Happy Easter

So sorry for the absence...
Over the last few weeks we finished with the Saturday Class... All the munchkins got their sites up and running.
And as planned I finally had a chance to get out of town for Spring Break.
We went down the coast on 101, through the Trees of Mystery and down to the Avenue of the Giants.
It was fairly rainy throughout the journey which I found to be an added benefit, since it kept competing visitors at bay.
I had a chance to stay in Redway and was very impressed by the little communities in the area and how they refuse to give up even though their little towns have been ravaged by floods for hundreds of years.
One of the highlights on the trip was stopping into a small conservatory where you could read information about the area and learn about the interesting events that have happened in the area...
While exploring the scene I was impressed to find one of the most complete displays of dead native animals that I have ever seen.
When these people go on a killing spree, they sure are thorough.
I saw around 80 specimens all crammed into on space, baby bears next to baby squirrels and so many others...
On the way out I wandered past a setup for children to explore... They were so often seen boxes with covered lids and the invitation to use your sense of feeling to guess what is inside.
I decided to skip the whole guessing process and just look inside...
I was shocked to find a taxidermied limb from a mountain lion...
It was obviously falling apart, smelled horribly, and had patches of fur that had fallen off and been worn away by the children...
That was a little startling, but other than that the whole thing was pretty neat...

After making our way though the Avenue of the Giants, we wandered down 101 and made our way to Fort Bragg.
This little town was actually where I was born, and I can't recall visiting it in quite some time.
Getting down there was no small feat, traveling down the infamous highway 1 through it's nauseating turns and bends.
It really was a sickening road, with little relief once through the passage.
After that with the rain and fog on the coast, the little towns on the side seemed pretty sad.
We finally made it into town in time to find a fun little restaurant in the middle of town.
As I wandered through the building, looking at art on display, I was surprised to see a small woman standing next to me, who moments later walks up and announces that she knows me and that I teach her son...
That was a bit of a trip. It really is a small world, and even driving hundreds of miles into what I would sum up as the middle of nowhere, there are still people out there waiting to hop out of crevices and say hello.

This week I am off to the Sheraton Inn again, up in Portland, for the latest round of conferences on integrating technology into the classroom curriculum.
Lately at my sites, I have been working on getting the teams up and running with their clickers, Proscope microscopes, and other fun new tools. I have just gotten three out of the four classes up on Apple Remote Desktop and had a little chance to show them how the tool looks in action.
At the last part of the day in one of my classes, I heard the teacher announce that it was time for all the children to begin shutting down their machines and getting ready to go home. I could hear the reluctant sighs as the kids looked at their screens, not wanting to stop what they were doing. Just for fun I asked if it would be alright if I took care of it, and my wonderful host agreed. With just the press of a button I sent out the order for all the machines to shut down, and within a matter of seconds all the kids were looking around trying to figure out what had happened...
Clean up was accomplished in record time and many of the kids came up to inquire about the magic I had just performed.

Good times,
though I am not looking forward to being away from my class and the fun planning that goes into being out of town.