Auntie Em, there's no place like home!

So two weekends ago I went back to visit my parents in Michigan.  This was the first time I've been back there in 3 years!  They come to visit me here and we travel to Arizona once a year to visit them in their snowbird home.

But going back to Michigan was awesome.  My parents are getting ready to sell their house and downsize since they are retiring.  The last time they moved was 15 years ago when I was a senior in high school.  The task for the weekend was to go through dozens of boxes that we packed up 15 years ago and moved into the basement in their current home.  Most of these have not been opened since then!

My brother (Brian), who lives in Oregon also made the trip.  We all had a blast going through all the memories, and then throwing most of it away.  I used my iPod to take tons of photos of things I want to remember, but don't need cluttering up my (or my parents') house.

The weekend was especially awesome because Brian and I had a lot of time to hang out without kids and spouses.  We are very close friends and it has been a while since we've had time like that together.

I also went to see my mom teach!  She is a law professor in her last term of teaching before retirement.  Between her years as a high school English teacher and later a law professor, she has been teaching for nearly 45 years.  I have never sat in on a class with her before, and it was awesome to see her in that role.  She is such a natural and engaging instructor.  In many ways, I can see where I get my style, even though I've never actually watched her before.  I was mostly struck by the way she engaged students in a rich Socratic dialogue about some seemingly mundane material (wills and estate law).  The students were talkative, reflective, and making connections.  I attribute a lot of this to the way my mom framed the experience.

Then, over Thanksgiving weekend, we went to Angie's parents' house (my in-laws).  LOTS of turkey, warm beverages, and mindless television.  Oh yeah, and other people to watch our kids!  I had planned to blog over the weekend and get caught up with some coursework, but the in-laws' internet was out, so I took an extended forced vacation from the tech world.  Although I did play quite a bit of Angry Birds Rio.

Well, that's all for now.  Looking forward to seeing our cohort family next week!

Head Above Water

I am struggling a bit to stay on top of work, school, family, life, etc.  There are lots of awesome and amazing opportunities and responsibilities at play, but only so many hours in a week.  So, amidst this I'm trying to keep a rhythm with my tech posts, and it is coming a bit more naturally, but I still need to remind myself.  I am really looking forward to some face to face time with y'all this weekend!

Breakthrough!

So I had a great breakthrough with Moodle this week. I spent about 12 hours playing around with it during the past 4 days. I crossed that threshold from feeling like I'm searching every time I want to do something, to really understanding the basic functions and how/where/when/why to use them.

On top of this, I created a Moodle site for my UMD Seminar section. Prior to that, we were using the generic student resources site created for all sections, but that was cumbersome and confusing for students to navigate. They were excited about our class site and are now much more enthusiastic about using it.

Triumph of technology as totally useful tools!