Miracle on the Hudson

On June 10 we had a unique opportunity in Braxton County.  The plane that landed in the Hudson River was scheduled to be transported through West Virginia by way of I-79 to a museum in North Carolina.  I saw the story on the morning news, so I knew what was going on.  It was the last day of school, so our principal encouraged the students to go out to the side of the building facing the interstate and watch the procession go by. 

It was quite a sight to see the huge plane go by on the road.  The students waved and the truck driver tweeted back a thank you to one of our students.  I managed to get a picture.  To find out more about the original story, visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28678669/ns/us_news-life/t/ny-jet-crash-called-miracle-hudson/

Just a few days left

Well another year is almost to an end.  Looking back over the year, there are things that I would have done differently.  Now that I have actually been through a full year, I have a better idea of what I need to do.

I will be glad to have some time off.  I look forward to the training in July and August.  Before I end this year, though, I have to move my entire room so they can tear up the carpeting and replace it with floor tile.  You sure can accumulate a lot of things over the years.

Presentations are over!

We had our presentations this week.  We were on a weird schedule so we could have senior exams in the afternoon of testing.  The laptop shut off during the presentations and had to be restarted.  As a result, we did not get the last team done during that session.  We had to do their presentation the next day. 

Team Audiation had a good demo but they used a black background and white writing on some of the scenes and they did not show up well on the wiki page.  The only thing left to do is upload the videos and basic housekeeping.

In the home stretch

This is the last full week that we have seniors in class.  They are frantically working to get done.  The following link is to one of the student's project page where you can see his running character for their game.  He is a very good artist!

Peddling as fast as I can

Time seems to be speeding up on us.  I feel like this hamster peddling away and not getting anywhere.  We haven't had our room for two days this week because of end of course testing.  That means we will have to pick up the pace starting tomorrow.  Lots of work to do and not much time to get it done.

Still Trying to Get Work Accomplished

Well, this last week was an interesting week.  The six weeks ended on Friday.  We were out of the building on Thursday from 1:20 to 4:00-4:30.  The students were not in attendance on Friday.  So needless to say, not everyone got their work completed. 

This week we need to get back on track and get more of our games uploaded to team pages and individual student wiki projects pages.  Check out Sarah's wiki page and projects!

Back to the Grindstone

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time off this week.  In addition to catching up on paper grading, I have tried to catch up on things around the house that have been let slide.  We have also had our granddaughter some and that time is priceless.

So back to school tomorrow and getting ready for the end of the 6 weeks.  It will be another busy week.  My students were to blog about how they intend to complete their games on time and be ready to make their presentations.  We'll see how that works out!

Presentation at Board of Education Meeting

The Board of Education has a meeting at each school in our county. The staff is given an opportunity to talk about their programs and classes.  One of my Globaloria students talked about how the class is set up and demonstrated his teams' game play at this point.  The audience seemed to enjoy the presentation very much.  One board member wanted to know when the final presentations would be given.

We have spring break next week and when we come back, we will only have about four weeks to finish up and plan our presentations.  This semester has seemed to fly by!

Busy week coming up

It is going to be another busy week!  There's a Board meeting Monday, a CTE advisory meeting on Tuesday and our Annual Talent Show on Friday.  Throw in preparing for end of course tests and it will be busy, busy, busy!

We did not get as much accomplished last week as we wanted to because of the Online Writing Assessment.  They used my classroom and it was not available for my class on a couple of days.  We will have to make up for lost time this week. 

State FBLA Conference

We just finished the 2011 State FBLA Conference in Charleston.  Our students enjoyed themselves and we had two 1st place winners, two 2nd place winners, two 3rd place winners and six other events with places in the top five. 

One of the highlights of the conference was the guest speaker, Eddie Slowikowski.  This is the second time that I have had the pleasure of seeing him speak.  See the video taken at the conference.