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One of my absolute favorite machines is a Lenovo X61. Unfortunately it's aging. I think I have had it for 5 years.
I just put Windows 8 on it and it's running decently. A lot of features aren't working, but they don't work in Windows 7 either.
I'll have to see if Lenovo is doing any drivers for any of the buttons.
I'll let you know what I think of Windows 8 as I go.
Something I had seen but hadn’t really done anything with in recent years until the IBM summer camp. They had the students download the VMPlayer and do all their development there, in an Ubuntu box, which was brilliant. Even more brilliant to is set up the machine in advance, that way you don’t have configuration problems – an issue I had at an SMU workshop on developing Android apps.
The cool part for me, is that I can almost duplicate the computers at school so that when I make videos at home, the computer looks more like the lab computers. Not quite as confusing for the students.
VMPlayer is free. At http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ I did break down and by the educational version of VMWare Workstation.
Oh yes, you can play with Windows 8 now without breaking your PC.
Another thing I like it for is software development. You can set up and save your whole development system for a project on a virtual machine and then put it on a USB drive and carry it around. Wouldn’t put it on the cloud,but they do have servers for that. Download time is a bit slow.
Depends
On the student and on the teacher.
I have had students come through my AP Computer Science program, pass the test, major in computer science and do really well.
I have had more not do as well.
I keep up with the local colleges and I keep up with the training as much as possible. I have even graded.
My kids don't pay full price for the exams and they get an incentive for passing, as do I. So they personally are not impacted by the costs.
I do recommend that they use the CS credit as elective and as an opportunity to be ahead of their classmates. Being in the introductory class of the major is invaluable and gets you contacts. However, having spent two years with me gives them an edge and
it should be an easy A an and opportunity to make tutoring money.
That's how I got through and ahead of college. If you are the kid that knows the answers and does well, you are first in mind for part time jobs, internships and other cool opportunities which has happened for me and my former students.
So I say take the class, most high school CS programs are AP driven but only take the test if you can afford it.
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Really?
Do we really have time for that?
One thing I’ve really liked about my administrators over the years, is that we don’t let clothing or hair, or earrings get in the way of the educational process.
We reverse t-shirts, we put sweat pants on people, whatever it takes to get a distraction covered so we can get on with the school day. We put ban-daids over earrings, we have the school nurse take them out, we find a way to deal with them (don’t look at me while it’s in your face is one of my favorite expressions, and don’t ask to go anywhere, especially the restroom.).
I dare say I’ve seen every single possible hair style and every possible hair color, from bald, to fades, to patterns, to braids, to elaborate braids, from white to black, to purple, pink, green, and multiple colors.
I’ve ever seen a couple relatives of Cousin It (all hair).
WHO CARES!
Get that child in a chair and learning something.
One of the reasons I haven’t been active on the internet is that this is the most hectic school year I have had in a while.
My students are also at the lowest level I have seen in a while.
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You’d think so, wouldn’t you. For a year, I watched someone who was an experienced middle school math teacher teach computer science. He had a degree in Computer Science and I think he went through the alternative certification route.
He wasn’t a good teacher. On his good days, he might have been equal to my bad days, my first year. Maybe. I always thought I was being generous. However, he spent too much time talking and not enough time letting students do. The mistake that most teachers make in a computer lab. His classroom management technique was to pick on the whitest kid on the class and make the rest of the kids think they were next.
I might go too far the other way. I think students stay engaged longer, if you talk less and let them work more. I tend to let them stay in their holes too long. I need to work on getting them to ask for help.
By the way, the reason he wasn’t teaching middle school math – he wasn’t very good at it – and he left teaching after trying computer science.
I certainly wish I had the breadth of knowledge in the field a CS degree would give me. If I had the CS degree, though, I don’t think I’d teach. I think I’d be working in industry. The money’s certainly better. And this is the argument made by many about why there aren’t more CS grads teaching CS at the K-12 level.
Yes, I had made arrangements to go to #ghc2012. I had paid an Early Bird Registration, booked a hotel and flight, and even made reservations with Super Shuttle. Had been discussing it with our Associate Principal with Instruction.
However, I didn't realize that our approval process on Staff Development had changed and I was asking the wrong person permission to go.
BUT the real reason.
The kids.
I've ended up with a much bigger course load than I had expected. In fact, I had expected an easier year. We have a lot more students at our school that we expected and the technology electives are down a teacher. That means I have a lot more students than I have ever had.
It also means that my students are at a lower level and less independent. I just finished making a movie over an assignment for my AP students. If they had been my PreAP students they would have knocked out that assignment in about 5 minutes, and gotten it right. Okay, maybe a whole class period.
I left one class early by 30 minutes for a doctor's appointment and no work got turned in. I can't imagine what chaos will happen if I am goine for 4 days.
Seriously.
So when you develop a large program, be it an operating system, a time keeping system, or any other large piece of software, you are doing the exact sort of thing that you do when you develop the curriculum for a new course.
You have documentation to start with – in the case of a course, the TEKS and the standardized testing that might go with it. AP Computer Science course description and the AP Computer Science test is one example.
You have an IDE. In my case, Word and Moodle.
You even get to do some user interfaces, etc.
Each week I have each of my students look up the vocabulary for the week. It’s my first assignment for the week.
I started that with my web mastery course.
First I believe strongly in consistency. My students know that on Monday morning they are going to see a new topic and they are going to get a new set of vocabulary words to look up.
Second, it gives them a chance to sharpen up their internet searching skills. One of my favorite, mis-defined words of the week this week was class for my web design students was “class”. I wanted the definition as it relates to XHTML, and they gave me lots of other definitions. Not all, as they had already caught on to the fact, I wanted a very specific set of definitions.
Finally it helps with the exam. We have a district final and both the students and teachers struggle with it because we don’t have a clue what is on it. One of the test writers (I’m often one), got the brilliant idea years ago to produce a vocabulary list as a review and that’s helped a lot.
Some of us give the kids the vocabulary list at the end of the semester, but I’m finding it’s better to give the list as we go, and then use the list as a review.
Besides, then the kids know what I am talking about when we discuss our assignments.