Author: kathleen

I was reading a post about part time jobs for teachers and realized that I have quite a few resources that I can utilize to make some extra money and help the teaching community at the same time.

First, I have access to a really good server and can either host other educators sites or teach them how to host themselves. I set up my own Moodle site at http://www.mykweaver.com/moodle which I currently use for Staff Development. I can also set up WordPress on the same site and teach people how to do it themselves.

I have two courses set up on Moodle and already aligned to Texas TEKs with syllabus, lesson plans, and everything needed to teach, one for Computer Science Fundamentals and one for Game Design at the entry level. I am very close to having Robotics and PreAP CS setup.

The CS courses need Stacy Armstrong’s APlus Curriculum but otherwise good to go and can go on Moodle setup.

Contact me and we will get something going.

I have a giant, almost not ending PBL – building a robot – and a side effect is students running off at the mouth. One student has been a particular problem and was toxic. He slowed work down and made students uncomfortable. Some was flat out racist, some sexist, and some a bit locker room in nature.

I was trying to let the students work it out, but it just got worse and we are hitting a hard deadline.

I finally pulled him, told him his conversation was toxic, and put him on a solo side project. Had some blowback, he complained, an administrator talked to me and it got very comfortable but I stuck to it. I also made it clear we could not be successful without his contribution.

I did see the main project make good progress so positively reinforced that and on task conversations.

The solo project wasn’t making satisfactory progress, so Wednesday, day before Thanksgiving break, I declared it help “Student X”, made him in charge of everyone including me and we knocked it out. He was positively reinforced- he got caught up, he got to be in charge and felt included in the group again.

Win, win all around.

Starting with chess. I played chess with a couple of my robot kids at lunch. I “handed them their asses”, but ended the game with a quick lesson in why I bet them. Also in how to get better at chess, study end games.

Today, favorite song, “Bye, Bye Miss America Pie”, the long version, which sadly, I know all the words. Ending with playing Rudy Valence and Buddy Holly. I spared them the Big Bopper, but only because the bell rang.

The battery life seems to be better. Not sure, yet. One of the problems I would have with the old Surface is that I would swear I put it away charged, and pulled it out uncharged.

Like the power thing better, the light is on the side rather than the tip so it’s easier to tell if you have power.

It works well with my VGA projector but I ended up with a way smaller screen and icons with it. For a while I was stuck with it but now it is back to normal. The resolution said it was the same each time. Very weird.

Using a Java server I set up on Azure I’ve been able to grade some Scratch assignments. It’s easiest to run Scratch 2.4 (the one we have at school) , and grade that way. I’m hoping to grade other assignment too.

Having the larger screen, and the ability to run programs on a server and remoting in solves most of the grading issues. I’m fastest grading on my school computer with both monitors but I am at least productive with this option.

Thanks @shanselman for the idea.

Can run both Scratch and JCreator with this option.

I loved my Surface RT. It was great. Due to @shanselman and having already seen one, I upgraded to a Surface 2 RT at Best Buy. Love the extra screen resolution.

I had bought my original Surface at the local Microsoft store right after they came out. Good place but almost in Oklahoma. We live a good 30 minutes away. They have always given me good service though.

I went to the Best Buy this time which is only an exit away. Did have a bit of mixup and glad the Geek Squad discovered it. The sales guy got me an old Surface, not the new.

I already had a Type Cover – don’t like the Touch Covers and Best Buy wouldn’t take it as trade in. I did check and it does work fine. I also have several other keyboards that would work fine also. I also have two additional power bricks.

I had the Geek store put a Zagg screen protector on the Surface 2 as I always regretted not getting one on the original surface, however, right now it has a ton of bubbles, I’ll let you know how it works out. I also haven’t been happy with Zagg in the past but Best Buy swore they would be good. I have the one year service agreement too, for damage and will move my theft coverage in the morning.

My original sleeve works – it’s great and I keep my hotspot in it for when I go to the gym and out and about.

I also got the Bluetooth adapter for the type cover, and it is quite awesome.

I only got $100 for the old Surface, but it was worth it. Didn’t have to look for a buyer. I think I could of sold it to a student but don’t like doing that.

I did a presentation on “Why Should you Teach Computer Science” today and it was easy. Could have walked in with my purse and done. Didn’t need my two computers, etc.

AWESOME!

Have my powerpoint on Skydrive.

https://d.docs.live.net/56252342e14c6ba5/Documents/Why%20teach%20Computer%20Science.pptx

I did add quite a bit of information on fundraising, specifically on www.donorschoose.com

Years ago I quit presenting at the local regional because I had to bring everything I needed for the presentation, including the projector. Parking was miles away from the group gathering place. The presentation place was miles away and there was no one to help setup. I quit the regional TCEA stuff all together.

I’m back and all in because of this group! Good job!

I think I’m finally figuring it out, but I still am not sure about one.

I ended up with a bunch of domains, which I probably should have already started getting rid of. I want most of them to point to the same places. I thought I could do it with the Office 365 DNS but it only partially did what I wanted.

I finally ended up doing it with my web hosting service which proves WHY I went back to them.

At one time, and now, my blogs were at blogs.kweaver.org

I’ve got to do a lot of link fixing, but, I just figured out how to move them. I might even do away to www.kweaver.us now. Who knows.

It was simple, I just went to the admin section of my Office365 account and added a CName record and it works immediately.

I’ve finally gotten complete fed up with the people who host kweaver.net and who have most of my domains because of their lack of ability to do any type of DNS service.

Sometime in the middle of the week, my kweaver.us domain is going to disappear, but you can still get to the blog at http://kweaver.typepad.com/

It shouldn’t be gone long.

Back in the day, I wanted to do some asp.net coding, which I did, and was pretty good at. Myhosting.com did a good job of hosting that, but I’m back to plain vanilla websites. So I have moved back to http://www.techark.com Family business, good uptime and good prices.

Also, they know what they are doing. Myhosting.com had some good people but they are gone and took the knowledge with them.