January 18, 2006
The roofer finally got someone to come and take a look at the hole in my ceiling this morning; and he had someone who could come over and begin work this afternoon. Instead of patching the hole, he cut out the entire square of the ceiling between the attic access and the walls then placed a piece of drywall into that hole. Speeded up the process dramatically from what we originally thought. The first layer of plaster has been applied, and now we just wait till tomorrow to see what else is needed.
I spent most of the day working on images for a comic book/strip vocabulary interactive. Most of the work is finding or designing little pictures that fit the definitions that the lesson plan writer has provided. They’re all fairly corny; but they’ll accomplish the goal. When I get it finished, it should be usable from the 3-5 grade band to secondary. Unfortunately, the MarcoPolo tool that I would use to make the interactive is down. So I can’t actually drop any of this work into place. Sort of disappointing. I wanted to see it in context. Guess I just have to be patient. Still I got a lot done because I was working at home all afternoon while I was getting plastered (har har). It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you’re not interrupted all the time.
During our team update this morning, I noticed, I think, that I go about things differently from Lisa. Maybe it’s just perception. She had her usual list of things to cover#151;lesson plans to review, proposals to respond to, and so forth. She worked down her list, telling us what she needed us to do. I thought about how my updates with Sharon go. Lisa works down through a list of what she needs from us. In my updates, I spend a lot of time saying what I’m working on. Maybe I talk about what I need too. But it just suddenly felt as if I go about things all wrong. Maybe I spend my time trying to justify things by going through that list of projects I’ve finished and the ones that I’m working on. Maybe if I peeked in on Lisa’s updates, I’d see her going through similar lists. The team meetings really aren’t the same as our individual meetings with Sharon. Still, I just had this revelation that I focus on the wrong things. And worse yet, I’m not quite sure how to change it. So much of what I do isn’t things that others can give me input on. I don’t need anything from them to update the server or work on interactives. Sigh… I guess I just have to try to listen more and then decide if I really am doing this all wrong.