Author: kathleen

I have two students signed up for the AP Computer Science Exam.  Sadly, I haven't been able to get either one of them serious about coding.

We started out today, going through the Barron's book.

Fun.

We’re working with Sound with XNA this week.  I introduced it yesterday and I’m going to demonstrate how to do it today.

The cool part is that we have all the tools you need for doing sound.  Adobe SoundBooth, microphones, etc.

Looking forward to it.  We’ll be writing a "drum kit".

Here’s a movie on using SoundBooth to make a decision.  http://www.screencast.com/t/ZDFhNjJiNT

Since I can't eat lunch today …. taking a blog break.

I was really glad to get back to my almost clean, spacious room.  With the new room arrangement, EVERYONE has more space.  We even have space to actually sit down and write stuff, which we didn't have with the old tables.

I am still doing a major purge, and unfortunately the custodians left my last trash bag in the room.  I live in Farmers Branch, and we have fabulous trash bags, designed to fit in our machines without a lot of work.  I personally like better than those plastic things that load into the Dallas garbage collection vehicles.

Spring break was great:

• Won Dallas Symphony Orchestra tickets which was a nice different outing for my husband and I
• One the TypePad Creativity contest with my blog entires about the different ways you can make a blog entry with TypePad (I'm using the web interface today).  $100 Gift Certificate from Amazon
• Got lots of chores done
• Cleaned out closets
• Got HAV unit preventative maintance
• Did a minor purge of my office
• Got oil changed
• Made lots of movies with new, soon to be released software
• Got a Screencast Pro account for free (and put movies there)
• Slept each day.
• Weather was gorgeous during the actual week

Spring Break sucked because:

• Dealt with special ed student and family (which made today sucky and last night hard to sleep)
• Ended with winter.  We had snow on Saturday and Sunday

So yes, I am glad to be back and finish the year.  And I've spent almost every minute since I got to school dealing with special ed family.  Still have to call mother and tell her my decision.

One thing that DCTC does, is free Open agility training on Sunday morning from 11:00 – 1:00.  The only nice thing about the snow is that I live only 10 minutes away so wasn’t afraid of the road.  I think one other person came by and we had the place to ourselves.

Got a lot of good work done.

Upgraded it several weeks ago, but today is the first chance I had to try it.  Man, it’s awesome.  It was good before, and you could upload your photos to the Kodak Gallery and share them, but now they’ve gone one step better.

You can upload directly to Facebook, Flickr, and Youtube with the software.  Tried it today and it worked extremely well.

Love Kodak – my father in law worked there his entire career, though early retired.  Husband worked in their credit union when in college.

Good job!

Movie in case anyone needs it.

Thinking about becoming a teacher, here are 100 great reasons why you should become a teacher if you have any doubts.

via blog.onlinecollegeguru.com

I would love to see this post taken off the internet and the person who created it flogged in public.

Well, maybe not flogged.

Rebuttal:

Few things on the scheduling are true — I can never count on getting off at a certain time, or even on start time.  People love to call meetings both before and after school.

Pay scale sucks too.

Jobs available everywhere?  Not necessarily, lots of budget cuts going on.  I am also one of the few teacahers I know that are qualified to teach every where.

Personal Chef and Snacks?  Again, haven't seen them and don't really want them.  Though since I do hassle kids who hassle the lunchroom staff, they treat me well, but there is no such thing as extra food or extra cooking.  Snacks were taken off the budget for meetings years ago.

On Twitter:

TeachTec Teachers – how are you using video in your classroom/lessons to show things you can’t bring to class? #TeachTips

I’ve videotaped connecting to the Xbox to create games, not only shared it with my students but others doing XNA stuff.

Here are the two I’ve made.

Few devices each year have to be set:

Automatically changed

• Chumby's (internet clocks)
• Samsun Frames for phone system
• All of my computers

Manually changed (so far)

• Zune HD (and the Zune 120, didn't get to that)
• Insulin pump (it's meter did it when I changed the pump)
• Various blood glucose meters
• Car radio
• Microwave and oven in the kitchen

Loving the fact that most of the stuff I depend on, like the Chumby's do it automatically.

Wish we would stay on Daylight savings time.

I needed another wandering around the house computer.   Using it now.  Acer One 532h.   I am about to get rid of one of the house computers, but haven’t decided which one.   May give it to the office manager’s nephew but haven’t decided.

This is slightly bigger than my car computer – Acer ZG5 – has Windows 7 and slightly bigger keyboard so may end up being my agility computer.

What I really like is that it uses the same power source as the other computer, so can share the cords.  I really like to keep my cords in specific targeting places, just in case I need one.  This means I have a DC in the car, and at least three others as I got two cheap on eBay.