Category: Blog

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.

So when I finished the demo, I had a working sound game.  One student turned in hers (I always have them do a copy of mine as their first assignment over a new program.

Movie here: Sound Game

I think it was fun.  I think they did too, and I think they are getting that these things are building on each other.  Wish my Rock Band drums were smaller.

I have two students signed up for the AP Computer Science Exam.  Sadly, I haven't been able to get either one of them serious about coding.

We started out today, going through the Barron's book.

Fun.

We’re working with Sound with XNA this week.  I introduced it yesterday and I’m going to demonstrate how to do it today.

The cool part is that we have all the tools you need for doing sound.  Adobe SoundBooth, microphones, etc.

Looking forward to it.  We’ll be writing a "drum kit".

Here’s a movie on using SoundBooth to make a decision.  http://www.screencast.com/t/ZDFhNjJiNT

Since I can't eat lunch today …. taking a blog break.

I was really glad to get back to my almost clean, spacious room.  With the new room arrangement, EVERYONE has more space.  We even have space to actually sit down and write stuff, which we didn't have with the old tables.

I am still doing a major purge, and unfortunately the custodians left my last trash bag in the room.  I live in Farmers Branch, and we have fabulous trash bags, designed to fit in our machines without a lot of work.  I personally like better than those plastic things that load into the Dallas garbage collection vehicles.

Spring break was great:

• Won Dallas Symphony Orchestra tickets which was a nice different outing for my husband and I
• One the TypePad Creativity contest with my blog entires about the different ways you can make a blog entry with TypePad (I'm using the web interface today).  $100 Gift Certificate from Amazon
• Got lots of chores done
• Cleaned out closets
• Got HAV unit preventative maintance
• Did a minor purge of my office
• Got oil changed
• Made lots of movies with new, soon to be released software
• Got a Screencast Pro account for free (and put movies there)
• Slept each day.
• Weather was gorgeous during the actual week

Spring Break sucked because:

• Dealt with special ed student and family (which made today sucky and last night hard to sleep)
• Ended with winter.  We had snow on Saturday and Sunday

So yes, I am glad to be back and finish the year.  And I've spent almost every minute since I got to school dealing with special ed family.  Still have to call mother and tell her my decision.

One thing that DCTC does, is free Open agility training on Sunday morning from 11:00 – 1:00.  The only nice thing about the snow is that I live only 10 minutes away so wasn’t afraid of the road.  I think one other person came by and we had the place to ourselves.

Got a lot of good work done.

Upgraded it several weeks ago, but today is the first chance I had to try it.  Man, it’s awesome.  It was good before, and you could upload your photos to the Kodak Gallery and share them, but now they’ve gone one step better.

You can upload directly to Facebook, Flickr, and Youtube with the software.  Tried it today and it worked extremely well.

Love Kodak – my father in law worked there his entire career, though early retired.  Husband worked in their credit union when in college.

Good job!

Movie in case anyone needs it.