My nine-year-old came home with a project from his gifted services teacher last month linked to Art History Month. He was asked to select an artist, musician or playwright whose work has stood the test of time and determine which of the Habits of Mind this person demonstrated.

My son selected Vincent Van Gogh, probably because the art teacher at my son’s school had delivered a great lesson on Van Gogh recently. We got books from the library, found websites, and my son started taking notes in Inspiration.

After a while, he thought that one of the habits of mind that Van Gogh demonstrated was “Listening with Empathy and Understanding,” because of his compassion for the poor. He consulted with his art teacher, who suggested that “Determination” would be another hallmark of this artist. Another online connection through a professional learning network (an art teacher who is a friend’s mother) suggested that Van Gogh’s experimentation with color might demonstrate “Creating, Imagining, and Innovating.”

My son browsed online galleries, collected the paintings that he thought best represented each of these Habits of Mind, and began assembling his tri-fold board. He’s done a nice job on it, and I’ll post a photo of it here tonight.

Somewhere in the process, he asked me if we could do something using some of the technology that I use every day with students in the district where I teach. I wasn’t sure what that would look like, but he collected the paintings in a folder on our computer, and started keying in some notes about what he wanted to say about each one. He really liked the idea of using the green screen effect and the Alpha Tool in Keynote, so we assembled the project there.

I was really proud of him for learning so quickly how to import, crop and edit photos in iPhoto, export them to Keynote, layer the photos after removing the green, and then resize himself appropriately for the paintings. It reminds me a bit of the book Katie’s Picture Show.

He then set to work writing his own scripts for each slide. He rehearsed them and recorded them (patiently, as I had not done that before, and we kept making mistakes.) Then he happily ran off to play while I worked on exporting the Keynote to a QuickTime movie so that his school could show it.

But then disaster struck. The exported version made all the timings go wrong. So we re-recorded the audio and re-exported it. It was even worse than the first one. Suggestions from my online PLN came in, and we opted to try to reconstruct the whole thing using Audacity, GarageBand and iMovie. So that meant having to re-record the audio AGAIN.

He got most of it done Sunday night, but was just too tired. So get this — he got up at 5:45am on Monday morning to record the last four audio clips before I went to work. THAT’S dedication.

Anyway, it took a little tweaking and editing, but he completed it. He added some cool transitions. (Gotta love Keynote for those!) And he selected the parts of Don McClean’s song that he wanted. I’m proud of him for wanting to do something different, something 21st century and beyond the trifold board. I’m proud of him for recording all of the narrations three times. And I’m really proud of him for all of the tech learning he’s done in the last week.

So proudly, proudly, I share with you… his presentation.

Please leave your comments for him here or on the fliggo site.

I have been tagged by Skip Zalneraitis for the “Seven Things” meme. I am grateful for this, first because it’s so nice to have friends, and second because my blog needs a jumpstart — again.  (Yes, I tend to be very dependable in my blogging, if you count once a month as dependable.)

The “Seven Things” are intended to help others get to know you, and are supposed to be things your PLN doesn’t already know about you. This provides quite a challenge for me, as I have encountered (and initiated) some deeply personal conversations with my plurk friends. Is there really anything they don’t already know about me? Hmmm.

1. OK, here’s one that only one or two people know if they have met me in real life. Where others may proclaim to be “directionally challenged,” I am volume-and-distance challenged. When I add milk to my coffee, I add it until the color is right — which often results in the cup overflowing. I also have difficulty estimating distances, being only able to compare them to things I know, such as the length of a football field, or the height of our ceiling. My husband would undoubtedly add that this volume-and-distance disability applies to our family budget, but this is MY blog, not his, so…

2. I’m soon to be a grandmother of five. I think all of my plurkbuddies know a lot about my two sons, but when I met my husband 20+ years ago, I met his adorable 7-year-old son Brian. Now 31, Brian and his beautiful wife Sara live in the southern California desert and have a blended family of four gorgeous and smart children. Newest Baby Mulford is due this summer. If you ever want to hear an unbelievable story with gut-wrenching twists and turns and cliffhangers — just ask me about their visit to Illinois last August.

3. I was a foreign exchange student to Germany in high school, and my host family owned one of a very few summer cabins in the Austrian Alps that were surrounded on all sides by nationally-protected areas. We hiked five kilometers in from the road to reach a tiny hut with no power or water. Not being much of a camper, I didn’t appreciate the charm of bathing in an icy waterfall, but it makes for a good story these days. (And yes, I did belt out every single song from “Sound of Music” while I was there, much to the chagrin and amusement of my host family.)

4. As a 9 year old girl, I attended a 10-week class called “White Gloves and Party Manners”. My father’s new wife had been tasked with making my sister and I into “ladies,” so I was promptly signed up for this class, ballet, piano, violin, and French. I rebelled by learning German (see above) and preferring blue jeans and sneakers for life. (Do you suppose I would have been more prone to acting ladylike if they hadn’t cut my beautiful long blonde hair into a “pixie” for easier maintenance?)

5. I’m a firm believer in the payoffs of a serious scholarship search. I received excellent advice on this from my high school counselor in the late 1970’s, and shored up 27 of the 29 scholarships for which I applied. While the last thirty years may have produced some modifications in the process, I believe the formula for success is still the same. We’ll put that to the test in the next two years for my oldest son and let you know if my theory stands.

6. As the daughter of a public high school teacher, it was both an honor and a terror to be sought out by an Ivy League college. My father’s chest swelled to the point that his shirt buttons strained, and the family budget suddenly strained even more. There was a “need-based” process for financial aid, so a tremendous portion of my tuition was paid by alumni donations. However, the work-study program was demanding, and the student loans were a definite challenge to pay off. My husband was so pleased when we actually accomplished this that he turned my framed diploma around and proudly displayed the letter stating that the loan was paid in full.

7. My parents spent my third Halloween night with the California State Troopers, scouring mountain ravines for their lost daughter. Apparently my mother thought it was a good idea to let me Trick-or-Treat with a neighbor lady who had a larger group of kids than she could keep track of.  I can’t imagine the conversation that took place between the neighbor and my parents, as the neighbor returned to my house to report that she had lost me somewhere along the way. I can only imagine the surprise of the other poor woman who turned around to count noses in her station wagon and found that she had one too many children — and that this small “Indian Princess” (with long blonde braids, LOL) didn’t know her last name or address or phone number…

Whew! Coming up with those “Seven Things” took me almost a week. (Thanks for your patience, Skip!)

And so now… I have to tag others. This will be a great challenge, as much of my PLN has already been tagged. How about the following – consider yourself tagged!

@athorp
@scarter
@caffeinatedelf
@abeam
@yoyosciteach
@vanishingpoint
@kolson

For the past several months, I’ve been working on a project with my 15 year old son, Alex, who is a gifted pianist.

His newest CD, Christmas Keyz, is now available for purchase on Amazon.

As you can imagine, there is much to tell about this. I tend to get wrapped up in the details of how long he’s been playing (11 years), the contests he’s entered and won (another post someday), and the remarkable paths he has ventured down that have each contributed to his musicianship, performance abilities, and altruistic maturity.

But what really matters is that he’s accomplished something unique, something beautiful, and something that brings joy to other people.  He stands a little taller these days, and that’s a sight that makes any mother’s heart nearly brim over.

This holiday season, Alex will take his music to a number of community events, including the local library’s “Visit with Santa” and a local elementary school’s “Santa Shop.” But his favorite audiences are the ones he’s been playing for since last June — the residents of a few retirement centers. He most enjoys playing for “the regulars” who gather to hear him play, who grasp his hands and look him deep in the eye as they thank him for bringing his music again, who cajole and tease him and press candies into his palm with a sidelong glance at mom.

You can check out clips of his music on his website at The Music is Key. You can watch him play his original arrangement, “Noel the First” from that site or on YouTube and Facebook. His MySpace page has a complete MP3 file of another of his original arrangements, “Away in a Manger”.

Alex is currently in discussions with a number of charities. We hope to have a special promotion sealed in the first week of December. For now, he’s watching sales closely, hoping that they edge up to the point where he can recover production costs on the CDs, website design, and marketing. He hopes to make enough to be able to fund his next two projects, a CD of his original compositions and a CD of his favorite anime themes (hauntingly beautiful works from various scenes in lesser-known video games).

I couldn’t be more proud of him. I hope you’ll stop by his website and read a little more about him. I hope you’ll consider purchasing a CD or two — as a proponent of the arts, as a supporter or young enterpreneurship, and/or as a voice of approval to a teenage volunteer musician giving back to the greater community. Thanks — and Merry Christmas.