Author: kathleen

I am an Outlook addict.  I freely admit it.  I also am a Twitter addict.  To join the two, I use a really great program called Twinbox

I have been learning more about Outlook this weekend, because I had a feeling I wasn’t efficient as I could be.  I was right.

I’ve found a feature in Outlook that makes Twitter even more handy, Search Folders.  I have search folders set up so that I can keep track of my favorite twitter people.  Easy to do:

I have the following set up right now:

To get that to happen, I went to Search Folders, right clicked, and picked New Search Folder. 

Then I selected Mail with specific words

That way, I get tweets from the person and tweets mentioning that person.

Works really great.

See how I have some tweets sorted out?

I wanted to let you know that Teaching CS in Dallas was named to the Top 50 Science Teacher Blogs at http://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/top-blogs/science-teacher/ based on your great science education content and recommendations from other teacher bloggers.
We are a career site for individuals interested in becoming a teacher and our goal is to become one of the best resources for future teachers.
If you would like to put your award badge on your site or can mention our list of top science teacher blogs we would really appreciate it.

This was not the only computer science blog picked.

Heading to Austin next week for First Bytes at the university of Texas in Aisin. Scary because it involves a lot of walking and my knee is bothering me since UTD.

looking forward to the presentations. They even have One on Tuesday night.
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We have half a day left in the STEP for STEM experience.

It was good and I recommend it but I was way harder than I expected. PBL is hard and planning PBL within a PBL is hard. PBL stands for Project Based Learning.

I honestly think spending as much as we spent on a two week unit is not good. I am really glad I ended up with a six week project, a more efficient use of time.

Next week is Austin for CS4HS

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One of my favorite questions.  The answer is “Honey, you left, I am still there!”. 

When I was at TI on Friday, one of the security guards kept looking at me funny and finally got courage enough to ask the above.  He didn’t graduate from us, but did finish school.

But yes, I’m very proud of the fact I’ve been at the same school, same classroom for 19 years.

We’re having to do 4 modules (adds up to two days of staff development), three of which are online and one is face to face. 

I just finished the first, on designing multi-level lesson plans and it was by an outside company.  It was short, to the point, and provided a template and a rubric for developing the lesson plans.

It wasn’t anything I haven’t seen or done, but I do like the template and the way things were put together.  Emphasis was on active learning.

I like the way things ended up spread, I do a module about every 3 weeks or so.

I have one of the first Windows Home Servers and man is it nice.  However, it started failing, and it may yet continue.

Since the software is SO old, recovery was difficult.  Wouldn’t work with any of my 64 bit Windows 7 Machines, so I grabbed an old Windows XP machine and it worked fine.

I had time to move everything off, and it took awhile, but everything is up and working again.

Why do I like it?  It backs up every system I have set up automatically, and restoring is a complete piece of cake.  You can store data on it, but I’ve moved the data to a more modern server.  Pictures, movies, and the like.

My Windows Home Server has been telling me that the hard drive with the OS is failing.  I’ve had it happen before, and it’s a pain.  Any other hard drive fails, I just go to the WHS, tell it to remove the drive, pull it out and put a new one in.

Unfortunately I haven’t seen a tool that will help, but at least I have the original CD.  Right now, I’m working on backing everything up on it, moving some of it to my Iomega server, and cleaning it up.  Once I get that done, I’ll be able to make up a clean backup, then pull that drive and reinstall everything.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I will be working a project for TI, so today they took us on two tours to two different places.

The first was Kilby labs where really deep thinking goes on. I am lucky as I have met him and been to talks he gave (remember I am old)

Its quite a place and designed so that workers don't have a lot of privacy but lots of toys. Lots of test equipment, but even some labview equipment.

The second was the Richardson Wafer Fab unit.

We have a tour Friday which will be in my old office building.

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I have been reading about Digital Literacy with interest.  While I can’t quite completely define Digital Literacy, I certainly run into it on a daily basis, and at lot of the time, it is students.

I have observed the following which I consider digital illiteracy

• unfamiliar with the keyboard
• unskilled using the mouse
• unfamiliar with common Windows or other OS functions
• cannot perform a simple internet search
• can only use one or two programs fluently
• difficulty following simple instructions

And yes, I see it a lot. 

Our students have are supposed to attend a technology lab during each grade.  Our course there are a lot of pullouts in an attempt to bring students up to grade level, and they do get pulled from the technology lab (common compliant by those teachers).

They are in a required computer literacy course for 1 semester in high school, usually in 7th grade.

Those students who do not have access to technology at home, don’t touch a computer any other time.  Once they get to one of my classes, they have forgotten any skills.

There is definitely a digital divide, and we have to find a way to bridge it.  By the way, this divide hits all income levels and ethnicities.