Race to the Finish

Yesterday and today were crazy days, trying to get everything done before we go home. Yesterday I worked on my PBL lessons all day, as well as writing questions for 7-8 of Dan's Supreme Court videos. The Supreme Court timeline is going to be such a great tool for everyone's classroom. The Library of Congress documentary aired last night, and I think Mary Sue finished the study guide to go along with it. I came up with some fun alternative activities that I think are going to be added.

An act of God allowed a shoe that I *really* wanted to fit me in the only size available - 8! I haven't worn an 8 since... I'm not even sure. So it was quite an exciting day solely because I got these shoes (on sale):



Pam posted a few pictures from the conference from her camera, so I have a few of me doing my presentation and working with the educators.



Today was a big day, too. I came in early so that I could record my tutorial for the video library and Google maps for the C-SPAN classroom website. That was really fun, and the guy who set it up, Devo, was super nice. I also had a SUPER publicly embarrassing moment. This morning I fell asleep on the train. That wasn't a problem. What was a problem was that I woke up and there was only one guy left in my entire car - everyone had left. I got up quickly, dropped my phone, hit my head, and proceeded to stumble - twice - in the aisle. It was so crazy. I don't know if my foot fell asleep, or what happened, but the man definitely just sat and stared at me like "Why is this girl drunk at 8am?"

As far as my work today, I took Brian Lamb up on a challenge to teach an entire class using his Booknotes programming as the basis of the curriculum. I had to adapt it, but I was able to find clips for every week but 4 for both my American History classes. I think the interviews will give the kids some different perspectives, which could spark some interesting discussion, and often times I picked clips that showed popular culture or some other aspect that we might not otherwise get into. So I spent a chunk of yesterday and a good part of today sifting through all 811 episodes of Booknotes and applying them to my curriculum. I may not get it every week, but it's nice to have either way for enrichment purposes.

This morning we went to the Newseum. It was fantastic. Quite possibly my favorite museum in DC, but definitely top 3. The exhibits were fascinating. I found this wall display of free press rights throughout the world. Green = free press, Yellow = Partially free, and Red = Not free at all:



The next two pictures I cannot wait to use. The Newseum has 8 real pieces of the Berlin wall. I believe they said it is the largest display outside of Germany. I cannot think of a better way to illustrate the differences between East and West Berlin/Germany than these images:



I also had the opportunity to "sit in" on a Google Doc with the amazing IACoPi educators who met in Des Moines this week to IGNITE and start moving ahead with the project. I have to thank Monte and Erin for all the notes and tweets!

I was supposed to go to the Library of Congress tonight after work, but I got kind of head sick on the walk to/from the Newseum, so I had to miss that. I am feeling better, though, so hopefully tomorrow will be better. It rained tonight, so I'm hoping it cools down a little.

The rest of the week is just as busy, so stay tuned!