Our Great California Adventure

We've spent a day and half in California so far and it has been fantastic! Last night we spent the evening at Downtown Disney. We ate supper at the House of Blues and Gerald bought a great bowling bowling shirt at the merchandise shop. We also checked out the other shops and restaurants.

Today we spent the majority of the day at Disneyland. We had a great time on all the attractions! We started the day on Space Mountain and it was darker and faster than I expected, but still really fun. In Tomorrowland we rode on Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters and Star Tours. Then we moved over to Fantasyland and rode the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, Pinocchio's Daring Journey and Snow White's Scary Adventure. Then we went to Frontierland and rode on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. We finished the afternoon by watching the parade on Main Street.

This evening we went on Pirates of the Carribean and Indiana Jones' Adventure. They were both really great, even though I got drenched at Pirates of the Carribean! We also watched the fireworks tonight and completed the evening with a ride on It's a Small World.

Tomorrow we are going to use our early admission to the park which means we need to be at the gate before 7:00 am. We are hoping to get in line for Finding Nemo Submarine Adventure first to avoid the horrendous line up we saw today. Then we will see all the attractions we missed today and take in some shows.

Wendy's Yard

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. I wanted to read it slowly to savour the final installment, but I got worried about spoilers so I read it really quickly on Saturday and Sunday. I enjoyed the book, but I was disappointed in the epilogue. I wish J.K. Rowling had ended the boook with Harry, Hermione and Ron in Dumbledore's office. I preferred it when their futures were left up to the reader's imagination as opposed to explained in the epilogue. I imagine that she wrote the epilogue to end the possibility of another installment of the Harry Potter books. She has been firm about not writing more books, and the inclusion of the epilogue really finishes the story.

The Harry Potter books have been a wonderful gift to me and to readers around the world. J.K. Rowling is a masterful writer and she has the ability to tranport the reader right into the wizarding world. When you are reading the books, you are in the places that she is describing, you are experiencing all the emotions and adventures right along with the characters. I have not read any other author with such an impressive ability to create and sustain another world. I am so glad that I've read all of the books.

SSWP Concludes!

The South Saskatchewan Writing Project concluded today. The theme we selected is Writing Lasts, Writing Transforms, Writing Re-Visions. I think it is a good theme because it sums up our experience in the project. I started graduate studies because I wanted a tranformative learning experience, but I was beginning to doubt that I would ever find it until I participated in this course. This class really changed my thinking about teaching and learning. I think that Sandra accomplished her goal of having us reconstruct our understanding by overloading us with a flood of information and expectations. I certainly believe that my understanding of language and learning is transformed, not merely modified.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

So, we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Friday evening. I thought that the movie was pretty good, if a bit superficial. It lacked a certain suspense that makes movie goers sit on the edge of their seat. The outcome was pretty obvious throughout the whole movie. I prefer it if there is some doubt about the resolution of the events, as opposed to a foregone conclusion. I would have liked to have been more fully engaged in the struggles and celebrations of the characters during the movie. I realize that I already know what happens in the story because I have read the book and the ones that follow, but I try to treat the books and the movies separately and enjoy each for their gifts.

On that note, the final book, Harry Potter the Deathly Hallows, will be released on Saturday, July 21st at 12:00 am. I plan to pick up my copy at 8:00 am and then spend a good portion of the day engrossed in the book. I am so looking forward to reading for pleasure! It will be a wonderful treat.

The Taste of Summer

Tomorrow we will eat the first tomato from our Italian garden! Garden fresh tomatoes taste like summer sunshine. Their texture is absolutely perfect, and they have just the right balance of flesh to fruit. My mouth is watering with the anticipation of tasting the sweet juices!

Our tomatoes are growing extremely well, thanks to a great deal of watering and fertilizing from Gerald. If early indications are accurate, it promises to be a bountiful year for the red beauties. However, our herbs aren't fairing as well. They started off very slowly so we moved them to shadier spot and that seems to have affected them positively. It will likely be another two weeks before we can harvest any herbs.

SSWP

So, we are past the halfway mark of the South Saskatchewan Writing Project. I can't believe that we are closer to the end of the course than the beginning!

Tonight I completed my Book Review and my Personal Writing. As expected, I am more satisfied with the review than the writing, but I am prepared to hand both in to Sandra tomorrow. I also updated the SSWP wiki to include the concept map for the Book Review and the final draft of the assignment. When I started drafting the review I wasn't cognizant of writing on the wiki , so I just carried on in Word and copied the final version onto the wiki. I guess that I won't use that assignment as an example of tracking the history of revisions using wikispaces! (Do you write in or on a wiki? I need to find that out so that I can use the correct preposition.)

Tomorrow in class Sandra is going to give a lecture on assessment. I think that will be interesting and useful. The next two days represent a shift in responsibility for the course content from the instructor to the students. From now on a great deal of our time will be absorbed with Interactive Presentations, writing response groups on Inquiry Papers and journal entries. I worry that I am exhausted of writing ideas and abilities, but I will persevere.

Gliffy

Tonight, as a part of my summer to plan to play with Web 2.0 tools, I used Gliffy to create an outline for my Book Review assignment for the SSWP. I am satisfied with the way it turned out and I think that I will include Gliffy in my Interactive Presentation with my classmates.

I found that the program operated a bit slowly for my taste, but I read that it works best with Macromedia Flash 9, so I think that I will check to make sure that is the version I am using currently. Other than that, I was pleased with the functionality of the program and I look forward to sharing it with others!

Breakthrough!

After a great deal of sweat and tears I've composed a piece of personal writing that is pleasing to me. I prepared a memoir about some of my strongest recollections from travelling. It is mostly descriptive language about the places that I have been, but I tied it together with why the moments are important. I am looking forward to sharing my piece with my writing response group this week.

I spent the rest of my time this weekend reading and writing for the SSWP. Now, I have more background knowledge about teaching writing and I feel like I am better able to participate in class. However, I am getting concerned about the timeline for the rest of the assignments. I will need to devote most of the next week to the preparation of my Book Review, Interactive Presentation and Inquiry Paper. I think I would like to continue my focus on technology through this graduate course so I am planning to concentrate my work for the Interactive Presentation and the Inquiry Paper on technology related topics. I am thinking about the title of Writing Processes with Web 2.0 Tools for my Interactive Presentation.

Panic!

I am supposed to be creating a piece of personal writing for the SSWP. It should have been ready to share today and it won't be ready to share tomorrow, so it looks like Friday is the ultimate deadline. I am having a great deal of trouble getting started. I can't select a topic, I haven't determined a useful purpose, I don't know the audience and I haven't even begun to think about format. I am not sure that I have ever written just for the sake of writing so without these advance organizers I am really struggling. Robert, our facilitator in the project, gave me a number of good suggestions to get started and Sandra, our instructor, gave me Nancie Atwell's Lessons That Change Writers. Between those two sources I should be able to get started on something that is acceptable to me and marginally interesting to my classmates. Wish me luck!

Kiran Ahluwalia

Tonight we went to see Kiran Ahluwalia at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Kiran is an Indo -Canadian singer who performs two distinct styles of vocal music: ghazals and Punjabi folk songs. Her music caught my attention when it was featured on several different CBC radio programs. I really appreciated the haunting melodies of the ghazals. Many of them were composed in a minor key which is quite unfamiliar to my western tuned ears. In sharp contrast the light hearted Punjabi folk songs had the crowd clapping and singing along. I also enjoyed watching the band members during the concert. It was obvious that all of them are fabulous musicians in their own right and Kiran's compositions and arrangements allowed each to shine. We picked up the CD for $20 and I already loaded it onto my iPod. I am looking forward to revisiting Kiran's intriguing music many times over the summer.

South Saskatchewan Writing Project

Today I started the South Saskatchewan Writing Project with Sandra Falconer-Pace and twelve classmates. My impressions of the first day lead me to believe that the class will be both engaging and exhausting. We have to complete daily journal entries, one piece of personal writing, two book talks, an interactive presentation and an inquiry paper. Between the SSWP and this blog my writing fluency will certainly improve!

Guitar Hero Has Arrived!

Guitar Hero for PS2 has arrived at our house! We picked it up at Best Buy on Saturday and Gerald has played about 10 hours so far. His best score is 80 000. Gerald's nephews Mario and Daniel helped him figure it out on Saturday night and then Lane and Danielle played with him on Canada Day. I think it will occupy a lot of his time this month while I am busy taking my class.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog about the summer of 2007! This blog is an place for me to chronicle and share the events of what promises to be pretty exciting summer. It is also an opportunity for me experiment with the processes and tools of blogging.