Saturday Night Thoughts

Spring break is almost over. And I need to get busy with lesson plans and an article that need to be written. But I think I'll postpone these tasks for a bit.

So what did I do on my spring break? Oh a variety of things crossed my path this week. I spent some time with one of the grand kids - little girl named Charlotte who is almost 16 months old. she lives about 20 minutes from us, so she's an easy find to take shopping, and a great listener of stories. She loves going to Barnes and Noble, so on that plain we are kindred spirits.

I finished reading a professional book, one by David Loertscher. It's his first of two on the Learning Commons. As I poured over each and every page, I began to get a true understanding of what a learning commons is on the grand scale of things. My task is to bring it into economy of scale for an elementary school learning commons. My immediate conclusion is that I have quite a bit to do to accomplish this task, and at that, it will be an ever evolving adventure. This will be a future topic for my blog.

This led me on to another conquest of sorts. My cell phone had been acting up in recent months, so I had justification for an upgrade with my provider. You may already know where I'm going with this thinking thread - - - I now have an iPhone 4. This is not any ordinary cell phone. I might go so far as to say that I'm in love with this little gadget - - - oops, mobile device. Not content to use it just as a phone, I created several QR codes, downloaded a QR reader app and the rest was a fun ride. Within a few seconds, a QR code scan transported my phone to a web page. I see lots of applications for this in my Learning Commons. And at that, I'll leave the rest to your (and my) imagination.

My next adventure was to charge up 15 old Palm TX handhelds. 13 held the charge, another did not, and another held a charge but it was inactive - tapping the screen with the stylus was like the lights are on and nobody is home. I think exchanging an internal battery from one to the other might resurrect the one that won't hold a charge. That's my next thing on the to do list. These handhelds will be used in the Learning Commons with wireless keyboards for note taking, writing stuff like poetry (April is National Poetry month), and more. So 13 or 14 working Palm TX handhelds could be a good thing. We'll see.

I scored on a shopping trek to Belks in Savannah. New clothes are a good thing, too. Even better than southern comfort food whatever that might be.

But . . .

Back to Saturday night thinking. I have some prep work to do for school and beyond. This has been my challenge all week. I started out great, accomplishing 2 of 3 initial goals for the week. It was adding 2 more to the list that punctured my enthusiasm balloon. So I coasted all week - my term for doing things not of the school or professional kind. Now have you ever seen a punctured balloon spiral around until it touched the ground or floor? MMMmmmm that might describe my frame of mind right now. I'm grounded . . . at least until I can put into print what is in my brain for next week's classes. Harnessing energy can be so much fun and extremely aggravating at the same time. So that's where I am on a Saturday night ... adding a blog post and disclosing my adventures past, present and future or sort of.