ED 240 # 3 It's all a balancing act...

Today has been a lesson in time management. It's like God is testing my tensile strength and waiting for me to snap.

But I refuse to.

So it's bad enough that this year the MAT program has been compressed into 5 weeks from 10 weeks. But I was expecting this, so I've been mentally prepared for it and have been dealing with it pretty well. No big deal. Two of the classes are great. One class is a joke. I stress more about the joke class because I can find meaning in the work given to us in the great classes. I can't find any meaning in the work given to us in the joke class. It just makes me mad. But I still cope.

Finding time to do homework between bottle feedings, naptimes, walks, and all the other things that raising a baby entails is challenging, but so far, so good. I haven't been getting much sleep, but I also expected that, and I still cope.

Finding time to do homework, take care of a baby, and raise a teenage daughter is REALLY challenging. Especially when you have to find time to make sure that your teen is not getting into trouble during the summer, all the while taking the time to make sure that said teenage daughter does not feel neglected because you are spending too much time doing schoolwork or caring for an infant son. But I still cope.

Finding time to do homework, take care of a baby, raise a teenage daughter, and make sure your wife still remembers who the heck you are...well, that's just icing on the cake. I think she still remembers what I look like, I mean, it's only been two weeks, right? So I still cope.

Today, I finally made an appointment for my son at the doctor. We noticed a few weeks ago that one of his eyes looked kind of "quirky." My wife took him in while I was in class today. To make a long story short, he's got a tumor in his eye. Not sure what it is yet. He's got an appointment with a specialist at Children's Hospital next week. Since we're not sure it's cancer (yet) I can still cope.

We'll see what happens after the appointment next week.

But I still refuse to snap.

Suckerpunch!

So I just watched it, and I get it. Zack Snyder wanted to make a film that let us all know what I have known for years: That the only thing keeping us down, keeping us from living, keeping us from being better....it's ourselves. So fight for what you want.

I get it, and I get the metaphors in the movie, and I really enjoyed the fight scene on the train. Would have been awesome in 3D. Sweet Pea is my favorite character...that girl looks GOOD handling an M4!

BUT...

The way he tied the story together at the end, you never really lose that sense of hopelessness he wanted you to feel right after the climax of the movie. And because of that, even though the end is supposed to be a victory of sorts, the audience doesn't feel victorious. Instead, we are left wanting...and what we want is for the villains of the movie to suffer...and they never do.

Also, he tries to pull off this dream within a dream type thing throughout the movie, but that never really comes off that well. It's just window dressing that leaves us all a bit confused. Best leave that stuff to the Inception folks.

All in all, worth waiting for on DVD, if you have a 3D TV it might be better, but I guess I'm glad I didn't pay money to see it in the theater, I would have been disappointed.

ED 240 # 2 Reflections on Google

I have, for years, depended on Yahoo as my primary search engine. The reason for this being that the Yahoo Home page was, to me, the most relevant to me and my needs. If I needed email, it was right there. If I needed news, it was right there. If I needed to do a search, the tool was right there. I used it for travel directions, to find movie times, basically everything. I ignored Google because the home page is sooooo plain and boring.

I was an idiot.

Learning about the different research and search tools Google has to offer has literally changed the way I look at the internet. I did not realize how exceptionally useful Google is. I was literally amazed by two things today: Google Translate and the Wonderwheel. I was especially impressed with the wonderwheel because it is such a simple concept that organizes your search for you. It's quick, comprehensible and incredibly useful when researching a complex or extensive topic. Today, I can say Google is changing my life.

Okay maybe that's taking it a little far, but in all seriousness, learning about these new tools WILL change the way I research information online.

ED 240 #1 My Educational Experiences with Technology

I was fortunate enough to have been born in 1972. What that means is in high school my "word processor" was a typewriter and only the very, very wealthy had a Macintosh with a dot matrix printer to write with. Very few people knew what a computer network was (Heck, computers only existed in Star Wars) and the internet did not exist. (Al Gore hadn't invented it yet.) I talked my Dad into buying me a Commodore 64...but I had no clue what to do with it.

It was not until I reached the university level that I really began to use technology. Even then, I only used my Mac to write papers. I didn't have any games (that's what the arcade was for), and the internet was only available to the geeky engineering majors. This state of affairs basically lasted until I graduated in 1995.

Imagine my sense of culture shock when I began the credential program in 2009. Holy crap! I began using EEE to turn in assignments and schedule my days. The internet was my best friend when it came for researching. and I used email and Google applications to plan and complete group projects. I used Video Cameras to document my TE. I used my Mac to schedule all my classes, assignments and important dates. Technology is cool.