I know it may be hard to tell, but this is a picture my dad took of me, just about to enter into a UPS MD-11.First off, this post has almost nothing to do with class. It is about airplanes, airlines, flying, and traveling, which is definitely connected to class (and could possibly be helpful for your travel guide), but really, this is an excuse for me to be a huge nerd about airplanes. If you are looking for the class recap from last class, please scroll down to the next post.
Okay. So as you have probably figured out, I am really into airplanes and airlines. I showed you my FlightMemory page during class, and I wanted to tell you a little more about how to make it, what you can do with it, and some other great links of interest if you are into this whole thing.
Story time: I first got really into planes when my dad would take me and my siblings to the airport to watch them when we were growing up. There are a few great places out at the airport - we used to park and watch them come in, then run through the parking lot, trying to outrace the planes. Pizza was also usually involved, which definitely helped too. Basically, it was a good excuse to get out of the house and hang out.
I lost that excitement about planes for a long time after we gradually stopped going, due to general life activities. I did however, need a summer job during college, and so when I saw a clipping from the Oregonian about a job at Evergreen EAGLE, I applied and went to work, in the summer of 2006. Ever since then, I've worked on and off (mostly in the summers and during the winter breaks). It's an amazing job that lets me be outside, work out, and also get to be up close and personal with some of the biggest pieces of machinery in the world. Evergreen was contracted for the last couple of years to service the Lufthansa flight from Portland to Frankfurt, Germany, which I spoke about in class today. In the course of my work on that, I did just about everything you could imagine. I worked in the bag room. I loaded bags. I cleaned bathrooms. I vacuumed floors. I cleaned seats (and trust me, that is a dirty job). I put down pillows and blankets. I drove cargo. I marshaled planes in and out.
At UPS, where I still work every so often (it's down to about once a month, usually on a Friday, because I am so busy most other days), my specialty is "topside," where the big cargo containers are loaded in, and I am part of the crew that pushes and locks them into place. Here's a picture of what that looks like (the inside of a UPS Airbus A300):
I also marshall planes in and out (marshallers are the people outside that have the light up wands that direct traffic - which I think is just about the coolest job ever, besides being a teacher).
So now you know a little bit about what I do in my free time. Now let's get on to the links.
You know about FlightMemory.com. This is one of my favorite sites out there. You do have to sign up to create an account (it's free). Then you have to enter your flight information for each flight in on the "FlightData" page. Here is what my FlightData page looks like for the most recent flights I've taken:
Now, you can see that I have a whole lot of information on there. Not only do I have the origin and destination airports, but I have the airlines, flight number, aircraft type, tail number (which means that actual, particular aircraft I flew), seat, duration of flight, and a whole lot more. So the question is, how?
To begin this investigation into your own flights, try to find any old boarding passes you may have laying around. They will be incredibly helpful, because they say the airline, the date, and the flight number. I try to save all of my old boarding passes - they are in a binder that I will bring in again next class.
Okay, so say you know where you went, when you went, and the flight number (or maybe you are missing some of that too). Here is an EXCELLENT site to fill in the gaps:
Airline On-Time Statistics - This is a US government run site (which, unfortunately, means that it is only useful for flights within the US), because the FAA requires major airlines to report on what they do each day. To find what you need, go down to "detailed statistics" and either click on Arrivals (if you know the city that you were flying to) or Departures (if you know where you left from). Let's use my case of the Alaska Airlines Flight 483, which my brother and I took from San Diego to Seattle, coming back from the Holiday Bowl during Winter Break.
I will click Departures (because there are not that many Alaska flights departing San Diego). I will then choose "All Statistics" on the next screen. I enter in the origin airport of San Diego (SAN), and the airline (Alaska - AS). Then I select my date that I flew, which was December 31st, 2008 (be careful to get all of those dates right!). By clicking submit, I am greeted with a list of Alaska flights that left San Diego on the 31st of December. Look! There is flight 483! The tail number is N583AS, which can be viewed online here: Airliners.net - Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 N583AS.
Pretty cool, right? There are several other sites that are fantastic:
The Great Circle Mapper - this will let you calculate the distance flying from one place to another, anywhere in the world. Here's what this would look like if there were to be a non-stop flight from Portland to Lagos, Nigeria: Great Circle Mapper: PDX-LOS. That is a long plane ride - 7540 miles!
I talked a little bit in class about Kayak.com, which is by far my favorite place to actually buy tickets, because there are so many options (and because the cheapest is easy to search for).
Also, check out FlightAware.com - Portland International (PDX) to see a great representation of all the flights that are in the air around Portland at any given time! This is definitely my favorite site to track planes, like if I need to pick up someone at the airport, or I want to know immediately how long I was in the air for. Here's the most current flight from that San Diego-Seattle route that I took in December: FlightAware: Alaska Airlines Flight 483.
Finally, using all these resources, make your FlightMemory page and also, an Airliners.net photo album! Just search for the tail number in the search box - they have just about every major carrier's aircraft from everywhere around the world. Seriously, that site is insane. Here's what my photo album of aircraft that I have actually flown on is: Airliners.net - Aircraft I've Flown On.
I also have an album of actual aircraft that I've worked on (which I just updated tonight, because I just worked on a new bird - N134UP): Airliners.net - Aircraft I've Worked On.
Let me know if you need any help with this! You definitely discover some pretty amazing things. For instance: I once flew on United Airlines N591UA (from Portland to Chicago in 1996), the exact same plane that was later hijacked on September 11th, 2001 and eventually driven into the ground in Pennsylvania - the flight that the movie "United 93" is about. Absolutely crazy, huh?
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Some very basics about airlines:
All American airline tail numbers start with N. All airports in the world have a three letter code. These can sometimes be very confusing. For instance: Zack, in your FlightMemory, you have a flight from PDX to STP - which is Saint Paul, Minnesota. It would be very hard for you to know that you almost definitely actually flew into Minneapolis-Saint Paul, which has the code of MSP.
A few other big airports: In the Los Angeles area alone, there is LAX (the main, huge one), SNA (Orange County), LGB (Long Beach), ONT (Ontario - where a lot of our UPS jets fly to from Portland), and BUR (Burbank). I've been to every LA airport except ONT, which is the reason why that area is so cluttered on my FlightMemory map. In the New York City area, there is John F. Kennedy International (JFK), LaGuardia (LGA), and Newark-New Jersey (EWR). I've only ever flown into EWR, though I really want to go to JFK someday!
Seattle is SEA (easy). Most are fairly common sense. Here are some that are not:
Chicago's main airport is O'Hare, which is ORD.
New Orleans is MSY (and I have no idea why).
Detriot is DTW.
Houston is IAH.
Kansas City is MCI.
Orlando is MCO.
Washington DC is either IAD (the big one, in Virginia) or DCA (Reagan National, in the capital).
Here's a good site for all the big airports within the United States: USA Today - Current Delays.
All airlines have a two letter (or a letter and a number) code. I won't go over too many, but here are some main ones:
AS - Alaska Airlines
QX - Horizon Air (which is owned by Alaska, but operates by itself)
WN - Southwest
B6 - JetBlue
F9 - Frontier
UA - United
AA - American
DL - Delta
NW - Northwest (merging right now with Delta)
US - US Airways
All of this information can be easily found on Wikipedia, if you are interested. Let me know if you can't find something, I would love to help out!
Finally, a few essentials about aircraft in general. Basically, there are two main builders of aircraft in the world. Boeing, which is based in the United States and has an enormous base and building plant in the Seattle area, and Airbus, which is owned by a group of European nations, which is based in Toulouse, France.
Boeing makes airplanes that start with 7 and end with 7. Like, the 737, 747, 757 (my all time favorite, by the way)... you get the point. Around Portland, the 737 is by far the most common. Both Alaska and Southwest own entirely Boeing 737 fleets now. Boeing's new aircraft (that keeps getting delayed, but hopefully should be out this year) is the 787 Dreamliner.
Airbus makes airplanes that start with "A3..." For instance, the equivalent of a Boeing 737 for an Airbus is an A320 - the kind of plane that just landed in the Hudson River a couple of weeks ago. Lufthansa flies an Airbus A330 into Portland currently - a downgrade from the A340 that I used to work on. You may have heard about the big new Airbus aircraft - the A380, which is an ENORMOUS double decker.
Okay, I think that is enough. I would be surprised if anyone actually read all that. But hey, I get into it! Have a fantastic weekend everyone! :-)
Click above for my FlightMemory page - make your own and post a link in the comments! :-)Good afternoon students,
Okay, now that was an interesting class, right? I really liked what everyone had to say during our seminar (I'll go over it more below), but I do want to make sure that we are keeping that core value of respect for each other alive. You can completely disagree with each other's views (and I think that there was definitely a lot of disagreement), but please do not disrespect individuals or people as a whole. That being said, the class excellent breakdown of the article, and there was some really good participation (I would guess about 75% of the class had at least one thing to say). I'm excited to get to see it on video (thanks Brandon)! :-)
I am going to post the recap, and then come back later and post another blog about flight stuff (because as you probably saw, I'm a huge geek about it). So look forward to that later.
Essential Questions: How do different structures of power impact the people over whom they govern? How does a developing country become developed? - As an aside, I think we did some pretty good work today with that second question, thank you!
Soundtrack: "International Airport" by Carbon Leaf. This is an excellent song about flying all over the place. Carbon Leaf is one of my favorite bands - their album Indian Summer is an all-time classic. Lyrics for International Airport here.
AGENDA 2/13/09:
News Brief
Socratic Seminar Redux
Leaving on a Jet Plane
Computer Lab Time
Homework: Work on travel guide. Check blog!
Here is the list of who signed up for what country:
Algeria - Andrew H.
Benin - Alondra
Botswana - Zack T.
Cameroon - Kurtis
Chad - C.J.
Democratic Republic of the Congo - John
Cote d'Ivorie (The Ivory Coast) - Scout
Djibouti - Russel
Egypt - Jazmyne
Ethiopia - Abe
Gabon - Gerold
Ghana - Mustafe
Guinea - Jordan
Guinea-Bissau - Carson
Kenya - Zach N.
Liberia - Nolan
Libya - Aaron
Madagascar - Nicole
Mali - Brandon
Mauritius - Archana
Morocco - Andrew K.
Mozambique - McKenzie
Namibia - Nathan
Niger - Tanya
Sierra Leone - Robert
South Africa - Lauren
Sudan - Thuy
Swaziland - Randi
Tanzania - Brooke
Togo - Morgan
Uganda - Kierra
Zambia - Jillian
Zimbabwe - Ben
Whew, now that's some good effort. For those that need to see the assignment again or lost a copy, here it is to download:
Africa Trip Guide AssignmentRemember that we set the due date in class of Tuesday, February 24th. Please be working on it during your long weekend - I am really excited to see what you can do with this! :-)
News Brief: Nathan brought in an article about the continuing violence in Afghanistan. Again, an incredibly important place in the world, and very interesting to study! We will be doing just that after this unit. Nolan, you are up for next Wednesday - any current news article about something outside the United States.
Socratic Seminar Redux: At the beginning of the class, I apologized for the lack of time that we were able to devote in the previous class to the seminar, and for me talking too much. It really is difficult, especially when what is being said is so interesting! :-)
We started up again in a giant circle, and went over the seminar ground rules again. I was really glad to hear your thoughts, even though it did (as we noted) get a little heated. That is sort of the point of discussing a controversial text - I want people to have different interpretations. I think overall, we did a good job of not making it personal, though there were definitely was some moments when I was like: "Oh wow, okay, I need to say something..." I think it comes with the process. We are going to continue to develop this skill of going into texts and seeing what they have to say.
There were TONS of things brought up that had me blown away. I always love it when you make connections to things outside the class, like genocide against Native Americans and the "animalistic" nature (like in Lord of the Flies). I also thought that it was interesting to hear your thoughts on if the positions had been switched, and white people were in Africa - that black people would colonize them, because humans are inherently greedy. If this is the case, how can we get past stuff like that, to work towards the common good? If we admit that greed and selfishness is a part of human nature, what do we need to do to move beyond it?
I liked the feedback from right after too - it is good to see that people were into the conversation (though Ben, you were absolutely right about me still butting in a little too much - sorry)! Let's make our goal for next time to really invite participation from everyone else. Make it a priority! Also, please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about the environment in the class - especially during debates like the one we had today.
All in all, the seminar was well done, and I'm glad that we really got to devote a lot of time to it. Thank you to everyone for being involved.
Leaving on a Jet Plane: This is where I passed out the travel guide assignment, and asked: "Why did we start this whole unit on studying Africa?" As I pointed out, part of it was that we saw the differences in conceptions between Africa and Europe, with Africa having overwhelmingly negative impressions. The travel guide is hopefully going to present you with some great opportunities to get past that notion - because there really is just an incredible amount of culture in Africa.
I also did a little show and tell with my airport badge, passport, and model plane of the Lufthansa Airbus A340-300. By the way, for those students that had actually flown that flight - if any of you flew during the last three summers, it is entirely possible that I loaded your bags or cleaned your seat. Small world! :-)
I will bring all that stuff in again for next class, which may or may not be in the computer lab (we might just use books from the library to research). I also introduced some helpful links (though the next post that I will write on airlines will have a lot as well), which are below:
Kayak.com - A great place to start, when you know where you want to go. Enter PDX as the origin airport, and find the three letter code of biggest airport in your country using the Wikipedia article below - that is just one way to find how to get there.
Wikipedia: African Airports
Flight Memory.com - chart your own flights!
Computer Lab Time: Obviously, we did not have time for this. Which, surprisingly, I am okay with. I wanted the seminar to control how much time we devoted to the lab, and since it was just a good conversation for so long, there really wasn't enough time to go up there. Next class we will devote almost the entire time to working on your guides, but don't assume that we will be able to go to a computer lab - bring any materials you think you may need!
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That should be just about it for this post! Look forward to another one later tonight about airline stuff. Please feel free to comment or e-mail me if you need! I should be out tonight from around 4:30 to about 10:00, so don't worry if it doesn't post immediately, or you don't hear from me right away.
Also, funny story - after class, when I was checking my e-mail, I got a message in my Spam folder that was a Nigerian scam! Complete with the President's name and coming from the city of Abuja! It made me laugh.
Watch the All-Star Weekend - and have a wonderful long weekend! You guys are all amazing, do you know that? See you next week! :-)
A map of Nigeria.Good morning class,
Because I am currently waiting to talk to another Westview teacher for a homework assignment from Lewis and Clark (yes, I have them too!), I figured I might as well get the recap done early today, while everyone is forecasting!
First off, I want to apologize for the rushed feeling of the seminar today. I did not know that class would be ending so soon until right before. I also think I was probably a little too directly involved in the discussion. I should have let everyone get their thoughts in on their own. It's very difficult for me as a teacher, because my main goal for this particular seminar was participation. What happened was good - I loved some of the ideas that were brought up. What I did not feel particularly proud of was my trying to force people to talk, at the expense of those who really did want to. It is a difficult problem for me. When I have a few people who are really into the conversation, I love it, but I also am really interested in what everyone else has to say.
I think the opposite of my goal happened today. I was so concerned with getting everyone to participate that I was the person taking up much of the time with my own thoughts, trying to get everyone involved! I just think it backfired. For everyone that was really excited to bring tons of ideas to the table, I am sorry for that lack of time. Obviously, we are going to do the seminar for the outside group next class - which is even more difficult because that is the group that did not volunteer to talk in the first place.
Anyway, I hope that we got something out of it. I'll try different things in the future with the seminar! Please let me know if the comments or by e-mail what you thought of things.
Essential Questions: How do different structures of power impact the people over whom they govern? How does a developing country become developed?
Soundtrack: "Refuge (When It's Cold Outside)" by John Legend. Selected because it is cold outside and the classroom should be a place of refuge and excitement. Lyrics are here.
AGENDA 2/11/09
Hand Back Work
News Brief
Chapter Presentations
Socratic Seminar
Visiting Africa
Homework: Find out basic information about your country - bring to class on Friday. Check blog!
If you do not remember which country you signed up for (which would be understandable, given the rush), please either comment or e-mail me. I just want you to begin investigating on your own - we will do more in class on Friday.
Hand Back Work: You should have your Somalia article handed back to you. I know that some people did not. Are you sure that you turned it in to me? Remember, I went around and checked it off, but I did not collect it until the end of class that day. I did look in my folder, and I did not find any other work. Please let me know if you think I may have misplaced it - or you could just send me another copy and I will be fine.
News Brief: McKenzie brought in an article about crazy weather in Europe - BBC.com - High winds hit north-west France. Again, an interesting look at some the extreme weather that has been happening! I talked a little about climate change/global warming, and the impact that melting ice caps have, due to the loss of ability to reflect light. This is called a "feedback loop" and here is an excellent recap of what I was talking about: ABC News.com: What is a "Feedback Loop?" Nathan, you are up for Friday - any news article that talks about something outside the United States.
Chapter Presentations: These were a lot better today, I thought. I especially liked how it seemed like almost the entire class was paying pretty close attention to what the groups were talking about. I don't know if that is a function of the new seating chart or not, but it was definitely appreciated. Again, the reason that we did this activity was to learn a little more about how different places around the world have dealt with development. We then crafted a small list of what we had learned about developing countries - off the top of my head, I think it was something like: struggling, time consuming, conflicts, government building. Good! I was actually a little surprised we got that much out of the exercise. Sorry if it was boring!
Socratic Seminar: Hopefully you have read some of my thoughts above about this. Basically, I think that I didn't allow everyone enough time to really go through and talk about it - and I know that there were definitely times when people had to restrain themselves from bringing excellent ideas to the table. This was my bad - but again, it's difficult. What do I value more: participation of everyone, even if it isn't that deep, OR about a third of the class really getting into the discussion and going very deep into it? For this seminar, I wanted participation, and I think I let everyone down by trying to force it too much. Live and learn!
As for the thoughts that WERE raised: EXCELLENT. It is obvious to me when people are doing the reading, making connections, and excited about asking questions. I loved what we had to say about the article. I especially liked how it seemed like nobody just completely rejected what the author had to say, even if the way he made his argument was pretty controversial. I seemed like everyone really considered the root causes of the answers to the original question of: how does a developing country become developed?
Again, please post any other thoughts, questions, or comments about the seminar - by all means, if you felt like you didn't really get to say what you wanted today, let it out on here! Let's start a discussion again! :-)
Visiting Africa: Thanks for staying behind for a minute or two to pick out your countries. Please e-mail me if you need to know which one you picked or have any questions.
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That should just about do it! Please have a wonderful afternoon. Don't forget to watch the World Cup qualifier between the USA and Mexico (4 PM, ESPN2) and/or the Blazer game vs. the ex-Sonics tonight (7 PM, CSN). Also, watch The Office tomorrow night, because it is pretty much guaranteed to make you laugh. And we could all use some more of that! I will not be at Westview tomorrow, as it is my day to do some homework, planning, and sleep a little. So, see you Friday!
