Activboard Training at Freeport H.S.

One of the technology initiative being implemented in our school district is the 21st Century Classrooms. This program will phased in as funding becomes available. At present approximately three classrooms per school will be out-itted with ceiling mounted video projectiors and Activboards. A group of those teachers participating met at Freeport High School for Activboard Traing. The seminar was facilitated by Andy Howard and Jeff Roser of Walton County's Technology Department. The participants were introduced to the software package and allowed some hands on training on the Activboad itself. The technology allows teachers to create electronic flipcharts that can incorporate a wide range of media such as, text, video, audio, pictures, and directly browse the internet in the flip pages. The activboards allows interactive use of the flipcharts. Click on the links below to learn more about the technology and the intiative itself

Now That School Is Out - Let Have Some Fun!

Click on the picture below and pull the strings!

Does Microsoft Dare?

Some things just need to be sacred. The coders at Microsoft who create Spell check and Grammar Check for Word should really fix this one. Correct Shakespeare? Of course, this is brought to you by the same company that is ran by a "genius" who never finished school that used "irregardless" in a recent radio interview.

The Day We Wait For Every Year

Yes. The last day of school. Kids ready! Teachers ready. Its been a good year. A truly rewarding experience. My three sections of freshman ended the last day with heartfelt goodbyes.
Later that evening the Walton High School class of 2004-2005 tossed their caps signifying their flight skyward.

The First Is No More.

The local Hardee's Hamburger store has closed in De Funiak Springs this week. This was the very first "Fast Food" place to come to town and was located off the I-10 exit. In its hay day the Hardee's brand pioneered breakfast with a menu of various homemade biscuits. With the buyout by CKE Inc. the food in my opinion took a nose dive. (CKE also owns the west coast burger giant Carl's Jr. and immediately plastered that yellow star all over the Hardee's.) The problem must have been local because, CKE website touts the success of their brands.

The Hardee Husky I ate in my youth sitting outside beneath those unique early stores with their circular space ship looking design are long gone. (I CAN'T EVEN FIND PICTURE ONLINE) My family had the habit which meant a trip to Ft. Walton Beach to enjoy my father favorite. He was definanately NOT a McDonald's man. The De Funiak Store was built in the expansion style of the 70s with mansard roof and wooden siding.The wisecracking Nascar drivers that huskered the Hardee's name disappeared from the television. At on time this Hardee's was the "meeting place" for so many locals that it could be said that it had replaced downtown. Today it stands empty. The placards removed from the window. Rumor has it that Whataburger will purchase the building and open their own. I will miss my steak biscuits, though I never realized that they toted an 800 calorie punch.

Are all the chargers charging?

This is a Canon Charger for the Digital Rebel.

The tiny electronic gadgets that we all seem to find indispensible all require batteries. The weakest link in our conquest of our universe is the common household battery. Before going to bed I must make sure that all my devices are charging. Their tiny blinking red lights fill my dreams.

Coincidences

In today's mail came a book from a friend of mine (the one who lives in Arlington VA) . We had promised to send one another a book. I had sent Tobias Wolff's Old School several weeks back. When I last spoke to him on the phone, he said he had recieved it, read it, and really liked it. The book from him in today's mail was a little odd. Not odd in its content, but in its timing.
Earlier this morning another friend (the one who lives in New Orleans) called me. He began by talking about the movie he had seen last night on Turner Classic Movies. The film was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. He said that he had found the movie a little "over-the-top".
"Have you read the book?" I asked.
"No." he replied.
I no doubt bored him with a mini-lecture of how the popularized notion of Frankenstein and Mary Shelly's novel were really quite different and that the film he had seen was Kenneth Branagh's attempt, albeit, a failed attempt, to capture her original thesis. After politely listening, my friend told me he was going to get back to rebuilding his front gate and hung up.

The oddity I mentioned earlier is in the coincidence that the book I recieved was Mary Shelly's Frankenstien. Having read it a few years back, I don't know if I should re-read it or send it on to my friend in New Orleans. I never take coincidences very seriously and certainly never invest them with any other worldly significance.

Probably more interesting is the fact that the edition I recieved was produced as a sample for Xlibris.com the internet's answer to vanity publishing. Did my old friend (a closet surrealist) deleberately set these random events into motion? Or am I investing him with an acumen for the mundane that even I can not touch.

Map of My Father: Carl Colin

These are some of the only words my father left for me. They were in response to an email I sent him asking for his comments on the coming of the year 2000, millennium. He wrote:

We each sat in our own chairs, our solace in a world that is passing us by. Or are we in fact, passing it by. The so called music that is heralded as the century's best was indeed not for us. I guess we just aren't as interested in what is going on around us as we were in the past. I think my deepest thoughts during the so-called countdown, were of my children and their offspring. I uttered a prayer for all of them, in the hopes that our creator would hear me and answer their prayers in the time to come. We were put here for something, and I hope we have satisfied that purpose. To you and all of yours, for the generations to come, may all of you be privy to the very best of everything, and appreciate the efforts of all those who came before you.

God bless all of you.
Mother and Daddy

I took this photograph of my dad in my grandparent's yard in Niceville Florida about 1967 with a cheap plastic camera that has become all the rage among "artists". My father always seemed to me like he looked in this picture, scowling and severe. In fact, he had a wonderous smile and sense of humor that peeked through when he didn't think other peoplewere paying attention. I inherited his "seriousness" and I'm sure my children thing of me in the same way I think of him. Isn't it amazing how that works out. His ashes are buried a few miles from there now. My grandmother and granddaddy are both dead and the house was sold to the First Baptist Church. My great grandmother and the house she lived in across the street they are gone as well. The old neighborhood where I played as a child is now a parking lot. Like the song, "They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot." Well its only gravel for now, perhaps they'll get around to paving it eventually. Some of you may read this and accuse me of being depressed and languishing in a bed of tears, but I'm only turning memories over like rocks and looking for the eyes of tiny creatures to fascinate me anew!

The Real Reason We Take Pictures

Digging through thirty or more years of photographs will turn over many good memories. This one I found yesterday. It is of my wife Sue Ellen with our first born Ariel. This is late 1976 and Ariel is but a few weeks young. When I look at this image, I recognize my own good fortune in this life and how I have been so blessed. We had taken the baby to see Ms. Ferris, who Sue Ellen had worked for in high school. I can't imagine why I didn't take a photograph of her, but I can still see her smile when Sue Ellen placed the baby in her arms.