L.A. Neighborhoods: Leimert Park

It's summer, school is out, the temperatures are in the 90s, and I get to do one of the things I love doing the most: exploring the city of Los Angeles and its many different neighborhoods that compose the core of what it means to be an Angeleno.
This evening, I took a short drive down Crenshaw Blvd. to where it crosses King Blvd. Nestled snugly within the confines of what is pejoratively known as "South Central", the community known as Leimert Park exhibits a regional character that is rarely found in other LA neighborhoods I've been in. As I cross 43rd St. and the smell of Phillip's BBQ reaches my nose, I immediately pull over and get in line for an amazing beef rib dinner, complete with macaroni salad and cole slaw. Wow...amazing. Afterward, I walked over to the park (the actual Leimert Park) and sat in the waning hours of sunlight as a djembe ensemble echoed their rhythms and beats in the evening air. As I sat, I observed the sights and sounds of mothers walking their children through the park, bystanders joining in the music of the drummers with dance, at least two entrepreneurs hawking the latest bootleg CDs and DVDs, all with the droning hum and bustle of the busy Crenshaw Blvd. in the background. The park, the neighborhood, remind me that Los Angeles is a city of communities, rather than a city of isolated individuals as it generally feigns itself to be. Yet this is not the first time I've been to Leimert Park. I actually considered moving into this neighborhood three years ago, and if ever forced to move, I would definitely consider it again.

Summer Freedom

So this is what it feels like to be finished with school! My friend Kent finished his first year in L.A. Unified today with his 7th grade history students! We celebrated by going to eat at a wonderful deep dish pizza place called Masa (for those of you who live in L.A., definitely check this place out)! We then decided to go check out the new action flick Live Free or Die Hard, which was thoroughly silly, but a lot of fun, especially for a Friday night! Hopefully this weekend I'll get much more accomplished than I got done today!

Friday vs. Monday

I was sent this video in an email today, and I thought to myself, "Not only is this hilarious, but this is wonderful because I don't even have to worry about this until Monday, August 6th!"
(with all apologies to those of you who may not get your summers off...)

Back in Los Angeles

After an amazing conference, I am back in Los Angeles! I'm looking forward to enjoying the rest of my summer, which finally feels as if it is truly beginning! I have to go back to Cochran in early August for professional development, so I've got a lot to cram into a small amount of time. Some things I'm looking forward to this summer are L.A. County Jury Duty, being a groomsman in my friend and colleague Rustum and Stephanie's wedding, and perhaps (I'm about 83% sure about this) road tripping the West Coast, with stops in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. However, on the more immediate horizon, tomorrow I get to celebrate with my friend Kent on completing his year at Carver Middle School in LAUSD!

Turner Field

As you can see, tonight I finally attended a baseball game at the stadium home to the Atlanta Braves, a team that I have grown up learning to despise. From 1991 to 2005, the Braves have won the National League East Division (which means that my team, the Mets, have not). However, the tide is now turning and my Mets won the NL East last year and are going to do the same this year!
Anyway, it was fun going to the game, seeing a new stadium (which was pretty cool) and enjoying a huge part of Atlanta. As much as I hate the Braves, I've got to say that I love baseball and had a great time at the game. [It actually wasn't much of a game. The Braves won 13-0 over the Washington Nationals in less than dramatic fashion].

A Guest Blog

[The following is a guest blog from my friend and colleague Raul Olivas, who has been in Atlanta for the past few days as well].

Hello world, as previously mentioned, I am a friend AND colleague of Kyle's and I'm ok with it (That's what my therapist said to tell myself when I feel I'm ready to snap). I am honored to share my thoughts with you all, so here goes. I have learned many things out here in Georgia...like, humidity is BAD!!! I sure have a whole new appreciation for the weather in Los Angeles, since I have gone through more shirts on this trip than I would like to account for. This is my first time out to the East Coast, and I'm having such a difficult time adjusting to this time zone. Fortunately for me, I have had the opportunity to see things I never thought I would. Earlier in the day, Kyle and I took a tour of the Cable News Network (Also known as CNN). I was amazing to see how much work goes into putting a show together, which is broadcasted throughout the country and many parts of the world. Well, that's enough writing for me (I'm a Math teacher at heart). Thank you all for reading my post.

Wednesday: Session 2

For my final session of NECC 2007, I attended Mathematics Model Classroom with Clickers and Whiteboards. Interestingly, this session was broadcast on Georgia Public Broadcasting, which we had to sign a release form for. He used SmartBoards (which we have at school) and wireless response devices to show us how he used student responses in his classroom.
Honestly, this information was nothing new, and I have myself used this technology in my classroom. What was cool was the fact that he then introduced us to Geometer's Sketchpad, an amazing software program that my kids can use to actually see and envision mathematics. While primarily being used for geometry, I can still see this being used for algebra as well!
Anyway, that's pretty much it for my blogging sessions here at NECC. I promise this blog will get more interesting and less technical for those of you who may be patiently lurking, without any vested interest in educational technology! Thanks so much for all your commenting so far!

Wednesday Session 1.5

In an informal session following my early departure from the previous session, I was able to have an active discussion with Adam Frey, the creator of wikispaces.com. He showed me how to sign up as a user for wikispaces (complete access is available for teachers). My idea was to use wikis as a forum for collaboration among the math teachers. We could use it for posting lesson plans, activities, student work, standards, and other ideas that teachers have. We've always talked about creating a database of resources for teachers to contribute to and to gather information from. A good example of this was another site that I was directed to here, a site that was shown as one of the Tuesday sessions -- Math Curriculum Topics.

Wednesday: Session 1

Uh-oh. One minute from beginning, it looks as if my first chosen session, Interactive School Mathematics: A Completely Computer-Based Interactive Approach to Middle School Mathematics is going to be nothing more than a sales pitch...I'm leaving :)

Fireworks!!!

After returning from dinner on the MARTA (Atlanta's transportation system), I retired to my hotel room only to be interrupted by a fireworks show occurring in the Centennial Olympic Park. The show was amazing and you can see the Google video here.

Dinner on them

This evening, one of LAUSD's largest contracts is with Arey Jones, who sells us all our computers. As a thank you gift, the company treated those of us from LAUSD that were here at NECC. We ate dinner at the Atlanta Fish Market, an amazing seafood restaurant in the Buckhead neighborhood. If anything, I was most impressed by the giant sculpture of a fish out front. Even the camera can barely frame the entire statue! It was great to finally sit down with our entire school team and here about everybody's conference experience. It was particularly helpful to talk with our technology guru at the school, Mr. Gonzalez, who is even more excited than I am to begin implementing some of the newest open source and web 2.0 technology!

The Bootleg Elevator

True story: Heading downstairs for dinner last night in our hotel, my buddy Raul has a brilliant idea of using another elevator that is much closer to his room than the main elevators located in the center of the building. You guessed it -- it turned out to be the Omni's maintenance elevator...which I guess goes to show that even buildings with shiny, glossy exteriors have that messy and dank part of them.....I guess you had to be there... :)

Tuesday: Session 3

For the final session on Tuesday, I've chosen to attend Curriculum Wiki: Open Source + Open Content = Digital Curriculum. For those counting, I will be live blogging this session (mostly to see what this type of activity does in terms of style, grammar, etc...).

So far, Jim has given us an overview of the similarities and differences between open source and open content, as well as a list of supported software. It's pretty much over my head.

The website curriculumwiki.org is a site designed to integrate both open source and open content. This seems like a cool place to post content-based student activities for students to access and use. Any user can edit the page, etc... What's even better is that curriculumwiki saves EVERY version of the website. You can also link to a specific version rather than the default (current) version.

My initial thought is that this would not necessarily be of great value in my classroom, but it would seem to be a fantastic resource in terms of developing a content curriculum with fellow math teachers at Cochran! Rather than working individually in our own classrooms, it seems as if this would be a great place to develop content as a department (or as a school)! In fact, you can even limit access to invites only! [note to self:talk to Alex and see if he can/will do this for us].

The handout from today's presentation is here.

Tuesday: Session 2

On to my second session, Open Source Blogging Solutions for Publishing Student Writing. Our presenter, Christopher Craft (christophercraft.com), so far has been the best I have seen of the conference.
He showed us four open-source blogging options for our classrooms, Wordpress, Wordpress Multi-User, DrupalED, and Moodle. He has used all of these resources in his 6th grade classroom and posts his blog online at crucialthought.com.
Chris didn't overload us with a lengthy PowerPoint, but rather spoke to the issues that we were most likely concerned with. Chris was obviously extremely knowledgeable, and yet was able to communicate in a way that really helped me see the value in classroom blogging (particularly through one of these sites)!

Tuesday: Session 1

It's Tuesday morning and I'm at Blogging for Understanding of Universal Lesson Design. As you can see, I sat at the side of the room because that's where the electrical outlets were :). They are currently presenting their blog on how they engaged their participants (teachers) in their classrooms and engaged them with other teachers across the country. Their excellent PowerPoint presentation was extremely thorough and gives a great set of guidelines for using blogs in a classroom environment. While their "classroom environment" was teacher education, I can very easily see this applied in my own classroom in the fall!

Tuesday Morning at NECC

So it's now Tuesday morning at NECC 2007. I'm looking forward to a full day of workshops, exhibitions, and panels. This should be great! It's warm and muggy here in Atlanta, but so far it's a pretty cool city although I can't say I've ventured out very far into the surrounding neighborhood. Later this evening, I'm headed up to a neighborhood called Buckhead for a sponsored dinner with some huge company that LAUSD likes to shell out money to. See you all later!

Monday: Session 3

The third and final session for Monday was Funding Your Dreams: Grant Writing in the Information Age, presented by a very enthusiastic technology coordinator of a school district in Louisiana.
Apparently, there is a RIDICULOUS amount of money out there for educators. Our presenter did two fantastic things for us. First, she took us step-by-step through the grant writing process, from the perspective of someone who reads grants and makes decisions whether to approve or deny them. Second, she gave us an online list of dozens of grant providers for us to sift through! After her session, I'm extremely enthusiastic about the possibility of writing for and earning funds for technology in my classroom!

Monday: Session 2

So session 2 today was entitled Math A-Z: Applets to Zeta. This second session was definitely not as useful as the first. The presenter presented too many and too brief tidbits of information in an almost random and haphazard way. Her PowerPoint presentation was slightly helpful in that it gives math teachers a list of resources to further explore, but the presentation itself was too spotty, too random, and too surface-level to be much of any value to me. The best part was afterward when the staff at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) brought out the cookies for the conference attendees to snack on!

Monday: Session 1

So my first session today, Building Student Success with Effective Math Technology Tools, was fantastic. Basically, two Florida researches presented us with a barrage of useful math technology tools that could be very easily implemented in the classroom. Their online resource guide gives great examples of such technology from Fastt Math (sic), which I mentioned in a previous blog post, to the idea of downloading free SmartBoard Software onto student computers so they can use the visual manipulatives in class. Great session! I give it two thumbs four stars!!!

The Robots are coming!!!

So I'm here at NECC 2007 and about to attend my second session of the day. Right outside the meeting room is a group of students who have created robots in some sort of robotics class! If nothing else, this is really cool! My roommate Mitch, has done something similar with his students at a Green Dot school in Los Angeles! Way to go robots!!!

Monday Morning

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It's Monday morning here in Atlanta, it's hot, and it's the first day of NECC 2007. After a breakfast of ham, eggs, and a croissant (what might have cost over $10 in Los Angeles only cost us $5 here!!!), Raul and I head down to the exhibition floor. It reminds me of my days attending the New York State Fair, where vendors on both sides of you are barraging you with offers to spend money -- only this time instead of $1 for a chance to win a Teddy Bear, it's $8,500 for a site license for the latest educational software.
I've only probably seen about 10% of the exhibits, but most so far I'm generally uninterested in. However, one did strike my eye. Fastt Math (sic) seems to be a cool way to help my kids really become fluent in the foundational basics of math, a lack of which really inhibit their ability to succeed in my algebra class. Other items that stood out were wall mounted LCD projector mounts (although my colleague Raul joked that those are just begging for kids to do chin-ups on).
Right now I'm headed to the session about using math technology effectively in the classroom. I'll let you know how it goes!

Arriving in Atlanta

The following is a true story: I grew up in a household where the news network of choice was CNN. I can recall watching the Persian Gulf War, the OJ Simpson verdict, and Hurricane Andrew coverage all on this network. Being a young individual who didn't care much for news (at all), I grew a general distaste for the network.
Now, over a decade later, I find myself staying in the Hotel of the CNN Center, where all of that wonderful news coverage of my youth was broadcast from!
Anyway, I've safely arrived in Atlanta. By the time we checked in, it was about 10:30 and my colleague Raul and I were starving. Luckily, we were directed to The Landmark Diner, a local 24-hour greasy spoon eatery where our appetites were satiated by some amazing buffalo wings, onion rings, and a fantastic mushroom burger.
Off to sleep now...tomorrow we begin NECC 2007!

Keeping Track of Blogs

My second post (composed all of 20 minutes later) is for those of you who may or may not have heard of this amazing way to keep track of your favorite news, stories, videos, and blogs (hint-hint). This is very much like creating your own daily newspaper with whatever content you desire!
The video above explains this very simply and effectively! To subscribe to my blog, click the text at the bottom of the page that says "Subscribe to Posts".

Summer 2007

Finally! After 10 longs months of teaching, summer is finally here! As much as I'd like to say that I took my first two days of summer to sleep in, this didn't happen. Yesterday, a good friend of mine, Eric, hosted a barbecue/fund raiser for his summer mission trip to Bali. He, and a team of other from Mosaic, will be serving a group of missionaries who are already in Southeast Asia as they rest and recuperate from their work. The BBQ was tons of fun and they raised almost $2000 for their trip!
Today, I fly off to Atlanta to attend NECC 2007, an educational technology conference. It should be fun and informative. I'm looking forward to spending some time perusing the various forms of ways to implement technology in my classroom next year. Plus, I'm looking forward to seeing the Atlanta Braves lose to the Washington Nationals either Monday or Wednesday, thus allowing the New York Mets to increase their ever widening lead in the NL East.
Anyway, I am starting this blog as a way to keep track of myself this summer. I'd love to hear from any or all of you so feel free to post comments to anything that gets updated here!
Peace