Priceless

Breakfast at nameless cafe attached to a gas station at a crossroads in western Ontario: $16.58 CDN. A campsite at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park, $29.50 CDN. Premium gas @ $6.00 per gallon in Upsala (in the middle of nowhere)Ontario with 10 miles left in the reserve tank: Priceless.

Doors with Grandmother Faces

Day two: wet and beautiful, at least the Superior views. Our destination was Wawa, Ontario and we were early enough to have ice cream and pop corn in the Cooper General Store and dinner at the North if 17 restaurant before we checked into the Mystic Isle Motel. The Mystic is above 17 south of Wawa... when I say above I mean up a sand road about 100 meters (note metric reference). I hit a soft spot in the road and did a bit of off-road fish-tailing before hitting the top, Tomto profitted from my error and made the top without incident. Once at the top we found a'restored' 40's era motel with a log exterior and even log walls on the inside. A German lady was at the desk and when we inquired abot discounts we got the equivalent of, "You vill pay the price or ypu vill not sty". We paid and stayed. Very clean and orderly as you'd expect from a German Motel. The flags of many nations were flying in the considerable breeze but that didn't keep the determined mosquitos from buzzing in our faces as we unloaded. By the time we were settled the np vacancy sign was lit and I was grateful for Tomto's foresight in reserving a room on the internet before we left.

Oh, The Grandmothers. In downtown which looks a lot like other northern North American towns... lots of closed storefronts, gritty streets, and other evidence of harsh winters and a less than booming economy, there stands a most remarkable display of public art. Dozens of used hollow core doors are mounted vertically every 3 meters or so, attached to the side walk near the curb with steel stakes. On each side if each door is a work of art depicting someones grandmother. Each doorside has a life-size Xerox copy of grandmas face and some artistic representation of a body...one had a real grandma dress with real sneakeras at the bottom, another an apron, another clothing made of newspaper pages. Every dorr had a writtin story of the grandmother, "Grandma came to Wawa from Nova Scotia in 1934 and had 8 children..." Some boards had multiple photos showing the subject over the years. Some were oviously the work fo young children, oters the work of artistic adults.... all celebrated the obvious affection the artist hold for their grandmas. The overall effect of the display was to make one forget the grittyness of a struggling town and to see only the love and beauty of its residents.

Day One: And then some other stuff happened...

Tomto and I met at the McDonalds at routes 36 and I71 at 9AM. We talked for a while, for some reason neither of us were itching to hit the road for real. Once we got underway we got trapped in a traffic jam in Delaware... the main road in was closed so all traffic was routed over a secondary street. So much for detailed planning. US 50 is called the loneliest road but the road to Toledo, routes 23, 15 and I75 qualify as the "boringest" roads, therefore nothing to report. I475 around Toledo dumps us in Michigan, the only sign that we had in the state was a speed limit sign announcing 70 MPH, and of course the total absence of cars built overseas. More boring highways, we elected to take 223 to 127 which as Don Jameson promised was less crowded than 23 or 75 but still boring. Road kill included a number of deer and a yellow cat. Lunch at Wendy's in Jackson where we did chat with a couple other riders, one seemed impressed that such old guys were actually riding to Alaska. He asked where we started and when and when we said Columbus, today he seemed somewhat skeptical that we were actually going to Alaska.

The other rider was on a 1975 Honda CB 360, a close relative to the Honda 350's Tom and I had in the late 60's. He gave us a brief history of the bikes (his Dad had purchased two bikes in '75 and the bike he was riding was the remains of the two original). His stupid brother had run the orange one without oil so the blue one was left with some orange parts. And with that he was away like a flash.

Days Inn in Clare. Not a bar in walking distance, picked up a six pack of Molson blue to get us in the mood (I wonder if the labels in Canada say "Imported"? )Well, off to dinner and the Dollar Store. Into the great Canadian North tomorrow.

After Midnight

Am I excited or what? Couldn't sleep last night and tonight I am still up at 12:30 AM typing this post to test the email posting capabilities of Blogger. If all works as it should this email will become a blog post. Should make posting from the road a lot easier with the little XO and its tiny keyboard and minimalist browser. The bike is packed the maps are cut and labeled, I've mutilated the Milepost cutting out just the pages related to our part of the Alaskan Highway. Hope to report again when we reach Clare, MI tomorrow PM. Tomto and I are meeting up near Delaware today at 9 and we will have a 300+ mile day ahead of us. The weather looks great and I'm ready to go.

PS Had to cut and paste to get this into the blog... the email function does not work as I had hoped :-(

The Long Ride

The Blog is shifting gears. Up to this point I've been talking education, now it's motorcycle time! Tomorrow Tomto and I are heading off to Alaska on the Beemers. Alaska will be our 49th state, we've bagged all the lower 48 since we started the quest in 2002, the last two (MD &DE) and Washington, DC Tomto picked up this spring. We're headed to Clare, MI tomorrow, from there we will cross into Ontario on Friday. Our route takes us across the top of Lake Superior to Winnipeg, then to Saskatoon, to Edmonton and then we pick up the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek. The only firm date we have to make is August 11 in Haines, AK where we will take the Alaska Marine Highway ferry south to Bellingham, WA. We'll split up for a few days and join back up in Nevada to ride the "Lonliest Road" US 50 back to Ohio. The whole trip should take about a month.

I will attempt to add to this blog via my little XO (the One Laptop Per Child computer). Failing that I'll email Loretta and ask her to forward to as many of you as she can.

Got to finish the maps. Stay tuned.

What I've Learned in EDUC 675

There should be a word in the English language that combines TEACHING and LEARNING into just one word because I don't think you can have one without the other. Case in point: I've learned more stuff than I can count this term and much of it comes from your projects, assignments and questions. I'd like to dwell on just one example in this post and then attach a piece of work that is the result of a student comment during one of our face-2-face meetings.

Danica and some other women, as some of you may recall, were giving me (and I think other men) a hard time about remembering birthdays and other things that some guys don't pay as much attention to as they might. Danica suggested somehow, I'm fuzzy on the details, that one might solicit birthday wishes from friends of one's wife and put them into a Powerpoint presentation and give them as a birthday gift. The idea stuck with me and I did just that... sent an email to Loretta's friends (I secretly copied her email list) and asked for birthday wishes, stories, photos, etc. The response was overwhelming. If bandwidth allows I'll post the resulting video here.

There are two points I'd like to make about this incident: 1) I learned from you all, and acted on what I learned. Students of all ages know things and have experienced things that we teachers have not and can benefit from learning. As a result of the project suggested in EDUC 675 I pushed myself to learn more about Powerpoint, iPhoto, converting .ppt docs into movies, adding a sound track, converting the whole thing to a DVD format, and burning a DVD that I'll send to our kids to prove that their mother is indeed a remarkable woman (see cow jumping over the moon cartoon).

2) On a whole other level/topic I learned that we all need to tell the folks who we care about and the folks who care about us how they have affected who we are. I've come to think about the project of gathering comments about Loretta as a "Eulogy For The Living". Too often we save the best for the last. That is we save all the good things we have stored up to say about significant others until after they are gone. By gone I don't necessarily mean 'dead' but gone from being an everyday person in our lives.

Let me suggest sending a note or email right now to a person who you admire or who has had an impact on your life. Be that person a parent, a student, a teacher, a preacher, a friend or a mentor... let them know they made a difference, made you think, made you laugh or made you the person you are today. If you get really inspired I'd be real happy to share with you the process that I used in making Loretta's Happy 16th Birthday video.

Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne Effect, that is a short-term improvement caused by observing worker performance, was most likely observed last week when I took my little RCA EZ201 video recorder to the class where my daughter Sarah is doing her student teaching. Sarah warned me that this particular class was her most lethargic and unresponsive. She was attempting to wake her students up with a role play in which Sarah and her cooperating teacher played the roles of talk show hosts and the students were guests on a show examining the points of view of parents, experts, and those who profit from the Barbie Doll culture. The students had assigned rolls and researched points of view about how Barbie has impacted the view/self perception of women in todays culture.

Not to take anything away from Sarah's preparation or her execution (there is no substitute for good teaching) of the plan but I observed what seemed to be a rapt attention to the camera and to what was happening on the 'stage'. I can't be sure but my experience tells me that students are quite aware of being recorded and that being recorded is somehow different from being merely observed. In today's media rich world there seems to be a pervasive sense of 'quiet on the set' as cameras roll.

The Hawthorne Effect as its definition states is a 'temporary' improvement. Therefore, setting up a permanent camera to watch big-brother-like probably will not improve engagement in the long run. However, occasional use of video or still cameras as well as other 'gimmicks' to capture student attention is probably a valid and useful teaching technique. Once student engagement is established it may be easier to maintain.

Just some thoughts on using techno-gear in the classroom.