My Obsessions! (and a cool tech tool)

Obsessions. We all have them, right?

I'm linking up with Living a Wonderful Life...

I have loved seeing everyone else's obsessions, so here are 5 of mine:

Teaching blogs, and incessantly checking Blogger for new comments/ followers/ stats.

I can't be the only one.

My camera.

I wanted a DSLR for years before I finally got one last summer. My husband was sweet enough to tell me to spend some wedding money on it- even before he knew he was getting a new computer from his friends as a wedding gift. I looooove it (like, took-1500-pictures-on-the-honeymoon love it). So glad he convinced me to finally go for it!

Arrested Development.

Oh goodness, this show. I can watch it over and over and over and I keep finding new jokes. I can just listen to it and be entertained (like when I'm organizing my classroom library...) My husband and I quote it ALL the time. Seriously... took me a few episodes to get into initially, but I highly suggest anyone with Netflix start streaming it ASAP.

Frogs.

I have loved frogs since I was a little girl. I have had them as pets, collected them, and love learning about them. My classroom has ended up sort of frog-themed- not especially on purpose, but because so many people have just bought me frog things for my classroom!

 

The Green Bay Packers!

My mom's family grew up in Wisconsin, so we are all huge Packers fans. Donald Driver (who you may know from his recent win on Dancing with the Stars) is my very favorite player, and he once called me 'sweetie' when I went to Packers Training Camp. The obsession doesn't stop there- I am an official Packers shareholder, got my own cheesehead for Christmas, have played (and won) in multiple fantasy football leagues, and read Packers blogs to get daily updates. My husband and I spend every weekend trying to watch both of our favorite teams (mine- Packers, him- Bengals). We watch a LOT of football, and a lot of NFL Network in the offseason (less than 100 days left!) It's a liiiittle ridiculous- but I LOVE it (and it is so much fun for BOTH my husband and I to be crazy about football, especially since when we met, he was just starting to care about it at all).

Sadly (for me, but probably not for my husband), Josh Groban seems to have fallen from the level of "Grobanite obsession" to "perfectly normal fandom." I'm still a fan, though.

Make sure you link up with your obsessions!

Anyway- today I started an "institute" put on by our local university. I had to apply to get in. The cool part about this?

It's FREE.

I am getting 3 graduate hours, paid lunches, a parking pass, books for my classroom, and a week (8-5 each day) of professional development (which, so far, is really good). For free.

I'm learning about integrating content (especially social studies) into the 90-minute reading block. They are giving us a lot of information to start with, but the last day or two will be primarily working on our own unit plans that we can take back to the classroom and use this year.

I'm pretty (geekily) excited about it, and I'm sure I'll share some of the things I take away this week!

One quick thing... one of our presenters showed us a cool free service for using texting or the Internet to do a live survey. I don't have near enough student computers (or cell phones in the classroom, thank goodness) to make this work with my class, but I think it could be great for professional development because just about every teacher will have a phone.

It's anonymous, which is good for a staff meeting or something like that, and you can actually download a PowerPoint slide that will automatically show the results as more people send in their opinion.

If you've never used it before (or especially if you are ever presenting to teachers and you want to engage them a little), check out PollEverywhere.com !

Hope you are having a happy Monday! (Especially those of you still in school!)