Category: Blog

Seriously, and there are several ways to do it.

Donor’s Choose – http://www.donorschoose.com/kweaver

Send a check to my school and make sure that you include a note to donate the money to the Robotics team.

Nothing stresses me out more than worrying about where entry fees or part money comes from.  I’ve already given quite a bit of money to the cause.

My school address: 

Hillcrest High School
9924 Hillcrest Rd.
Dallas, TX  75230

Frankly I don’t need food (got a lot of that today), don’t wear perfume (at lot of it turns on me) or much jewelry.  Anything else I want, I tend to buy when I want it.

#dfwwpdev

Seriously.

I have always said the best staff development is to allow us the freedom to sit down and work. We never get time for that.

This developers camp is precisely that.

The air has been filled with words but they have been useful words. Most of the day is spent working on code and on sharing ideas.

Oh, gee, the ideal classroom.

We need more of this!

Sent from my Windows Phone

One of my missions now has a motto:

Make E and T as important as S and M in STEM.

Seriously, both engineering and technology are the ugly step children of STEM education.  Neither are required by many education programs in the US, neither are very well funded.

My goal is to make Computer Science required as a course in Texas again.

I’m finding that Donor’s Choose at http://www.donorschoose.org/ is a really good resource for obtaining materials for your classroom.

My personal site is at http://www.donorschoose.org/kweaver and even if I don’t have an active project at the moment, your donations will be collected for my next project. 

So far, I’ve had six projects funded:

• Xbox controllers – 7 total, those were 3 different projects
• 2 netbooks for the Robotics team
• 1 Xbox

The Xbox materials I’m collecting for game programming – I incorporate some of the Microsoft XNA programming in my PreAP computer science, and am hoping to add some to my regular computer (Visual Basic) class.

Once you get your first couple of projects out there and going, doing the creative writing for the next projects isn’t hard.

It’s really strange and it’s happened twice now, that when I call a parent to see how a sick kid is, that they are really taken aback.  It’s almost like they think I might be checking if the child is truant or something.

That’s why I find it so weird.

Kid’s in my room for months everyday, I like the kid and am concerned, so I call home, just to say hey, how is kid doing, and let him know I called.

Once we get past the initial bristling up, it’s all good. 

Weird.

I’m working with several individuals to see if we can promote Computer Science within Dallas ISD.  We’re looking at National Engineering Week since we’re too late for CSED week (that would be now).

Wish us luck!

Am in the process of making travel arrangements for this conference, it is early, but wanted to get it set up so I wouldn’t forget or back out of it. 

I didn’t go last year, too many things going on then, but went when it was in San Antonio as a day trip and that was fun.

This year, since it’s in California and there are only three cheap flights a day (Virgin America), I’m going on the 8th and hanging out until the 11th.  Figure I can do some sightseeing, though my Wednesday flight is EARLY.

The hotel still doesn’t have the code so waiting on that.

I’ve been thinking hard about how to change things so that there are more women in computer science since I’ve been to Grace Hopper.  One thing I see in my community, is that not all high schools offer computer science and that is something we need to change.

We need to start talking with principals and other administrative staff and convince them to teach computer science.

Until we do so, there won’t be openings for Computer Science teachers, and it won’t be taught.  I know for a fact that in my district alone, less than half the high schools offer computer science.

I have always felt it important to use meaningful names when programming.

To teach that to students, I remind them of the importance of their own names.  It helps when you have a student with a significant name (last year one of my CS students had the same name as a famous athlete). 

If worse comes to worse, I tell them why I named my dogs the names I did (Dulce is named “sweet” because she has a sweet face and because I want her to be sweet).

I also monitor students as they are programming with Lanschool and remind them as they are working that they need to use correct names if I see they are not.

Pick one topic at a time (I broke that rule today).

Keep it very short, two examples at the most. 

Show live code.

Give your students time to do it and ask questions.  Show your student(s) questions to the group as often as possible.

Don’t repeat yourself.  If you repeat yourself, people will zone out on you.