Soon I will be leaving for my annual summer camp adventure, but before I go I will be going on a trek to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. I have included the trek details below for those who may be interested.

Here’s the itinerary for my upcoming trip to Philmont.

Formatting note: Activities tend to happen after the backpacking is done. Elevation changes are estimates. There may be some side hikes to places not on our itinerary that will add some distance and allow for some additional opportunities and photos.

Day 1- Opening Campfire

Day 2- Ranger Training (Philmont Training), See the World’s Only Tyrannosaurus Rex Track-
Backpacking Distance- 2 Miles
Elevation Change- Not much
Ending Elevation: 7200 feet

Day 3-Archaeology, Tour Petroglyphs, Conservation Project
Backpacking Distance- 2 Miles
Elevation Change- about 1000 feet
Ending Elevation: 8200 feet

Day 4- Western Lore, Horse Rides, Cantina Show, Chuck Wagon Dinner and Breakfast(no dehydrated food)
Backpacking Distance- 5 Miles
Elevation Change- about 500 feet
Ending Elevation: 8500 feet

Day 5- Rock Climbing and Rapelling
Backpacking Distance- 6 Miles
Elevation Change- about 1000 feet
Ending Elevation: 9500 feet

Day 6- Burro Racing 12 Gauge Shotgun Shooting and Reloading
Backpacking Distance-7 Miles
Elevation Change- An up and down day, last 3 miles gain about 1000 feet.
Ending Elevation: 10200 feet

Day 7- Trail Camp- No Activities
Backpacking Distance: 5 Miles
Elevation Change: Another up and down day last two miles push us over 11000 feet
Ending Elevation: 11500 Feet

Day 8- .30-06 rifle and Reloading
Backpacking Distance: 5 Miles
Elevation Change: Next two days are all downhill (-1500 feet)
Ending Elevation: 10000 feet

Day 9- Gold Mining and Panning, Mine Tour, Blacksmithing, “Stomp” show
Backpacking Distance: 7 Miles
Elevation Change: Continuing downhill mostly (-2000 feet)
Ending Elevation: 8000 feet

Day 10- Cabin Tour@Hunting Lodge, Western Lore, Branding
Backpacking Distance: 6 Miles
Elevation Change: Up and down but not much of a change
Ending Elevation: 8000 feet

Day 11- Side Hike Tooth of Time
Backpacking Distance: 5 Miles
Elevation Change: Up and Down day (1000 feet up and down during the day)
Ending Elevation: 8000 Feet

Day 12- Return to Base camp
Backpacking Distance: 5 Miles
Elevation Change: (-1000+ feet)
Ending Elevation: <7000 feet

Backpacking Distance (not including any side hikes): 54 1/2 Miles
Highest Elevation: 11800 feet
Longest Day: 7 Miles

Looking for more information?
Check this site out: http://www.philsearch.org/ Click on Treks. Scroll down the page and click on Trek 5. There is our itinerary. You can also see photos from previous groups. I hope to submit some of my own after the adventure.

Thanks to all veterans and current members of our armed forces.

Our school has been using Engrade since the beginning of the second quarter. Prior to switching over (I had been using Thinkwave Educator, fantastic customer support there!) I set up an account and emailed them a few basic questions. To date none have been read. Why? Does customer support exist with Engrade? It certainly seems like it should. After all there is a prominent button that says “Email Engrade Support”. I understand that I am not paying for this service, but I would have expected that at least the emails I have sent would be read.

Here’s an example of outstanding tech support. We bought a Smart Board 8 years ago (well past warranty) I started having difficulties with it a couple of weeks ago and emailed their tech support email. Within two hours I had a response. Two hours for a product that in tech terms is an antique.

Thinkwave Educator is similar in that any issues I have had with both their free accounts (currently) and with their paid products I have always received prompt and accurate customer support.

Is Engrade going to provide support for their product?

But Annja had a hard time buying it.
Rogue Angel: Golden Elephant by Alex Archer

One of my favorite archaeology/fantasy authors. I have not read this one yet but have read the 12 books preceding this one.

Rules:
* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence – either here or on your blog.
* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence.
* Don’t look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

Thanks to Stephen Abrams of Stephen’s Lighthouse and Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog)for this rather interesting (and easy) meme.

Bloggers, you’re it.

And now for a variation…

Follow the same rules as above but this time use the most recent book you finished.

Alex Henry’s only three boats were lost and he saved his own life by grimly hanging to the bottom of an out of control craft he had been riding in, clinging tenaciously for several hours before finally being rescued by one of Amherst’s aides.

The Conqueror’s by Allan W. Eckert

A narrative of the French and Indian War focusing on the rebellion around Detroit led by Chief Pontiac. I started reading this in October to get ready for my hike along the Chief Pontiac Trail in southeastern Michigan.

What is the closest book to you and what did you last read?

Last week one of my Travel bugs (Scout Bear) celebrated its third birthday.Its birthday is the day I started him on his geocaching adventure.

A travel bug is a geocaching item that has been given a unique code that is trackable using the geocaching.com website. Generally the travel bugs are small items that have a small tag attached to them. Scout Bear is different. It is one of the Post Office Bears in a Scout Uniform.

He started close to home near Auburn Hills, Michigan and has traveled over 10,000 miles. He has met many scouts along the way including Cub Scout Pack 25 from Princeton, Massachusetts and the GPS Scouts who took it on the MidState Trail while they were getting ready for Philmont. (Interesting note: I will be going to Philmont this summer as well) He has traveled to 11 different states and Mexico during the three short years he’s been on the trail.

This could be done as a sort of modern Flat Stanley type activity with a class and their own travel bug. The only difficulty is the random travel of the travel bug. Travel bugs have been known to disappear (someone finds them and doesn’t log them into the site or just keeps them) or they end up lost.

The picture below is a Wordle from my Delicious bookmarks. A wordle looks at a groups of words and highlights the words that appear most frequently. It could be used on a selection of text or as I have done my tags from delicious.
You can check my bookmarks here: http://delicious.com/techicebreaker

My laptop computer has been acting strange lately. The strange issue I have been having occurs after I shut my computer down and turn it off. When I shut off the computer the hard drive light comes on and it continues to run. If I unplug it, it will drain the main battery down to nothing.
The details:
Compaq Presario V2000
1.86 gHz Pentium M Processor
Windows XP Service Pack 2
1gB of memory

Any suggestions?
Other than get a Mac, which may happen anyway.

UPDATE
Just a few weeks ago I bought a new Inspiron 1525 from Dell. I am getting used to Vista slowly and enjoy the rather large amount of hard drive space I have now. Thanks for your help and suggestions!

… and I felt right at home where I belong.”
Lyrics from “Fred Bear” by Ted Nugent.

Tomorrow is our last day of school for students and Friday is our last day for teachers. Its going to be a bit crazy for me for the next couple of days….

The schedule:
Thursday:
At school:
1/2 day of school
- Awards Ceremony
-Assist with technology presentation for teachers during the afternoon.
-pack up classroom

At home:
-Pack for summer camp and trip to St. Helena Island.

Friday
At School:
-Finish packing classroom and check out of school.
At Home:
-Unload car and continue packing for camp and St Helena Island trip.

Saturday

-Pack car for move to Lost Lake Scout Reservation.
-Drive to Lost Lake Scout Reservation in Clare, MI (about 2 3/4 of an hour trip)

Sunday
-Drive to Mackinac City to catch boat to St Helena Island at 9:00 am.

Sunday Through Wednesday Morning
-Camp and work at St Helena Island with Troop 4 from Ann Arbor. (See My First Animoto Video for a taste of St Helena Island)

Troop 4 from Ann Arbor, Michigan has been renovating the light house and keeper station for the past 20 years. Scouts, adult leaders and their families camp for the week and spend most of each day working on various projects on the island. Some other highlights of the week include a day hike to a Heron Rookery and the remains of an old village, twice weekly bonfires and the scouts work on advancement as well. Its a very rustic week. This will be my second time camping with Troop 4 (I’m from Troop 154 in Sterling Heights and know Troop 4 from Lost Lake Scout Reservation)

Wednesday
-Drive back to camp

Thursday
-School meetings back in Detroit. Return to Lost Lake for remainder of staff week and summer camp.

I’m really looking forward to being back at camp this summer. This will be my 18th summer at Lost Lake Scout Reservation on staff. I’ve had many positions over the years ( Handicraft Director, Program Director, Pathfinder Director (1st Year Scout Program) and Commissioner) Currently I am the commissioner and work with the troop’s leadership and camp staff to make sure the scouts have a good time at camp. Some of my specific responsibilities include judging our Scoutmaster Cookoff on Tuesday afternoons, coordinating the campwide barbecue on Wednesday night and taking photos for our camp’s slide show at the Friday Night campfire. Here’s an example slide show from last year. http://scouts21.ca/2007-08-20_llsr.php

I also do a lot of the carving on our growing collection of totem poles in camp which range in size from 8 to 25 feet tall.

Technology wise it will be a bit of a challenge. Internet service is Dialup and is slowwwwwwww. We can get WiFI at the local McDonalds (about a 20 minute drive)

Our summer camp season lasts until early August. I won’t be as active on Twitter and I cannot imagine what Google Reader is going to look like. Email and direct messages are probably the best way to contact me via the Internet.

This post was inspired by the following posts:
Your Summer Reading List and Professional Development Meme

Here’s a list of the books I’ll be reading this summer for Professional Development on my own.

1. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson-

2. The Passionate Teacher by Robert L. Fried

3. The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

4. Thinking Visually by Oliver Caviglioli and Ian Harris

5. Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

6. Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe

7.Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

I will be reading the Understanding by Design books to see how they fit into my school’s adoption of SIOP (Structured Instructon Observation Protocol) http://www.siopinstitute.net/. I will be reading Presentation Zen, Thinking Visually and The Back of the Napkin to improve my presentation and graphic design skills for the classroom.

Also during the summer I hope to experiment more with the Wii Board project to see how it can be used in my classroom in the fall.

This is not my usual style of writing for this blog. The Red Wings are my favorite hockey team and some co-workers were saying that they weren’t going to sweep the Avalanche. Since they had nothing to lose (their teams didn’t make the playoffs) I wrote and emailed this little press release celebrating the Wings win. Enjoy!

Press Release

Denver, Colorado

Colorado Avalanche to join the Buffalo-Edmonton Golf Tour.

After being swept from the playoffs by the Detroit Red Wings last night, the Avalanche announced plans to join the Buffalo-Edmonton Golf Tour. Although Edmonton and Buffalo have been playing golf for weeks, its expected the Colorado franchise will have no problem catching up.

“We’re looking to duplicate the success Buffalo has had on the golf tour in recent years”, an unnamed Avalanche team member said.

“Without a goalie, it should be an easy task to put the ball in the hole,” another player added.

When asked to comment on the golf tour Mike Babcock declined saying,” None of our players have had much experience in playing on that tour as it starts much before our season is usually over. Our focus continues to be winning our tenth Stanley Cup.”

The Chicago Blackhawk franchise is the perennial favorite to capture Lord Stanley’s Other Cup trophy.