Going away for the weekend with Techie

"Let's go away together this weekend.." I told techie. So we did.

I took my students to my home community of Nigigoonsiminikaaning this past weekend and had an Ojibwe immersion camp. The only part of techie I brought was the digital camera. Before I went, I took all the pictures I had in the camera and transferred them to the lap top. My plan is to sequence them and add Ojibwe phrases to them to show in my classes and at language table. Tayaa...I just created another project for myself. Oh well....

Anyways this weekend, I took over 150 pictures and the beauty of a digital camera is that I can take as much pictures as I want and I will not be wasting film. Also I can delete the ones I don't want and archive the ones I do want.
This weekend was full of ceremony where we were visiting sacred spots and offering tobacco. We walked around in the snow and saw all kinds of tracks. We had a sweat lodge, visited the community round house, sat in a blessing ceremony and ate traditional food like smoked beaver, deer stew, moose chile and wild rice. I was surprised to see so much snow there was on the ground. I love snow.

Sometimes it is good for my sanity to get away from the many aspects of Techie and all of her gadgets. Where we stayed, which is the language camp, there is no running water or electricity. It is good to get back to the basics periodically and to appreciate the simple things like, a sunrise, the beauty of snow, a walk in the woods.

Techie helped me do research this weekend in the form of a picture essay. I also got to know my students and bonded a little more with them. It was a great Anishinaabe filled weekend.

Stayed tuned when people start to wonder about Pebaam and Techie...are they becoming an item?

My Techie is eye candy

Techie and her many personalities are coming out. Now that she is establishing residency, she is letting her hair down and getting comfortable.

One of her friends/personalities arrived this week. The modem for the wireless was shipped to the house but it is still in the box. Just gotta find time to take it out and hook it up. I find myself short on time these days so I need all the short cuts that I can take without sacraficing quality.

For my birthday this week, I recieved a web cam and a cordless mouse. The cordless mouse was easy to set up but not the web cam. I knew Waase Giniw Ikwe (our friendly co-hort down the street) had one of those gadgets so I asked for her help. What was needed was an additional program off the internet. Miigwech Waase Giniw Ikwe for hooking that up.
I went to class early the next day and projected my students on the web cam as they entered the classroom. They saw themselves on the big screen in the classroom and it was funny how they reacted when they saw themselves there, larger than life. Playing with Techie is a good way to get to know her.

I am really intrigued with power point because it is such an easy program and has many possibilities. It can take simple lecture material and turn it into eye candy. I must say that techie is visually pleasing. I now would like to turn a lot of my material in visually stimulating lectures. Again this takes time but I see the long term effects of that.

Working with a lap top, developing power point lectures, surfing the internet for information, adding to my blog, down loading articles for class reading, hooking up new technology, using a laser pointer, recording with the digital camera, using a proxima projector, hooking up with wireless internet, using a wireless mouse....is all so new, fast and seemingly limitless.

Stay tuned to the saga when Pebaam asks...is the sky really the limit to getting to know techie...?

As The Bannock Burns

I decided that living with Techie is like living in a soap opera and the soap opera is called "As the Bannock Burns." The latest drama is that Techie is helping us get up to snuff at work and at home. Here is the latest...

I presented with power point for the first time this week. I gave a lecture on the four types of powwows for my Ojibwe Culture and History class and found power point made the job easier. Previously, I would write all the material on the board and ususally needed two large blackboard spaces. I liked powerpoint so much that I saved the presentation and plan to use it again in the future. I experienced technology as a time saver this week.

At home, I don't always get a wireless a connection and sometimes the signal is so weak that I lose the connection right in the middle of working on something. I think also I am stealing the neighbor's signal and that doesn't sit well with me either. The home computer is a dial-up and it is so slow and sometimes that quits on me too right in the middle of something.
Well I like being in the solution so we decided to order our own wireless connections. The phone company said we need to get a modem in order to have wireless. I'm not sure what that is but I think it helps transmit the signal, so we ordered it. So at home and at work, we are getting up to snuff.

Kinda looking forward to doing homework at home again, after all it is called "home" work.

Anyways, that is this week's drama as the bannock burns. Stayed tuned next week when pebaam asks...