Weekend. :)

[bookaddict88]

 Overall, I've had a great weekend so far!  Saturday, my school's Lego League team had their robotics competition. I've been assisting some with the preparation for the competition, so volunteered to help chaperone.  Unfortunately, I overslept by about two hours (at least it wasn't a school day!), but I still made it, and we had a good deal of fun.  Granted, our team came in last for the actual robotics demonstration, but they didn't do too poorly on their demonstration or their teambuilding exercise.  To top it all off, we actually won a trophy! It was the Judge's Choice trophy, so we're not quite sure what that means, but winning something was definitely pretty exciting for the kids. We'll find out Monday if we are one of the teams going on to the next stage in the competition. 20 out of 25 teams move on, so we actually have a chance, despite our poor performance on the demonstration.

Then, Saturday night, I agreed last minute to host a couple of Irish CouchSurfers.  They finally found my place around 2am (my phone's not working, so that didn't help), so we only got to talk briefly before heading to bed.  However, we had brunch this morning, which was awesome.  CouchSurfers, we decided, are (usually) some of the most open, friendly people out there.  So we had some great discussions before they had to head off again.  (The Irish accents were an added bonus, in my opinion! ;)  )   Not many CSers decide to visit Tulsa, so I'm glad I got this opportunity to host!

This afternoon, a friend who I haven't talked to in forever caught me on Skype.  While we were talking, we discovered that the newest version of Skype comes with a free trial of video conferencing!  So we downloaded everything we needed, rounded up a couple more of our friends, and had a video conference call. I still can't get over how cool technology can be.  We had three people in Madrid, one person in California, and myself in Oklahoma, all looking at and talking to each other at once.  And, since the friends I was talking to are some of the most amazing people in the world, we just had an all around good time.

Of course, all this means that I haven't even started grading and lesson planning yet. Oops. At least we only have two days of school next week! And then I get to go back to California for Thanksgiving!!!

Comments

[3rdragon]

I'm very excited for when the video conferencing update hits Skype for mac. I pretty regularly have a multi-person Skype date, and it would be awesome with video.

[bookaddict88.livejournal.com]

The beta version for Mac is out, though, and works! One of my friends has a mac, and chatted along with the rest of us Windows folks.

[3rdragon]

Oooh!

[tarzanic.livejournal.com]

Very cool about the Lego robotic competition! If you have time, I'd love to hear more about how you helped with prep. With luck, I'll be teaching a seminar on robotics using the Mindstorm kits next semester. I've heard a bit from a colleague and I'll have some training later on, but would love to hear other perspectives.

[bookaddict88.livejournal.com]

I honestly haven't helped a whole lot with the prep for Lego League. I pop in to help with meetings sometimes, and help chaperone the events. Next year, I'm planning on being more involved (we want to get a junior Lego League group going as well), but this year I was mostly just there to give encouragement and see how things worked.

But if you have specific questions, do let me know! I'm definitely learning a lot as I observe.