Author: Tom

SCETV Workshops Spring 2010

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EdTech

The time-lapse video above gives some indication of the frenetic pace I’ve been hitting this week. Several months ago I agree to once again do my Google Earth workshops for the SCETV Technology Conference. Had I known how hectic these past two weeks were going to be even without the conference, I might have reconsidered. However, despite PASS testing, 135th day counts, and other pressing needs in Spartanburg Five, I headed on down for the Wednesday – Friday sessions.

As I had done last year, I’m presenting two different sessions. The first is a basic introduction to Google Earth. The teachers get some time just to become familiar with the program’s controls and navigation, and I give them some suggestions for using it in their classrooms. The second session is more in-depth. I cover ways that Google Earth can be used to create highly interactive lessons buy using embedded media. I tend to get lots of oohs and ahs with that session because there is some really cool stuff you can do.

Wednesday we had a luncheon and were joined by several representatives from Discovery Education. Phillipe Cousteau, grandson of Jaques Cousteau, was our keynote speaker. In the evening the Discovery Educators Network (DEN) STAR members had a dinner at the SCETV studios, and we were again joined by Phillipe Cousteau. He spoke about some of his current environmental education endeavors.

DEN Star Educators DinnerPhillipe Cousteau addresses the DEN groupDEN Star Educators at SCETV

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Furman Singers and the End of an Era

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Local, Music

Tuesday night Laura and I attended the Furman Singers’ concert. It was the last tour concert with Dr. Bingham Vick at the helm. This May Vick will retire from Furman after 40 years as a professor there. In most respects the concert was typical of the Singers’ tour concerts. The first half featured major choral … Read More “Furman Singers and the End of an Era” »

Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge

Posted on By Tom 4 Comments on Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge
Travel

Woods Pond Trail

It was a second Saturday, and the Lowcountry Unfiltered group had another trip planned.  This time it would be a bicycle trek to the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge on the Georgia coast south of Savannah.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to join them.  We were making a quick trip to Florida to pick up Laura’s mother.  However, since we would be driving right past, we decided to stop on the way down.  We liked it so much that we also decided to stop on the way back to break up the trip.  It turned out to be a great discovery.

Sometime between 1929 and 1932 this area was developed as an airfield, and served as an emergency landing strip for air routes along the Eastern coast.  In WWII it was redeveloped as an Army airfield and was used to train both fighters and bombers.  In 1946 there was an attempt to transform the Army base into a commercial airfield, but that ultimately failed.  In 1962 the area was designated as a wildlife area.

The runways of the old airfield are in an unusual triangular pattern.  The old tarmac remains, and this serves as an excellent base for hiking or biking.  There is also a wildlife drive that loops through the area, using part of the old runways and taxiways.

On our first stop it had just started raining, but we decided to do the wildlife loop anyway.  We first stopped at Woods Pond, and were amazed at the number of storks and green herons.  The whole place was covered with birds.

The road continued through pine, live oaks, and hanging Spanish moss…

…then crossed several of the old runways.

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Jimmy Buffett and the Shoe Event Horizon

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Miscellaneous, Weirdness

In Douglas Adam’s original radio play “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Arthur Dent eventually lands on the planet Brontitall.  There he discovers a super-evolved race of bird creatures with a painful past. On Brontitall the main industry was the production of shoes.  Eventually the economy reached the “Shoe Event Horizon” where it became economically … Read More “Jimmy Buffett and the Shoe Event Horizon” »

Echo Valley Photographic Proof

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History and Genealogy, Local

After reading my recent post about Echo Valley, my brother Houston decided that further photographic proof was necessary.  As archivist for our family, he had the necessary photographs and sent them to me via email. So, here we go.. Here’s a photo of me standing in front of the Swamp Rabbit Railroad… …and here’s the … Read More “Echo Valley Photographic Proof” »

Test-Driving the Eye-Fi Explore

Posted on By Tom 2 Comments on Test-Driving the Eye-Fi Explore
Gear, Geocaching and Maps, Photography

Eye-Fi

I’ve been interested in these little gizmos for some time now. The Eye-Fi Explore is an SD card that will automagically upload your photos to your online photo service of choice whenever it comes within range of an open wireless network. Not only that, it uses some strange alchemy to geotag your photos each time you click the shutter. It sounded like the perfect photographic tool, but also the promises seemed too good to be true. I was hesitant to make the investment until I saw that Woot.com had one for a dirt-cheap price. I decided to give it a shot. I found it both to be about as amazing as I expected, and about as frustrating as I imagined.

Eye-FiThe Eye-Fi comes with the SD card (2 GB in my case, but available up to 8 GB) and a USB card reader, as shown above. The management software comes on the card itself, and automatically launches when the device is first plugged into the computer. The first thing I discovered is that you must have wireless access to configure the device. Just being connected to a computer with Internet access isn’t enough.

There are lots of parameters that can be set with the device. You can choose your photo hosting service (Flickr, in my case) and even set up separate routing for videos, so your photos may go to Flickr, but your videos to YouTube. You can set the device to connect and upload automatically to any wifi hotspot, or only when it comes within range of specified hotspots. I always like to edit my photos before they go public, so I set the privacy settings so that I would be the only one to see them on Flickr. You can also enable/disable geotagging.

Eye-Fi-Screen-Two

The most amazing thing is that this device actually works. I tried it in both my Fuji WP33 and my Nikon S70. It took photos, and when I turned the camera on in the presence of a wireless network, it uploaded the photos to my Flickr account without any interaction from me.

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Memories of Echo Valley

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History and Genealogy, Local

Echo Valley from the Ridge

In the northern part of Greenville County the Middle Saluda River flows across a long flat valley. Where Highways 276 and 11 come together, and where the Saluda crosses this road, one finds the community of Cleveland, South Carolina. The valley now hosts a post office, convenience store, and a couple of other businesses, but at one time an exciting amusement park occupied this same spot.

It was the late 1960’s and I was seven or eight years old. Dad and Mom loaded five of us (my two oldest siblings were in college) into the Chrysler and we headed toward the Great Smokey Mountains. It was a fantastic trip up through the mountains of North Carolina, with stops at Pisgah National Forest, Maggie Valley, and eventually Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That was the trip that we visited Echo Valley, a Western-styled theme park along the banks of the Saluda River in Cleveland, South Carolina.

Echo Valley Ticket

During this time Western theme parks were all the rage in North Carolina. There was Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, Frontierland in Cherokee, and Tweetsie Railroad in Boone. Most of these featured a Wild West town with regular shoot-outs and the endless conflicts between cowboys and Indians. There were also carnival rides and can-can dancers to round out the bill. Echo Valley followed this same pattern, and was developed to capture some of that Wild West market for Greenville audiences.

The late Melvin Jarrard was postmaster of the Cleveland post office and a local businessman. In his autobiography The Mountaineer of Cleveland, South Carolina, Jarrad describes how Harry Stuart brought the idea of Echo Valley to the area, and how that idea had originated with Ghost Town in the Sky.

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South Carolina Digital Library

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on South Carolina Digital Library
EdTech, Internet

Today I discovered an excellent new online resource.  The South Carolina Digital Library is a collaborative project between several agencies, organizations, and colleges which brings together several digital libraries.  The collections include historical images, documents, audio, and other ephemera.  These items are still housed in their previous locations, but the SC Digital Library brings all … Read More “South Carolina Digital Library” »