Author: kathleen

I hate Websense.

Right now if your organization uses Websense you cannot read this. This whole domain is classified as Membership and Clubs. That is not my main concern though.

It’s my other domain kweaver.net which is the problem. And frankly the whole thing has been upsetting.

First kweaver.net is a domain I use for teaching. I have a really cool set of php pages that hit a MySQL database. It tells my students their assignments, their grades, and their status with me. What they have turned in, what I have graded and what they need to do to fix programs to get a higher grade.

Nothing in our acceptable use policy says I caanot do this. All it says is that they have the right to the code since I did it in their employ and have worked on the code when it was broken in class.

So here was what happened.

Came in Friday morning and all was fine first period. I took a quite look at 2nd periods assignment from the website. Kids came in and they tried to login to find out the assignment and they got the websense message. Nervous laughter. they told me and I checked and found sure enough Websense blocked “personal website”.

I emailed the person I last talked to about this issue and since I did not hear from him by the end of the class period, called Network Services and talked with the supervisor in charge. He told me to fill out a form and email it and I did. When I left at the end of the day the email had been read but the site was still blocked.

Give All the Teachers a Big Raise | Alfred Thompson | Microsoft 10

I think that the biggest problem with education is that all teachers with the same experience get paid the same.

Teachers should get paid according to how much they attract students and by how much they affect school rankings.

That tends to shut people like in the foot, since CS teachers don’t tend to affect student performance as much.

But that IS how the real world works.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Education Columnist Scott Parks

I really don’t care for this guys opinion when it comes to education. I rarely think that he gets it right.

I also don’t know what is going on at Preston Hollow right now, and in the past few years, BUT …

I teach their older siblings.

All of my classes are completely mixed. Though my AP CS is the least mixed but the sample size is smallest — 3 anglo boys and 2 hispanic girls — though one of the anglo boys has not been educated in America until recently and wants to go back to Europe to school.

I have black, hispanic and aglo students in every other class. Even my Pre AP classes are fairly well represented by each ethic group. I will say that the majority of my students are Hispanic.

I also believe that the students treat each other fairly most of the time, and that race or background rarely comes into play.

If students are being placed in classroom based on their skin color and not their proficiency that has to stop. I just don’t see it at our school.