Maybe it is the 47 cups of coffee talking but these carts have me thinking... (design thinking)

There is this grocery store by the gym I go to. There are many early mornings that I see a stray cart or two at the opposite end of the strip mall sometimes even as far as the street. I would imagine these carts are not cheap and cause issues for the other stores in the area. Who would want another store's cart clogging up the sidewalk and taking up parking spots?

Did you know a runaway cart can hit about 35mph if the wind catches it just right? Think of the damage that can do if it hits a person or car!

You could post signs, put a few cart corals in the parking lot but that does not seem to change shopping cart behavior. Think of every store with carts you have visited, it is the same, carts all over the place.

Tonight we had about 87 things to do between the time we left school and karate. It was a wee bit stressful. The kids were taking care of the things outside which freed me up to hit Aldi.

I have always thought the quarter for a cart thing was weird but the store is always mellow and clean. I really hate those chaos filled stores, they stress me out.

Tonight I think I cracked the quarter code, there might just be two reasons.

The first is there are no loose carts anywhere. Every cart is accounted for, in the hands of a shopper or in the cart spot on the side of the building.

The second is about human contact.

As I headed to the door someone called out to me about her cart. We exchanged cart for a quarter with a few nice words thrown in. While I do not care for shopping this shifted my mood. A pleasant exchange with a stranger can brighten almost every day.

On the way to return my cart, I had another quick and happy exchange with another person, cart for quarter.

These tiny conversations brought a certain human element to something that might otherwise be a lonely shopping trip. One thing that hit me was the people I talked with were both well into what I assumed was retirement age which made me wonder if this might be the only human interaction they had that day. What if their kids were at work or lived far away?

A tiny shift in how they deal with carts solved a business problem and brought about positive interactions among their customers.

How might we develop an exchange like that in our buildings and classrooms?

Like your ELMO but with an iPad (elementary classroom teachers)

I used AirServer to create the infinity mirror effect. We were in a meeting today and Dominic told us about this fantastic idea. As we discussed all things technology he explained one method of using the iPad as a portable ELMO. It was too cool not to share. Step 1 Make sure you have AirServer running on your laptop. 1. Click the Windows key on your keyboard or click the icon in the lower left of your screen. 2. Just start typing AirServer. 3. Click AirServer. Don't see it? Contact technology or your building tech person. Step 2 Connect your teacher iPad to your laptop. 1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen. Start by swiping in the bezel, the black plastic part surrounding the screen. 2. Click AirPlay Mirroring. 3. Click your name. Step 3 Open the camera app and instant portable ELMO! Anything you see in the camera's len will be broadcast to the big screen. I just used this method to take a picture of my notebook as a demonstration of how co

Who is emailing me? The Blue Man Group??? (Add an image to your Google account.)

WHY It is always nice to put a face with a name. Sometimes we need a tiny little reminder of what someone looks like because we don't see them very often. Follow these steps to add/change the image associated with your Google account. HOW Open your email. Click your image. It might just be a blue circle if you have not added something already. Click Change . Find an image you like. Your amazing new image will appear. From now on everyone can put a name to a face!

Annotate PDF? How might I do that?

So I have a PDF and I need to edit it. Here is one method that works pretty well for me. Open Word. Click File . 1. Click Open . 2. Click Browse . 3. Find the PDF you want to annotate. 4. Click Open . Click OK when you see this box. Bam! Your PDF now opens in Word. Note: you maybe have to click Enable Editing at the top of the screen. Finished editing and want to turn it back into a PDF? Click File . 1. Click Save As . 2. Click This PC . 3. Pick a location. I usually save things to my desktop. 4. Click Save as type - and choose PDF. 5. Click Save .

Learning in the Lou

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