How Courtney Saved the 2014 B.F.O.

The Black Friday Omelet.  The 2nd most looked forward to meal of my year was in Jeopardy once again this year, but was once again saved and rose from the ashes of the leftover bins in the fridge like a salty, carb-laden phoenix.  This is the story of how this glorious omelet was saved once again.
For anyone not familiar with the story, you can check out last year's post for a little back story.
So if last year was a change in typical holiday traditions, this year was a revolution.  Dad passed away only just a month ago, and this is the first of my 34 years (that I can remember) that some sort of Thanksgiving dinner hasn't been prepared in my childhood home.  I guess last year's "Family Stone" reference was a bit more spot on than I had realized at the time.  My immediate family spent last weekend together at Pheasant Run in Chicago swimming in the pool, eating and drinking too much, and being way too loud for generally accepted hotel behavior.  This year my kids and I were headed to my Grandfather's house on Thanksgiving Day with Mom to have dinner with her Dad, step-Mom, and two half-sisters and their families.  In the planning stages all seemed like it would be OK for the B.F.O. as I could just bring home a goody bag of bits and pieces for the glorious omelet on Friday morning.  But, "best laid plans, right?"
For as delicious as our Thanksgiving Lunch was, the semi-potluck style in which it was prepared meant that quite a few of the traditional Thanksgiving standards were noticeably absent.  Of course we had turkey and mashed potatoes, but that's just about where the standards stopped.  See, one of my aunt's families has a lot of food allergies, so we had quite a few dishes made without dairy, gluten, or meat.  And in typical Keebaugh fashion, there were more dessert options than main course fare.  For as delicious as everything was, I was struggling to see my omelet come together.  I left lunch with the non-ideal combo of turkey, plain green beans, macaroni and cheese, and a bacon cheddar potato skin headed for the omelet.  With so many of the regular cast missing, would it still be any good this year?
Later that evening, my brother and his wife, Courtney, swung by the homestead to hang out and watch some football.  Knowing we were heading to Grandpa's and eating quite a few Vegan, non-gluten items, she had brought back from her parents the most glorious little care package that included the two most critical missing pieces for any B.F.O., delicious stuffing and the glorious green bean casserole.  (If you remember from last year, green bean casserole is the single most important item in the B.F.O.)  While the bacon cheddar potato skins were a surprisingly nice addition this year, I was missing the cheesy potato and corn casseroles that had been so delicious in the past, and I was also left wanting on some gravy to dribble over the top.  But, things always have a way of working out for the better.  I have always been a firm believer in this, and this year's B.F.O. is no exception.  Courtney's simple gesture falls nothing short of heroics in my book.  It wasn't the best B.F.O. in history, but the story of its coming together typifies the thoughtfulness of family during the holiday season.

In closing, and on a little less tongue in cheek note, this year I'm thankful for my family and the time that we all have to spend together, but more importantly for the time I had to spend with my Dad before he had to go.  I have said and thought numerous times in the last month that he did such a great job of raising my brothers and me that it feels like he's never too far away as he's so deeply embedded in each of us.

Exams Here I Come

My procrastination is about to come to an end; it's time to get busy.  My plan is to use a large chunk of my Thanksgiving break to take my exams.  Hopefully over the long break I'll be able to complete multiple exams.  I've heard that they can be a little stressful, but I'm fairly confident I can work my way through multiple tests over the time I have available.  I do have some awesome resources to use, along with the fact that I'm pretty knowledgeable to begin with.
Regardless of how many exams I am able to pass next week, I will definitely have them all passed by the end of 2014 to become an official Google Educator.  After that I can begin to focus on building up a better network and online presence to begin work toward acceptance into the GTA.
Just as an extra little thought, I will keep you guys in the loop for a new class I'm going to pitch to Mr. Heath for next year.  Keep in mind, this is just a thought at this moment, but I'd love to know what you guys think about it.  I was thinking that that a really useful class would be a student version of what I'm doing now as a teacher.  A Google Apps for Students course similar to this one.  The focus would be on all of the technical details and more advanced uses of Chrome, Drive, Mail, Calendar, Sites, and other Google Apps and Extensions.  For anyone interested in getting better with Google tools (I know a lot of university professors are utilizing them for work, especially Drive) I would recommend checking out the site.  I think creating a site like this would be both fun for me and really useful for our school, students, and maybe even teachers looking to learn more about Google Apps.  Thoughts?

Google Educator Certification Rolling

So after missing day one of the training our county is providing for earning the Google Educator Certification, I was able to attend day two on Monday this week.  I think I'll be ok after missing day one as Gmail and Calendar were covered, and I'm pretty familiar with those already.  I'll just need to do a little refreshing before I take the exam for those two tools.  I did pick up some good study resources to help out a bit with some of the more advanced features that may come up on the exam.  I'm pretty confident in my Google knowledge though, and I'm not too worried about the actual exams.

This Monday we explored some of the more advanced tools in Google Drive, and I picked up a few new, cool tidbits along with the excitement of just learning it a little better.  The things that have me worried about this exam are 1) the test for Drive will cover a lot of material.  Between Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms along with all of the different tools associated with each one, there is a lot of material to be knowledgeable of.  And 2) with the recent new update to Drive and the fact that Google is in the middle of updating these exams to reflect this new update, I don't know whether to jump in now and take the old version of the exam or wait for the new version to come out with questions over the "New Drive."  Timing is everything, right?

We also took a very brief look at Google Sites.  I've used Sites a little, but I would consider it the tool that I'm the least knowledgeable of.  I haven't really built a full scale Google Site yet, but I have dabbled and I continue to get better.  If anyone is interested in what I have done, "Sites-wise," feel free to check out the Site I set up to serve as a digital portfolio of my daughter's education.  We started it last year to reduce the amount of paper that our pack-rat daughter thought she had to keep.  It's been fun, but definitely needs some updating done for this year.

All in all, I have a little studying to do, but very soon I'll be jumping in to take these five exams and earn my Google Educator label.  From there, it will come the time to start pursuing acceptance into the Google Teacher Academy.

2014 miGoogle Conference

Yesterday I attended the 2014 Michigan Google Summit for Education for the second consecutive year, and it was a great day to see what other teachers are doing with Google products. The day started with Cyrus Mistry, a Chromebook Project Manager at Google, giving a really interesting keynote about many of the things Google is working on and doing for educators. There were a ton of sessions scheduled, and while I think I could have chosen better, I did pick up quite a few new tips and tricks for the work that I do as well as seeing some successful teachers tell about how they have successfully integrated Google's tools to work on cross-curricular projects with other teachers and groups of students. On top of the sessions, as usually happens, I ran into a few people I know and having discussions with them in the in between times was valuable as well. One tool of Google's that is brand new this year and right at the tip of everyone's tongue was Classroom. I was really excited to see Google roll this out over the summer, and I was really eager to play with it. A lot of teachers at the conference have been using it, and it sounds like they are still working on perfecting it. I was a little relieved that I hadn't dived right in so I can use it once a lot of the bugs are worked out. This will be one of my top priorities for next year, especially with my Intro to Computers and Algebra classes. Another priority will be shifting my Intro to Read/Write Web course over to Google Sites from Weebly. It's going to be a lot of work, but in the end it will be very worth it, and there will be a learning curve for students that I hope we can work through. All in all, I had a very productive and exciting day seeing what other teachers are doing and perfecting my use of Google in the classroom. It will definitely help as I get started in the Google Educator Program next week.