The American Educational Research Association had the annual meeting in San Francisco last weekend drawing around 15,000 participants from around the world. I was accepted to present some research from the SWH project regarding the effect of the implementation quality of the SWH on student performance. The presentation went well with roughly 75 people attending the session at 8am on sunday morning. There was quite a bit of interest in the topic and methodology after presentation.

The SWH team had four presentations displaying many of the good results we have been seeing due to the inquiry based approach to teaching science that has been employed in all these elementary schools across Iowa. Marcia was presenting results regarding increases in critical thinking and a couple of Brian Hand’s post docs also had presentations. I think everyone enjoyed the great weather in the city and the plethora of good food. I know …

Last weekend the family went out to Utah to have an early celebration of our mom’s upcoming 50th birthday. What better way to celebrate than two great days of (injury free?) skiing and snowboarding. Local skier Karl Fostvedt showed us some of the best Utah skiing and made us prove we weren’t gapers by testing our skills on the difficult, double black diamond slopes. We had a perfect bluebird day on Saturday up at Snowbird and an off and on day up at Park City on Sunday.…

In May of 2011, we took a family trip to Norway to learn about the land of our ancestors. The name Fostvedt is Norwegian and my Dad’s grandparents spoke Norwegian at home. So I, and my siblings, are not too far removed from our Norwegian roots. During the course of our trip we visited Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Bodø, Å (Lofoten Islands), Oopdal, Lillehammer, Kristiansand, and Fosstveit. It was the trip of a lifetime and some photos are below.
…

Back in 2006, Duke and I took a trip to Galena Pass over the Christmas holiday. Sometimes you just don’t realize how lucky you are to grow up among the Sawtooth mountains and the Boulder mountains until you are away from them for an extended period of time.…