Category: Blog

I am in Dallas Texas and we have been experiencing budgets cuts for a while. We have just started recovering from our last.

I teach computer science and was a professional programmer. I have been teaching for 18 years and am about to get my first second generation student.

I have one class with a textbook and we get a new one every seven years. That means I am teaching Visual Basic.NET 2003 and Visual Basic 2010 is the current language. Not a huge deal but bothersome.

My computers are 2 years old. Again, not a big deal as my students treat them well and they are better then what the business labs just got.

I have 28 computers and I have taught as many as 28 students at once. When I do the computer lab has very little space for walking around. I can't teach more than 28 students as not only am I limited by computers but physical space. I have found that classroom management is influenced by the amount of physical space students have. I taught with 2 1/2 foot space per student for years and just went to 3 foot per student and the energy level went way down.

I know that pair programming is all the rage but with my layout that would give us 1 1/2 foot per student. Can you imagine being that close to a neighbor?

I have taught with in a traditional classroom with 40 students and frankly no one in the room had a quality experience. I was swamped with grading and couldn't get work back in a timely matter. There was no walking space for me to observe students. 

Frankly I have been in most of our classrooms at one time or another and more than 25 students just does not fit.

Then lets took about the amount of time per student. We have approximately 50 minute class periods. With 24 students, each student gets about two minutes of teacher time per day. Up to 30 and now we are at 1 1/2 minutes. And we haven't discussed that it takes more time to take attendance and sign truancy or homework sheets. 

We are spending money as efficiently as possible and cuts are not going to help.

It is important to invest money in our students. If they do not receive a quality education they won't have a future.

Sent from my Windows Phone

That’s been a real issue for me this year, because I’ve been wanting to do some XNA and some Windows Phone stuff, and the IDE and SDK’s require Windows 7.

Our tech has put Windows 7 in every lab that is not on the obsolete list except mine, and he came to do mine Friday.  It didn’t take much talking.

I’ve got all the software installed by Adobe CS 4, and I’ve run it on Windows 7 without a problem.  That will be the first thing I do when I get in on Monday. 

There should be only two differences between my machine and the kids machine – that’s Lanschool and Deep Freeze.  Shouldn’t be hard at all to get me moved, as I rarely save anything anywhere but on my documents.

Best thing, Gridworld works without a hitch on Windows 7 and we’ve had to do some major tweaking to get it to run on our machine with Windows 7.

Best giggle:  Even though our machines are two years old, they are still better than any of the machines recently installed in the business department.  Better processors, better hard drives, etc.

To begin with, I am a bit of a snob when it comes to certification.  I have a regular certification, earned as a post-graduate at Texas Woman’s University.  I had to file a a deficiency plan with the local university, take the required graduate classes and tests – since my college degree was in Mississippi, I had to take Texas politics, etc.  I also had to take tests in pedagogy, mathematics and computer science.  By the way I finished with an almost 4.0 (my sponsoring teacher for Computer Science student teaching did not like me and gave me a “C” which my Mathematics sponsoring teacher and the university sponsoring teacher didn’t agree with, that knocked my student teaching grade to a “B”).

I also passed all the tests on the first try – more on that later.

You have to understand that these are three entirely different certifications.  The last time I looked at getting a CTE certificate, I couldn’t just take a test, I had to have office experience, which technically I didn’t have, since I didn’t work as a secretary or a receptionist, I was one of the bosses, and a system’s analyst at that.

When I got the Tech Apps certificate, you couldn’t take a test at all.  It hadn’t been developed.  Instead you had to take a course in each of Tech Apps certification areas.  They were all pedagogy courses, meaning you learned how to do the software AND learned how to teach it at the same time.  Again, took them as post graduate courses, this time getting a 4.0 out of 4.0.

Now, you can “just” take a test, but I know people who have worked in the Tech Apps field and the Computer Science field who haven’t passed the test after multiple tries. 

The biggest problem between the two, is that there is a funding disparity.  Though some of the things I learned this week means that some of the funding hasn’t been obtained legitimately – it’s supposed to be based on the number of students who go through several years of CTE courses, and another Dallas teacher and I compared notes, and we know that there are not as many students going through CTE as they’re getting funding for.

Every CTE teacher I know gets about $3000 to spend on a discretionary basis.  We get about $2.00 per student, I got about $200 this year, which doesn’t even cover the ink for my printers.  I’ve seen CTE buy things like large full standing copiers.

Until recently they got computers more often than we did, but that has changed recently.  They also only count about 1/3 or 1/2 of a regular CTE, so principals really like them for their budget.

Tech App teachers and Computer Science teachers have always had to work hard to recruit students to keep our classrooms full.  That is new this year for the CTE teacher.

As a result, the tech app teacher and the computer science teacher perceive that we are working very hard to keep what we have, and that the CTE hasn’t had to work hard at all and it is just handed to them.  From looking at the TEKS themselves, you can tell that our courses are aimed at a higher rigor (especially CS).  

It always bugs me when I see someone trying to do what I do, that do not have the proper background and training.  I feel that it cheats the students.  I really worked hard to get where I am.  I worked hard to get scholarships and funding for my Bachelor’s Degree, my Master’s, and my certifications.  I feel it takes away from me when it is handed to someone else.

Apparently Perkins has been changing lately and that is going to be very interesting.

Robots from elementary to high school. Presenter is parent of kid in robotics.

Learn from competing. Don't worry about first competition.

One presenter is CS teacher – high school.

Both work for Rockwall ISD.

Reason -> STEM
21St century learning skills
Collaboration
Creativity
Higher order thinking

Already better than 8:00 am presentation.

Learning to learn. Hands on and project based learning.

Integrated across curriculum – often have a theme.

Integration can be hampered by timeframe. usually six weeks at the high school level.

List of kits.

Tetrix – Lego plus metal
Vex is also metal bit more advanced

Build your own.

Tetrix – First challenge software

Vex has own competition and great curriculum.

BEST – C programming or easyC programming

EasyC – Is

First – labview
. uses C or Java.

Best robotics is free kit.

First tech challenge – long lead time
$1200 to start – $69 a year

First January to APril
Work with mentor
$9000 Each year
The first challenge must be ours.
First is adult driven.

Doable and grants.
Mentoring

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The last post and this post was done with One Note mobile. The neat part is that you have the full text editor just like you do with email and unlike what you do with the current apps.

You also have the blog post on the "cloud" since One Note mobile syncs with Live.com

To blog, just email the post to your Typepad or other blog email address.

I am experimenting with a picture to see if it will post.

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Sponsored by a book publisher. Presentation by the author. Spent too much time selling his concept and not getting to the implementation .

Claims he supports AP Principles in his book.

Claims what we teach in 9th grade, won't be see in work future.

CTE emphasis. Sorry but I get annoyed when the CTE people horn on on CS and Tech Apps.

Claim: High powered skills are in video game design.

Demonstrated STEM integrated lesson. Used one very short reading on ship wrecks to build assignments across the curriculum that take a week or more.

Claims:
Integrates Core Curriculum
STEM Academy

Uses Game Factory 2 to eliminate syntax. Goal is AP Computer Science in fourth year.

Have several versions of the curriculum.

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Bryan Baker of Allen High School brought on a high powered XNA programming presentation.

He had some really good videos of students, good demos of programming, etc.

Pat Phillips was also there and handed out a DVD with XNA stuff.

Bryan and I do things in an opposite way. He teaches XNA after the AP Exam and does it in an advanced class. Not sure that would work in my world, as I have to get kids in the PreAP door.

I want to put XNA in our PreAP curriculum, and I will be fought to the death on this. I am doing it in my classroom, two years in a row. I bring in XNA when we do conditionals in Java.

This is my second year.

The coolest part about XNA, is that it gives you a Java like language that allows students to program for the Xbox, the Zune, and the Windows Mobile Phone.

Good job and another reason for coming to TCEA.

Talk by Microsoft Employee Alfred Thompson, introducing Small Basic – This was not on the TCEA Planner website but a side talk by Microsoft.

Small Basic Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/smallbasic/

Small Basic Download

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff384126.aspx

Good starter language, is text based. Ports to Visual Basic.

Has “turtle graphics” also Gridworld style graphics. Has tons of examples and documentation on the internet.

I really like this as an introduction to programming as it gives an easy transition to Visual Basic.

He also talked about the Kudo, Kinnect and other projects by Microsoft.

Very interesting presentation. There is a new course coming down the pike for AP.

This is the main reason I came to TCEA. I am also planning on going to similar presentations at SIGCSE in Dallas.

They feel, and yes, I agree, that the AP Computer Science A test is too technical for most students. They are purposing a principles course, that has programming as only one facet of the course.

The most amusing part was that the group presenting just couldn’t get their technology together. Probably wasted at least 15 minutes of their 90 minutes. But comforting to the rest of us.

Their website is at http://csprinciples.com/index.php

I think they are very ambitious and I hope it works.

First event to was a round table discussion on Robotics, middle school and Lego.

While I am probably doing First, they had some really good thoughts.

These are the suggestions made:

• Make sure all the team members know how to build and how to program.
  
• Have specific goals in activities.
• Be organized as the students can get obsessed.

   
   

   
   

Which should you teach, CTE or Tech Apps

Presenter went over all of the Technology CTE courses along with Pathways. Also went over the proposed changes to Tech Apps.

Most interesting part is that there I can teach most of the Technology CTE courses with my Tech Apps certificate.

CTE teachers haven’t not learned that they have to recruit. Both computer science and tech apps have been “required electives” and the hardest of the group so we are used to recruiting.