Hello all! My name is Todd and I am super lucky to have a wonderful wife and two wonderful children to share each day with!
We call a small cottonwood filled valley in the middle of Arizona our home. We live in a town called Cornville, but the truth is it takes longer to get there (“there” being a gas station, post office, feed store/mercantile, and some homes) than it does to get to Cottonwood where there are things like restaurants, bike shops, a dance studio, and a Walmart. More stuff. We have lived in the same home for 18 years and while it is falling apart most days we continue to grow and thrive and be usually content.
We were married in the park just down the street on a heavenly June day. Our kids are both healthy and blessed with kindness and gratitude. We are super fortunate to have a pretty close family. My mother-in-law lives in Cottonwood and we get to spend a lot of time with her. My dad lives in California and my mom in Oregon. I miss seeing them more often, but I speak with my dad several times a week and my mom a little less often. I think that on the whole, we are a good and close family.
My wife recently opened a new location for a dance studio she has had for about 10 years or so. It is really nice and we are lucky to be able to contribute to the community in this way. Dance is good for the soul.
* I say that with this side note: I danced like a lunatic for many years. When I quit drinking, I quit dancing. Hmmmm. I can rationalize that the same way I rationalize the non-writing of poems. I used to write many poems. When I met my wife I pretty much stopped because all my “poems” came true. I think I am still dancing inside and I am still writing poems each day. I am living them. I know that sounds kinda lame, but most days I feel like it is true. And that is good for me.
These last couple of weeks I have been busy at the dance studio. Yesterday, I finished getting the lower barres installed in the large room. Very nice.
I am looking forward to the class as it is a great community of support, dreams and hopes, and troubleshooting tactics. I am going to get this blog looking a bit better in the near future.
Nice studio!! I love dancing too. Latin music is my favorite (of course). Is dance the subject you teach?
UOPS! Sorry I just read your blog and saw you teach English in college.
Nice to meet you… anyway!
My wife teaches the dance and I taught English classes at a small private high school. I used to teach Photoshop and some classes for teachers but currently just doing my day job as an instructional designer.
Welcome to the class!
The studio looks great, thanks for the sneak peak when I visited in July.
Say hi to Cottonwood for me.
Great rains in the valley these past few weeks. Happiness in the desert.
The studio does look pretty elegant and I like that.
Hi Todd. I like the look of the blog and the swanky new dance studio too. Just one thing, maybe at some point over the course you could tell me what an ‘instructional designer’ is as I’ve come across this term loads recently and don’t fully understand what it involves. Anyhow, I’m really looking forward to exploring online teaching and learning with fellow ‘POT certers’ like yourself.
I am very lucky. My job is to work with teachers and wonder with them about what works best in online classes and how the internet and computers can be best used in places of learning.
But, I also described it like this: “Today I work as an instructional designer. In the old days there weren’t any of those. Today, with all the tricky new things we use in our daily lives, education has become something different than the old school house. So I guess we need to adapt. Adaptation takes lots of time and writing of poems to get it to look and become more perfect. Usually, I think it is what it is. Which, like all things, can be improved.”
I try to build productive relationships with folks and play around with the idea of learning and how it fits into schooling. How cool is that! The traditional ID is a person who works with a “content expert” to design online content and courses.
Helen, I ran across an excellent blog by instructional designer, Christy Tucker. It’s a few years old now, but it really helped me understand the concept for a course I took last winter.
http://christytucker.wordpress.com/2007/05/26/what-does-an-instructional-designer-do/
It’s actually a set of 6 postings, but she has included an index.
Another good source of very thorough introductory explanations of educational terminology is the “big dog little dog” site by Donald Clark. Here’s his page on instructional design.
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd.html