Technology and CS in Dallas

Author: kathleen

  • Pocket Sharp

    I am using Pocket Sharp to blog with the phone.
    The only problem is that it keeps popping up the screen keyboard.

  • New Toy

    I am playing with a Windows Smart Phone while waiting for the Treo 680 to come out.
    Things I like: the ability to do Windows things especially internet explorer.
    its official… Blazer sucks
    the weird part is that the blogging software cannot handle the keyboard well.
    my students who have seen it think I should keep it and dump the palm os
    FYI its a Cingular 8125

  • Test

    test

  • This is kind of cool.

    I just like the fact that Libya’s government has completely changed their attitude.

    Report: Libya buys laptops for schoolchildren – CNN.com

    NEW YORK (AP) — The government of Libya reached an agreement with an American nonprofit group to provide inexpensive laptop computers to all of its 1.2 million schoolchildren, The New York Times reported in Wednesday’s editions.

  • Raptor

    Okay, I am hooked and I am in love.

    Went to CS4HS this summer.  First, I will say, I am not a good traveler, and I don’t like sitting still.  Thus I don’t do workshops well.

    But I am in love with Raptor.  See http://raptor.martincarlisle.com/

    I put it on my computers, took a few seconds.  I printed out the first handout and gave it to the kids yesterday. 

    Today I had them write “Hello World”.  Boring… but necessary in my opinion.

    Then I had them write a program that got two numbers from the user and out put the sum.  I’ll come back after 4th and let you know how it went, but …

    I have six kids in 1st period PreAP.  2 “got it”.  2 still think the rest of us have another head.  2 understand why the first two got it, but think that they are weird. 

    Frankly, I’ve never had kids engaged in programming this fast.

    IT’S COOL!

  • Replacing a hard drive

    Today is a staff development day and since I did 17 1/2 hours this summer, I have the day off. Of course, I always do more than the required hours (22 hours).

    Anyway, I have noticed that the hard drive in my home office system has been whining and this morning I woke up to a black screen and the drive light lit. When I rebooted, I got a SMART drive error, telling me to back up my data as the drive was failing.

    I did.

    So I hadn’t planned this, though today is full of mundane errands, I’m replacing the hard drive. It’s a Maxtor and I bought a new Maxtor — 200 gig at $49 after rebate. Not a bad deal.

    The nice thing is how much easier it is these days to replace a hard drive, I was dreading it, and still am, but all I am having to do is run the MaxBlast software.

    And I can wait until the whining disk is out of the system!

  • I MADE IT!

    I made it through the entire six weeks without writing a referral.  Without sending a kid to the office.

    I have not been cussed at.

    Students have not torn up equipment.

    They don’t hit each other.

    They haven’t written on the hall with black marker — and the kid that did that is even in my class.

    They actually do the assignments I give them.

    What a difference a year makes.

    Oh, and I got to tell my principal “I told you so”.  He and I were working on a project during summer school and I told him that I knew we were going to be a “Recognized” school again while he was principal.  We got some news today that indicates that I might have been right.

    PRETTY COOL STUFF!

    P.S. for those of you who haven’t been paying attention … last year I was teaching remedial math instead of CS.

  • 10 Programming Languagues you should know

    Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Ten Programming Languages You Should Teach – You may want to learn them first

    Alfred posts about an article at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016415,00.asp which is a very good article. Oddly enough, my classroom website is written in PHP, and I do recommend it to my Java students as the next thing they need to learn.

    I also teach Visual Basic, and have taught some form of basic for 14 years.

    AJAX is on my list to learn, as is Ruby, but I haven’t had a chance, the others I have written enough code in each one to get something working I wanted working.

    I would stress also that Assembly Language is something ALL Programmers need at some point. I’ve taken it at the college level twice, and it really helps you to understand what is going on under the hood, and I think it makes you a better programmer.

  • My record is getting better

    I blogged last week about how I had gone 4 weeks without sending a kid to the office.

    I am now at 5 weeks.  I honestly doubt that has ever happened in any school year.

    Seriously, this has been the coolest school year.  Right now, I’m sitting in my Webmastering class and every kid is on task and doing their assignment.  Okay there are only 9 kids in the class.  I had one who started to argue with me over the restroom rule a couple of weeks ago, and after the second exchange, she’s since stopped even arguing.  She knows she’ll get the pass when the 5 minutes is up, and she’s cool with that.

    We only have 3 more days and it will be six weeks, wonder if I will make it.

  • I may have set a record

    At least my own — I have gone 4 weeks (and a day), without sending a student to the office.  In fact, I haven’t had to send many to tardy center either.

    I made sure all the administrators knew that today, because they were on my case last year because I had a group of frequent flyers — except that I saw them in the office during my planning period too — AND on the disclipine list. 

    I haven’t even had an argument with a kid — though I have pulled two out to the hall and read them the riot act for playing instead of working.