Poster Day

Yesterday morning all five of the teacher RET teams made presentations that summarized what they had been working on during the last six weeks.  It was impressive to see the work that everyone had completed.  Just a couple of weeks ago it seemed like many of the teams were struggling to complete just one thing so they could claim success.

For the presentations, I dressed in "typical" RET clothes - khakis and a polo shirt.  Many of the other teachers were in more formal attire - shirts and ties for the guys and dresses for the ladies.  I should have thought to wear more business attire to the presentation.  I remembered this morning to put on a shirt and tie for this afternoon's poster session.

I believe that our presentation went well.  Before the presentation started, Marvin was driving our robot around the top of the tables to demonstrate its capabilities.  I know we modified our presentation on the fly based on comments presented by other groups.  One of the items we added was how we were going to take what we had learned over the summer and apply it to our classroom.

This afternoon is the poster presentations.  Along with the posters, the Photonics Center will also be having a cafe with refreshments.  My wife and son are scheduled to come to the event and I'm looking forward to showing them the labs in which I worked.

Friday morning we will wrap up the RET program with a meeting to provide our feedback.  An outside consultant will ask for our input on the program and then Helen and Cynthia will see if we have any final comments before we are off for the rest of the summer.  We have three "call backs" during the school year.

I'm still trying to figure out what's the best use of my $500 budget for school supplies.  I want to go back into my classroom's storage closest because I think I saw some laser/fiber optic equipment that I can use to supplement my communications lessons.  I really want to know what I have before committing to purchase an item.  Just my luck I would latter find out that I already have one!  Especially in this day with limited school budgets, I'm really trying to get the biggest bang for my $500.