Category: Blog

Unfortunately I’ve had a student ruin this for me …  he refuses to read in my class, and since he is 504 and special ed, I have to accommodate him by reading the power points for him.  So I am a bit tired of doing screen casts.

However, Camtasia 7 absolutely rocks.  Everything works slightly better, and there are some lovely new features.

Screencasts are infinitely easier to do.  It makes doing them in segments very easy and fast.  I frequently switch from screen casting a Powerpoint to screen casting code.  When I do, and I ask the record to save and exit, it puts the new screen cast video into the open existing project (or if it is the first one, creates a new project.  Not only is the new video in the clip bin, but it is also added to the timeline.  Most of the time that is good, but a few times I’ve had my "cursor" in the middle, and the screen cast was placed there, instead of the end where I wanted it.

I do lots of things with Camtasia as a teacher.  Yesterday I had a student who had problems with an assignment and I just didn’t have the time, energy or brain power to solve it.  Had her email it to me, looked at it this morning, and made a screen cast for her showing how to fix it.  http://www.screencast.com/t/Mjg0OTczN

I have used it to record and display student work. 

I use it to accommodate special ed students (especially hard of hearing students). 

And of course, use it to record what I do in the classroom.  There are lots of those in my ScreenCast account.

It’s also fun to use to make movies with a video camera.  I have made a ton of dog training videoes.  http://www.screencast.com/t/MTJkNzJm

I am looking forward to playing with the new features of Camtasia.

Summer plans are finally coming into place.

First, Early Start — which will actually be last.  Last year was our first time to do Early Start, and it was one of those, we want to do it, but we don’t know if we will get the money — and then it came at the last minute.  Literally.

Early Start was great.  Two weeks in August, right before school starts, we brought in new 9th graders.  We had them in the four core curriculum courses, and with elective teachers.  If I remember right, we had 6 groups.  It gave the students an opportunity to comfortable in the building, meet some of the teachers in the building and see what we had to offer.

I am also hoping to do ACP’s.  Those are our district finals, and I’ve done them for several years.  That’s also a good gig, and I hope I get to work with the same person.

I am signed up for an Advanced Alice workshop in Chicago, and I am going to take a side trip on the way up to visit relatives.  That looks really good, and will give me some more Alice under my belt which I really like for summer camp.

I should do an AP workshop, and will probably stay at home, since I have to pay for the room if I go out of town.  Just have to decide which one. 

As a team this year, we rocked. I would have liked one more sub but that might not have helped.  We managed to get all but 18 students of somewhere around 300 students tested in Reading.  Testing was online and we used two labs and one Testing Server. 

I really liked what we did this morning.  I pulled all the missing kids schedules and we sent subs to get the kids.  We put them on a computer and tested them as soon as we found them, so we were able to return the labs to regular use by 6th period.

I didn’t take a break, as there is really no place I can go to get peace and quiet other than my own lab.  If I go to the teacher’s lounge I end up working, which wears me out.

We had minor glitches with the Install software, major problems in the Business lab, and one computer was acting up in mine.  Not sure what was up with it.

We have TAKS testing — old style — and then Online Benchmark testing in May.  I’ve got two kids studying for the AP Computer Science test — they freaked out earlier this week, but I think my stress was rubbing off on them.

It will be nice to see my own kids again.  I haven’t seen most of them for three days.

They just came out with Zune HD software 4.5 – loving it.

Had to resync everything but can smart DJ on the Zune itself now.  There is a lot more information on the Zune, and suspect most of it is accessed via the internet.

By the way, I really want to get a Zune HD 64 gig, but have decided to do the next best thing.  Since I am fairly certain only the glass is broke, I sent the vandalized one off to a third party repair facility, and figure I’ll keep my videos on it, probably pictures too, and use the red one for music.

It’s not going to be cheap to fix, but I think worth it.

You don’t have to buy a Kindle to read Amazon Kindle Books.  I love them.  Now, I don’t go around being green.  If I am environmentally friendly, it is because it makes sense from an economic sense, and reading Kindle books is cheaper.

First, most of the time, the book itself is cheaper.

And you don’t have to buy the Kindle.  I already have a Netbook (okay, I have two), and I have an air card, though that isn’t necessary, you can download the books when you are at home.

Not having the books fill the shelves is great.  Being able to make the type size any size I want is even better.

Even better, is not having books that end up in the landfill.

Right now, I am completely pissed off at several programmers:

First, the yahoos that wrote Adobe Soundbooth.  If I open a file as an MP3, save it as a WAV file, and save it, I expect it to be in the same directory I retrieved it from.  Not the directory I saved something the last time I used Soundbooth.  Just saying…..

Second, I swear to god that the Java people update their software just so they put a new freaking ad in their installer.  And PLEASE do not set the button automatically to check.  I have to uncheck the check on 33 freaking machines.  And had to do another 30 some machines in the business lab.

Third, the authors of TestNav written by the Pearson Learning people.  The freaking client installer reboots computers, and doesn’t tell you it didn’t finish.  And not every computer.  My lab is pristine – I use Deep Freeze, and am careful about keeping a frozen.  Something like 6 out of the 28 did this.  This is NOT fun.  Business lab was even worse.

Finally, the authors of ICQ.  One of my face book friends invited, and they not only changed my Home Page, but my default search engine AND my blank tab in Windows Explorer.  It’s gone and won’t be back.

Well, not completely, but I have identified the problem.  She has been driving me absolutely buggy for months.

She screams at me constantly and doesn’t do what I tell her too.  Yesterday I figured out why.

She came into the room late, and I said “Tardy Center”.  Didn’t blink, didn’t move, “Tardy Center”. No blink, no move, “Tardy Center”.  Then she even said, what did you say?

When she came back, I wanted to tell her what I told the other kids.  I called her name.  I did it again.  I walked towards her, saying her name.

Then it dawned on me. 

SHE DIDN’T HEAR ME, and I have been mad at her for the same reason my mother gets mad at me.  SHE DIDN’T HEAR ME.

I wrote her a pass to the nurse with a note to sign her up to evaluate her hearing.  I haven’t done that before, in 17 years of teaching I haven’t noticed that a kid was not hearing me.  She thought I was being funny.  Okay, I’ve been known to send a kid to the library and back to give us both space.  BUT SHE DIDN’T HEAR ME.

And yes, she flunked the hearing test.  They were able to determine she had a problem and found her a way to fix it in less than 45 minutes.  Finally flunking is a GOOD thing.

This is a perfectly brilliant child, and there are 8 other teachers that she doesn’t hear.  Why did it take me so long and why didn’t the other teachers notice? 

Why didn’t her mom notice – who did say, no wonder you don’t do well at school, you can’t hear your teachers.

Score one for Weaver, but why did it take us so long to notice?

By the way, I had something similar happen to me involving needing glasses and the 2nd grade. 

I have clocks ticking in my head, and they start getting loud.

My first clock is the TELPAS clock.  Good news, we test Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.  Bad news, I don’t have a complete schedule and haven’t figure out what to do with my kids!

The next clock is the AP clock.  I had to stop it to get the TELPAS clock going, but it’s going on now.  And I am ignoring the TELPAS testing when it comes to that.

Somewhere is the TAKS clock, but for me, it’s mostly a time suck.  I can’t work on the other clocks when it goes off.

The next clock is the ACP clock.  I have to have a certain amount of material covered and let me tell you, it isn’t happening this year.  I don’t know what I am going to do about it.

But I have a bad thing and a good thing in all of this.

The bad thing, is that I have a student who has been homebound I am trying to get caught up.  Man is that clock ticking, and I am going to see how much of that clock we can push off to the summer.  If we can.  We’d have to work out something to where that student and I are not alone and that student’s parent wasn’t any where around.  I can’t say much more than that, but that situation is making the clocks tick louder.

I have a student in PreAP Computer Science.  Wondering if anyone has any more ideas for interventions.

I have given him extra time, have walked him through several labs, and upon finding out he either doesn’t or can’t read and follow directions, have made a series of movies of the material he has missed so far.

Anyone have any other bright ideas?

I took my Rock Band drums to school and I actually think I’ll leave them there.  They are a bit big to steal and I never get around to playing with them during the school year anything.  I also figure I will take my extra Rock Band Guitar, and probably even leave it since i have three (one Guitar Hero usb, and one Rock Band Wireless), and since I never play it either…..

The Rock Band kit worked with the Drum Kit software 100%, there is a lot of things I can do to make it better, so it will be interesting to see what I and the kids come up with.