GAETI 2017-2018 Tony Odom

Hello, you're gorgeous. And so, it ends.  And i'm still here. So what do I leave with? Perspective.  Although I am still unsure about where tomorrow will take me, I feel confident that I can deal with whatever is thrown at me. I'm done. For now.  Next week, i'll go to Florida and give my wife and son their promised vacation.  It'll be good to get away for a while. I've produced what i've produced, and I am fairly proud of it.  Maybe now my mind can slow down and I can collect my thoughts and develop a plan to keep moving forward. I told everyone on day one to put aside their expectations.  And even my expectations were exceeded. My sole surviving tile came out of the kiln today and it looks phenomenal. We had three miscarriages before we had Jacob.  Three tiles exploded into dust and shards. But one remains. Also, it is kind of fitting that my son refuses to be boxed in to anyone's definitions and the other three sides of my &qu

So here's a little more explanation about yesterday: https://www.wcbi.com/update-msu-returning-normal-following-bomb-threat/ But now that all that is over, let's focus on the here and now. We all presented our art projects to the IHL representatives this morning. I really enjoyed everyone else's presentations. Here are my finished products.   Minus the surviving tile. The project was about crossing borders. I crossed a personal border making ceramics. The raven is the intermediary between Odin and Midgard (Earth).  This crosses the boundary between the human and the divine: the natural and the supernatural: myth and reality. The mixed media project is the boundary between life and death, heaven and hell, order and chaos. And between thought. word, and deed.  How far are we willing to go for what we believe? So this go round has been faster and a lot different.  I feel as content as possible with what I produced.  I feel a lot more confident in my

Today we planned a business. Then we had a nice discussion about wellness. Then we had a Zoom session with a lady in Brazil. Now we have to leave because some idiot decided to be an idiot.

I made an Infographic using Piktochart.  I think it's OK. https://magic.piktochart.com/output/23225775-21st-century-news  (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site. And I have made another video with Adobe Spark.  This is a really helpful program! https://spark.adobe.com/video/zHAqhXRKSqpIS We also spent a great deal of time polishing our Weebly sites.  Every day I improve it. http://tonyodomGAETI2017.weebly.com/ I made a Prezi.  It's not very impressive.  I am working on a proper one about Educational Technology that will be on my Weebly site. https://prezi.com/view/I3wCXTkwkIRWzCpYxdUh/ I feel things winding down and I feel like I've done a lot more than before, but I'm afraid that i've not done enough.  I think i'm just really stressed out about other things outside of this institute and really need my vacation.  I've earned it this time! I have also started work on a new Weebly site for my classes. http://mrodomsclass.weeb

We began with a presentation about iPad apps that can be of use in the classroom. Then we made out own website story using Adobe Spark: https://spark.adobe.com/page/kj2yyqTGGi3R5/ So over the weekend, my clay pieces were fired.  One came out fine: And it's being glazed: The glaze looks like Pepto-Bismol. My tiles were not so fortunate. This is the sole survivor.  Much like an old star, they exploded.  The brightest flames burn quickest, I suppose.  I still have the concept and I also have the sole survivor: Hopefully, it holds up because this glaze has a very interesting look once it's fired. Then we did a newspaper in Google Docs.  Here's ours: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b90ymcSs6fpjSmQT0z1KfnDKGjS9go6-OPJFFSQU9hI/edit?usp=sharing

We were visited this morning by the assisstant Secretary of State for Mississippi.  He was very enthusiastic about helping us start our own business.  Of course, a salary increase might negate the need for that,but I digress.  He also mentioned that the state was desperate for tax dollars.  Funny, considering the massive corporate tax cuts passed just this past year.  But again, I digress. The web tools he showed us were very helpful and thorough. https://yallbusiness.sos.ms.gov/ http://www.sos.ms.gov/Pages/default.aspx We spent the rest of the day putting in work.  Getting the art projects finished. The others are being fired in the kiln. We put in work on our Weebly sites and lesson plans, and helped each other through the process of getting our portfolios together.  For production results, see: http://tonyodom.weebly.com

So today, Ms Billie Fulton from GAETI 2014 and my own school came to talk about tech things she has found. We finished our Flat Stanley project. We Skype'd with my old friend Christian over in England.  That was actually pretty cool.  It was really nice talking to him again. My art projects are coming along nicely as well.     We finished out the day talking about business plans.  I do side jobs, but a business? Seems like a lot of outside things to have to deal with.  Then again, I give my labor to K12 in exchange for $12 an hour.  I could pay myself more.  Just a thought.

Today we learned about banner making software.  I made this one for my college class: We got a primer on Camtasia and began making our flat stanley movie.  I am hoping to put together a project that won't be a drag. Art project progress:     A LOT got done, for sure. We finished up with more Canvas.  I learned today that i've been adding documents to pages the hard way.  Time savers!!!!

So we began the day with a primer on making presentation videos.  I even made one: We then began a Flat Stanley project.  Flat Stanley has come to Mississippi State and we are to make a movie about his adventures.  Stay tuned. Art progress:   We finished the day on a webquest.  Here are the results so far: http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=356929 I apologize for not being more descriptive.

This morning, we were with Dr Lee for a primer on Canvas.  Much of it was review for me, but necessary.  I have revitalized my old Canvas account and will use it this year to augment Google Classroom. We also were treated to a presentation on Fair Use and Copyrights from the library staff. The art project progresses: It has been glazed 3 times since this photo was taken. We are also doing a four tile story of sorts.  Gotta work on that later. The multimedia project is also coming along, just slower than I would normally be working at this point. We got some spiffy new headphones today! Much better than the ones I got last time (though i was still using them as of May of this year!)  These are USB connected and really nice! We have also begun a WebQuest.  The one we did last time is still available.  I hope to improve.  It will be about the Cuban Missile Crisis. So here's another header I made for my Weebly site: And with that, I take my leave.  

Art project was first up this morning:   My shapes have been drawn on the watercolors, and have been glued to the mat board.  I am now in the process of cutting them out.  It is a very tedious process, but it will be rewarding.  The plate on the right is not my project, but shows what my project will look like.  I am using the same plate mold, but this design:   Dr Beriswell talked to us about creating board games using Powerpoint and Excel.  To be honest, this one was difficult for me because I am not a fluent with Excel as I'd like to be.  It looks like something I could really benefit from, but there's the learning curve.  I'll get it eventually. My old friend Justin Putnam came to deliver a presentation about gamifying you classroom: using gaming principles in instructional design. He also brought a lot of really cool tech to play with: Finally we took a field trip down the hill to the TK Martin Center.  I honestly didn't think I was going to be ab

Today we went over how learning takes place and how we can effectively help our students understand things better. We also planned a lesson using the UbD concept.  Here's what we got: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B99Hn2NZuGDfX0lYelVISDF2R1E/view?usp=sharing Art project update: We also got and played with new tools: Augmented reality. bubbl.us timetoast.com word it out Plickers and using Google Docs to collaborate.

1.  Simply by sharing that what we do has to have a purpose or there's no point in doing it.  I would explain that once they figure out what they wanted the students to learn, why they needed to learn it and how this fits into the big picture, planning everything else becomes so much easier. 2.  I plan to shift to more "backwards planning."  I was doing it before but really got away from it in the last few years.  I also plan to have a Skype or google hangouts session.   So the morning was spent learning about effective lesson planning. I feel much more confident that I can do better at this.  My problem is taking time to plan as opposed to using my down time as down time.   We also spent about an hour on a Skype session with a teacher in Hyderabad, India.  It was interesting to learn about how schools are different over there.  40 kids to a class?!? No thank you!   Art project progress:   Watercolors were dried, then I applied marker, pastel ch

Using receipt tape to demonstrate the age of the earth.  This was a starting point.  The earth is very old and we are but a blip on its radar. Now, we can make weather reports!! Turns out: you do it with Powerpoint! Who knew? Is there anything that program can't do? Art projects are underway: Stay tuned. We had a guest speaker. Newly-minted Dr Nick Timmerman discussed the portrayal of Native Americans in history and literature and popular culture. We closed out with an exercise on using creative writing in science (with applications in social studies). I haven't much else to say.  Slogged through the morning because of a late night and did OK in the afternoon.   Here's a little random fin:

Took a walk over to Hilbun Hall to the Dunn-Seiler Geology Museum. Took part in a scavenger hunt, which is the thing to do if you take kids to a museum, else they'll be finished looking in about 3 minutes.  Saw some cool stuff: Like these fossils from around 400 million years ago. And this mastodon tooth. And METEORITES! We also took a trip to the meteorology lab and played with the green screen. I'm getting ahead in the world! We heard a speech from Bryce Touchstone about his experiences living and working in South Korea, Tajikistan, and Australia.  He's the source of the above quote. The art project commenced.  We veterans are doing TWO projects.  Here's my inspirations: Stay tuned! Finished up learning about gaming.  I'll provide links on the website.

Today we explored our websites at weebly. Here's what I have so far: tonyodom.weebly.com A couple of the headings I made myself.  I couldn't find what I liked, so I made it. We also had a discussion regrding BYOD.  I spoke my piece and was wildly unsuccessful.  ADD was firing today.  We did explore possible solutions to problems. There was a guest speaker after lunch. Nashandra James, technology coordinator from the Madison School District spoke to us about the successes and struggles of their 1:1 initiative.  She gave us some great input about what we can do in our districts. We wrapped up the day getting a primer in graphic design from Dr Beriswell.

Today we took an excursion to the Coal Mine. I It was very interesting to see how the process takes place.  Lignite is what is mined there.  All this time, I thought it was an underground process, but it is not.  It is more like strip mining.    However, they go to great lengths to replace what they take out.  Here is a picture of mined land that has been restored.  Here can be seen the oldest land (which has been reclaimed) to the newest (in the distance on the horizon). It was a spectacular view. Just to give you an idea of how massive some of this equipment was: I stand about 5'11" and the middle of this truck wheel comes up almost to the top of my head. We also learned about how the lignite was formed over millions of years by the compaction of prehistoric swamp land.  They have even found petrified wood within the lignite. I learned a lot about mining.  We even did an experiment on porosity and permeability. If I were ever