The tragic events in Chardon today, make us all take time to stop and think about the important things in life: family, friends, and loved ones. My thoughts go out to the Chardon students, parents, teachers and community members.
One student sent me this poem:

Things like this should never happen,
But sometimes they still do.
Although we are not there in body,
Mind and with our hearts, we are with you.

All we can do is hope and pray,
that recovery is down the road.
This will always be in our memories,
If only we could help carry the load.

Many districts in the nation are wearing red tomorrow as a way to honor the students of Chardon.  I hope you will, I know I will.  Mr. Holman

Below are a few links that I suggest the students of CMS look over to get an idea of how their blogs should be progressing.  Starting with Quest 4, or at latest Quest 5, students will no longer post their questions and answers.  You will show what you know by incorporating the concepts talked about in each Quest into the story of your feudal character.   If your blog is awesome, leave the web address in a comment and students can go check it out!!

http://redforever.weebly.com/the-middle-ages.html
    *Check out blog posts for Quest 3 and Quest 4 to see the evolution of                 awesome!

http://sparklesandbubblesandsunshine.weebly.com/web-quests.html
    *Great example of historical fiction.  Fake story based on real facts!

http://7astudent.weebly.com/middle-ages-journal.html
    *Some more excellent historical narrative!

http://ohiostatefootballrocks.weebly.com/world-history.html
    *Great writing...next blog will follow the story jsut without the embedded     questions and answers!

http://davidworldhistory.weebly.com/scroll-tent.html
    *An entire Middle Ages universe!  Check out all the pages of historical             awesomeness.  Definitely can tell this student knows how his charcter's life     would have been effected by the information in the Quests

Been an interesting week.  The site was lost and found again, kids working on the middle age webquest and more. 

Well, I wanted to post this up and see your reactions.  The national archives in Washington D.C. has the image to the right as you enter.    This statue is called "The Future" 


The rest of this comes from the following link: 
Statue The Future Architect John Russell Pope placed four monumental statues around the National Archives Building. Each was cut from a single block of limestone weighing 125 tons. Aitken's "The Future" sits on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the building. The young woman lifts her eyes from the pages of an open book and gazes into the future. Its base is inscribed with a line inspired by Shakespeare’s play The Tempest: "What is Past is Prologue."

My question to you: What does the following mean or say to you: "What is PAST IS PROLOGUE"?  Leave a comment on your ideas. 

Sometimes I think it is a good idea to just stop and look around sometimes.  It's why I ride motorcycles.  So much more to see when doors and a roof are not in your way.  So much inspiration and amazing things to see.  Whenever and where ever you can find inspiration to be a better student, teacher, parent, person take time and don't let it slip away.  I hope everyone has a great long weekend with family and friends. 

Mr. P and Mr. H are presenting next week at Etech Ohio.  This conference is the largest state technology conference in the U.S.  We will be addressing technology use in the middle school: we will address the webquest, the online textbook and technology in general.  

We need your help.  This presentation is not really about Mr. P and Mr. H, but about you.  Please take time to complete this survey.  We may use your words, ideas and FIRST name in our presentation to help explain to others how technology changes teaching and learning.   Thanks in advance for taking the time to provide us with feedback and your ideas.  

When you have finished, please go to your blog buddies blog and read the posting they have up.  Comment on all posts. 

CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY

_It's like the Plague has landed in the Pennington household.  I am still under the weather, but now Olivia and Kyle have joined me.  So off to the pediatrician's office today.  Continue being awesome students today. 
Tomorrow I have to attend a professional development thingy with Mr. Bowens and Mr. Heintz at Perry Middle School, so I will not see you until Friday.  At Perry us teachers are going to discuss something called the "common core curriculum" and start creating some digital collaboration between our schools.