Today was a busy day spent running errands.  I went to Oneonta and on the campaign front, counted Becker signs.  Everyone asks when Gary’s are coming out but it seems a little early.  No other politicians (other than the ones with primaries) have signs out, except Becker.  He only has a handful, mostly in Walton.  I sited only one between my house and Oneonta.  None from Oneonta to Walton.  Several around the town of Walton (someone is an eager beaver in that town!), and only one on the way to Delhi from Walton.

On the Social Studies front, I spent about 1 1/2 hours on Edmodo this morning and looked at some cool sites and information:  The Common Core Conversation, Web 2.0 Guru, 13 free annotation tools for teachers, the 33 digital skills every 21st century teacher should know (I’m not even close – something else to work on), eight free tools for teachers to make awesome info-graphics, 48 ultra-cool summer sites for kids, Bloom ipad apps, Annenberg classroom; games and interactives.

I spent a half hour at school.  I had to pick up my notebooks to revamp and talk to Mike MacDonald.

I spent an hour reading “Teaching Global History.”  Mostly about teaching it chronologically versus thematically and why it is so European centered with suggestions on how to change.  Interesting quotes were:  “Social studies teachers who are avid students of history find that the more they learn, the more they discover what they do not know.”  SO TRUE!  Alan Singer also suggests “the 21st century may be the “Chinese century” in the way the 20th century was dominated economically and militarily by the U.S. and the 19th century by Great Britain.” (Fishman, 2004:24)  Singer also discusses his “poop theory” of history – funny!

I hope to finish, “The Dark Monk”, a mystery set in Bavaria in the 17th century.

For the food lovers out there, sorry, no pictures tonight.  Dinner wasn’t very photogenic but it was good.  We had ham from Maple Shade Farm in Delhi, a salad of lettuce from the garden, arugula, red onion, figs, pears, pecans, feta cheese, topped with a dressing of salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. Bread was a lemon-blueberry sweet bread from Annutio’s in Oneonta.