I spent about half my day today adding pictures to my rolling screen saver.  I did this because I have started asking my classes “Where is this picture from?” (its location) whenever I’m between powerpoints or videos or whatever else that I’m showing on my laptop in class.  In between those powerpoints and videos, the kids have been asking me about the pictures on my desktop, which change every 15 minutes, so I’ve decided to make this something fun and educational that we do.  They discover where the shot was taken, and a little something about the picture.  The pictures are of places that I’ve been my the last 20 years of travel (plus shots of my car).  These pictures include around 15 different countries (out of the 30 that I’ve been to) and maybe 15 states out of the 49 I’ve been to.  What haven’t been included, up until today, were all the California (Sonoma, San Francisco, North Coast, and Monterey) and Chattanooga pictures that I’ve taken over the last year of traveling.  Now my students will have more places to guess.

While doing this exercise, I have come to realize that my kids are hilarious when it comes to taking pictures.  They make silly poses and faces and they occasionally photo-bomb a photo (even before it was popular to do).  Their massive collection of “bench tour” pictures are also very amusing.  Now that I’m complete for the moment on desktop picture publishing, I have come to realize that most of the new pictures I added are of my family.  This is a new thing.  Although I’ve traveled with my family for years, I only started taking pictures of them on a regular basis in 2010.  Since they have become teenagers, they have become more interesting subjects to photograph for me I guess.  It makes sense: since 2010, I have really enjoyed traveling with my kids, now that they are autonomous and interested in where I’m taking them.