A post a day for 10 days?

I saw this post from Tina Zita (@tina_zita) on my Twitter feed this morning, and thought... 'it's almost exam time, can I do this?'

If I start small, maybe.

So... what did I learn today? I finally learned how to use the spirometer. I've been at this school for longer than my grade 12's have been alive (kids born the year I started at this school are in their first year of university now), and I've never used the thing. Seriously, I could have searched Youtube for an instructional video - oh look, I found one!

But in the past, I've used other techniques to measure lung volumes, mostly involving balloons and mathematical approximations of volume. Maybe tomorrow I can post about how well it worked for my students...

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Reading Challenges 2018

A few years ago, I started a reading challenge with the intent of reading more. That year my goal was to read 26 books (and the challenge was " 26 Books with Bringing up Burns "). 26 books seemed reasonable, and I hadn't really been keeping track of what or how many books I read in a year, so a book every two weeks seemed do-able. This year, so far, I'm at 99 books (and as I should finish the one I'm planning to use to complete the second reading challenge... I'll be in triple digits by the time we ring in 2019.) For my fourth year of participation, #26BOOKSwithBringingUpBurns... I read a book that: is self-published: The Dealmaker by G.S. Marriott has food or drink on the cover: Killer Cupcakes by Leighann Dobbs is translated from its original language: The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is your friend's favourite book: White Oleander by Janet Fitch has pink on the cover: City of the Lost ...

I missed yesterday...

...but I'm not going to get discouraged. Yesterday, we used the spirometer in class - the one I learned how to use on Monday - and we got decent results. First, we'd examined respiratory rates (resting, after jumping jacks for a minute, and after a calming breathing exercise) for the whole class. That in itself was an interesting activity, with 17-year-olds getting very giggly when they were supposed to be following a simple, alternate-nostril breathing exercise. They also got distracted and asked if I could start a yoga club... but that's typical. Tangents are the natural order in my classes. For sanitary reasons, we use disposable mouthpieces for the spirometer, so instead of having everyone use it, we usually take a few volunteers, as they are in limited supply. Rule number one: don't inhale! (It's full of water.) Rule number two: listen to Ms De Jong! One of the measurements is actually a two-step process so we can...

Has it been 10 days yet?

Yup. I just counted from my first post, and it was on January 16, making today day 10. I missed a couple of days - both times I had begun writing, but didn't finish or didn't publish the draft - but I also double posted a couple of times, to try and catch up. Still, this is post number 8, on day 10. Not bad for a rookie, right? We started exams today, and since my first class doesn't write until Friday, I'm trying to be productive and mark their major lab reports before I have to start marking their exam papers. It's going slowly... #BellLetsTalk day is in full swing, making my phone buzz and my computer bong with alerts as people tweet and re-tweet. Yes, I am easily distracted when faced with a task I don't always enjoy. I also wrote a reference letter for a former student who is applying to the SickKids Summer Research Program , and its deadline is before my mark-entry deadline, so I justified writing it before grading papers, too. Just imagine if ...

Ms De Jong's Diary of Discovery

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