Hatchet Dioramas!

Students have been working on Hatchet Dioramas for a few weeks now and the results are amazing. Hatchet is a novel about a boy whose plane goes down in the Canadian wilderness and he learns to survive for 54 days before finally being rescued. Students were asked to choose any scene from the novel and create a diorama, a 3d representation, of that scene. Check out some of the submissions:

Evil Hat for the Win!!!!!

Holy Moly! When I started "Reaching Out" I never expected to get such a generous donation. Evil Hat has come through, their box arrived today. They donated two Fate Core Systems books, about a dozen Fate Accelerated handbooks,

Evil Hat games run on a RPG game function or platform called "Fate Core" and once you've got that down, you can get different games that have different parameters but run from the same platform or set of rules.

TSR Games and World of Dragons

Carnival Sumo Wrestling

Reaching Out

As a teacher, I've got zero qualms with asking for resources. I'll send letters, emails, texts, tweets, and shout-outs every direction. As such is the case, I've been shamelessly asking everyone around, every RPG publisher, even GameStop and local comic shops, if they'd be willing to donate money or materials to our academic club, World of Dragons. 

World of Dragons meets every Thursday after school, or did this year. We'll see what day it is next school year or if we need to expand to two days. The kids learn about tabletop RPG games, character creation, story creation and DMing ( DM means Dungeon Master for the Geek Speak illiterate).

Recently, I've had two responses that I'm overjoyed to share, and so excited for the kids. TSR Games, the original publisher of Dungeons and Dragons over four decades ago, is doing a piece on the club for their Facebook page, and today I've learned that Evil Hat is making a donation of merchandise which we'll receive over the summer.

I'm so thankful for these publishers. And it just goes to show, don't be afraid to ask for help.

Packing Up

Packing up the classroom is never easy. Whether you've got to pack because it's required at the end of each year to facilitate cleaning, you switching classrooms, or maybe you're moving to another school site, packing up is a big chore with very little time to do it.

Thanks to the Googles, there are plenty of places to go for advice on how to pack up a classroom. There's Jodi Durgin's Clutter-Free Classroom, there's Mashup Math's 7 Handy Ideas for Packing Up Your Classroom, and probably a million other choices. All the advice they give is good stuff. They tell you to take a photo of your class before you do it so you remember how to set things up. They advise keeping things organized and starting it early enough so that you have enough time. They're chalk full of good advice, most of which I'm going to ignore and just throw things in a box.

It's the starting out fresh that I like. With each pack-up, with each move, you get to recreate your classroom in a better way. I take what worked and build on it, and take out the stuff that didn't. It's like lesson planning. But with your classroom being a more structured atmosphere, it's difficult to mix things up as much as you can period to period or day to day like a lesson given to a class. So, with each move I get to grow, I get to expand my knowledge, and I get to try new things. With each classroom move, I see a chance to set things up even better than last time. I see a chance to clean up behind the shelves and desks, to clean up the endless amount of materials I horde throughout the year like a pack-rat. I get to shed the old ways and try something fresh and clean.

Getting My Training On

Listen, there's always more to learn in the industry of film and multimedia. So, the question then is where to get that training. And if I'm using that training, then maybe my students can benefit from the same resources I'm using. Then, I'm facilitating their learning development.

Has anyone used Lynda.com?

I've heard about it for years. I've known people that have used it, but I've never touched it.

When I get a few moments, I'm going to take the free trial and see if it's what I need.

And now cats, because they amuse me.

Hey Ya!

This is the first post. Thank you for being fabulous

I'll be messing around with this blog through the summer to start getting things ready for students next year. See, we've got a new class at Hercules Middle School. It's called Film and Multimedia; it's part of the Pathways or CTE curriculum being offered in West Contra Costa County Unified School District.

Let's get to it!