Focus on Schools Part 2: Tech ed for 21st century workforce
Student Katlain Nelson agrees to let her teacher project a piece of writing onto a screen for a writing subject review.
Her hands are the favorite part of herself, she wrote. “They help me when I am working the hay fields. They help me when I move bales of hay into perfect pods.”
Her hands write stories, and her hands wipe tears.
In Emily Putney’s fifth grade class at West Homer, students are reviewing a writing assignment for lessons in transitions and “voice.”
They do this in a seemingly old fashioned way, helped along by the latest in projection technology. The teachers have a “document camera,” a device that sits on a flat surface with a camera mounted to it. The teacher places a piece of paper (or an object) in the view of the camera that she wants to show the whole class. The camera sends the image to the projector mounted to the ceiling.
Smyth takes Tusty 200
If Big Lake musher Cim Smyth was an animal, he would undeniably be cheetah, as Jeff King found out the hard way after leading more than half the 2012 Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race only to be brought down like an antelope just miles from the finish line.
“I had an eight-minute lead over him leaving Homer and I thought it might not be enough,” King said at the finish line Sunday, crossing it seven minutes later than first-place finisher Smyth. “Both Smyths are known to be hard finishers. (Cim’s brother, Ramey, won the T200 in 1998, 1999 and 2002.) They’re remarkable.”
Smyth — Cim, that is — is no stranger to being in the T200 winner’s circle, having won the race twice before this year, in 2004 and 2009. Smyth also is no stranger to coming on strong at the end of a race, as he is a four-time recipient of the Iditarod’s award for having the fastest time from Safety to Nome.
The good, the bad and the ugly of a Homer winter
The good, the bad and the ugly reality of harsh winters like this one mingle in a picture full of contradictions: There’s a mini boom in snow removal and retail sales for local retailers. Snow plowers and haulers are in high demand. Cod fishermen unable to get to their fishing grounds are out of luck. And a hemmed in harbor clogged with ice spells hard times for smaller vessels.
Skip Perk, owner of Skip’s Trucking, said this year’s total hauls of snow are three times what he had last January. He’s hauled snow on more consecutive days in 2012 than in any previous year since 1987. The private contractor is called out to work with City of Homer Public Works crews on snowplowing around the clock.
Homer Library readers can now try out a Kindle
E-readers remain a mystery to book loyalists, yet are touted for a variety of features individuals may want to discover for themselves – without risking the investment. Now they can try out an e-reading device free through the Homer Public Library.
Friends of the Homer Library purchased six new Kindle Touch electronic books and six new MPG Players for $3,500, equipment now available for cardholders.
The Kindle comes already downloaded with about 30 titles including: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Kidnapped,” “Frankenstein” in its origination by Mary Shelley, “Leaves of Grass,” Dickens’ titles, the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
Sandwich board signs can stand for now
For now, business owners protective of their sandwich board signs will be able to keep them within certain established limits, after contentious testimony at the Homer City Council meeting called into question a constitutional issue.
If Homer sign rules were to change, favoring real estate agents and nonprofits, but not allowing a cafe to broadcast its soup du jour – would it amount to stifling speech and enterprise?
In the end, the council voted unanimously to send sign changes back to the Homer Advisory Planning Commission for more tweaks. Then it’s to land on the work table of the Homer Economic Development Commission for a look over, before coming back to the council for a vote.
What time should area schools start?
The day hasn’t fully awakened yet when, in the dark, children at Paul Banks are dropped off by their parents for kindergarten through second grade.
These tender years, parents can be seen walking their children to class and every bus is met by Principal Benny Abraham or staff, ready to offer a hand for the district’s littlest students.
“We start at 8:30 a.m. It would be hard for us to start much earlier,” Abraham said. “I would rather keep our start time where it is at, though we may not be able to do that.”
The Kenai Peninsula School District continues to hold public meetings in order to receive input on a pressing dilemma. About $750,000 in busing costs needs to be reduced throughout the district. Homer is targeted for cuts in five or six buses at a cost of $60,000-65,000 each for more than half the savings.
Tusty 200 adds two new Homer checkpoints
Volunteers are the staple for dog mushing check points along the trail, which includes Homer at McNeil Canyon School this weekend for the first time.
For Kasilof resident James Banks, being a volunteer for the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race seems more like fate than a choice. Growing up in Michigan, dogs were a part of his daily life for as long as he can remember, but these were family pets or bird dogs used for hunting, not the powerful pulling huskies of the north.
“I’ve always had dogs since I was born. When I was four, my parents used to find me outside, sleeping in the doghouse with our St. Bernard,” he said. “But when I got here I knew nothing about mushing or sled dogs.”
On the wings of Homer’s Sandhill Crane migration
In 2008, working in cooperation with the International Crane Foundation and crane biologist Gary Ivey, Kachemak Crane Watch funded a satellite banding project to determine where Homer’s Lesser Sandhill Cranes migrate to spend the winter. Homer’s Sandhill Cranes go to the Sacramento area in California where they feed and roost with the valley’s Greater Sandhill Cranes.
Jan. 6-9, Edgar Bailey and Nina Faust, co-founders of Kachemak Crane Watch, went to Sacramento, to meet with crane advocates who founded Save Our Sandhill Cranes, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining open-space habitat and the conservation of the California Central Valley’s Sandhill Crane populations through education, outreach, and community activism.
Aerial wolf killing set for March
Starting as early as March of this year, wolves on the Kenai Peninsula will be subject to extermination from above, as the Alaska Board of Game on Monday voted unanimously to approve predator control measures authorizing the aerial killing of wolves in Game Management Units 15A and 15C.
The measures are presented to help boost declining numbers, low bull-to-cow ratios and calf survivability rates in a moose population that has seen better days.
Anchor Point sees huge savings
At the Anchor River Inn, the grills in the kitchen used to be hooked up to propane, an expense that made every pot of soup and hamburger’s cost just that much higher.
At the end of November, owner Jesse Clutts shut down his famed restaurant to make a conversion.
“We shut down for that week, then we were able to go in and change out to new equipment. Using propane in the kitchen was our major expense,” Clutts said.
December’s bill brought Clutts the equivalent of a Christmas gift. From paying $2,000 a month for propane, his bill went down to $500 a month with natural gas.
“It was exactly as they said it would be; we dropped our costs in one month,” he said.
