Adding to Symphony

You want to know what Symphony really means to me. The other day in a game my team was able to do something that was pretty difficult, take something from practice and implement it to the game. We were able to clear the ball from one end of the field with only 4 passes and score a goal. Something that is not easy for any team, but especially us. It was really beautiful to watch everything come together so smoothly. It looked really great. To me Symphony in sports is that perfect play in any sport when everything just falls into place and comes together. We have recent memorable ones right here in NY from Derek Jeter's flip play against the A's or David Tyree's catch in the superbowl on Eli Manning's pass. Everyday in sports we see these things come together, some larger than others. That, to me, is what Symphony is all about.

Second Blog on Symphony

Daniel Pink's Symphony really was cool to look further into. I was able to do many of the things that Pink suggests in the portfolio section of his book. Check out some of these that can be useful to many of us in and out of the teaching field.

• Listen carefully to the great symphonies.

• Read magazines you have never looked at before and look for connections to your own life.

• Learn how to draw (and teach students to draw).

• Write down metaphors (understanding one thing in terms of something else) you encounter.

• Follow the links (play six degrees of separation with websites).

• Look for solutions in search of problems (ask why and why not).

• Create an inspiration board (tack up inspirational images).

Playing "Follow the Links" is really fun to do with anything. You get to off on a tandem and find new and fun things that you had no idea about. I did do this and found out many things about Symphony.

Also check out my first blog on Symphony that I posted in March earlier in this blog

Mini-P's

Today in class I watched two very cool mini-presentations. The first was something I think that I will use immediately. I always find myself writting notes and reminders on pieces of paper and putting them in my pockets to eventually get crumpled up and just not be as useful as they should be. Now because of Nicole I can use these sticky notes that stay on my computer screen all the time. I think this will be great and very useful to me so I can stop ending up with 7 pieces of paper in my pocket everyday or so. The other presentation was good because it gives you website templates to create a website for teachers. As a teacher in the world of technology it is important to incorporate computer usage for your students and these website templates will help me possibly create a new website EASILY for my classes. This is something also that may help me in the very near future. Thanks classmates!

VACATION!!

Finally vacation has arrived! I am very excited to be on vacation from work however I do have a jam packed schedule anyway. My group has to get a lot of work done on our project because when vacation is over we have less than a month to have it completed. I would personally like to finish it over this break to get it done with. The team I coach has games throughout the break as well as practice whenever we don't have a game. I also need to do many other odds and ends this break so there will really be limited time to relax. I just hope I can get most of it done early in the break so that I can have a little time to myself at the end before we go back.