Just in time for a new year...

I really thought I had broken the pattern last year. You see, since 1997 (my second full year of teaching), there have been major disasters every 2 years that have impacted the attendance area of my school in some fashion. I don't remember what happened in 1997, but here's a list from 1999 forward: Hurricane Floyd, 9/11, Hurricane Isabel, and ending with Hurricane Katrina. And so, last August I started biting my nails. I was wondering if I would be teaching during the day, and doing Red Cross work in the evenings as I have done for most of these events. I waited... I just knew something was going to happen... And nothing did. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I went to the Innovative Teacher conference in Seattle, and came back. Still nothing. Woo hoo! The pattern was broken.

And then Gustav showed up. With his friend Hanna. I guess they think that since we didn't have anything last summer, we need a double dose this year.

School opens on Tuesday. Gustav is scheduled to arrive on Monday. Fortunately, I think I'm prepared for the first day.

I am also hoping and praying that Gustav gets bored and decides that New Orleans and that whole area isn't worth visiting. I hope the residents there have been evacuated safely... I've heard from one set of friends, who are safe and outside the area. One last wish, and then back to planning for the start of school: If you've been evacuated from the area, and not been able to reach family & loved ones, please make sure you register with Red Cross Safe & Well so your family and friends can find you.

Masters of Disaster---LIVE!

Hm... Okay, maybe that headline is a bit kitschy even for me, but I couldn't resist. This afternoon we had a tornado warning while we were at school. To help make that a little more understandable: A tornado WATCH means the conditions could possibly produce a tornado, and the National Weather Service is keeping an eye out. A tornado WARNING, however, means that a tornado has been spotted, either on the ground or in the sky near you.
We were puttering around in the classroom, packing things up for the summer. I have one student that enjoys looking at the weather, and often does this if he has the opportunity. He was doing that while I was looking up something for another student, so he leans over to me and points at the scrolling bar on the Weather Channel homepage. And I see it: bright red, scrolling slowly, TORNADO WARNING. He has seen it too, and wants to talk about it, but I needed to stop him so the other students wouldn't get scared. I simply said, "If it was for this area, we would be in the safe room, in the position that we practiced." He nodded, lost interest, and went forward. I can honestly say it wasn't more than 3 minutes later that one of our assistant principals came on the PA system and said, "All instruction will cease." I never thought I would hear those words out of the mouth of a principal! He requested that all students & staff report to their assigned safety locations, and then the school lost all power. Now, our school is a Red Cross shelter site, and has generators (I know this because, 3 years ago, before I ever knew I was teaching at this school, I did the shelter survey... it was one of the first things I did for the Loudoun Chapter!), so the hallways had lights as did some classrooms. We stayed in the room for about an hour, and ultimately dismissed all students by 4:15 p.m.
But, I was very proud of my students... they knew exactly what to do, and although they were scared and had some high-pitched voices going on, they did what they were told to do. I have to attribute at least SOME of the ability to what we've talked about in class with the MoD adaptations.

Masters of Disaster Adaptations

For those who heard about the MoD adaptations that were created by myself & the Loudoun County, Virginia Red Cross can look here for the Intellitools Classroom Suite files. The first module, Disaster Safety & Preparedness are available here.
Please note: The current Classroom Suite files are in Version 3. They are compatible for version 4, but once saved in version 4 they will no longer work in version 3. I hope to have time this summer to port the older activities to Version 4 over the summer as well as create the activities for the Fire Safety module.

If you are interested in print activities, and can provide proof that you have purchased a kit (or several kits) for either your chapter or schools & other groups in your area, I'm happy to email you the PDF files. If you would prefer to receive a CD of the print activities along with the IntelliTools activities, please contact me. There will likely be a minimal cost for the purchase of CDs and shipping.
I'm choosing to require proof of purchase for the paper activities in order to protect the copyright on the MoD kit. Groups that use the computer-based activities will typically have students that cannot access the print kit at all and so need more assistance to get this important information to their students & clients.

I would also like to thank the parents who previewed the activities for me before they were released, IntelliTools, Inc. for hosting the files in their activity exchange, and Mayer-Johnson, Inc. for allowing us to use the Boardmaker-PCS symbols in the activities without charge.

RCT 3

Two of my students have started working on RCT 3 parks with me, and one student is using RCT 2 on his own. The parks in RCT 3 are working very well, although I am controlling the mouse in order to reduce the possibilities of information overload. As I said, the hardest part is getting the paths laid correctly. One student has made it all the way to the Tycoon level challenge in Vanilla Fields (the starter park), and another has made it to that section in the Splash-Water Park expansion. I asked the one student do to Splash because his research is on Sea World. We've also had some trouble connecting the slides to the pool complexes, but I don't know why. I think it might be the terrain being uneven. We'll keep working at it.
I will post some screen shots of the parks in a week or so; I neglected to bring the CD home with me this weekend, so I can't run the game.