People don't always grasp the power of the "YouTube" generation. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of junk on there, but there are some really great nuggets that can be used for instruction. Web 2.0 technology is so useful for motivating and captivating students. A friend of mine sent me a link to the video below. I think it's a great introduction for art or music - two subject areas that are becoming more and more threatened by budget cuts and the hard choices necessary to meet NCLB requirements. It's about 6 minutes long but it can be used so many ways to motivate students.
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Human Calendar Rocks Too!

My brother knows this guy named Craig who created the humanclock.com web site. It's a really cool web site he created by having people pose with carboard numbers during his travels. While cirumnavigating the continent of Austrailia (yes, Austrailia is also a continent) he was dreaming of Marcia Brady on the Brady Bunch and started thinking of making a calendar using a grid formation like the one at the beginning of the Brady Bunch. Really cool but the heat of the Outback must have been getting to him.

Anyway four years later I got an email from my brother that Craig had released Humancalendar.com publicly. So I went to check it out and saw that my brother, Mike, and his wife, Betsy, and some of his friends were all on it. It's pretty cool to see something that. I mean it's totally cool and yet totally insane at the same time. While some people fritter their lives away channel surfing for what's not good on TV, here's a guy who actually puts his idle time to good use. Good for him!

Oh by the way, if it happens to be July when you look at humancalendar.com, #17 is my brother and #18 is his wife, Betsy.




My wife and I met Craig during Mike's "bachelor party" at the Lucky Labrador in Portland, OR. He had just returned from his bike trek around Austrailia and had really facinating stories to tell. It was a great night of food and fun as stories. Craig turns out to be this really cool guy who is mellow and just enjoys being creative. His tech skills are strong and I believe he is a powerful Jedi Knight fighting for good in the cyber universe. One day I'd love to be able to do the coding that he does but I really enjoy helping teachers and students take advantage of technology to aquire their own knowledge.

While at the wedding on Mt. Hood, we asked Craig to take out his cardboard clock numbers and we posed for a two pictures for 5:25 AM and PM. 5-25 is my anniversary!


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