Dauphin Island Inspiration

"Water is the driver of Nature."
~Leonardo da Vinci

“Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.”
~J. Russell Lynes

“It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.”
~Anthony Robbins

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

~Thomas Merton

The trees reflected in the river -- they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Climbing Stairs: Can FUN Change Behavior?

Reflecting on standards, assessment, evaluation, and "GRADES"

As I think about evaluation & assessment in a redesigned curriculum for education majors, I am back to reflecting on what elementary teachers should KNOW and be able to DO. What makes a teacher effective in promoting and facilitating learning among his/her students?

What preparation (college courses or other) do you think will influence your teaching? If you are already teaching, what has made an impact in your experience?

During a late night or early morning grading frenzy at the end of a semester I stopped recording for a little while and blogged about GRADES. Check it out...I'm still pondering these questions as well.

What do you think?

Blogging Inspiration

I have been inspired to revisit my commitment to blogging by a colleague, John Strange. John and I have recently been assigned to a technology committee exploring possibilities for authentic utilization of technology in a redesigned curriculum for future teachers.

John shares all of his educational technology class assignments and resources through his EDM 310 Class Blog which is worth exploring. The use of various technologies for communication among college students, elementary students, and teachers around the world is a great model for 21st Century life-long learners.

USA Jaguars Inaugural Football Game

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

What do you think?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Wish I Invented Post It Notes

Three months of planning. 4 days of shooting. 6000+ post-it notes. A completed senior project by Bang-yao Liu at the Savannah College of Art and Design. 1 minute and 54 seconds...

Shells

During a recent trip to the west end of Dauphin Island, AL with friends and family, we stumbled upon a carpet of shells. The large, heavy, almost fossil-looking clam shells intriqued me. As we spent three days returning to the scene to confirm our discovery, I developed more questions to ponder....

What kind of shell was this, specifically, and what did the animal inside look like?

Where did this large collection originate? Were they uncovered or washed up by a recent storm?

How long have they been without their inhabitants?

Do they represent lost protection? Or freedom from encasement and structure?

Does walking on shells cause disequilibrium, loss of balance..... or consideration

and watching your step?

Were they there to discover Anne Morrow Linbergh's sentiments:

“Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego”

Is it ART?

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life." ~William Faulkner

As I walked toward the driftwood sculpture discovered on Dauphin Island this cloudy Memorial Day weekend, I became increasingly intrigued by the formation and the choice of additional materials...

"It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet." ~Kojiro Tomita

As I circled the creation, I admired the idea and aesthetic design. I thought of the installation art of Jeanne-Claude and Christo...

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. ~Amy Lowell

I even took pictures with it as we often do with notable landmarks...

But, Is It Art?

Sunday Nap: Jessica in the Jasmine

She's sweet 16 and finds the most interesting places to catnap these days; wherever she wants.