Category: Uncategorized

Today we had to say goodbye to our wonderful cat, Watson.  One of five cats, he was the one we thought would be around the longest.  This was a surprise.  We think he may have had a stroke or a seizure.

Watson was totally my cat and whenever I was home he would crawl up into my lap and snuggle right up…all the time.

He was a goofy cat as well…he did funny things…and when he was overweight he could not make it through the opening in the door that we had to access our “Cat Basement” where the food is.  So, he lost weight and could eat again!

But, the thing I will remember most about Watson is how close we were.  He slept with me every night and he would literally crawl up next to me.  He did not mind when I held him close and he would fall asleep just like that.  He would get up in the night and go wondering but he was always back when I woke up (even during the night).

I think I’m going to miss that the most.  I think he knew very much how much he was loved and cherished.  Rest well my little friend.  If pets go to heaven I’ll be seeing you!

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Mark K. (sad)

Tonight we had a rehearsal for Easter Sunday service. I noticed something. I’m really gaining a repertoire of Christian songs. I’m starting to know some of the songs without referring to the charts.

That feels good. I can relax more and pay attention to how what I’m doing fits into the song.

I also talked with Justin about the occasional Exit 244 gig. They are apparently very interested n having me play when I can. They are looking for a permanent bass player (and that really can’t be me right now) but they still want a spare.

That is a cool feeling as well!

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Mark K.

The 2018 Maine State Science Fair (MSSF) took place on Saturday, March 24 at Thomas College in Waterville.

MSSF is open to all students from all public, private, parochial, and home schools (grades 9-12) throughout Maine and is organized by the Jackson Laboratory and the Reach Center, of the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance.

I participated as a judge in the Behavioral and Social Science Category of the Fair for the 2018 Maine State Science Fair held at Thomas College.

Participating in this event was absolutely inspiring!  It is clear that the students involved in these projects have invested a huge amount of energy and time.  As a judge, I only got to interview the students I had been assigned, but I got to walk around and peek at all the projects.  They ranged from Physics, to Engineering to Social Sciences!

Three stellar projects that I encountered involved studying the similarity between languages using math, predicting the occurrence of depression and suicide using artificial neural networks, and the determination of right- and left-footedness in dancers!

What an amazing time and I look forward to doing it again next year.  And, I look forward to recruiting more members of the KVCC Faculty to become involved!

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Mark K.

So, this week I have been participating in a program at KVCC where we are building an Adirondack Chair. It is very cool when you have the right tools! All was going well but I started to get impatient and I moved quickly. I’m not sure if this was the issue or not, but my chair is a bit crooked. 🙂

I think it will be fine to sit in, but it is certainly not perfect. All the slats in the back are going to be straight up and down and not flared like a fan.

I guess it will have character!

Here are pictures from the building!

Carefully grinding that edge with a router!

Smooth as glass!

Me posing with my router…that was actually easier to do than I thought!

Elizabeth and her favorite band saw!

Our most excellent instructors!

Mark, holding the parts list…

Chairs…part way done!

First to finish, and sit, in his chair!

My finished chair…I just need to take the little nubs off that fill in the screw holes!

All the chairs….and….

…all the builders!

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Mark K.

After about a year of working with the editorial team at Division 2 of the American Psychological Association, my chapter submission was accepted and the book has been published.

The book is titled
The Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning

Here are the references to the book and to my chapter!  YAY

Harnish, R. J., Bridges, K. R., Sattler, D. N., Signorella, M. L., & Munson, M. (Eds.). (2018). The Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/ 

Kavanaugh, M. (2018). The impact of technology on teaching and learning: Does anyone miss the chalkboard? In R. J. Harnish, K. R. Bridges, D. N. Sattler, M. L. Signorella, & M. Munson (Eds.). The Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology web site: http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/ 

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Mark K.

Well, I started working in earnest on the Introduction to Psychology class that I was hired to do with Unity College.

At first I was really frustrated with Canvas, the LMS, but, admittedly, it is now growing on me!  I actually like it quite a bit.

While the basic unit in Blackboard is a “folder” into which you put items, the basic unit in Canvas is a “Page”…these too act like folders but you simply put links to other Pages.

The process is such that you are best preparing the pages that you want ahead of time and then you can create links between them in other pages.  Pretty neat and it is set up with a nice font.

I’m not sure how well it works on the student end.  I have not made any assignments or anything yet.  I’ve got all my content pages created as templates and I went through and added all the Learning Outcomes for the 8 weeks of modules that make up the class.

Canvas

I decided to do a unique design on this class for the Unity audience.  A lot of the assignments connect the concepts to topics related to outdoors, nature, recreation, and the the type of work that these students will be doing.  I feel that this has left me more creative, though I do believe it is going to take me longer to get this class done than if I copied material from my existing class.

I’m also actively constructing all the assessments to be “transparent” using what I learned at the Achieving the Dream conference.

All in all, having a great time creating this class.  All the LOs are done, so the plan is to update all the Assessments tomorrow.  This will be long as I’m making them transparent so I need to come up with some good sample papers.

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Mark K.

 

 

Trying to get into writing things as they happen here…yet the year is going on…and lots of things have not be documented here.

So, today, I practiced with the Christian rock band “Exit 244″…very cool stuff!  The band is a lot “heavier” than I thought (even though I have listened to their album “Blindsided”) but it was a good experience and different from the other music I play now.

As I was there we ended up writing a song…it has a very cool and catchy bass/guitar part that ended up working out really well.

They all said I did a good job and they would like me to play more regularly.  I have to see about fitting this in every once in a while!

Exit 244 Facebook

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Mark K.

Ah, so my goal of writing in this blog is certainly not happening. It is already February…11

Yesterday I turned 53. Still not really feeling old, but the reality is, gravity is more present now than it has been in the past!

I guess this is the time in life when I have to balance my relaxation and friend/family time with my to-do list of projects and stuff I want to get done.

Over the last weekend I spent a LOT of time in my studio fooling around with Logic X Pro and recording all kinds of things. I got some really good tracks down and the beginnings of a lot of songs. Once complete recording of a total jam I did on guitar. I had drums backing me up, and then added bass (and vocal … though I took that out…eeek, I still need to work on vocals!) and it is very cool.

“In a Special Time”

I could probably go with just instrumentals and jazzy things most of the time. Coming up with the song form and any lyrics is not nearly as much fun as finding really cool riffs and bass lines to jam over! Totally fun though.

This is the kind of thing I wish I could do a lot more of…just open ended jamming like that. I need to schedule that in more into my week.

Speaking of which, I need to plan my week right now.

Watching the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea as well….very cool stuff.

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Mark K.

Yesterday I spent the day at Faith at a “Men without Regrets” conference. It was pretty good.

There were three presentations that really struck me:

• One person presented on race. That there really is only one race (the human race). But we cannot be color blinded because color is part of the diversity that God created…part of our individual identity.
• Another presentation told the story of a plaster, having moved recently to Hawaii, ended up in a diner at 3 am while a number of prostitutes came in. One of them said it was her birthday the next day. The pastor decided to wrk with the diner and throw her a party the next morning. What kind of church would throw a birthday party for a prostitute at 3 am? The diner owner was amazed. We should scribe to be a church known for its love, not known for what it is against.
• Finally, the last energetic session looked at the story of the last supper in the Upper Room. The speaker’s wife (Jewish) made note that the basic of water to wash feet was at the door and that each of the disciples ignored it. This was a test, and Jesus pretty much shamed everyone there while he was demonstrating that the Son of Man had come as a servant.

The whole event was really cool.

I met a cool pastor for Ellsworth named Kevin. I’ll have to follow up with him.

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Mark K.

The year is certainly underway and I’m just getting back to this blah!

I did export all of 2017 and it is ready for printing. Amazing that what little I did still cam up to over 120 pages! (Each post starts a new page. It is easier that way.)

I have still not been able to load pictures from my phone though. I want to be able to do that.

Work in progress.

Speaking of which. I purchased a new time management system based on printable PDFs that you fill in. It is all based on the number 5 in terms of yearly goals. It then breaks down into quarters, months, weeks, and then days. The premise is that you probably can’t get more than three things done in a day (at least not in regard to yearly goals.)

My regular to do list remains but this system tracks work on my yearly goals. Exercise, publishing academic work, music, prayer, and publishing a book. Cool stuff.

I guess I will be reflecting milestones here as well!

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Mark K.