Outreach Adventures

Outreach science at its best.

This morning's commute...
Two hours and fifteen minutes of this... on a commute that should take about an hour and a half (still long, about 55 miles, but faster). It was gorgeous - if I hadn't been watching the minutes add up on the GPS telling me I wasn't going to make it to the school on time, I would have really enjoyed it.

I spent the day watching out the classroom windows, hoping that the snow would stop. It finally did, at least at the school. But when I got back up on the hill headed home, down roads that I know had been plowed earlier (since I was stuck behind the plow for awhile this morning), I found this:
Yup, more snow. Fresh. I got to create the first tracks through much of it. 40 miles of this... Now, with the added bonus of sun glaring off of it half the time (the other half of the time, the snow was falling too thickly to see the road).

But, I shouldn't complain. It's gorgeous. I get to see it every day as I go from Talent to Klamath Falls

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And, this week's school rocks - they have SMARTBOARDS! OMG! I want. I really really want. So, despite the commute, I'm having a good week. They're doing the Hot Stuff lesson, and I think it's going well. I wish I had known about the SmartBoards before going in - I would have had some awesome graphics ready for the heat stuff, to try and work with what they're used to and reap the benefits of the technology. But it's still cool. I like that a slide from 3 days ago is still there in the same notebook and I can refer back to it, sure that it's what I did in that classroom and that it will trigger some previous memories for them. One of the problems of teaching the same class 4 times in a day is that I forget what references I made in one room, and confuse the students when I bring up something that didn't happen in that room.

I'm also thrilled that I'll be able to ask them to email me what I've drawn/written for my portfolio. Yay.