My Year in Photos & Videos

As a way to reflect on my year on both a professional and personal level, I went ahead and pulled interesting photos and videos that I posted online during 2009. Where ever you happen to be in the world, I hope you and your family have a most happy start to the New Year! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this past year.

January 2009
I started out with the best intentions of fully participating in the 365 Photo project (eg-you take a picture a day, post it online, and share it with the various 365 photo groups on flickr). I did make it nearly 100 days. However, I found that I simply couldn't keep up with this over time. Not even this shiny new Panasonic Lumix camera could keep me in the project!

February 2009
Over my February break Erin and I visited with my sister and family while they were on vacation in Park City, Utah. Here is a short little video of my cute little nephew, Jack:



March 2009
This is one of my most viewed flickr photos, which I find kind of bizarre. In this photo you'll see a 10.1" HP Netbook connected to a large display, keyboard, and mouse. This was part of some experimentation that we did with netbooks at my school. This was important work as netbooks will play an important role in our school's laptop program which will launch at the start of the 2010-2011 school year.

April 2009
This turned out to be photo number 103 in my effort to participate in the 365 Photo project. This is my cat, Bucky, and I caught him in the backyard one day sitting in this pot.

Also in April, the Earthbridges team completed another very successful 24 Hour Live broadcast on Earth Day. Below is a photo of my webcasting setup taken after the 24 hour webcast was over. Hover over the photo to see the "anatomy of a webcast":










May 2009
Erin and I visited Yosemite National Park for our very first time. Here is a short little video of our hike to the top of Half Dome:


Yosemite 2009 from Matt Montagne on Vimeo.

June 2009
Our school transitioned away from Firstclass to the much more powerful, flexible, useful, accessible, user-friendly, relevant, standards-compliant, and collaborative (oh, and did I mention FREE) Google Apps for Education platform. As luck would have it, our neighbor, a google engineer, was moving out at the same time as our transition and sold this cool lamp to me. It is now proudly on display office desk.

July 2009

Erin and I went on a fairly epic car camping trip up the California coast into Oregon, over to Crater Lake, and then down through Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. Here is a photograph of Erin and I standing on the top of Wizard Island, which is a volcano in the middle of Crater Lake.

August 2009
August was a busy month for me. I was lucky enough to travel out to the Google Teacher academy with my teacher buddy here in the Bay Area, Derrall Garrison. Below is the video that I submitted as part of the Google Teacher Academy application process:


My former colleague and master math teacher, Joe Georgeson, and his wife, Linda, visited San Francisco for a week in August. I was able to shoot up to the city to spend the afternoon with them. Following seeing Joe and Linda, I flew to Michigan to spend time with my family. It was great celebrating my birthday with so many of my nieces, nephews, family members, and friends.

Celebrating my birthday with my nieces, nephews, and god-child in Ludington, MI:

September 2009
I attended the sophomore retreat up in the Santa Cruz mountains with my most excellent group of advisees:

October 2009
I had the good fortune to attend an outstanding conference here in the Bay Area at the Nueva School. The conference was stacked with fantastic presenters and learning opportunities. Here is a photo of a session I attended with John Seeley Brown:

November 2009
This is a photo of a co-worker of mine, Adam Contois. Together we were guest "Time-Clock" presenters for a November weekly high school meeting. The "Time Clock" is basically a five minute talk that serves as a fun way to wrap up this student assembly. We created a short little talk with pictures on the "Myths of the Technology Department." This is one of the photos that we shared.

December 2009
A small group of faculty at my school participated in a series of three workshops with Apple on the topic of "Digital Storytelling." For our final session we met at the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto and shared our projects. 'Twas great fun.