Holy cow have these last two weeks FLOWN by!?! Students showed up for classes two weeks ago (on the 17th) and it has been a not stop ride of craziness since that Monday. I feel great about what I am doing with my classes and my students seem to be very well behaved and engaged in the activities I have planned, but it has been a LOT of work. I am teaching a new class this year, World Drumming and Music. We focus on West African and Latin American drumming and culture. This is a topic that I have always found interesting, but never studied in great detail, so I am working my tail off trying to keep up with my students who are picking everything up VERY quickly. My other classes are also going very well, but again...lots of work behind it. I was in MN/WI last weekend taking pictures for a good friend's wedding and my sister is getting married next weekend (a week to the day actually...CRAZY) so I am neck deep in photo editing and sub plans since I know I will not be doing any work while I'm in the lower 48. I hope this blog post does not sound like complaining...I truly do LOVE what I am doing. I have been exhausted these last couple weeks, but I have almost ALWAYS had a smile on my face. Teaching music is the greatest experience one can have...not only do I get to spend an entire day engulfed in music, but I get to do so while sharing the love of music with others and hopefully passing my enthusiasm for the aural arts on to the next generation of performers, dancers, singers, and composers.
Ok...well, I am off to school to get some more work done. I just wanted to touch base with all y'all to let you know things are going great up here in the Land of the Midnight Sun (soon to be the Land of the 11:00am - 2:40pm Sun)
Rock on,
~Mr. Lockwood
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
I LOVE ALASKA!!!!
So, I have been up here in Alaska a little over a year and every now and then I still think to my self: I cannot believe that I live in Alaska. This place is amazing. Take tonight for example...I get to school around 11:00am and get a TON of work done. I wrote lesson plans for the first week of school, I organized my classroom materials, and I put posters up on my walls. After I worked at school, I headed up to Birch Hill and played about 13 holes of disc golf in the pouring rain (fun...but wet), then I went home and made some dinner. After dinner, I went out with some friend (oh yeah...I now have friend my own age up here - I love it) and shot several games of pool. I know I could have done all of this anywhere in the world..but for some reason it feels different being here in Alaska. I don't know if it is the smell in the air, the hills/mountains in the distances, or just knowing that I am in the most amazing state in the union...but something makes everything up here feel significant...like it is the right place to be. I remember going up to the Boundary Waters with my dad as a kid and thinking to my self: I would love to some day live in the middle of the woods, away from all of the city lights and pollution...and here I am...living in a small log cabin in the woods in the middle of Alaska. this is truly a dream come true.
Tomorrow, if the rain stops, I am planning to go up to the disc golf course with the guitar and have a BBQ with friends. It should be a blast. After tomorrow, it is back to teacher mode. Early bed times and 10 hour days await me...but I don't mind because teaching music in Alaska is one of the greatest things to have ever happened to me. The only thing that would make this better is if all my friends and family were up here with me....I know you would all LOVE it here as much as I do.
Ok...I am done with my slightly sentimental rant. I am off to bed. Foot Foot says "Hello" to you all.
Rock on,
~Mr. Lockwood
Tomorrow, if the rain stops, I am planning to go up to the disc golf course with the guitar and have a BBQ with friends. It should be a blast. After tomorrow, it is back to teacher mode. Early bed times and 10 hour days await me...but I don't mind because teaching music in Alaska is one of the greatest things to have ever happened to me. The only thing that would make this better is if all my friends and family were up here with me....I know you would all LOVE it here as much as I do.
Ok...I am done with my slightly sentimental rant. I am off to bed. Foot Foot says "Hello" to you all.
Rock on,
~Mr. Lockwood
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Up In Smoke
I don't know how much of this news is making it down to the lower 48...but 2.5 million acres of Alaskan forest has burned down so far this year. That is actually not that much when you think about the total amount of forest in this state and is nowhere near our record (6.5 million acres in 2004) but the smoke is getting ridiculous. Forest fires are part of the natural cycle of a forest's life...but the smoke is coming into town and causing some problems. I grabbed a camera and tried to shoot some pictures, but the lighting was pretty bad. The sun is actually setting now, but it is hard to tell how much of our darkness is due to the setting sun or due to the smoke. Here are a few pictures I managed to take:
Downtown Fairbanks:
Another from Downtown Fairbanks:
By Fred Myers:
These next two were taken from my friend's 5th floor apartment:
The smoke looked a lot worse about an hour and a half before I took these pictures, but I did not have my camera with me. If the smoke is as bad tomorrow as it was today, I'll try to take some more shots...the severity of the smoke is easier to see in the day time.
I cannot believe that this time last year I was in the Swamp Donkey with Stephen driving up to my new life in the Land of the Midnight Sun. This last year has flown by! I have learned so much and have experienced a lot of great things. In retrospect, I am still glad I moved up here; 365 days and no regrets. I miss family and friends at times...but modern technology helps keep in touch. I hope everyone out there in blogging land is having a great summer (I may have written that in my last post...but I still mean it.)
Rock on,
~Mr. Lockwood
Downtown Fairbanks:
Another from Downtown Fairbanks:
By Fred Myers:
These next two were taken from my friend's 5th floor apartment:
The smoke looked a lot worse about an hour and a half before I took these pictures, but I did not have my camera with me. If the smoke is as bad tomorrow as it was today, I'll try to take some more shots...the severity of the smoke is easier to see in the day time.
I cannot believe that this time last year I was in the Swamp Donkey with Stephen driving up to my new life in the Land of the Midnight Sun. This last year has flown by! I have learned so much and have experienced a lot of great things. In retrospect, I am still glad I moved up here; 365 days and no regrets. I miss family and friends at times...but modern technology helps keep in touch. I hope everyone out there in blogging land is having a great summer (I may have written that in my last post...but I still mean it.)
Rock on,
~Mr. Lockwood
Sunday, August 2, 2009
ASRA ROCKED!!!!
OK, so I realize it has been a VERY long time since I have posted...summer has been crazy =) As most of you know, I went back to MN/WI for a little over two weeks at the beginning of the month and had a blast. I had the opportunity to see a lot of friends I missed on my first trip back last Christmas. As soon as I returned to Alaska, I started teaching at the Alaska Summer Research Academy (a.k.a. ASRA) It was AWESOME!! This camp was fantastic. Kids from all over the country came to spend 12 days in a highly academic but very entertaining summer camp. I am sure most of you remember me talking/blogging about circuit bending; well, that was one of the huge things I co-taught in the module called The Sounds of Science. We had a blast ripping apart old toys and seeing what kind of noises we could create. Here are a few pictures (I blurred out the faces of the students, so that is why some of the pictures may look a little funny.)
One of the students stuffed a speaker and an 1/8" input jack into the pikachu and turned it into the COOLEST ipod player ever!
This was one of my favorite finished toy. The students didn't only get into the technical aspect of circuit bending, but had fun exploring the aesthetic aspect of the hoppy.
Another thing we did in our module was build a PVC marimba (well, technically it was not a marimba since we did not have wooded bars resting over resonators. Instead we hit the actual resonators...much like the Blue Man Group) We used some pretty advanced physics and mathematics to figure out required tube lengths for each desired pitch, then we fine tuned the PVC by ear. Once we finished putting it all together, the kids glued a bunch of stuff to it so it ended up looking awesome! Check it out.
Finally, we took sounds samples of all of the circuit bend toys along with other cool sounds we found (like my arm muscles recorded through an EMG)and mixed them all together into a massive composition. We used some GREAT synthesizers and modulators such as the Korg KP3!! Again..all of the work was done by the students.
Not only was ASRA a place for students to learn through exploration, I had the opportunity to play around with some way cool things...like blowing dry ice through tubes lit by LEDs.
>
I also played with LED lit spinning string. This was a great way to check out nodes and anti-nodes (also, it looked cool.)
The only unfortunate things to have happened during the camp was the amount of forest fire smoke in the air. It was VERY thick at times. I guess this is pretty common for Fairbanks. I guess when you live in a state covered in Boreal Forest (a.k.a Taiga) and you have about 1,000,000 burning acres...some smoke is bound to creep into town. This picture was taken on a pretty bad day...on a scale of 1-10, this was about a 7.
So now that ASRA is over, I have about eight days until I start my second year teaching at Randy Smith. Where did this summer go? I hope everyone out there in Blogging Land is enjoying their summers. I will try to get back into the groove of blogging, so please check back soon.
Rock on!!
~Mr. Lockwood
One of the students stuffed a speaker and an 1/8" input jack into the pikachu and turned it into the COOLEST ipod player ever!
This was one of my favorite finished toy. The students didn't only get into the technical aspect of circuit bending, but had fun exploring the aesthetic aspect of the hoppy.
Another thing we did in our module was build a PVC marimba (well, technically it was not a marimba since we did not have wooded bars resting over resonators. Instead we hit the actual resonators...much like the Blue Man Group) We used some pretty advanced physics and mathematics to figure out required tube lengths for each desired pitch, then we fine tuned the PVC by ear. Once we finished putting it all together, the kids glued a bunch of stuff to it so it ended up looking awesome! Check it out.
Finally, we took sounds samples of all of the circuit bend toys along with other cool sounds we found (like my arm muscles recorded through an EMG)and mixed them all together into a massive composition. We used some GREAT synthesizers and modulators such as the Korg KP3!! Again..all of the work was done by the students.
Not only was ASRA a place for students to learn through exploration, I had the opportunity to play around with some way cool things...like blowing dry ice through tubes lit by LEDs.
>I also played with LED lit spinning string. This was a great way to check out nodes and anti-nodes (also, it looked cool.)
The only unfortunate things to have happened during the camp was the amount of forest fire smoke in the air. It was VERY thick at times. I guess this is pretty common for Fairbanks. I guess when you live in a state covered in Boreal Forest (a.k.a Taiga) and you have about 1,000,000 burning acres...some smoke is bound to creep into town. This picture was taken on a pretty bad day...on a scale of 1-10, this was about a 7.
So now that ASRA is over, I have about eight days until I start my second year teaching at Randy Smith. Where did this summer go? I hope everyone out there in Blogging Land is enjoying their summers. I will try to get back into the groove of blogging, so please check back soon.
Rock on!!
~Mr. Lockwood
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