In theory, what I want to do is have a place to comment, muse, whatever, when something occurs to me. Some of it will be clever, probably, some remarkably simple-minded, some that I will never care about seeing again, some that I will want to make reference back to in some obscure future. But with the fugaciousness of my thoughts (see? I learned a new word today!), I thought it would be interesting to see what I keep and what I lose. So ok.
It's a bit late to make a point of it, at least in my daily life, but a big influencer of my thinking lately has been listening to A Way with Words - http://www.waywordradio.org/- it's lovely to have a regular old pair of smart people talking about a wide spectrum of language and language use with people who use it. My favorite expressions learned in the last week or so are:
- schippchen (the pouty lower lip expression)
- sitzfleisch (the ability to sit still for long periods, usually expressed in the negative)
- saddity (although I haven't found anyone at school, yet, who knows this word)
Other stuff that's going on: Barb got us all started on Lumosity, and that's actually a pretty good thing. What eventually happens with it is still moot, but it's interesting to see the ability to get better at doing discrete tasks, mostly involving memory and focus. I didn't feel like I started out that badly, thinking that spatial relationships and number processing were my big weaknesses, but there are things that I am definitely getting better at. So that's cool.
My walking is a big part of my day. Even though the time consumed is pretty small, relatively, I spend my most quiet, uncommunicative time in the morning and afternoon, back and forth from school, and even if I do listen to stuff - books, podcasts, rarely the radio, I'm still inside my head a lot more than even when I'm quiet-timing other places. I think this is good, but it does concern me that I'm perhaps becoming even more solipsistic than I usually am.
I'm trying to use Pinterest to organize aspects of my life, thoughts, et cetera, and enjoying it a bit more than I would have thought. I hope I never become one of those who automatically things of pinning things without actually examining and processing them first, but it really is a convenient dumping ground for stray pieces of information, images, ideas or what have you.
One thing I did learn today (one that I wasn't looking for, but was happy I found); to paste a field of data or a chart from Excel into Word or Powerpoint in such a way as to make the new document still interactive with the original workbook, use paste special in the document or slide show, pick the chart or data range, and link. It works beautifully, and added a new dimension (very timely) to my teaching of Excel in class this morning. I will definitely add this to my instruction from now on, geeky as it is. As well as using a double click on the autofill button to avoid having to drag. That's pretty cool too.
A new thing I did in French 1 - we're starting the big unit on food and food vocabulary (plus some grammar stuff I haven't looked at yet), so rather than me standing up in front blathering about all the words for food that I know, I decided to break them into 4 categories, Viandes, Fruits/Legumes, Produits Laitiers, and Ingredients, and have four groups, each one assigned to one of the categories, make Powerpoints with images and vocabulary for at least twelve items in each category. So far, it seems like they took to this very well. We'll see what the results look like. Here's the Box folder that should eventually hold their results:
https://uofi.app.box.com/files/0/f/3485959810/Categories_de_Nourriture
Another Way with Words interesting thing to have learned: in St. Louis, and with a variant spelling that might or might not be related, the term "Hoosier" has long been a term of derision referencing lower class, rural or hick people. Not specifically related to people from Indiana, but I'm sure there was some reference to the outsider. Apparently, the Indiana usage was the residents owning the derisive term, so that it wouldn't be offensive anymore. Huh. Never heard even the breath of this before.
A new thing I did in French 1 - we're starting the big unit on food and food vocabulary (plus some grammar stuff I haven't looked at yet), so rather than me standing up in front blathering about all the words for food that I know, I decided to break them into 4 categories, Viandes, Fruits/Legumes, Produits Laitiers, and Ingredients, and have four groups, each one assigned to one of the categories, make Powerpoints with images and vocabulary for at least twelve items in each category. So far, it seems like they took to this very well. We'll see what the results look like. Here's the Box folder that should eventually hold their results:
https://uofi.app.box.com/files/0/f/3485959810/Categories_de_Nourriture
Another Way with Words interesting thing to have learned: in St. Louis, and with a variant spelling that might or might not be related, the term "Hoosier" has long been a term of derision referencing lower class, rural or hick people. Not specifically related to people from Indiana, but I'm sure there was some reference to the outsider. Apparently, the Indiana usage was the residents owning the derisive term, so that it wouldn't be offensive anymore. Huh. Never heard even the breath of this before.
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