Arriving

While you were filming the storm, I was doing this. By coincidence, it's an answer, even if it's not as pretty or elaborate as I would have liked.
Spring will come. Weather we want it or not, weather we like it or not, it's arriving. Bringing hope and fear, like any beginning and ending. But it feels good to be on the way.
Have a sunny spring, filled with hope.
PS It's silly: I am not able to insert a dynamic Geogebra sheet in a blog. I know exactly what to do, I do the same steps as the others, but what works for them does not work for me. Stupid.

Strong Wind Storm

I wanted to show you the kind of wind storm we are having. First I couldn't find my video-camera, then it had no battery. when everything was ready, whenever I tried to record the wind stopped for a while. finally I got this small video.
The tree is not moving very much because the house itself shelters it. I took it an hour ago more or less, now it is raining and pitch dark.
Awful day! There may not be spring this year.

A journey

It's interesting. I had forgotten to finish this post. The real experience is not the video in itself, it's the situation I took the photos in. I went shooting the town, you know I love this activity, with students. It was an activity for the Contemporary Architecture project. I was working with the weakest students in the classroom and it was amazing the amount of work they did and the good results. These photos are mine, but when they do their ppts I'll also publish them, because I've seen some of them and they are really good. They perfectly got the aim of the photos and their walk into the Mysticism was something new for them. they read, answered my questions, thought, compared. In Spanish, of ocurs,e it is impossible for them to use english in an immediate situation. But it was a kind of MI practical experience.

Geometry (2)

Still at it.

Geometry

This is a picture I really love. Don't know why. What I see now is the amount of Geometry ancient architects knew. Here's one for your Geogebra if you want to study it. I should be doing the activities in my LearningLab, but I couldn't do this morning what I was required: a cardgame for my pupils. So, nothing to think about. It will have to wait until tomorrow.
Sunny cold evening here. anyway, I'm at home. What about you?

An Ordinary Miracle

Sorin went to the market for vegetables and brought me this. And hope. It's still cold, windy, muddy from the partially melted piles of snow, cloudy, but it seems that the wind has a new smell.
In one of his very few optimistic (I should say "less pessimistic") poems, Bacovia, our most melancholic poet, tells the spring:" I can still see you, I can still hear you." Maybe we will live this ordinary miracle one more time. A gift. I feel grateful and humble.
And all this, because of some tiny weeds! Back to the kitchen, where I belong today!

All Around

As I saw your photos I realized again how much Geometry is around us. Especially in your town. I'm quite taken with Geogebra these days, and I tend to see it everywhere. Here's a piece of the frontispice of your cathedral, just a game of recognizing shapes. And a suggestion, if you don't mind : you could add a Maths part in your Architecture project. I wish I had the time and the idea of taking more such photos when I was last there! I could use them in many ways. Well, that oprtunity is lost.
Thanks again for the photos.

Chasing gates & windows

After days at home with the virus, the application and the cold I, finally, went out today.
I got some nice views and I recovered some old ones from other walks.
The reflections on the windows, what is behind the gates appeal me a great deal. Looking for a hidden mystery?

Wishes

I got these today and I'm "sending" them as a good luck wish for the Comenius! These are some of my favourite flowers, especially irises. I won't say "bafta!" becauseI have just learned a new phrase in Italian: "In bocca al lupo!"
Do you know the right answer?

Preparations

Spring flowers, butterflies, a ladybird, a cat, a chimney-sweeper and a horseshoe (for luck). This is what I prepared for the 11 girls in my tutor class. There are 12- the piglet in the right bottom corner will be just to tease a girl who is a real pest- always fighting, calling names, yelling. She will get the starfish in the end, because it's a very quiet and discreet animal.
The spring seems to forget it should be approaching this year, but I enjoy preparing these amulets and thinking of the meaning I could add to each one. And although (unlike the girls in school who pin all of them and look like a Xmas tree) I only wear the one from Sorin, usually, I enjoy getting them, keeping them and thinking what they could mean, unless it's an elephant, a pig or a witch on a broom!
Yours is on its way.

Never-ending story

I'm in a learninglab about Geogebra, this is a homework. I could only upload it as a picture here, but in reality it's dynamic. It probably means nothing to you, and it's just an exercise, but I thought you might like how it looks and I felt like sharing it.
Good night.

St. Valentine at school

Students in 1st Bachillerato go on a trip together before entering the last year at school. In order to raise money they sell lottery at Christmas, have parties at discos and sell flowers for Saint Valentine. Carnations are always the same colours. White for friendship, pink for secret love and red for passion. You pay one euro for each you want to send your mates. Write a small note and put it in an envelope. Then on 14th February, a group of the students from 1st Bachillerato goes from one place to another in the school looking for the people the carnations have been sent to.
I got two white carnations this year. One form the headmaster thanking me for the services and recognising the work I do for the school and another one form Choni, thanking me for the new possibilities I have shown her to teach history through projects. I had sent carnations to everybody the first year in the project.
It was a nice feeling, getting them in the department. Nobody else got any, it was a bit embarrasing.Oh!, yes, our hardworking conversation assistant got a pink one. But he was not there, he had started a week vacation.

Inside & Outside

Both Shakespeare and Dickens have almost no equal when drawing the inner landscape of characters. Nothing escapes their deep observation. This is why I like them. But there is also an outside landscape that needs to be told. I find Phinn's novel about the Dales in Yorkshire a wonderful descriptive example. If I read between lines I can even feel the water in the fields, the thin air, the solitude. And of course, nothing better than learning to cope with our own pains.
These three books are my companions these days. They are completely different but even so, they share human landscapes inside.

Sunny cold, freezing sun

It's not madness. Just a thought about some winter evenings in this town. A very thin wind gets through the clothes like a sharp pocket knife, temperature gets minus and nevertheless there's always the reward of walk in the sun by the Walls, where light plays with weather to encourage poor inhabitants to leave their comfortable heated lodgings and enter the last rays from the sun. One feels good!

Fighting Cold

Finding shelter and good company for a lively chat seems to be the best way to fight cold weather. Fluffy feathers help, too.

Last from Seville

Remembering the sun from under the snow. Schools are closed for 2 days. Oh, the clear sky and the orange trees...

Souvenir fom the Conference

Sun and rain in Seville

A walk in a heart-warming town

A long way....

It's been a long way since the beginning of collaborative work and there's still more path to walk to the very first prize.

Postcard

A good thought from Sevilla to one of the places I like and to its people. Greetings from Plaza de Espagna.
You are right, it´s a beautiful place! I woke up very early and had time for a walk. Still cannot use the room connection.
Got to go now. I´m very nervous!
Wish me "Bafta!".

Welcome in Sevilla

You could very well see some of these traditional Sevillanas. Look at the clothes and the inviting movements in the ladies and how these gentlemen take and adore them.
Follow Adela on the stage. She's dressed in a man's suit.
Enjoy your stay there.

Biodiversity

2010, Biodiversity Year has just started. Environment will be worked on, read and written and hopefully some actions will be taken in order to preserve this biodiversity.
But it is also the year to celebrate multiculturality. A celebration of life. This is why I'm also uploading this video.

Save the Pianos

"Save the Souls of the Conservatory Pianos" and "Help the Pianos Play Again" were the titles of a fund-raising campaign that aimed to collect the necessary sums to have the pianos of our most famous last century composers brought to a functional state.
It was a successful campaign, many people have donated their valuable objects and the objects were auctioned. The first piano to be brought back to life will be the one that belonged to Dinu Lipatti, one of our greatest pianists. He was George Enescu's pupil and godson (he was an "enfant prodige", he played Mozart at his own baptism ceremony), but he died of cancer in his early 30's. Here is one of his performances.