Have a Good Life

Last year, May 2010, I walked during lunch at work and rode my bike after work, some days. I also weighed about 250 pounds. In 2010, I rode 700 miles on my bike and I was pretty proud of myself. I rode 300 miles in 2009.

So far this year, I have ridden over 400 miles; close to halfway to my goal of 1000 miles this year. I am down to 215 pounds now, and I feel great.

This has been a good year.

Even though I am not a graphic designer, I really appreciate the opportunity try to rub shoulders with those types of people. I like to read the things they share and analyze how they approach tasks and design.
In education, design really takes a back seat. Sometimes, even in the trunk. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
I fancy myself as someone who pays attention to good design, and I think about it. "Thinking about it" is usually 95% of the solution. If you just look at it and think for a moment, you're more than most of the way there.
So, Piper and I got an assignment to collect and present some information on the time our office has spent on professional development with teachers this year.
I compiled the data from 18 people and put it into a spreadsheet. We used Numbers, Pages, and Acorn to create the infographic.
I haven't ever used Acorn, but I bought it a few weeks ago, and I have been waiting for an opportunity to use it. I am glad something presented itself.
The infographic itself is a Pages document (11 x 17). The images are from some image pack I downloaded years ago, but haven't had any reason to use. To get the triangle graphs, I had to create them in Numbers, then paste an image of them into a Pages document and "Mask with Shape..." to get them right. I wish I could mask graphs in Pages (or Numbers) with a shape. That would be really nice. I tried to do it in Acorn, but I couldn't figure that out either.  Piper pulled the + signs from somewhere and Instant Alpha-ed the white background so they looked better.
I thought it was pretty fun creating it. Even though it took a long time to do, it was worth it. I learned a lot, and created something beautiful in the end.
Here is the Prezi my boss used in the presentation to the principals in the district:

http://prezi.com/uwqeo1eqxza1/ebl-year-in-review/

Good thing we didn't get rid of our girl clothes. #itsagirl September 13th is the due date.

From this post: http://speirs.org/blog/2011/5/5/ipad-trials-at-oklahoma-state.html

Was the integration of an E-Reader an enhancement or detraction to the academic experience?

The responses were mixed. On the one hand, students liked using the iPad to house their textbooks and suggested it promoted more reading. [I'd venture that they could read more because they were actually able to have their books with them at a time when they otherwise wouldn't] On the other hand, reactions from the beginning-of-the-semester expectations of planned use to the end-of-the-semester actual use saw e-book reading exhibiting the greatest change, a substantial decrease. Students thought they would use the iPad as an e-reader but did not do so as much as initially planned.

What was said later about pedagogy needing to change with technology was spot on:
 

"...technology, pedagogy and curriculum each have influence on the other. If you're not able to modify your teaching methods or curriculum to take account of new technology, that's a barrier to getting the maximum utilisation out of these devices."

If the iPad-as-textbook is just the textbook loaded into iBooks, with nothing else changed, the iPad is no better for reading than a textbook; it is probably a worse reading experience (with the only benefit being that the iPad is lighter than a textbook).

If the textbook is just a PDF opened in Noterize or PDFNotes, then it is already much better, as those two programs are designed for annotating a PDF.

If the textbooks are in something like Inkling, where there are additional multimedia supports (videos, pictures, interactive images, etc.) then it is even better.

It is probably best when the book adapts to the new technology like the book "Our Choice", which clearly appears to be the best "book" reading experience on the iPad.

I hope the image explains it better than I could.

In conjunction with the Salt Lake Marathon, there is a Salt Lake City Bike Tour: 25 miles that goes pretty much along the Marathon course. It is not a race, as they told us numerous times, but it is an organized event that you have to pay to participate in. It was the first organized, large-scale cycling event that I have participated in. I think I did pretty well. According to iMapMyRide, it was just under 24 miles, not the 25 that were billed.

Since this was my first organized ride, I knew I wanted to push myself harder than I do when I usually ride. It took me 1 hour and 20 minutes to ride 23.87 miles, which is 17.9 mph average. It certainly helped that this ride was mostly downhill, with not much uphill. I wanted to hit 17 mph as my average, so I am pleased with 17.9 for myself.

The ride started at 6:00 am, and it was raining for the first 20 minutes or so. Luckily, there wasn't much wind, and the temp was right around 50 degrees. It was still chilly with the rain, but not as cold as I thought it would be. To keep warm, I had a long-sleeve shirt under my jersey, calf-high dress socks, and plastic bags in my shoes (to keep the wind out; it is a lot cheaper than toe covers), and a handkerchief over my head to keep that warm as well. I stayed pretty warm, once I got going.

For me, this was a big deal to ride with a bunch of other people and be able to keep a good pace. I tyipcally ride by myself, and it was great to be around other cyclists. I have not participated in any of these organized events because I never feel like I would be able to keep up with anyone. I felt like I was a pretty average rider in that group. I passed some people, and got passed by some others. I hit a small wall at about 20 miles, and I felt that I couldn't keep up the pace. So, I found someone who seemed to be going fairly fast, and decided I would stay with them. That really helped. I did stay with them and we were going about 20 mph the whole 2.5 miles I stayed. After getting some rest by following them, I was able to take off and finish the ride pretty strongly.

While on the bike, I ate 1 Clif bar, and drank one water bottle of Powerade. I had bread, jam, an orange, half a banana, and yogurt before the race. I didn't get a side ache, nor did I feel like I ate too much. The only time I stopped was for a potty break about half way through.

I am really glad I did something out of my comfort zone and tried something new. It is a lot different when you don't have to worry about traffic lights or cars while you ride. I enjoyed that, and I look forward to riding in more organized rides.

Bonus: My wife took me to the starting line, and then had the kids meet me at the finish line. I am really lukcy that she's willing to do that. She is so supportive of me, and that is great to have.

 

So, my wife is a pretty good scrapbooker. She recently was asked to create a scrapbook layout for scrapbooksteals.com, to which a large portion of our paycheck goes each month (just kidding; I am lucky she is wise with what she spends there). I used an app for designing our work web site called iMockups. I told her it might be worthwhile to try using it to create the wireframe for her scrapbook layout. She typically takes my app suggestions and does nothing with them since she likes to be her own person (an admirable quality).

Well, eventually, she bought the app for her iPad and she struggled with it a bit, and then we figured a couple different things out. Below is her scrapbook page layout.

Since she has made this layout, she made about a dozen more layouts, and then started plotting out what our backyard is going to look like as we add a garden next year. I am fascinated that she took this tool that is expressly designed for mobile apps and web pages, and used it for her own creation. She made it work, and created a lot of really neat layouts. In addition to that, she also helped me understand her vision for our backyard, which is great, since I have to do all the work to get it to that point.

I am constantly impressed by how something like the iPad, which seems so limiting at first (no keyboard, weak processor, small memory, consumption-only device), can actually allow people who aren't really geeks to be creative in their own special way. It is inspiring.

I guess the real April Fools joke is that it was Spring!