Well, not really, but it is an amazing image. Check out the newly released super hi-res NASA image of the Earth that just happens to show the location of room 162. Fun stuff!
Quadblogging Post #3 – Where on Earth?
Hi Quad buddies!
We have some questions for you about where you live and we hope that you can help us answer them using the comments.
We have been using Google Earth to check out your schools and your communities and have found some interesting things. The students ZER Vent Sere and in Room 12 have lots of swimming pools! The Fabulous 6D’s live in a really big city.
There are some questions we would like you to answer for us. Let’s begin with ZER Vent Sere . . .
- What is the best thing to eat at the Panaderia Antoni Balague?
- What can you tell us about the Vila-Sana?
- What is growing here?
We also have questions for our new friends in Bolton!
- What can you tell us about St. Paul’s Church
- What do they sell at Paper Monkeys?
- Now a quiz, can you tell us the name of this location? Is that a soccer field?
Finally, for our friends to the south in Room 12 . . .
- What does Waikato mean?
- What is your favorite pie at the Pie Men’s shop? We think your pies are different than our pies
- Can you identify this location?
Quadblog post #2 – Questions for you!
For our second activity, several students created a survey that we would like you to take. We plan on sharing the results as soon as everyone has had a chance to answer the questions. You don’t need to answer all of the questions. Just the ones you want too 
Quadblog post #1 – Around our school
Hello quadblogging buddies! We have created several activities for you to check out this week and we have a slideshow to share today. It contains images and information about our town, our county, and our part of the state.
We are located in Monterey County, which is about 200 miles south of San Francisco. That might seem like a long way to you, but California is really big! Our community is located in an agricultural area of California and it is known for growing lots of vegetables. We grow so much that some of it gets shipped all the way to Japan.
Earthquake plates
We are near the coast on the map, but it takes about 90 minutes to get there because there is a mountain range between us. We are near a famous earthquake fault called the San Andreas Fault. We know that our new friends in Room 12 know about earthquakes too because we share the same plate on the earth. There has not been a large earthquake here recently, but we try to stay prepared because we know it will happen some day.
Enjoy the slideshow below made by Lupita, Mikayla, Stephanie, Ana Marie, and Cassidy!
Live blogging event – Skype call with India Q&A
Watch this space on Monday, 8:15 A.M. Pacific time for a live blogging event. Room 162 will be video conferencing, via Skype, with two gentlemen from India who will be telling us about Indian culture and Hinduism. They will also be teaching us how to do some ancient Vedic Math operations. Students will be using this space as a backchannel to discuss the session.
Netbooks arrived!
It’s been more than a year since room 162 was vandalized and eighteen computers were stolen. Today, we received our replacements. Thirty-two new netbooks arrived and I had the pleasure of distributing them to my students this morning as they walked in the room. We are not ready to have the netbooks go home yet, but each student will be using them throughout the day and we will charge them overnight.
The new Acers are running ubermix and I’ve customized each a bit. As we are a Google Apps school, the default browser is Chrome. Several extensions have been added including the Google URL shortener, Diigo app for our class bookmarks, an RSS reader so that students can easily track their favorite blogs, and one of my favorite extensions, Readabilty to remove excessive formatting from webpages.
I decided to test my assigned network capacity immediately. I wanted to see how my one Airport Base Station would handle 32 simultaneous connections. As with most Apple products, the connection was easy and seamless. “All right kids, let’s try to break it.” They fired up their Google Apps accounts and began sending emails, creating presentations, forms, and shared documents, watched Animoto videos, logged into their blogs, and opened multiple tabs in Chrome. I even had a video Skype call with a student across the room. None of us noticed any slowdown. The network and the netbooks performed brilliantly. Next week I get to return to my “regular” lessons that include plenty of netbook time.
It was a good day.
Quad blogging begins January 16th
We will kick off the new year by “Quad Blogging” with three classes located around the world. In a quad blog, four classes collaborate to promote writing and interactions between students and teachers. The process runs for four weeks with each class gaining the spotlight for one week. When it is our turn, we post activities and information on this blog for the other three classes to interact with.
Quad blogging is great fun because we get to meet new people around the world. This year, we will be blogging with The Fabulous 6D’s in the UK, Room 12′s Awesome Learners in New Zealand, and ZER Vent Serè in Spain.
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- The Fabulous 6D’s
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- Room 12
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- P.E.L.E.
Winter Wonderland Dance
As we finish up our last week before we take our Christmas holiday break, we always have a school dance. We thought we would share with our friends a few images from the evening.
TEDx Youth Day
CPMS representing!
I had the great honor of gathering several former students and together we participated in the TEDx Global Youth Day on November 19th. The all day event, known as TEDxYouth@Monterey, was held at Cal State University, Monterey Bay. We met at Chalone Peaks and boarded a charter bus to be taken to the event. This was just one of dozens of events held around the world on this weekend.
The organizers did a spectacular job finding 17 wonderful and inspiring presenters that spoke around the theme of “Inspire Tomorrow, Today.”
It began at 10 AM with introductions and then swiftly moved into presentations organized around the mini-theme of Voice. Most speakers were live, but they also played some crowd favorite TED Talks and we had a chance to mingle and network with each other during breaks.
The first speaker was Johan Khalilian, who emphasized, through story-telling, to stay close to the voices that matter in your life. We were totally blown away by 13 year old author and artist, C.J. Paghasian who encouraged the audience to passionately pursue their dreams. We listened to the beautiful voice of Andrea Blunt who not only sang, but played the accordion.
Kendall Ronzano shared her vision of sustainable building and design by highlighting a project that she introduced by asking the question, What if every high school built a home for a homeless family? Through her blog, NerdGirlHomes, she details the process and experiences of building a house by herself.
Everyone enjoyed watching the recorded TED Talk by Adora Svitak
In the next session, we discovered a local Hispanic woman named Dionne Ybarra who had connections in her past that linked her to King City. She is the daughter of farmworkers who took up surfing and has founded an organization whose goals are to empower young girls around the world through the surfing experience. My students made an immediate connection with her.
Students with surfer Dionne Ybarra
We also heard the amazing tale of Ray Ricafort and how he developed the idea of a taking a “roadtrip” as a means of both self-discovery and as a tool to help realize your dreams. He has a great website called Roadtrip Nation and shared several clips as well as the personal and emotional details of how and why he began his journey.
During a break in the afternoon, we were able to watch graffiti artist Nurihan Park create a mural for the event and munch on some snacks. My students took the opportunity to grab some chalk and create a little art themselves. One was even interviewed and asked about his experiences at TEDx.
The final session in the afternoon was equally impressive. The wonderful Shandra Benito told of her experiences growing up as a hearing impaired student and the tough time she was having coping until she had a long talk with a friend. She became inspired to turn her attention to the positive and discovered that by helping others in a similar situation, she created a ripple effect of good deeds. It was a beautiful story told by a charming young lady.
High school student Iljin Cho played a beautiful classical violin while his slide show demonstrated that even though money to support the arts in schools may have dried up for the time being, it doesn’t mean that the music has to stop. He is part of a group of high school students that dedicate their Fridays visiting elementary schools and teaching youngsters how to play. A truly beautiful presentation that ended with the call to Bring music Bach!
The day ended with a Pacific Islander theme as we heard of an incredible adventure that a group made up of seven Pacific Island crews, sailing in traditional ocean canoes, is undertaking. We learned about the Spirit of the Sea that is guiding them on their journey. They impresed upon us the importance of a shared community and strategies that each of us can use to find our own island.
Finally, we had the opportunity to experience the Hawaiian dance group known as Huli a Hahai Mai ia’u. They performed two mesmerizing dances for us.
There were many more presentations throughout the day, but there is simply not the space to cover it properly here. Everyone was in agreement that this was an event that we will never forget and I look forward to taking a new group and becoming more actively involved next year.
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