Author: kathleen

People don’t pay attention.

When I teach, I like to have a conversion with people. Notice I said people. Goes for both my students and for teachers when I do staff development.

When I train my dogs, I use a training method that allows constant communication between the dog and myself, called clicker training. There has been some discussion as to who is training who – is the dog training the human or the human the dog?

So I’m used to having a conversation – I want people to ask questions, take me off to a different path, in other words, learn.

Reverse flipping can get in the way of that if people decide to wait for the recording and not participate.

But I don’t teach technology and I teach a white board, I can’t reverse flip (or even flip).

Don’t worry, young grasshopper, we have technology for you. Go to http://www.swivl.com – there is a device that will follow you AND pick up your voice while you are teaching and you don’t need a camera man.

I have two of these, and original bought one to clip on my dog to film her while we were training – she moves to fast though they think they can fix that – but it works fine for me.

Again, you can take a few extra minutes and use Camtasia to upload your software OR you can go direct to your video publishing software on your phone or camera.

You can do a reverse flip with any web cam. You don’t have to be fancy. Since you are using your teaching voice in the classroom, you don’t need a loud microphone but it wouldn’t hurt – I have used one.

Right now, I use a Logitech Web Cam. With it, I can even Picture in Picture. I teach computer science so most of my lessons are stuff that are done of the computer. I even do my own closed captioning a lot of the time, talking what I am typing.

Camtasia has a Screen Recorder that you can use to record your screen. There is a company called Swivl that makes a device that makes your camera follow you, I have two, don’t use them enough and they are great. http://www.swivl.com/

If they aren’t here at #TCEA2013 they should be.

Don’t need much else.

I HATE the concept of flipping. Reverse flipping fills in the gaps, rather than trying to enhance what the teacher does in the classroom.

I don’t have time to record my lectures ahead of time, I teach 5 preps, and I’ll probably change my mind 3 times before I see the kids. My kids don’t have time to watch them, my best student is on my robot team and on the basketball team.

However, I’ve been using the same software the flippers do to produce my lectures to let kids either repeat what I’ve said or to let kids see what I’ve done when they have been out.

I started it because I had a deaf student in my web design class. I recorded it because I thought he needed it but he did fine with my own closed caption. However, my non-English speakers LOVED it. They would play my demonstrations at their own speed, slowing me down, stopping me, for fast forwarding me as they work on the assignment.

I do believe that you get what you pay for and I have been using Camtasia for YEARS…. Probably decades. I rarely bother to edit afterwards, but will pause or chop it up as I go. By using Camtasia, I can usually upload in less than 5 button clips. I upload while I am monitoring students and while grading student work.

I did a four hour session on RobotC programming for Lego today and I think it was successful. A librarian was about to program a robot for the first time to do an obstacle course.

Another teacher thought they had learned how to teach programming.

No one walked out.

Had lots of questions.

Lots of people asked to log into my Moodle.

Only thing I forgot to do was to plug in my laptop.

I get to play again on Thursday!

Good turnout.

Yes, I teach high school. Many of my students are taller than I am, okay at 5′ 4″, most.

Some have children of their own and occasionally, some have been married.

Yet, I still think of them and call them my babies.

First, it reminds me that they are not making mature decisions yet. It keeps me from holding grudges and remembering that whatever happens, they are still capable of learning.

Second, it reminds me that my job is to help them learn and grow from their mistakes.

One of my babies doesn’t get it. I’ve written him up, not because he is the class clown, but because when I ask him to move so he is bothering other students, he won’t.

Some days he comes in and is capable of settling down and working. Some days, we all just would have a better day if he would work in a corner by himself. It would be really nice if he could figure that out on his own, but he isn’t ready yet.

I once was in a situation where I had three different copies (at least) of a presentation I was going to give on at least three different media and I was really glad I did. I think the presentation finally worked on their equipment a fourth way.

Today I’m going a presentation at another school. I did most of it on my surface, and it’s saved on it, on the SD Card, my Skydrive and on my Moodle Server. I’m about to put it on my harddrive moodle server. I put it on a thumbdrive when I got here and handed to the person’s who I am going to use her workstation.

Over kill?

My head exploded when I tried to do it with port 8080

• Set up Drive to be drive letter M:
• Turn off :80
  • Open Developer Command Prompt
  • Netstat –aon
  • Look for
  • 
  • taskkill /pid #### where #### is the pid

See previous post – my touch screen broke and I now have a new computer. After being told on Tuesday that my old computer would be repaired, I got another phone call last night telling me that they were giving me a Microsoft Store credit for the old computer and closing my Assure account as it would cost too much to repair the computer.

ARGH! Meant I was out $200.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a new one. I am now convinced I want only four brands: Dell, Lenovo and Acer. I’ve had a ton of Acer netbooks in my hands (5?). I’ve had even more Dells, somewhere over 50. I’ve also personally owned several Lenovos, both before and after IBM.

I won’t buy another Gateway (they sell their warranties to companies that go out of business). I am not sure about HP, if you open up some out of the same lot of computers they will have completely different parts inside. Seriously. I also don’t like their tech support.

Best thing about Lenovo, I’ve NEVER needed their tech support.