Long day….

Crazy crazy day!!! As many of you know today is Wednesday. 🙂 Which means we had a news broadcast today. The students I work with haven’t seemed to have caught on to the fact that if they put off doing their stories, It makes more work for us to do in a short amount of time. This week was especially frustrating for me because the kids didn’t have a broadcast last week, giving them extra time to work on their stories, and they still didn’t get anything done. Well, I take that back, I had about three of them get their stories done on time. So that left Monday for writing stories, and a late night last night for writing the script, getting images for the background of the live show, and doing a practice run.
That brings us to this morning. I had to get up early to go finish getting things ready for the broadcast, but I was really really tired, and had to drag myself out of bed at 7:00. I was hoping to be up earlier than that, but no such luck. I went over and picked up Kevin (one of GCI’s School Access employee’s who is here to help with VTC issues) and Leonard (a PolyCom employee here for the same thing) from Browns lodge where they were staying. Its a bit of a walk down to the district office, and it is a little chilly out, especially for Leonard who is visiting Alaska for the first time from California. I got into the office and made sure the computers were set up the correct way, and all the other little things you need to worry about before a live show. The kids started showing up around ten to eight in the morning all excited for the production. We scrabled with getting computers set up with the correct video clips, and got the script put onto the telprompting computer. By then it was getting close to time, and I got a tape put into the camera, and got the lights set up. Austen was getting the anchors placed in the virtual set, and making sure the chroma keying was working correctly. Hunter was double checking the video coming into the mixer, Cassandra and Nilson were queing up the video clips, Mia, Chara, and Kimberly were rehearsing the script, and Ben was getting ready to produce the show. At 8:30 A.M. Ben told everyone to be quiet, and gave the countdown 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and gave the signal for the show to begin. After a few minor audio issues, the show went off a success.
The rest of the day was crazy. Kevin, Leonard, and I did some VTC testing in the AM. We had some serious issues with Shishmaref, which took until 2:15 to fix. I then taught the Journalism Class to a couple students in Shish and a class full in Elim. That went alright. Its kind of difficult to teach over VTC. I guess its just different. Basically the rest of the day was filled with getting things ready for the broadcasting of wrestling and volleyball this weekend, and had one more meeting with the SBT kids. After everything was said and done, I got home around 7:00. Kind of a long day. Well, I had better get some sleep.

Hit the ground running!!!

So the first day back was as crazy as I thought it would be. I was supposed to have a meeting with the SBT kids, but only 3 the 20 or so showed up. The day went really quickly. I got some things squared away for the video conferences this week. Got a filing cabinet put in the studio (so I can have a little better documentation process of the students ILP’s (individualized learning plan). Lunch came awfully quickly which was nice. I got to come home and spend some time with Erin. After having a week of just hanging out with her, it seemed like I hadn’t seen her forever when I was gone this morning. So after lunch I found out that all the student broadcasts that had been published were not iPod Video compliant. So I re-exported the movies again, this time in the correct format. I really like the iPod videos. I was able to play with one, and think that they are cool enough to own. The video quality is amazing on them. If I had money I was trying to get rid of I think that’s what I would get next. So the afternoon went quick enough with the SBT kids showing up after their classes got out at 3:30. They all filtered in and informed me that they hadn’t done any work over the last two weeks, and that their stories were not finished like I had asked. So we rescheduled a meeting for Tomorrow morning at 8:00 A.M. where they are supposed to show up with their completed stories. We’ll see what we get. There are a lot more kids than before, so management is getting to be a little different. I am still not sure how many of them will be sticking it out for the early mornings, and the outside of school hours that are needed to make the show a success. By 5:00 most of them had filtered out promising to have their story done by the next day. A couple of students were heading over to the police station to get an interview about sobriety tests. They dropped off the camera at my house after the interview at about 7:00. It’s nice having students that are willing to put in the extra effort. So that left the rest of the evening to working on the journalism modules, hanging out with Erin, and getting a little dinner. Erin made Italian chicken, wild rice, and asparagus, with a little wine to wash it down. For all you reading my blog out there…. If you feel like sending me an iPod Video I wouldn’t complain. 🙂

Back in UNK

Well we made it back safely. The flights were pretty uneventful. It was a beautiful day out in Valdez when we left. Katie snapped a picture of the mountains as we were walking out to the plane. I am hoping she will get a chance to upload that to the gallery for us all to see. Our flight to Anchorage went really quickly, and Era was nice enough to check all of our bags on through to our final destinations. So all we had to do was go and check in for our next flight with our respective airlines. Katie was flying with Continental, and Erin and I were flying the trusty Pen Air. After we got all that squared away, we went to Chili’s for a little lunch. We visited for a while, and then decided find a place to plug in our laptops. Katie wanted a couple things from my machine, and I wanted a couple things from hers, so we firewired up while Erin was working on the heel of the Christmas stalking she is knitting. Its amazing how she makes those knitting projects turn into real things. I could never do that. In the time it took us to do that, Erin managed to lose her wallet in her backpack. 🙂 Its amazing how that tiny backpack she has can make things disappear like it does. I even dug around in there, and couldn’t find it. So she went back to Chili’s and looked around there with out any luck. When she returned she checked her backpack again, and found it down in the bottom of one of the compartments. So that was a little exciting there for a while. It was then about time for Katie to get through screening to her gate, so we walked her down to the gate, and head down stairs to the Pen Air “gate”.

We are now back in Unalakleet. We actually have to wake up early tomorrow. The days of sleeping in have come to a close. 🙁 This week is going to be pretty busy. I have to get the journalism modules up in moodle, schedule some video conferences, work with the student broadcast team (SBT) members to prepare them for their upcoming broadcast this week, and get ready to broadcast the volleyball tournament this weekend. I think its time to head to bed if I want to get a decent nights rest for the coming week of dressing nice and working hard.

The Last Night

Well the Thanksgiving week is coming to an end. It is amazing how fast time flies some times. Today was nice and realaxing. Erin and I hung around the house while everyone esle went out and about around town. Aron, Robin and Mark all went up to the pass to do a little snowboarding. They were only able to get one run in an hour because the wind was howling at a brisk 40 miles an hour. I guess the visabilty was a little questionable. Mom and dad took off for a little snowshoeing and Katie went to the library to work on a 10 page paper she has due next week. I don’t konw if I should be taking breaks like this. I am getting a little too used to sleeping in and not having to do anything. I hope I can get back into the swing of things in a timely fashion when I get back to Unalakleet. I will be a fast and furious week with the wrestling and volleyball tournaments coming up next weekend. I get to fly to Stebbins with a few students and PK to broadcast the volleyball games live to the district. At the same time Randy and John will be broadcasting the regional wrestling tournament to the other districts in Alaska that are sending schools to the regional tournament. The following Monday I am heading back to Anchorage to work on setting up a course BSSD will be conjointly running with Southwest Region School District. I guess we are going to start Elf up here in a little bit, so I should run.

Thanksgiving

Sitting around with friends and family. The Holdens drove down from Fairbanks today. Its nice to hang out with them talking about old times. Mark Standley and his two kids Aaron and Robin will be getting in sometime this evening. It’s going to be a bit of a full house. My friend Josh Steadman also came down from Fairbanks. It’s fun to hang out with him. Living up in Unalakleet makes it a little difficult to hang out with old friends.

I am pretty excited about getting everyone set up with blogs, and the photo gallery. I hope people get a chance to look around at our family pictures, and read a little into our lives. I hope it is something that you find interesting. My future posts will hopefully be a little more exciting to read.