Groundhog's day

Itinerary.
Thursday 10/28
6:45 pm load bus at TWA.
Friday 10/29
9:45am debuss at Hotel in Cedar Rapids Iowa.
Two workouts for overweight wrestlers.
4:00pm back on the bus to go to the unidome, and workout.
5:00pm pick up weigh-in cards and prestage for weigh-ins. I worked weigh-ins till 7:45 and was released by the head official.
8:00pm Destruction of a local Chinese buffet.
10:30 room checks
11:00 lights out
12:00 sleep on floor ( Beds are too small, and Moistner is a cuddler)
Saturday 10/30
6:15am Wake up call.
7:15am back on the bus to the Unidome
9:00am-9:00pm officiate.
10:00pm Applebees.
11:30pm bed checks
Sunday 10/31
12:00 lights out check
1:00am bed to myself
4:15am Wake up call
5:00am back on the bus
10:00pm back at TWA.

The reason I say it was like Groundhog's day is because every time I woke up, I was on a bus.
I know my blog is about Officiating, but I want to start off by saying that the group that went on this trip did a great job. There were no discipline problems on the bus, or at the hotel, and everyone wrestled hard. I officiated three matches with a Georgia wrestler in it, but did not get to see much of them wrestle unfortunately. After I officiated a few finals, I got a break, and watched Marshawn wrestle his consi-finals match. He wrestled very tough e ven though he was obviously worn down by the grind of the entire trip. Marshawn beat a talented wrestler to bring home 3rd.
On to officiating. When I work a National tournament I always compare them to Fargo. It relay isn't fair because Fargo is the most organized event I have ever been to. Unlike Fargo we did not have any rules meetings, but we did discuss the rules that were pertinent to this competition. No hair rule, no facial hair rule enforced, and abbreviated overtime. Match times were also cut short.
We were not assigned to mats. The head official just told us to form teams. I mdid not mind rotating to the younger age groups, but they had split mats, and I was not comfortable working in such a closed in space. I went to a mat that was close to the split mat so that even if I had to work the split mat, I would at least get to rotate off. I ended up with a 5 man team covering 4 mats. We had High School , and Middle School matches on our mats.
There are plenty of ways to tell if you are doing a good job as an official. One of them is a lack of requests for meetings. I made it till 2:00pm before I was called to the table for anything, so I had a great morning. There were great scrambles on my mat all day long. The scrambling is an area where I could tell a difference between the wrestling I normally see in the Southeast. The scrambles were much longer, and great to officiate. I had a good scramble on my mat, saw control beyond reaction time, called the takedown, and the opponent immediately got the reversal. I probably could have waived off the tekedown, but I was confident in my call. There was no time out called, and the match continued. At the end of the match I was approached, and my call was questioned. I signaled coaches misconduct, and gave the coach his warning. He said I don't care and continued to argue the call. I looked down and saw that he did not have a coaches band, and realized why he did not care that he had been warned. I stopped talking to him and walked away. In another match the defensive wrestler was almost clear on an escape so the offensive wrestler lifted him, and drove him out of bounds. In my mind I had to decide to make a call or not. These decisions happen all day long as you are officiating, and something that gets easier with experience. It was active aggressive wrestling, and would have lead to back points if it had have been in the center of the mat, so I did not call stalling. The offensive wrestler did have the option to complete the maneuver in bounds, but choose to drive straight out. He had forced the wrestler out of bounds to prevent a dangerous situation. Forcing a wrestler out to avoid scoring is clearly outlined as a technical violation, so that is the call I made. At this point the wrestler made a comment, and I gave him a freebie. I warned him to stop talking. On a restart, the same wrestler jumped before I blew the whistle. I gave the caution for false start, and he argued the call. I called unsportsmanlike for 1 point and continued the match. Latter in the match he got another false start, and argued the call. I called caution for false start, and 1 point for unsportsmanlike. He false started again, and I cautioned him, awarded one point for the third false start, and he argued the call again. This third unsportsmanlike call got him a 2 point penalty, and he argued again which disqualified him from the match. I took the time to explain to his dad that it did not disqualify him from the tournament, just the match. The wrestler came back to the mat and said you suck, but I choose to ignore it so that he could wrestle his next match. That was a mistake on my part. Letting him stay at the tournament was a disservice to all of the people at the tournament that were putting there hearts on the line and behaving with good sportsmanship. Instead of reprimanding his wrestler, the dad came over to say something to me. I noticed the lack of a coaches band again, and asked him to leave the area. The only other close call that could have gone either way. The defensive wrestler was coming up, turned and separated from the offensive wrestler. The offensive wrestler doubled him out of bounds. I called one escape. The coach asked if I had noticed the double leg, and I told him it was beyond reaction time, and the conversation ended. It ended up going to overtime, and the offensive wrestler won. There was no question about his takedown in overtime, and I was glad. Did I mention that the wrestler was Dallas Brown, and the coach was Sean Moistner. I would not have heard the end of it if the match would have come down to a judgment call.
I called several consolation finals, and final matches, and saw some great wrestling. The tournament was tough, competitive, and a great experience for the wrestlers who attended. The newer, chaperons, and Dads that came appreciated the trip as well. The Unidome was a great place for the tournament with natural light filtering in, great seating, and unobstructed views.
As an official it was a challenging tournament. We had long stretches on the mat without a break, and when you did have a break there was almost never food available. Fortunately, I planned on the lack of ability to get food and packed a large bag of p nut M&Ms. Their were volunteers as well as college wrestlers helping man the tables, and they did a great job. Ethan B. was there working, and told me his coach wants him at 165. Welcome to college Ethan.
Training continues this weekend at Collins Hill where my group will be training at the preseason USA tournament. We will have a statewide officials meeting at 3:00pm Sunday at Holly Innocence. I am looking forward to both.

Thing 23

Wow this post was a long time coming. When I saw the email about the course, I thought to myself, that sounds fun but I was a little apprehensive about committing the time needed to do the course justice. Dennis Horne took me right off the fence when he asked me to do the class with him so that we could keep each other on track.

Thanks Dennis.

It will take me a while to actually let all of the information sink in, but the best part is that when I have a task at hand, I will remember all of the great resources I have explored and be fearless in exploring the use of new free tools on the internet. This course blows away any technology classes I have had in the past, and further developed my level of comfort with technology. Reading instructions, and following directions seems to be a lost art-form these days, but completing this course will put you right back in the saddle. If you can make a cake, you can accomplish all of these tasks.

I highly recommend this class for many reasons.
No driving, unless you can not follow directions.
Self paced. I like to work at a deligent pace, and sometimes get frustrated with the pace of a group.
You can complete your tasks anywhere you can get on line.
All of the task leave you with a functional product.
Completing the tasks gives you a sence of accomplishment.
Many of the tasks were fun, and easy.


My eyes are open, and I am ready to move forward.

Thing 22

By memoore | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

I created this cartoon with the use of Toondoo It wasn't very hard, and was kind of fun. I could see starting on a little project like this, and looking up after a couple of hours had passed. I put it out there for public view, and viewed several others as well. There is an opportunity with this site for sharing, and getting ideas from other people.

I also made a quick todo list at Ta-da lists It was really easy, and I could see myself using it on a daily basis. I could use this every day to get my day organized, help plan practices, and set up timing, and tasks that I would like to accomplish with my daily lessons.

I perused several other sites, and plan on keeping the list as a reference. I tried a few sites, but was unable to use several of them on my school computer because they required a newer version of a flash player, or some other upgrade that is blocked by the school. I get frustrated when I find something I might use, and just can't do it.

Going through these lists, and reviewing items from my Google reader have lead me to realize that I need to stay active on the web. There is so much happening at such a rapid rate, that I have to play with new tools on a regular basis, just to find tools that I can really use.

Thing 21

I scored a massive 41 on my Responsible Digital Citizen test. I was surprised at how low I scored.
I think that parents should have a heavy hand and be highly involved with teaching their children digital etiquette. More than likely the responsibility will fall on educators in the near future. We do not have any social skills classes in the college track curriculum, and I don't see any coming in the near future. It will be extremely difficult to teach someone Nettequitte if they have not already attained a level of proficiency with standard manners. The social skills are a dying art form in my opinion. You would be shocked to know the number of times I hear the F-Bomb dropped in casual conversation. While I am monitoring the hall I can easily overhear conversations, but the students don't even bother to look around to see who might hear them. We do have a set of writing standards at our school which includes the lack of Internet/text style abbreviations. It is a small step in the right direction, but did you notice in the description it implies that those abbreviations are alright on the Internet or in texts. OMG ;)
If we are going to work on Internet security, it needs to start in early elementary grades. With security I think the parents have to be on the front line. Students should know how dangerous it is to post personal information on the Internet.
When it comes to your digital footprint students need to understand that once something is on the Internet it is out there for good. posting information about yourself, or others can come back to haunt you at every turn. Again I think that most of these moral decisions have to come from the home. We as teachers can tell a story about the cheerleader who was kicked off the team for inappropriate pictures on myspace, or the Teacher that was asked to resign over pictures used on Facebook, but I think this will have to be established at a much younger age.
Bottom line, if they already have these bad habits when they get to High School they will be much harder to break than if they never develop these habits at all.

Thing 20 Organization.

Getting organized is the task at hand. I choose to use Simplebox
I found it very easy to use simplebox to take quick screen shots of some of my favorite sites. I liked how easy it was to move things around, delete items, rename items, and it only took me a few minutes to figure out how to find the embed code for the box I created. After reading the descriptions of the three choices for organization, I thought I would be most likely to use simplebox, and it was the third choice which will make it seem as if I read all three(just kidding).
I went to some of my favorite sites, boxed them, renamed my box, figured out how to embed it in my wiki page, and made the big toolbar into a small character. Wow, that sounds like I did a lot of work, but it was easy.
I could see myself using this tool in the future to help keep my web searches organized. I think I will use it more than Diggo for getting organized. I like the way the finished product looks better than the way Diggo looked
I did have a little trouble figuring out how to embed my Box to my wiki space, but when I stopped looking at the help menu, and just started helping myself, the problem was solved with a few clicks of the mouse.

5d the cash cab

I enjoy watching TV quiz shows like jeopardy, but my favorite might just be the Cash Cab Show on the Discovery Channel. While I was perusing my Google Reader i discovered that now you can play the cash cab quizzes right from your computer. The beauty of the show for those of you that have not watched it is that someone hails a cab in NY city, and are picked up by the host of the show in a minivan style taxi loaded with hidden cameras. They are asked if they want to participate, and then it is on. They answer questions all the way to their destination, and earn money for correct responses. If they miss three questions they are kicked out wherever they are. There is also a double or nothing bonus question when they arrive at their destination. I have taken some of the quizzes myself, and read some of them to my class. My students enjoy the challenge of the quizzes, and I often get some good teachable moments to discuss the trivia in greater detail. You might want to try it with your class.