the exponential human population growth

Hey everyone! Help me celebrate the birth of my friends brand new baby boy Emmett Stallings!

check out http://emmettstallings.blogspot.com and look at the picture of the little booger!

New Comic Ideas

The Global Community

The NECC conference reaches much further than I realized. After a workshop this afternoon, I went back to the GWCC to hang out in the hallways and get some free wireless internet. In the process I met a fellow person in need of electricity and so shared an outlet and a spot on the hallway floor.



Cecilia is from the Philippines and is a NECC award winner for the work she is doing in global community wikis with her students. She has recently set up a great site that allows students to log in and upload videos and pictures that spread a message of hope across the planet. It's almost a "here's what I'm doing in service" wiki that connects many students so far from Japan, Australia....and soon the US. I'm looking forward to more service learning in my classes, clubs, and youth group...and I'd love for us to get involved with her site.



So congrats Cecilia, and keep in touch from the South Pacific!

Web 2.0 Workshop....no web...no workshop

One of the fears of teachers everywhere who use technology is that inevitably, the technology WILL fail at some point...and.....then what? The workshop I was in today was on the Web 2.0 trend of open-source softwares and user-ownership over information sites and corporate sites alike. Funny thing was...the web was down during the workshop. The presenter was really flustered and I ended up leaving early because I wanted hang out at the conference center for a bit.

As technology-minded educators in the classroom, we always strive for using technology in such a way that it transforms our education process....meaning that we use the technology to allow us to accomplish things with the students that we would otherwise not be able to do. So what happens when it fails? Honestly....usually a digression to didactic learning where we deliver content without the aid of technology. Teaching at its purest form. This is often a fun challenge. To make teaching interactive and stimulating without the maelstrom of media that the kids usually get caught up in....aye, there's the rub. The trick is for the teacher to not get frustrated with the lack of technology when it breaks down and to simply keep the mind on the goal.....student learning.

The Adventures of Gas Man

Had some down time in a workshop and couldn't resist making this. Enjoy.

Swimming with the fishies

Once we got through with our workshops and the keynote address last night down here at the NECC conference in Atlanta, we were able to go to the Georgia Aquarium as part of the conference package. There were about 3,000 of us trying to get in at once, but it was great all the same.
I saw my first cuttlefish in person! For those of you non-dorky types, I'm shameless in admitting that I'm fascinated with critters of all sorts, but when it comes to salty sea critters, cephalopods are my favorites.....octopus, squid, nautilus, and the masters of disguise...cuttlefish.
Here are a few pics as well as a pic of the most amazing whale I've ever seen in person. The beluga whale. Watching these guys was almost zen-like.












All this said though, I'm really not keen on being away from kelley for this long...especially over a weekend which is my only real time to hang out with her during the summer. I'll be glad to get home on Wednesday.

cheers,
jeff

What the Tech

So it's day 2 at the NECC conference (where Link and I are) in Atlanta, GA. We're currently sitting in a 3-d photo workshop that is teaching us how to do object rotations and 3-D panoramas. This stuff is awesome! We'll be able to take multiple pictures of objects and then import them in a program that will animate them in a 3-D fashion....like when you look at a car manufacturer's website and you can rotate the image of the Toyota Yaris. Pretty sweet. I can see using this in Forensics, Biology, Anatomy, and even my tai chi and outdoor adventure clubs. Now.....all we need to do is get the district to tool up for the cost of the software! :)

Today's probably going to be the best day of the conference between this workshop and the aquarium.....I'll try and get some more pictures up later of the aquarium. Also, check out the new wiki site www.svitec.pbwiki.com for some daily podcasts from Link and myself.

Cheers!

Perseverance

I love it when we can find music that becomes the soundtrack of our lives. It seems that the songs speaks to us both lyrically and musically and plays itself out as we're riding in our cars, or experience nature. Andrew Peterson always seemed to be the soundtrack of my life when I was heading to the mountains in the springtime.
Harrod & Funk always seemed to find their way into my head if I'm visiting Furman. Bob Marley seemed to skank his way into my heartbeat when I smell that first scent of pollen in March.

I love it even more when God can use ideas to become the theme of our lives for a given length of time. 2007 has been a year of perseverance for me and those close to me.

Over spring break Kai, Scott and myself went to Linville Gorge for 3 days of extreme perseverance against the elements and the rock faces.

Kelley and I had a miscarriage this spring after our first attempt at having a child.

Kelley struggles daily with her job as a billing specialist and has a groaning from within to do something more.

Perseverance has mainlined itself into the fibers of our being so much so that I now understand James when he said "count it pure joy when you experience trials of various kinds, because you know that trials produce perseverance".

This week The Village Church youth are at Summersalt and I'm writing this from the internet cafe at White Oak. The theme is James University simply because we're walking through James this week in an effort to speak to these kids who are scattered, poor, oppressed, and weak. Perseverance was our first day's lesson and I can't help but think that God has prepared me for this week with this year's efforts in perseverance.

I thank God for the opportunity to represent my faith through the struggles that He allows me to endure.

lates,
jeff

The flight of the great barred owl

This week was a bit of a freedom fest for me. School is out, my business of the summer hasn't yet really kicked in, and so I had 1 week to basically do what I wanted. On the docket was a rock climbing trip to Crowder's Mountain, and 2 paddling trips on Cedar Creek.

Wednesday I met Kelley for lunch at Colonial Insurance across town. We went to this really hip deli near her work. The place had scripture quotes painted on the walls and the atmosphere was really relaxed. The staff seemed to be some guys of rough backgrounds that were kind of turning things around for themselves and doing a great job. They kept the drinks filled and were very polite. Service was top-notch.
After lunch I met Kelley's co-workers....who were pretty cool. Oh...I also got fussed at by Colonial Public Safety because my canoe was sticking off the back of the truck into the parking lot. She made a huge deal out of it, and it really wasn't a big deal. Anyway. After I said goodbye to Kelley I headed off to Cedar Creek.

It's a small creek that is a distributary of the Congaree River. It branches from the Congaree somewhere in the vicinity of the Congaree Swamp proper and heads south. It's usually a relatively decent sized creek.....about 5-10 feet deep in most places. It's part of the floodplain ecosystem, though, so when it rains, the creek floods very high and leaves the confines of the creek bank to flow into the floodplain forest around it. When this happens, you can literally take your canoe into the trees around the creek and paddle all throughout the floodplain.

This week, though, the creek was very low. 1-3 feet deep at best. It made for a fun journey, though, because I had to scramble over logs to get upcreek.
I saw 1 great barred owl that day and the highlight was when I caught a watermocasin (cottonmouth) snake with my snake caliper. I was stoked! So far my venomous snake roster includes a rattlesnake, a copperhead, and now the cottonmouth. He was surprisingly docile until I got the caliper behind his neck. I have some really great video footage of it.......but I dropped my camera in the water and it's yet to let me get the footage off. I know I know.....dorf goes paddling.




2 days later I returned to Cedar Creek, this time with fellow climbing expert Scott Bolte. We paddled further upcreek than I had been 2 days earlier and mastered the art of getting the canoe over dead falls and brush brambles. In the process of our adventure, we saw 9 Great Barred Owls (including the one in the picture which was actually the smallest we saw all day). Check out the wingspan on that guy.


Sorry if the pic is fuzzy, but it was hard to get close, and I lucked out with the action shot.



also saw 4 snakes, mostly brown water snakes yellow bellied water snakes. The last one we saw is in the picture below and was enormous. As big around as my forearm and about 4-5 feet in length. He (or she) had just eaten a large fish meal and was relaxing and digesting on the log. I could barely lift the snake with my snake sticks. Fun times.


In the process of all this, my mind wanders to humanity's current state (and my own at that) of fascination with information acquisition and delivery through electronic methods. The internet, movies, TV, iPods, blogging, podcasting, etc. etc. How many of us make the opportunity for ourselves to experience life in its primal beauty. A paddling trip to the swamp might seem to most to be an undesireable activity that they wouldn't take part in unless it was on some reality show where they get 1 million dollars if they do well. By sharp contrast, Scott and I wanted to paddle upcreek, just for the reward of experiencing that which we previously had not. Each bend in the creek brought about new and exciting things.......a school of feeding gar, a flock of mating cardinals, massive cyprus and water tupelo trees, and whatever else we saw that we couldn't burn into our memory.