teaching

Think Thank Thunk Thurns Thwone!* (Prizes!)

February 1, 2011 , 13 Shawn Cornally

Here’s how I feel about blogging for an entire year:

Despite its horrifically inelegant name, blogging has turned out to be the most important professional development I have ever had, hands down. It has forced me to be honest, forthright, and punishingly analytical of my own teaching practices.

Let that be a lesson to you, administrators: teachers don’t want meetings, and we don’t want full-day leadership retreats. We want to seek out our own colleagues with questions that we’ve generated about our own classrooms.

Funny, kind of sounds like what my students want, too . . .

Anyhoo, I’ve made it to one year. (Can you believe that the Internet Gestapo hasn’t shut me down yet? Or that my blood pressure hasn’t ruptured an artery dousing my computer with blood, thus rendering its electrical connections shorted?) YAY!

I cannot thank all^** of you enough. I can’t thank you enough for tolerating my yelling (as I direct it away from my students). I can’t thank you enough for being a network of people who pragmatically care about education. Finally, thank you for how you’ve all helped my students. I was a reinvent-the-wheel teacher before I “met” all of you. Thanks!

Party Games, With Prizes!

Here are two puzzles/riddles; their solutions are not connected. I hope you enjoy them.

First, A Riddle:

The first correct solver — whose solution is emailed to: shawn [dot] thinkthankthunk [at] gmail [dot] com — may choose one item from any of the prize lists below. Only one correct solution will be accepted.

Aa Farmer Stands Up For His Crops (by Shawn Cornally)

To start, A mean old Titin fast approaches to pillage a human village.
His destruction was three-fold; affecting fixtures, tinctures, and every fourth ligature.
The villagers were im-b-ibing, and did not notice the Titan until eight hours later.
Only an unessential farmer of this starch had a low enough phrown to cause the Titan to flee.
So, the Titan moved on to tear apart two other gala-xies and glu-ons.

Second, A Puzzle:

Screen 1. Click the link below to investigate the puzzle further.

To celebrate my blogiversary, I have also designed a small puzzle. The first correct solution of this puzzle receives an autographed 8×10 of yours truly, a lock of my hair, and a spoon that I once used to eat yogurt and never washed (circa 2008).

Kidding.

Here are the real prizes:

1st Correct Solution Submitted: Choose any one of the following (from 1st, 2nd, or 3rd lists!)

• USB Missile Launcher (Sorry, PC only)  or
• Desktop Magnetic Accelerator or
• Darth Vader BBQ Apron or
• Slave Leia BBQ Apron or
• Blade Runner Umbrella or
• The Annotated Hobbit.

2nd Correct Solution: Choose any of one the following (from 2nd or 3rd lists!)

• USB Drink Cooler or
• Working Model of Davinci’s Catapult or
• R2D2 Pepper mill or
• Atlas of Middle Earth or
• A $20 iTunes gift card or
• Any ThinkGeek T-Shirt (<$22 USD)

3rd Correct Solution: Choose any one of the following.

• Lightsaber Chopsticks or
• Geek Magnetic Poetry or
• Edwin A. Abbot’s Flatland or
• Tolkien’s short story Farmer Giles of Ham

I will post the puzzle’s and riddle’s solutions once the correct solutions have been submitted!

* Sorry if you have a lisp — totally not meant to offend.

** Thank you from the bottom of my heart: Lianna Cornally, Dan Meyer, Jason Buell, Frank Noschese, Matt Townsley, Sean Nash, Kathy Kaldenberg, Karen Clingerman, Riley Lark, Mrs. Bethea, Jerrid Kruse, Rhett Allain, JoVE, Sue VanHattum, Zach Shiner, Ben Blum-Smith, Spike Curtis, Chad Sansing, Gilbert Bernstein, Jan Powers, Sam Shah, Kate Nowak, The Sarcasymptote, The Virtuosi, anyone who has ever tweeted one of my links, anyone who has ever commented, and the Students of Solon High School.