New Blog Site

Look for future posts at this site:

http://kleinwelt.com/blog

Who is this guy?

It occurs to me that since many of you don’t know Matt, you may be thinking, “Who is this guy?” Well, here’s the link to his blog so you can find out a little bit more about him. http://kleinwelt.wordpress.com/ I think I may have to take the blame for the fact that he hasn’t posted anything in a while. Sorry everyone. :)

Human Clue

Well, it finally happened. I got talked into participating in a high school activity. The event was Human Clue and I was the criminal Coral Reef. Several of the teachers dressed up as criminals and our rooms were used like the rooms on a Clue board. The students worked in teams to solve the crime. Miss Biel, one of the high school math teachers, was the victim. At the beginning of the night she was “murdered.” Then, she followed the students around acting as her ghost. She’s a little scary!

The students had to go room to room asking each criminal for clues. We had three cards we could show them – a room card, a suspect card, and a weapon card. They could only pass to adjoining rooms. Each team had a different solution which made it even more interesting. It turns out that I did kill Miss Biel with the ballet slippers. Yikes! It was really fun.

I was Coral Reef and my weapon of choice was seastars. Think ninja stars only way cooler. :) The other criminals were:
Binary Brotha – weapon of choice: dorkstick (usb stick)
The Mad Scientist – weapon of choice: dry ice
Miss Dancy Pants – weapon of choice: ballet slippers
Miss Coffee Queen – weapon of choice: mug
Mr. and Mrs. Plastic – weapon of choice: frisbee
Mr. Samurai – weapon of choice: Samurai sword
Super Girl – weapon of choice: SAT Study Guide

What Teachers Do When No One is Looking

Our Word of the Week (WOW) this week is “career.” The story I read to the class during this lesson is What Teachers Do When No One is Looking by Jim Grant and Irv Richardson. The book is actually written for adults as a sort of defense of the teaching profession, but we used it to spark discussion about how different careers require people to have certain skills. After reading the book, I had the students write their own ideas about what teachers do when no one is looking. Here are a few of my favorites. I left their spelling and grammar as they wrote it. I think it’s more fun that way.

When no one is looking teachers reading book about cook.

When no one is looking, teachers drink coffee.

When no one is looking teachers….REST.

When no on is looking, teachers are dancing.

When no one is looking, Teachers shop.

When no one is looking, teachers eat candy.

When no one is looking teachers play games.

When no one is looking, teachers…are in the beach.

and my personal favorite….

When nobody is looking teachers grab a cup of joe and a taco.

Closure is Good

Yesterday I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (insert sigh here) I won’t give anything away, but I will say that I’m grateful to J.K. Rowling for giving us closure on all of the story lines. The story feels complete and that is fantastic.

Helpful Online Tutorials

One of my friends from my Master’s program in Plymouth created these really great tutorials for Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) as well as Macromedia Studio (Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks).

The site is called Quantunet, and the tutorials are really great. If you’re familiar with Atomic Learning, it’s kind of like that, but better, more extensive and easier to integrate into school curriculum.

Check it out!

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I am a Major Geek

Turns out I really am a major geek. I took a geek test and scored a 38.06706% on it. If I had reached 45%, I would be a Super Geek.

Anyway, if you want to take the Geek Test yourself, go to the following website:

http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

If you take it, let me know how you scored in the comments section.