. Instead, I think we, as voters, should be sent back to the polls, and if we elect in the same way we did a few weeks ago, we should then allow the GG to let a coalition govern. A minority government, under the Conservatives, with their current (nil) economic policies, cannot succeed.

My 2 cents.

Dance for a Cause

2008-12-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

Elias holds on to Eibhlin as he judges the dance contest.

A student holds Caia, while watching the dancers do their thing.

Students from Gibsons Elementary School (where I first taught in 1974!) held a benefit dance for my son-in-law, Elias, as he battles the cancer in his brain.

Gibsons Elementary Principal, Mark Heidebrecht, reported on this event in his blog. Thanks to the students from Gibsons and their guests from Langdale, Cedar Grove, and Roberts Creek for making this event a great success.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, December 2), Elias has his next MRI. Here is praying it is a good one!

Photo credit... my daughter Chelsea who loves photography almost as much as I do!

A question for our laptop using students

2008-11-27T17:58:00.001-08:00

Do you use any of the tools portrayed in this video as supporting 21st Century Student with his learning?

What do you think of this video?

Background notes from the original posting on YouTube.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.

ERAC Meetings

2008-11-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

I attended the ERAC Contacts meeting today in Victoria, BC. Because of the travel time back home and making two ferry connections, I'm staying over tonight. During the meeting today I was showing someone my PureDigital Flip Camera. I thought I'd use the flip tonight to take the short video embedded above. It really is a slick little gizmo and at the price - I think I paid $99 - it does a pretty good job. Since I showed mine at a principal's meeting last year, I think there have been a dozen or so purchased, mostly for use in Special Education, but some for classroom use. I think there is a clear application for them in the classroom. Mine came from Costco, but I haven't seen them there lately.

FlipVideo. Look here for more details.

Trying out xtranormal

2008-11-19T15:48:00.000-08:00

This took about 15 minutes to create.

Imagine kids making public service announcements with this free web tool.

Cheers... Bob

Fighting Cancer

2008-11-16T17:20:00.000-08:00

Do you see the guy over on the right... in the picture of family... yes, that's him left side of the picture, by the window, in behind my daughter and their daughter. That's Elias. He has brain cancer. He's had it for some years now, but following his last episode this summer they have decided to try alternative medicine to go along with the traditional treatments. He is fortunate to have the top oncologist in Western Canada on his case, but the cancer keeps coming back and in August it showed signs of really spreading. Alternative medications are expensive. The costs are approaching $15K per month. I feel so fortunate to live in our small community. The school district (he is a chef at the high school), the union he belongs to, the ferry workers (where he works in the summer), the community at large... they have all rallied around him in this time of struggle.

If you want to read more about his story, go to: http://caringbridge.org/visit/eliasminatsis. It is uplifting how my daughter, Chelsea, and Elias are facing this journey.

Teacher 24/7 Laptop project

2008-11-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

It is a pretty exciting time for me. I'm very excited about the decision our Board of Education has made regarding the provision of MacBooks to all our teaching staff, full time and part time, continuing and temporary contracts. The teachers must apply for the laptop, but the costs are being handled by the board over a 4 year lease program.

The laptops will be ordered next week and the rollout will be held over much of a week before the Winter Break. I'll be coordinating training sessions on various pieces of software and web 2.0 tools from January through to June and we will have summer days during the July/August break.

The purpose of providing a laptop to our teaching staff to have available for them to use at any time of the day they wish is to enable them to support/enhance instruction in the classroom. The learning opportunities for staff though workshops and peer tutoring will help teachers, individually and collectively, as they become more familiar and confident in using this resource to support student achievement.

I'm even thinking of a "laptop camp" similar to the Hypercard camps we used to have many years ago.

This should be a very interesting project, one which I am happy to see get rolling before I retire.

The purpose of providing a laptop to our teaching staff to have available for them to use at any time of the day they wish is to enable them to support/enhance instruction in the classroom. The learning opportunities for staff though workshops and peer tutoring will help teachers, individually and collectively, as they become more familiar and confident in using this resource to support student achievement.

Photo Credit Swansea Photographer
http://flickr.com/photos/tfrancis/1288761901/in/set-72157600161692049/
Used with Creative Commons Licensing Permission to copy, distribute and transmit the work

Chris Lehmann - The Schools We Need Today

2008-10-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Chris made this presentation at IgnitePhilly conference. He uses the technique of 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide (or maybe it is 15 seconds). Great presentation, and as he says, it is a good thing he speaks quickly.

And... here is a slideshow of the slides he was presenting.

IgnitePhilly

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ignitephilly education)

Miss Owen's Blog

2008-10-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

One of the teachers in my school district has started a blog and judging by the regularity in which she has been updating it, I have no doubt it will continue to be viable for some time.

Miss Owen teaches grade 1 and I have enjoyed working with her for a few years as she incorporates technology into her day to day work with students.

I wrote a comment in response to Miss Owen's October 15 blog entry, however I will leave it to you to link to her blog and read my response if you are interested.

Old Boys 2008

2008-09-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

When your gross score improves by 17 strokes from one year to the next, it is more likely that you will be the winner of the tournament. And that is exactly what Brian did to take this year's Old Boys tournament. It was actually not that clear from the initial look at the cards, but numbers guy Glen made a slight error in addition which initially pointed to Paul as the winner. Brian, with his net 68, is pictured here accepting the trophy from yours truly, host of this event for the past 5 years. There is some talk about the event being a "criss-cross" Howe Sound event next year, with one round in Squamish and one in Roberts Creek. Negotiations continue. There was a mildly negative aspect to this year's gathering with rain pouring down on the first day and the wimps prevailing over the more hardy golfers, wiping out day one's golf. That was soon forgotten with a gathering back at my place and Judy creating Wii characters for everyone and then Wii target golf competitions taking place. Two good evening meals, two good golf course breakfasts, and a chili lunch after the rainout made for a very nice get together.

Dad and Me ... 5 days later.

2008-09-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

Five days later and I'm back at, staying overnight with dad at the hospital. This time it was different. He had responded well to the treatments provided by the medical staff and definitely knew me when I arrived at 11 pm last night... problem was, he was excited to see me because he thought I was there to take him home! Well,needless to say we went back and forth for the next 9 hours as he tried in vain to convince me he did not belong in the hospital and that I wasn't being his "number 1 son" by not acceding to his wishes. During that 9 hours he slept for, at most, an hour in 5 minute or so fits. It is tough to see him this way. I like to remember him more as he is pictured here taken at a family gathering 18 months ago, and pray that once he recovers fully and is discharged we will have fun days like this again. He has barely had a chance to get to know his great grandchildren. Thanks to brother Barry and nephew Shane for taking care of these night shifts and to my sister Corilee and other family members (including mom) who are standing by, keeping him company 7/24.

Dad and Me

2008-09-16T16:29:00.001-07:00

Dad went to the hospital this past weekend and I travelled to town to be with him last night. I guess when you are 84 years old, things just start to happen. For dad, they actually started to happen some time ago, but now things seem to be coming to crossroads. My mom is amazingly strong… for some couples I guess that just happens when you have been married for 60 years. My brothers and sister live closer to dad and have taken the load off mom so many times. I love and appreciate them for this. I can't be with dad every day. Last night, he didn't seem to know that I was with him in the alcove at the hospital, but I held his hand, he held mine (when he wasn't trying to get at the catheter and other things) and I talked as loudly as I could to him, knowing that his deafness and the volume I could sustain with other patients nearby probably didn't make a great match. Lots of things going on for our family these days. I just need to maintain my trust in God that he has a plan that makes sense.

BorderWars 2008

2008-08-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mark Ahlness for posting his XO slideshow using the PictoBrowser tool which lets you chose sets of photos from your Flickr photostream to create a slide show that can be embedded into a blog entry. He, in turn, credited Alan Levine for the discovery he made. Alan gives more information about its use on his page.

BorderWars is a biennial event (does that mean every two years?) which pits golfers from the US and Canada in a friendly competition. This year's event was held in the Lynden Washington area and was a lot of fun for the group. Canada was victorious and the US team serenaded us on the deck of the Shuksan golf club.

Looky Book

2008-07-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

I found this cool site for getting a preview of books that you might consider for your picture book collection.

This is NOT an online book reading site. It is also NOT a site where you purchase books... it simply gives you access to a preview of the books. Click on a book, and the pages open to let you turn from one page to the next. It also has user reviews. You can browse the site or register.

For the book preview I embedded above, click on the "eyeballs" to go to a larger version of the book to preview. Then click on the pages to navigate forward and back.

SCGCC first 10 holes

2008-05-26T22:30:00.001-07:00

I decided to use VoiceThread to show off the first few holes of our golf course to some of my friends who live far from here.

The course is quite tight, wouldn't you agree?

Working with MsK

2008-05-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today I am working with a teacher, setting up a blog. Her first efforts will be done "real soon now"

Would it make any difference?

2008-02-11T12:46:00.000-08:00

You can probably tell from looking at this photo that each of the students in the class has a laptop computer to work with.

Can you tell me what you would think about having a laptop for you to use in your classroom?

Can you also think about how having a laptop to use would make a difference in your learning?

Sharing with our principals

2008-01-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

This past Wednesday I was giving my monthly report to principals at their district meeting. Every once in a while, I try to show a video that helps support the work I am doing with their teachers and students. Encouraging the staff in the district to work with students in new ways is an uphill climb, but I'll keep plugging along.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today is the video I showed this week.

With regard to this video, I also chose to give them a a link to this site which contains the above image of a staircase metaphor for the new Bloom's Taxonomy.

Finally, I included the following statement from a teenage student which I found while reading one of Mark Wagner's blog entries, Project-Based Learning: A Student Comment. I believe it closely matches the ideas in the staircase graphic and the video.

"I am a high-school student, and I believe we need more project-based learning in our schools. Of all the classes I have taken, I have learned best in those that are interactive. Anybody can read from a textbook, memorize the information, take a test, and forget what they read in a week. American schools are focusing on just that. Students take tests on words, words they found in a book for the sole purpose of testing. They don’t need to learn what the words mean, because they only need that information until the test. Also, I think we need to rethink our testing strategies. Vocab tests are insane. We get fifteen words on Monday and test on Friday. We forget the words over the weekend and get fifteen new words on the next Monday. History is a little harder. Students are required to remember dates and names. I personally only remember what happens, not who made it happen or where. I consider myself a good learner, but I have a good short-term memory, so I have been successful so far. However, if I was asked what happened in World War I, I would be able to tell you it was called the Great War, involved most of Europe, and started in 1914 (I think…). This coming from an A student. In addition, many of my peers are happy with C’s and don’t try to accel in school, so I think the United States of America needs to find a motivational tool to help American students reach their potential and continue to better our economy. -I apologize for the lack of structure in this comment. (My thoughts aren’t always organized.)"

There are lots of good ideas to mull over here. Enjoy your week!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

2007-12-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

Cousins

Cell phone research

2007-11-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

Here is was sitting at my computer doing some paperwork when one of our tech's cellphones buzzed. "It's a text message." he said. And he added he has no idea how to use text. One of our other techs who routinely communicates by text with her daughter showed him how to access the message. It was a request for assistance from his daughter who was sitting in her history class and needed a song from the Vietnam era.

We quickly did a bit of research for her... finding Animals - We Gotta Get Out of this Place for her and sent this URL as a text back to her.

Now to my mind, this is a student who has learned how to work with outside sources for her research and found a way to get an answer without the use of a school computer. I wonder if her cell is capable of browsing the net and what the implications would be for her doing that in class with an open wireless network.

Getting started with classroom blogging

2007-11-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

I had a workshop yesterday morning for an hour and a half with seven teachers from the local high school. They were interested in finding out about blogs and how they might use them to communicate with parents and students. I showed them a few moments of the video which we were given as a link in our class last week and also played a podcast which I had created with some grade 7 students last spring describing how they value blogging. By the end of the session, three of the participants had a blog that they were ready to publish, three more were working on their ideas, and one was convinced that blogging was not for him and his teaching style.

Some good questions that I have heard before but are worth reporting. I wonder what your responses to them would have been.

1. I have a lot to do in my day as it is. What is the value of reviewing student blogs and marking them? Can't I just continue to do that with them at their desks?

2. Some of my students don't have computers at home and I don't have enough computers in my class to make this worthwhile. Am I treating those kids without access fairly, even if I make blogging optional?

Comments?

Stop Cyberbullying - My story (repost)

2007-11-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I would take this opportunity during this week of being aware of the cyberbullying issue repost the following from a blog I wrote last spring.

Almost Wordless Wednesday

2007-11-21T13:36:00.001-08:00

My workshop toolkit is spread amongst a number of black bags.

Facing the realities of bullying

2007-11-20T18:05:00.000-08:00

I read this blog and the associated news story yesterday. One thing it has done for me is to move me another step towards working with students and parents to understand the way social networking and personal communication on the internet work in practice. Many of the things I speak to parents about ways to monitor their child's interactions on the net can use some minor revisions. It is clear to me that it is not only in the realm of research that students need to learn how to validate what they read online, but also in their personal lives.

A week to combat cyberbullying

2007-11-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

I was at a meeting today and discovered that this is bullying awareness week.

One of my colleagues at the meeting gave a quick tour of a great site with lots of ideas for teachers to use with their students to explore this topic.

Visit the website at: http://www.bullyingawarenessweek.org/. This site is a creation of the developers of cyberbullying.ca. The theme is Stand Up to Bullying and there are activities for every day of the week.

I gather that the Langley School District in British Columbia has organized challenges for its schools to compete with one another over the week. Good for them!

Having browsed through a number of the activities, I can see that all of them can be used at other times in the year, even if you don’t participate this week.

Electronic Commerce and Technology Survey

2007-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

It arrived in an official looking government envelope this morning... a survey for me to complete regarding the use of the internet by our organization with respect to gathering data and exchanging information from/with clients. The letter stated that,

It is vital to the success of this survey that you complete the questionnaire...

I filled in the obligatory radio boxes and added my comment, "An survey about the use of the internet to collect and distribute data, using paper ... what a concept."

The American vs Canadian Dollar

2007-11-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

I got a bit of a rude awakening yesterday with respect to the decreasing value of the American dollar compared to the Canadian dollar.

While it is encouraging to note that our trip to the US in February will probably cost less than anticipated, I discovered the opposite effect yesterday when I got a settlement document for an investment which I sold.

Apple stock has been riding high lately and I decided to sell 25 shares. The gross proceeds for the sale was $4645.25 in US$. The net proceeds were $4405.52 in CDN$.

What irks somewhat is that most of my shares in Apple were purchased when the dollar was skewed in the other direction! At least I have made a profit on the sale, but it still hurts to see the negative exchange.

Image Credit: jburwen's photostream

Welcome Caia Rose

2007-09-30T13:06:00.001-07:00

Caia Rose Minatsis was born at 0303 this morning. Judy and I are proud grandparents and were blessed to be at our daughter Chelsea's home as she gave birth. Weighing in at 8 lbs. 14 oz., Caia is doing just fine... she seems to have a great appetite. Elias (dad) and Eibhlin (sister) are very excited.

Anticipating the first day back

2007-09-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've been up since 5:30 this morning. It was a restless night for sleep. Today is the first day back for the 2007-8 school year and though I have been working on technology stuff during the summer, today really does kick off the new year with students and teachers returning to school.

This will be the start of my third year with district as opposed to school responsibilities. I found it funny last week when meeting with the administrative assisstants and the meeting organizer asked everyone to introduce themselves and tell folks how long they have been in the district. There were two of the admin assistants who have been in the district for 30 years. The newest member of the group has held her position for six years! There were a couple of on call people in the room who are brand new to the job. When it was my turn to say something, I indicated that I started with the district in 1974... 33 years ago. I started teaching in Smithers, BC in 1971.

When I read this blog the other day, The First Day - A Different Perspective, I couldn't help but think back to a few days in my carreer.

1) The first school day in September 1978 when I got my first posting as a school principal at Davis Bay Elementary School. Yes, it was a 0.2 assignment and meant I would teach 4 days a week, but not that first day.

2) The first day of school in September 1986 when I wasn't there because I had taken a leave of absence that would turn out to lead to resignation and 13 years in business with my brother and then on my own.

3) The first day of school in September 1999 when I returned to the school district as principal of Langdale Elementary School.

4) The first day of school in September 2005 when I started in my current role as Technology Manager.

Today, I will visit a number of our schools and complete that tour tomorrow or Thursday this week. My first stop will be the school where I was last principal. I like it that the kids there still greet me warmly. It will be a great set up for a great new year.

Take this science quiz

2007-08-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

To think, at one time I wanted to be a scientist.
What facts do you remember from your days in class?
How much has your success in life been based on the memorization of facts?
Am I just compensating for getting an "average grade"

Back to work, workshop

2007-08-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

Cool tool... I found a free, beta app called Animoto that allows you to upload pictures and create mini videos with free music. Relatively easy to use. I chose a few fun and group images from our Admin working session in Whistler to use for a sample video.

The url for the video can be shared, or, you can get embed code for various services such as Blogger or for your own website.

Lazy me

2007-07-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

I have trouble understanding why I have not updated my blog for two months. I could claim to have been too busy, but that would be a lie. I have had lots of things to write about and I just haven't done it. I've been driving in my car, returning from a school visit thinking about what I could report. I've read other's blogs and thought about similar ideas I could express, I've been at a couple of conferences and had ideas to share... just too darn lazy to follow through. And, some of you may know this feeling, the longer I hold off posting, the longer I wait.

Well... today I had a great experience and I want to share it with you.

I'm working this week with a laptop lab open for staff drop in. Some workshop ideas went out in June. So far, I've had precious few takers. Early in the week I was reading one of my favourite blogs, Moving at the Speed of Creativity and a particular podcast caught my attention http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/07/15/podcast172-a-9-year-old-discusses-programming-in-scratch-initial-impressions/

I listened to the podcast and went straight to the MIT Scratch Page and downloaded the software. After playing with it myself for a bit, I called a couple of parents and invited them to bring their kids and any other hangers on to my laptop lab to explore this afternoon. What a fun afternoon of exploration and problem solving it was. So much fun that I've told them they can all come back again tomorrow morning and play some more.

There... I've done it. I broke my slump.

Check out Scratch... I think you'll find it a lot of fun.

Made my Day

2007-05-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

As a teacher, and certainly as a principal, you don't always enjoy the respect of all the students you will encounter in your career. In one of my many past assignments I both taught and administered at a school. One particularly difficult student was a very angry young man and I had a difficult time working with him. Long after my leaving that school, it was clear that I was not someone he respected. A week or so ago, he flagged me down as I was leaving a parking spot. He is now nearing adulthood and he wanted to both apologize and thank me for the discipline I tried to impart those many years ago. He said he felt that he would not be where he is today, on the road to success, without the constant effort on my part to get him moving down the right path. I thanked him for telling me that and we shook hands. He moved on down the street and I went to my first tech meeting of the day with a huge sense of professional satisfaction.