So I’ll be the first to admit that because of my wide variety of classes taught, my marking has been somewhat schizophrenic. I don’t generally mark the same way in CPT as I do in History, French or Science, and each class lends itself to specific ways of gathering marks. Readers will note that I [...]
Read the full story »Movies, music, books and other elements of culture.
Teaching, instruction, students and whatnot.
Family stories, legislation affecting families, discussion on family issues.
Gizmos, gadgets and the latest gear.
Politics, news and happenings around the world.
The warmth of Colbie Caillat’s version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is what drew me to include it in this year’s list. While the song is normally fairly laid back (and I should know, with 14 different versions perfomed by everyone from Judy Garland to Kermit the Frog), Caillat’s has a beat, even [...]
Sorry for the late posting of this one… I was out finishing my Christmas shopping yesterday and forgot to post.
Today’s song is a re-interpretation of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Casting Crowns. It seems like every recording I have of this song (I have 5) uses a different melody line, but this [...]
I’m just going to say for the record that whoever wrote the song “12 Days of Christmas” seems to have been a little obsessed with birds. By my count, at the end of the twelve days, the beloved would have received 184 birds of different, including 42 of these swans. I don’t know how well [...]
Allow me to tell you a story of technology run amok. Today’s song was downloaded from the iTunes store as one of their free “tracks of the week.” Free, mind you. Unfortunately, Apple encoded (at the time) all their music in a proprietary codec with a DRM wrapper. Boo. So, after trying to find a [...]
Back on the 2007 list, I wished that Crash Test Dummies had done a version of The First Noel. No sooner had I asked than Jeremy pointed out that they had, in fact, recorded that very song for their 2002 Christmas album Jingle All The Way. Lead singer Brad Robert’s voice does indeed fit well [...]
Today’s song is a mashup of Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Angels We Have Heard On High. Now, I have a fair number of Christmas remixes, and they don’t always work. This one, by Dynamo & JP, doesn’t mess around with the melody, which seems to be a feature of the dance versions that [...]
Today’s song is a medley of the Carol of the Bells & Sing We Now of Christmas, as sung by BarlowGirl. Because of the limited number of songs this time around, there aren’t as many repeat artists as the Month of Music, but BarlowGirl has two songs on the list. The blending of the two [...]
Two years ago, I did a series of posts leading up to Christmas that I called Month of Music. Each day, I posted a Christmas song I enjoyed, for 30 days. I decided to do something similar this year, but I didn’t have enough new music for a whole month, so I decided to countdown [...]
finalism (n): belief that an end has or can be reached. funalism (n): belief that anything can be laughed at, if you try hard enough.
Social:
Women of the Year – It would be easy to dismiss Glamour‘s list of Women of the Year because, well, it’s Glamour. That would be a mistake, however, as their list [...]
facundity (n): eloquence. funcundity (n) speaking well on amusing subjects. Here’s this week’s list, sorted:
Social
Holocaust Education – The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education is a site designed specifically for teachers planning lessons on the Holocaust. With timelines, survivor videos and class sets of materials, there is plenty here to help plan a complete set of [...]
Sorry to anyone who’s had troubles accessing the site recently – my host was having issues with my site. Apparently, one of the plugins for the blog had generated in excess of 6000 database entries in one table alone, which was making the queries extremely slow and CPU intensive. Because I’m on shared [...]
Fenestral (adj) of, like or pertaining to windows. Funestral (adj) amusement had before heading out a window… okay, that was a stretch. A green and white fog entered my brain this week, and along with the NaNoWriMo finish rapidly approaching, I didn’t have time to hunt down tons of links. Here are the ones I [...]
After having Patrick Ness‘ books recommended to me by the fine folks at io9, I went to the library and picked up a copy of The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy. And, man is it good! So good, I went and read through the sequel, The Ask [...]
I’ve had many discussions with outstanding teachers around the country (Teachers of the Year, Milken Educators, NBCTs, and so forth). It always amazes me how few of the teachers being recognized for their accomplishments in the classroom can brag on the support of their administrators. Much more common are stories of subversion, sneaking around policies, [...]
When I went to mow the lawn the other day, the kids asked why I’d let the grass get so long. I told them it was so the elephants would have a place to hide, not really thinking about it. Of course, with a line like that, the kids wanted to know all about elephants [...]
When I started this blog in 2002, it was with the intention of it becoming a repository of links to stories I was interested in. It has evolved over the past eight years to become that and much else. While my weekly links roundups serve much the same purpose as the original story file, the [...]
Fideism (n): doctrine that knowledge depends on faith over reason. Fundeism (n): doctrine that places amusement above all. This will be my last Fun Friday update for this school year – they’ll pick up again in the fall, time permitting. Here are your links for this week:
Social:
Scenes from the Gulf – The Big Picture has [...]
I’m really enjoying the new Matt Maher album, Alive Again. A line from one song in particular (Flesh And Bone) has stuck with me:
I met a man who walked on water
Who wore His crown like a blue collar.
I met a man who treated children
Like they were ambassadors to the kingdom.
I wonder how often the church [...]
I originally signed on to Facebook a couple of years back because a friend told me I could find an old high school buddy through the site. Fair enough. Since then, I’ve reconnected with a couple of old friends, but not in any meaningful kind of way – just a few chats now and then. [...]
My district finds itself in a bit of a pickle finance-wise this year. Three factors have come together to create one of the toughest financial times this school district has faced.
The first is inability to raise our own funds. The Saskatchewan government last year announced that it was removing the ability of local school boards [...]
