My life centers around four basic areas: Church, Teaching, Computers, and Gaming
I have been attending Grace Brethren Church since May 1991. I have been active in the youth ministry since that time. I have worked with the youth drama, adult drama, and have gone on several trips with the youth. We have gone to Mississauga, Canada to help with church planting. We have gone to Turkey to help encourage Turks who lost homes in the 1999 earthquake. To think that when I first showed up at church, I had hair down to the middle of my back with a white stripe. (It's a very conservative church, heh.)
It's what I do. I'm always looking for new ways to present something or new ways to look approach something. However, I must admit, I'm not sure if it's to become a better teacher or simply to keep it from getting stale, heh. I use two screens, computer, LCD projector and an overhead projector to teach. My current goal is to find a way to animate algebraic equations to help students see how to solve them. But, my favorite tool is my worksheet generator which I have presented at conferences. When I shared this idea with another person he said to me, "Ahh..drill and kill." I take issue with the idea that drilling is a bad way to learn something. It's as if education is the one area where people think it doesn't work. It's used in television--commercials are repeated over and over (and shows for that matter). It's used in training athletics. It's used in learning music. It's used in practically everything where non-academic learning is involved, yet somehow it should play only a small role in education?
People think that I love computers. Well, I guess, I do, but not to the extant that people me accuse me of it. Computers can be wonderful tools to present, to entertain, to communicate, and to engage people. It's the one tool I know that can eventually animate an algebraic equation the way I see them in my mind.
Part of my love of computers comes from gaming. I'm one of those game addicts that plays those online games for hours at a time. But, in my defense, I NEVER let it affect my real life. Really! The games I play online are called MMORPG's--Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games. The list of games I've played are Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Horizons (one month, I actually found it boring), World of Warcraft, Earth & Beyond, Anarchy Online (two months, game design encourages lewd behavior), and Star Wars Galaxies. Wow, that's a lot, but I never play more than one game at a time.
I didn't list this at the top, but I thought, I'd mention that I love sushi. Best place I've been to in South Carolina/Georgia is in Beaufort, SC. I've tried the ones in Aiken and Columbia in SC and Augusta and Atlanta in GA. I don't claim to have gone to all of them, but I've tried the one people speak of the most.
FYI: You know those Japanese steak houses like Kyoto's or Kobe? In Okinawa, we called those American steak houses, heh.
http://rpsec.usca.edu/Classwork/703sp2005/Personal/Switzer/
(February, 2005)
The views expressed here are not necessarily
those of the University of South Carolina.