There’s No Place Like Nome….

With NYO finishing, my travels brought me to Nome.  I am here for the OS Help Desk Certification that BSSD is jointly putting on in conjunction with Southwest Region School District, and to help with the gifted and talented camp.  The help desk kids are staying at the NACTEC dorm, which I visited for the first time today.  The facility is very nice.  They have bedrooms, common rooms, and a kitchen.  The students are responsible for all of their own cooking and cleaning outside of their classwork. So its a good experience for them. The GT kids are staying at the Aurora Inn.

Tomorrow, the GT kids will be flying in.  I will be working primarily with the OS Help Desk kids for tomorrow, and then floating between the two groups after that.  I would write more, but I am exhausted, and need to hit the sack.  I’ll fill you in on the rest of the details tomorrow.

Six AM Shmix AM

Well, when the alarm went off at six this morning, my legs, back, calves, and shoulders said “ehh 7:30 sounds like a better time to get up”.  So off with the alarm and back into slumber-land. So needless to say running didn’t happen for me today, but Im fine with that.

Work went well today.  We are getting things ready for the job fair in Anchorage which I will be leaving or tomorrow.  We have been printing off posters to put up promoting BSSD.  I got the big poster printer to work on OS X machines today.  That was something we have been fighting with for a few years now.  So that was nice.  I had to do a firmware update on the printer which worried me a little.  I didn’t want to turn the big poster printer into a paper weight.  It all worked out though.

Aside from that I destroyed Stebbins website.  I was working with Damon one of the teachers from Stebbins.  He has a wordpress install which is the same thing I use for this blog.  He was using it as the schools main site linking over to a blog where students post to regularly.  Well, we have this problem with someone clicks on a link in the blog it tries to send them to www.stebbins.bssd.org.  which would normally be fine, but our addresses don’t have the www in it.  So it turns up with a page now found error.  So we were working on getting that to work, and I accidently in the wordpress admin area changed the address wordpress looks for to find itself.  So when I updated the site with the new address, it couldn’t find itself.  Which in turn made it impossible to put back.  Whenever I tried to make the change it would to make the change in the wrong spot, and the file it was trying t change was in a totally different area on the server.

So as you can imagine Damon wasn’t too happy.  He had to start over by removing the install, and reinstalling.  Luckily he hadn’t really added anything to the install yet, so he should be able to have it back up in an hour or so.  I offered to do it for him, but he wanted to work on it himself.

So after that catastrophe I worked on some orders for the district for next year.  The Ed Support office is buying some iPods so their trainers can use them to show off podcasts on how to tech different activities.  The idea is… They are creating video podcasts of SFA lessons, and QSM concepts.  These will be a digital resource for the teachers in the district.  The iPods come into play by allowing the support staff to have those video podcsasts right in their pocket.  When out at site they will be able to connect the unit to a TV, in any teachers classroom, and show them examples on how things can be taught.  I hope it all works out, and that they don’t turn into just a music box for the temporary owners.

Well, I had better hit the sack.  More to come from Anchorage and then Valdez this week.

Iditarod Hits Unalakleet

John Baker the first musher into Unalakleet for the 2006 Iditarod arrived around noon. He was graciouse enough to take 5 minutes of his time allowing the student news broadcasting team to get an exclusive interview. The Channel 2 news team was actually stuck behind our kids while they were getting the first interview from him in Unalakleet.

We are posting a lot of video, and soon pictures to BSSD’s Iditarod coverage website http://mushing.bssd.org/.

MSP

I’m sitting here in the Minneapolis airport waiting for my flight to Duluth. I found a plug in near my gate to charge my laptop and ipod up with while I wait. There are a lot of people looking for outlets. I have had probably 10 people walk by looking for a plug-in as well. There are two plugs on this outlet; unfortunately the second one is broken somehow. It’s like there is something jammed in one of the connection slots. You can’t get your plug into it. Oh wait, make that 11 people. So my flight went really well. When I checked in I told them that I had a first class ticket for my return flight from MSP to ANC, and that I would really rather fly first class on the way down, so I could sit with my wife on the way back up. I explained that she had a coach ticket and so on. So he did a little looking in the computer, and said he couldn’t switch my ticket coming back up to a coach seat because they were completely booked, but he upgraded me to first class anyway, and told me that I shouldn’t have a problem talking someone into trading seats with me on the way back up. No I am left with the dilemma of still having a first class seat on the way back up, and weather I should give up that comfort to sit with Erin. We’ll see if she can convince me to give up living the high life or not. I watched a couple movies on the flight, one on the computer, and one on the ipod. I have decided I really really need to get another battery for my computer. These ones really don’t last very long. It took both my batteries to get through one movie. So that’s a little disheartening. It was nice to have the video ipod to fall back on when the “big screen” went out on me.

Last night we ended up going to the theater to watch Harry Crapper, and got there about 5 minutes after the movie had started. Now mind you not the credits, because we know there is like a half an hour of credits before movies, so we asked about that and the person selling tickets told us that it had actually started. So we ended up buying tickets for the 7:00 PM show, and went out to dinner. We decided to go to the Outback. It’s like two blocks from the theater, so we just left our car at the theater and walked over. (12 people looking for an outlet now) Dinner was tasty, I had prime rib that was really good. Katie nibbled on some fettuccini alfredo, since she is still recovering from losing her smart teeth. So after dinner we walked back over to the theater and got there early enough to get the best seats in the house. The movie was pretty good. Even though I am not a Harry Crapper fan. After that mom was in the mood for another movie, so we ended up going right into “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. It was also a good movie. We didn’t get back to the hotel till about 1:00 A.M., so it made it a short night for getting up to catch the plane this morning.

I just got a VTC request in from Laura a teacher at NACTEC. Its crazy to think that there are people that don’t get this time off. I feel bad for them. It’s nice to have a break. I got that scheduled and updated on the VTC calendar. That is one thing that is tough to get behind on. I got to a point there where I would schedule them the day they happened, and that ended up causing some problems. I am going to try to not let that happen next semester.

Well for the rest of my time here in the Minneapolis Airport, I think I’ll be surfing the web, maybe watching a movie or something.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am TIRED. I have been staying up till 2:00AM the last few nights, and getting up early. I am crashing early tonight. My plan is to be asleep by 10:00 PM. We have our last broadcast of the semester in the morning. The kids have done pretty well this week. A few of them really worked hard on their stories. There was a lot of video editing invovled in this one. I think the kids are getting the hang of Final Cut Pro which is really cool. That’s what the pro’s use. If they keep up on the tech they could easily hit college with some pretty powerful skills they could use towards a digital video career.
John and I are haeading to MacWorld in January. We just bought the plane tickets, hotel, and confernce admissions today. Should be a great expierence. As Erin says its where the biggest mac nerds go for the week. I will be taking a two day session on video compression. I know its going to be way over my head, but I’m hoping to glean something from the wealth of knowledge around me.

Well its time for some sleep….

BSSDPN (BSSD Sports Programing Network)

This week’s sports coverage is brought to you from Stebbins and Unalakleet. We have some great high school sports for you this weekend. Unalakleet is hosting the regional Wrestling tournament available to you via video conference and windows media player web cast. You will find the links to each wrestling session web cast at the BSSD website. If anyone is able to watch the live coverage we would love to hear your feedback. Our students work extremely hard and really appreciate any comments they get. You can email them at feedback(at)bssd.org. The other exciting live broadcast is a mixed six-volleyball tournament being held in Stebbins. There are teams from all over the Bering Strait School District, as well as Galena who is from another district. These matches will be viewable only by VTC (video teleconference). Once again students will be doing all of the work that is involved in these broadcasts, and if you are able to watch this coverage the same email address will work for sending them a note.

Today I got up and got over to work around 7:45 A.M. As soon as a I walked in the door the scrambling began. I needed to get John and Randy’s equipment together that they would need for the wrestling broadcast. Gave them a quick run through on how to run the equipment. They knew what they were doing. I just wanted to go over it with them, so they could have a refresher before they started on their own. We took off from Unalakleet around 10:00 A.M. It was only a 20-minute flight over the frozen ocean to Stebbins. The Stebbins staff greeted us warmly. We got our stuff up to the balcony over the gym, and then grabbed some lunch. After we had some food in our stomach’s Hunter, and Austen (the two students that came with to run the broadcast), and I pulled out the equipment and started setting up. We brought with us two GL2 mini dv cameras, and a couple 20-meter firewire cables. We put one camera on each end of the gym up on the balcony, and the cords met up in the middle at the computer running the show. We ended up having John send over a special firewire cord from Unalakleet on the last plane flying this evening to set up a third camera. So I think we are going to be able to put on a pretty good show for everyone this weekend.
Austen and Hunter are really good guys. They work hard, and both have great scenes of humor. They are fun to work with. There will be some students from Stebbins that will be helping out with the broadcast as well. We are hoping that they will get excited about doing this and become more involved in the BSSD news broadcasts. Our goal is to get every site going with a news crew.
I just heard that Savoonga, which is one of our two schools on St. Lawrence Island just, got three whales a couple days ago. I was trying to convince one of their teachers into getting some students out there with a video camera and shooting interviews and getting some footage of the experience. That is something that not many other people in the world will ever get the chance to see. It would be a great addition to the student news broadcasts.
It is now 12:30 A.M. and I need to get my sleep for tomorrow. It is going to be a long day. I’ll see if I can get some blog time in during the busy day, and hopefully get some pictures up as well.

All for now…..

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.

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.