Back in Mill Valley again. While I’ve been back a couple times for brief visits, today’s visit is the first when I’m expecting to catch up with old friends.
Of course, as is probably not unexpected, I’ve arrived at Boyle Park at the appointed time and no one is here yet. But I guess some things never change.
Had breakfast downtown at a place called Toast with Rebecca. She is my contact at Common Sense Media and just happens to live in MV a few blocks from my old home. Had a nice omelet with salsa and avocado. Yum… Not something you’d find in Maine really.
A lot is the same here and other things have changed. Mt. Tam looks the same. Beautiful as always. Tam HS has a lot of new construction including an all-weather track. It has a nice big sign
“Bruce Grant Track” a well deserved honor for Mr. Grant. I looked him up online and it appears he’s still in Corte
Madera. I’m debating if I should give him a call…
We’ve arrived in Orlando. We’re
Waiting for the Disney bus now. At least they hbe to foresight to mount a big TV so the kids cam watch. Of course, they are showing ads for Disney movies…but at they also added in some environmental ads too…plant a tree, clean the beach, etc.
We’re off to Disney World! We board in a half hour if all goes well, so in the meantime it’s airport school time. I’m watching the kids work on very 19th century math worksheets…pencils in hand. I’ve got two laptops and an iPhone, an iPod nano and an iPod video with me. I’m sure there’s a better source of math education available to us, but for now, I guess I’ll just have to wait until elementary education joins the “personal digital device” bandwagon.
There are a lot of kids flying today, some wearing Disney t-shirts. I bet we’re all headed in the same direction.
Peter works on his math homework
Nathan and Deanna work on more math homework
More random thoughts…I searched the app store this morning, and I was surprised that Disney has not released an app for DisneyWorld and their other parks. There are some retail 3rd-party apps, but nothing from Disney. I picked up one of them, and we’ll see if it is helpful.
Reminds me of when I was in school and there was talk of a math/physics curriculum based on theme parks. How much fun would it be to take an iPhone with the accelerometer in it with an app that could record data while zooming around on a roller coaster? Do some geo-caching, etc. I remember my first trip to Epcot when I was a teenager, and there was a computer that had a touch screen. You got to pick different roller coaster elements like a hill, curves, loops, and string them together, then it would play an animation of you riding the roller coaster you designed. It had a gopher or beaver that talked to you on the screen if you choose elements that shouldn’t go one after the other. It was the first time I had ever used a touch screen. How things change!
I’ve got a couple hours of downtime before I head out for the train station to go to Hangzhou, so I’m going to catch up on reading stories for the boys and posting to the blog. Here’s a video of the maglev train ride. In the middle of it, you can hear me noting when we reached top speed of 431 km/hour.
One question…who is holding the camera?