Category: Blog

One of our business teachers died Thursday night.  She is retiring, so it is doubly sad.  Several of my students are hers so Monday will be hard.

We lost another teacher unexpectedly about 15 years ago.  That teacher was one of the reasons I have always kept up with my grading and my lesson plans.  She left us a mess of incomplete grades.  Made it even harder on us.

The good news is that we have had a student teacher / now pretty much full-time sub who is or going to be certified in business so hopefully she can take over for the rest of the year.  The kids know her so that will make it easier on everyone, especially the kids.

Really hate to lose people and especially that way.

Longer explaination as to what prompted this in my next post but here’s how to move items from a Google Calendar to Outlook (especially when you don’t want all of them.

Moving Items from Google Calendar to Outlook

Yes, I could write the software necessary to maintain a calendar on our school web site, and train someone on how to use it, but the person who does it is very comfortable with Google Calendar, and likes it.  In fact, he asked if he could use Google Calendar.

I believe in working smarter, not harder.

So why rewrite something?  I’d love to make the color’s fit the website, but haven’t figured that out, so "oh well".  In fact, the darker navigation bars that I made last week fit better with the calendar!

It’s here:  School Calendar

We finished TAKS testing on Friday.  It's a MAJOR deal and to do it, we have to shut the whole school down.

We had 9th graders in the portables — they only test Math on Thursday.

Special Ed and Limited English Speakers were upstairs.  I don't understand their testing and don't have to deal with it.

We had 10th and 11th graders in the building proper.

During the first two days, I did my favor duty — hall monitor and better yet was a reliever, so was at a different post every 30 minutes.

I did the Science test on Thursday — which is a drag as you have to distribute calculators and clear them.

The last day was Social Studies.

And as always managed to screw something up — the seating chart.  I could do it if it was on the computer.

The next joyful thing I have to do is to Field Test an EOC (End of Course) test for Chemistry and we have 300 students.  Thankfully I just have to have my lab ready.

Texas really needs to change the way we test high school students.  Shutting down for 4 days is ridiculous and putting it on the teachers is even worse, since we have a stake in the results.  Everyone is convinced we are going to cheat and we have monitors out the kazoo.

We need to go to a testing center.  Probaby have to use the local communinity colleges or build  a facility just for testing.  Students get an appointment and report for testing that day, instead of reporting to school.  The people who work at the testing center could be in our sub pool and they wouldn't have a stake in the students doing well, so it would be more fair.

We're going to have to do to that for on-line testing.   Here's the deal, with 300 students we're going to probably have to kick my kids and one other labs kids out of their room for 3 days.  That part really sucks.

Finally figured out how to add a new XML data type to my school web site.  Now I can split out the Events from the Clubs.

Love it, because it is very easy to update, and I might be able to farm out some of the work.

http://hillcresthsdallas.org

We’re TAKS testing, and my assignment today was to sit in the hall, 30 minutes at a time, different places.

So being the geek I am, I took my computer and external hard drive – which is worth another blog entry.

The website is at http://hillcresthsdallas.org and I got the following done:

• put Yearbook pictures of the faculty on the faculty pages.
• put Yearbook pictures of the various clubs on the clubs pages.
• Improved the navigation

I took the Small Business starter kit and changed it drastically.  Still had multiple layer navigation which I admit was a pain, but managed to eliminate that today.

I’m going to look into graphics tomorrow, but I don’t promise a lot of progress because people keep “sucking out my brain”.  It’s exhausting because they keep wanting me to tell them what to do and I won’t.  Just because I’m happy with something doesn’t mean it’s right.

So far today, I’ve had three special ed students part out on me, and a fourth just be more snarkie than usual.

I have 12th grade PAWS, didn’t know what we were doing with them –and they told us at the last minute — but I knew they were to be doing SOMETHING.

One of my special student there decided he had to be somewhere besides my room, and got very upset when I wouldn’t let him.  He broke my first rule — talking during announcements.  My second rule is that I never ever let anyone go anywhere until announcements are done.  Thus I didn’t hear them at at all.  He said "Can I", and I said, "No, " Sit down" which I know know means stand up and argue with me. 

My really special student came complete unglued when I asked him to write his first flowchart with Raptor.

Then another one went off on me over something that happened over a week ago, but I haven’t seen her since she’s been in ISS.  Sent her to her counselor.

I no longer have any domains with GoDaddy!  They are all registered with MyHosting.com

There were absolutely no interruptions in service for any of the accounts. 

GOOD JOB!

I had three domains that I hadn’t moved from GoDaddy yet.  The first (kweaver.net) moved today, and best yet, I don’t think there was any interruption in Email.  I initiated it on April 19th, and it happened today (April 25th) so it takes about 6 days to happen.

The next domain – click-l was initiated later in the day (10:15 pm), so I don’t expect it to move until later today or even tomorrow.

The last domain is the school domain.  I did not get it going until the 20th, so I expect it to move tomorrow or Tuesday.

Came in this morning to find at least one row of ceiling tile missing from ceilings.  It’s WAY cool because you can see the old part of the school.  Now, the ceiling in my room goes to the top, but not the ceiling in the hall.  We have network wiring, wireless network wiring, heating/ac ducts, sprinklers and all kinds of interesting stuff heading by acoustical tile ceiling.  It’s really cool to peer up at the past.

I’m told they are putting in new heating and air conditioning.  And the coolest part is that they claim we will have real working thermostats in each room.

Okay, I’ll believe it when I see it.

You have to understand that I have been at this school for 17 years, almost 18 years, and we’ve had new HvAC threatened before.  However, this is the closest we’ve seen it happening.  Last time, they came out and surveyed, decided they couldn’t do it, got sued by the district and I got a set of new computers over it.

We have a boiler / chiller system.  And the temperature in my room is inversely proportional to the temperature outside.  Today, I could hang meat in the room, and in January, we could bake potatoes by placing them in the edges of the room near the radiators.

Oh, some of the radiators are already gone.  Not mine…..

The other nice thing is that they are working at night.  Much safer.  Wonder if they are working on the weekends too?

Be interesting to see what comes out of this.