Vote for Beaver Stadium

Click here to vote for Beaver Stadium against Texas A&M's Kyle Field. Don't know too much about the site or the competition, but anytime PSU's competing, it's worth a click.

Benelux Minus the "ne"

Just back from a weekend in Belgium & Luxembourg. Decided to drive the 8+ hours each way, as plane tickets were steep (CHF600 for an hour flight) and Kristina was already scheduled to fly up for the week with her job. Long drive for just a weekend, but in the end, worth it. A few thoughts:
-loved the drive through Switzerland, France, Luxembourg & Belgium; lots of beautiful countryside with some interesting sights along the way--plenty of castles & wind farms captured my attention
-laughed as I passed a little French town called Bitche...and I just laughed again as I typed it
-Antwerp is a pretty lively little city; we arrived around 11pm Friday night and immediately felt a fun/hip/alive vibe
-enjoyed two strong beers (~9% abv) after breakfast on Saturday...when in Belgium...
-drank some AWESOME Belgian beers...Westmalle Trappist Tripel, Kapittel, Grimbergen, Brugge Tripel, a fruity Kriek, and a few others; definitely heading back to Belgium at some point just to enjoy the beers again...
-first time ever in Luxembourg, and probably the last; not too exciting; interesting-looking old "walled" city though
-the yellow street lights in Lux & Belgium made the highways look like airport runways on Mars
-Brugge is a fun little town near the northern coast; sometimes referred to as "the Venice of the north" is what I hear...

Frantic February

It's been a hectic month here in the Zurich area...after returning from a teaching conference in Paris two weeks ago, I've been working daily to figure out how to implement all the new ideas I discovered into my teaching/school. So far, so good, I'd say.
Boys basketball and playing bball on my own has also kept me busy.
Booked three different trips (Brussels in March, Copenhagen in May, and Scotland/Ireland for a golf vacation with my college buddies in October). Very exciting.
And finally, I found out this week that I could be teaching math AND humanities next year, an opportunity I'm VERY excited about. Nothing is set yet, but just to know the possibility is out there has got me "juvenated" (credit to Bill Simmons for that one).

Right now I'm getting ready to meet my family at the Zurich Flughafen before heading down to Zermatt for a week of skiing and checking out the Matterhorn. I need a break after the whirlwind last 2+weeks. Hope to post some photos after the trip.

Ning, Jing and Social Networking as a Collaborative Ed Tool

Went to the European League of Middle Level Educators (ELMLE) Conference in Paris last weekend, and my brain is overflowing with seemingly awesome new ideas. But I'm in a place right now where I'm not exactly sure how to use them all in my 6th & 7th grade math classes...so I'm just throwing all the ideas out there for the kids to play with, and hopefully some of these new ideas will stick. Here are a few...
Ning - This is a social networking site (similar to Facebook in layout) where you invite "friends" to collaborate with you in various projects. On the recommendation of Alan November (novemberlearning.com), a developmental psychologist and education professor, I created Nings for each of my 4 middle school math classes with the intent of creating and sharing content on our site. Just threw them out there to see how they react...here's hoping for some positive results over the next few weeks...
Jing - jingproject.com offers a free download of screencast software that can be used to create instant "vodcasts" of work created in classrooms. Hopefully I'll get clearance to download this app onto our school computers. I see big possibilities with this tool...
Google docs - I was familiar prior to the concert, but had only used it for personal stuff (mostly sharing football stats with friends...), but I've learned tons of possibilities for using this collaborative tool in education...again, we'll see how willing some colleagues are to implement this into our practices.

Tons more ideas, but I'm tired from staying up until 4am watching the Steelers win the Super Bowl, so I'm going to bed. More to come...

Davos

Yesterday, Kristina and I spent the day skiing with three other friends at Davos in eastern Switzerland. We had a beautiful, clear day, and Davos is a resort with quite a lot of terrain, so we had a great day. Finished the day with beers at a great apres ski bar, and fondue in the town of Klosters. Ahh, Switzerland...

All Good Holidays Must Come to An End

Tomorrow is my first day back at school since Dec 19. I feel rested and ready to get back. Kristina and I spent this weekend at the resort of Engelberg, about an hour south of Zurich. We skied yesterday, hiked up an alp today, took a break in the snow (hence the photo), and then sledded down on those old wooden toboggans. It was cold all weekend, but clear skies gave us plenty of sun and some great views. Fun weekend.
Then we came home and had fondue for dinner before watching the Eagles beat the Giants. Now we're watching the Steelers, though I'm not sure we'll be able to stay up the whole game...

License Plates

Playing the license plate game on road trips is one of my favorite pasttimes. Pretty sure I've seen all 50 US plates, plus a bunch of Canadian plates. Living in Europe, we see mostly Swiss (obviously) and EU plates, which all look the same. But today while walking through Thalwil, I saw the rarest plate I've ever seen from...the Republic of San Marino. How cool!