Monday, February 25, 2008

Rapid Fire Learning for February

Karen Wallace kicks off the Rapid Fire Learning for February over at the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog. He is my recall of what I learned this month:




1 - Immigrants come to Franklin, MA from a variety of places around the world and for a variety of reasons, most prominent amongst them being the quality of the school system. So why do we have such a problem getting funding for the schools? That is the subject for another discussion.

2 - What started as a project for Dolores' kindergarten friends became one for me as Dolores brought the amaryllis plant home as the Franklin schools were out on winter vacation this week. She took off for a well deserved break of her own leaving me to mind the plant. I became enchanted with the explosion of blossoms and took a daily photo to record the progress. For a few days, the amaryllis also inspired a sherku.

3 - The learning about embedded links in meme widgets continued this month as the article that Michael Pollitt was researching finally got published. I summarized the caution here,

4 - On my second visit to the library this week, I learned more about the history and happenings leading to and just following the Great Boston Molasses Flood in 1919. I had recently completed the book Dark Tide and learned that the anarchist in New England were quite active. Sacco and Venzetti are probably the most well-known. What I did know realized was that Sacco lived in Milford for 9 years. Milford is next door to Franklin. I will write more of the historical discussion that occurred on Thursday. The discussion helped me decide to choose Dark Tide as my entry for the Love Affair With Books.

5 - I helped at the registration desk at the NewBCamp08 held this past weekend on the Johnson & Wales campus in downtown Providence, RI. As a new event, it was a success. 50 of the 80-odd preregistrations showed up along with 20 walk-ins to give 70 folks the chance to learn and share information on blogging, podcasting, and new media in general. While I have read Chris Penn regularly, I got to see his updated intro to new media presentation. While I participated in the two previous PodCamp Bostons, I was unable to stay for the Saturday party. This time the schedule worked out for me and I got to hear Matthew Ebel perform his material for a free 90 minute show. More to come on this front but NewBCamp08 was a success and much credit goes to the lead organizer, Sara Streeter!


What did you learn during February?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:00 PM

    Sounds like a full month of learning for you Steve! I have enjoyed the photos of your amaryllis, and we were on similar tracks... wrote about [bulb] "forcing" here on MWAC last week in connection with the Daily 5 Minutes.

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  2. Thanks Rosa! As we have discussed previously, a day without learning is a day without fully living. :-)

    It is interesting how the blossoms connections are made!

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  3. Thanks for the mention Steve, I just love how powerful rapid fire learning can be. I learned something new from your blog this month - I never knew those beautiful flowers were called Amaryllis. We have similar here in Australia, but I have always just thought they were a sort of lily.

    Looks very very cold in your neck of the woods!

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  4. Karen, I actually found out that is not an amaryllis but a hippeastrum. Still in the same family but as you follow the links in wikipedia, the hippeastrum is what matches the photos I have been taking. The amaryllis is something different.

    Another learning!

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