Author: kathleen

So far, the whole Mac experience has been interesting.  I went by the Apple Store after I finished with camp, and left about 10 minutes later with a Mac Mini, a converter to VGA, which I haven't gotten to work but didn't spend a lot of time at it, and stickers on everything.

Not entirely convinced it is something I want or need, but I may very well keep it.  I'm doing a presentation on Saturday for the Apple Corps: http://acd.us/emailblast_august14.html

Haven't seen the receipt yet in my email, hope the sales guy got it right.  I guess as long as it is in their system.

I'm making some movies on it and getting familiar with the whole setup so I am ready for the presentation.

Oh, the presentation — Camtasia for the Mac which is similar but not the same for the PC.

FYI:  Love @Camtasia not sure about @macmini

I’ll say I did a pretty good job recruiting, I’ve doubled my student load. 

Here’s how:

• Early Start camp – this is an opportunity we’ve been doing for two years now.  We bring in ninth graders and expose them to their core curriculum and to electives.  Since I don’t teach 9th graders, this is a way to put the thought in their head early.
• School web designer – I’m the school web designer – see http://www.hillcresthsdallas.org – actually wrote the website in Visual Basic, which I don’t teach but show.  I have a huge number of students taken web design this year.
• Teaching web design – I have three sections of web design and they are full – that’s an opportunity to recruit for CS.
• Attend every open house, etc.  I attended every open house I could last year.  AP Open House, etc. 

The biggest thing is to be out there so students meet you.  Also teach cool stuff in your classes so that friends want to try it.

Today is the first day of Office Depot’s discount for our area so I plan to go by and stock my classroom. 

I am good when it comes to my favorites:  paper and white erase stuff. 

So my plan is to get the following:

• Pens – regular gel pens are my favorite in colors
• Sharpies – especially silver and gold for writing on black things
• Dry Erase Markers and Pens
• Glossy paper for the color laser printer.  I am thinking of making signs with objectives with those.   That kind of paper would be nice for a word wall too, since the administrators seem to think that is necessary.
• CDs
• DVDs

Not sure what else, will see when I get there.

We’ve traditionally mailed out a summer packet before school starts.  I think this year’s is about 20 pages.

In the past, this was printed and mailed out to all the families.

This year, it’s been posted to the school website and available electronically.

Saving paper, saving mailing (sorry post office), saving a parent from spending at least a day getting the physical part done.

Wonder how many copies don’t get there, get lost and don’t get used?  Probably as many electronically but we saved a parent a day, a ton of paper, and energy.

We’re in Day 2, and we still have twice as many kids as we did last year.  They are VERY cool kids.

I started with Alice (www.Alice.org) and had the kiddos do the 4 tutorials.  Some finished yesterday.

Today I started out by showing the school website, especially calendar and how to find it (we’re the second hit on a Bing search using Hillcrest High School Dallas and 3rd on a google search).

After the tutorials, I have them look at the same worlds and then let them loose to explore.

Tomorrow, I’m going to show them how they can do a web page in Word, Powerpoint and then show them Dreamweaver.  Then I’m going to cut them loose and see what they come up with.

Last day, movies.

The other elective teacher and I are swapping kids next week.

The beauty of my “curriculum” is that I can go with the flow, give them a taste of my courses, and a feel for how I teach – basically give them a set of assignments and let them go.

Probably the responsibility that has driven me the craziest.  Yes, I freely admit that.

It involved making sure that reports of down equipment were entered, including phones.  Involved making sure dead equipment was removed.  Make sure Novell passwords were reset, etc.  Also responsible for online testing, required surveys, etc. 

It was a lot like herding cats.

I’m still responsible for the school website, that was a volunteer aspect of it.

Losing some of the abilities is going to be worrisome – people needed me.  Plus anything that was needed for my classroom was done immediately.  Especially things like Novell passwords, etc.

Oh, and they haven’t filled the job for my replacement.

It will be nice to be a teacher again.  I’ve been teacher tech for the majority of the 18 years at my school, and backup for the real teacher tech when I wasn’t.

Oh, and losing the $1000 a semester isn’t good.

I think we have twice as many kids already than we did on our biggest day last year.  Over 40!  The building is hot – when people ask me about the A/C, I point to a window unit on the floor, and we are all punting.  I’m in my room, which is relatively cool since it has a window unit.

Relative, mind you.

We’re doing Alice, and I’m having them go through the Alice tutorial.  Which I am doing too, though slowly.

Just got this set up and it is kind of fun.  Instead of logging into the computer by typing in my password, I just sit still for a moment and the web cam scans my face.   I need to get Keypass working with it.

Fun keystoke saver.

If you are lucky like the employees at my school district, you’ll get an extra $120 for supply money.  You do get that as tax free, or something like that.  They usually have use show receipts before we spend any other money.  I already have Office Depot’s discount week in my calendar, and will do my shopping then, though I did buy a couple of packs of pens so I would have them for early start.

I also go to the Office Depot breakfast, they hand out some good stuff.  Most of the office / school supply places have a breakfast and it usually pays.  They usually give out something you can use.  If not, maybe a friend or student can use and giving stuff to others generally pays off. 

I’ve been a teacher for a while and the things I use the most are:

• Good pens
• Sharpies – I always get a big box with lots of colors and a small pack of just black.  You want silver to write on black stuff too.
• A USB hard drive.  This year’s is a Terabyte for just over $100.

I used to buy floppies, then went to CDs, but lets face it USB stuff is just easier.

This was originally posted on the wrong blog.

The first reason it’s hard to fire teachers, is because it’s really hard to get hired as a teacher, and we need some protection.

Especially technology teachers.  I’ve been teaching computer science for 18 years, and it would be very difficult for me to get a programming job right now.  I’m really good at basic programming, but I show no expertise in the type of programming that is done in the work place.  Neither I or a potential employer would know if I could actually do it. 

It would be almost impossible for me to get a teaching job.  Right now, I know of one opening and it’s an hour away from my house. 

But let’s look at why teachers get fired.  I have had co-workers under investigation because of a student accusation.  I know that the accusations were false in the past, but they still had to go through the process.  In my district, we’ve never had a teacher come back from that process, but I’ve found them in other schools doing other jobs, so obviously the accusation was unjust.

I’ve had two principals decide they didn’t like me, and that my subject was unnecessary.  Now, my class is REAL expensive.  While the funds for the computers come from the state,I need a very large room that could hold two regular classes plus they could repurpose of the computers.  Yes, that has happened.  And yes, instructional technology have come back and gotten their computers back (in my building).  The good news is that my school is very parent driven and the parents not only see the need for my class, but have fought for me.  (Moral of the story, make parents happy).

I’ve survived those attempts plus I teach math so my job is fairly secure. 

The other issue with firing a teacher, is you are depriving them of about the only big benefit in teaching.  Our salaries are relatively low – and find a part time job that makes the difference.  Our biggest benefit is our pension.  If I were to get fired now, not only would I lose my income, but I would lose that pension, and since we don’t do social security (we have our own retirement system that is much better), I’d be screwed out of both.

So, yes, as teachers we need some job protection.  Sometimes it goes completely overboard – if I’m in an investigative process and I go out and make some income, that income should be deducted from what the district is paying me. 

But we DO need protection.