Summer - So Close and Yet So Far!

This weekend is Memorial Day. It conjures up images of parades, barbeques (most definitely), family and friends, warmer days, and most importantly, the near arrival of summer.

Today we will BBQ (although I've been grillin for a few weeks now - any excuse to fire it up). Tomorrow is the parade, and we have been going the past few years to make it. If I look at the calendar, I have five weeks left. Wow, does it feel weird to say that. Our class has been through so many challenges this year, and of course the barrage of state testing that is given to the fourth grade.

Now, I sit here with my mind on the 'summer fun', but I still have much to do, and I cannot run late. I have a health unit to finish, a poetry unit, finish a book that we are reading, a science unit, two field trips, and don't even mention the end of the year wrap up stuff. It will get done, as it gets done every year, but it can be a daunting task at times.

What's in store for me this summer? I will start out working on the district's Science curriculum, and I have 2 summer sessions of school as well. I would like to do some traveling with the family, and we are planning on doing a minor facelift of our kitchen as well (ourselves). I am finishing up the upstairs house projects, and I would like to enjoy my car hobby as well.

Two months sounds like a good deal of time, but before you know it, it is mid August and you are back in your classroom getting ready for another group of minds and hearts to challenge and embrace. It never gets old. It never gets boring, and it never stays the same. We are dynamic as we want to be, but to remain 100% the same is almost impossible.

If it ain'r fun, it shouldn't be done...

I started playing with digital video in my Educational Technology program. I firmly believe that playing and exploration are some of the best ways to learn anything, and I usually take that route when trying to learn things myself. I took our school digital camcorder and started videoing my students to use in a cute short movie.

Our school's Technology Integration Facilitator and teacher of teachers Noel Forte quickly came on board to help. Noel has used quite a few video applications, but most of all she is an absolutely wonderful person to work with. Looking at the two of us talking about what we could do, you would think that we were the elementary school children. We talked about effects, transitions, scripts, acting, music, etc, and the great thing was that our discussion went far beyond the one video that we were filming at the time. We were writing out a digital wish list of sorts - thinking "What can we do?", "What would we like to do?" and "What CAN'T we do?"
We even got our principal involved, as well as a few other teachers. Of course, yours truly prefers to be on the side of the camera opposite the lens.

I finished the video today, and the kids loved it. It makes me laugh every time I watch it, but I learned something myself. It wasn't made for any specific technical competency (although I did learn how to reverse video!). It was that we must have fun. When I do my best work, it is because I am intrinsically motivated in a quest to excel. Nobody can get me more invested in a task or project than I myself can, no matter who they are. I was fortunate enough to enjoy what we were doing despite it being challenging as well as new and intimidating. My kids were also very much into it, and I wonder if my excitement was contagious as it was visible how happy I was to be doing this.

If it ain't fun, don't do it. Does something that is labor-intensive always have to be laborious?