Category: Blog

Thinking about becoming a teacher, here are 100 great reasons why you should become a teacher if you have any doubts.

via blog.onlinecollegeguru.com

I would love to see this post taken off the internet and the person who created it flogged in public.

Well, maybe not flogged.

Rebuttal:

Few things on the scheduling are true — I can never count on getting off at a certain time, or even on start time.  People love to call meetings both before and after school.

Pay scale sucks too.

Jobs available everywhere?  Not necessarily, lots of budget cuts going on.  I am also one of the few teacahers I know that are qualified to teach every where.

Personal Chef and Snacks?  Again, haven't seen them and don't really want them.  Though since I do hassle kids who hassle the lunchroom staff, they treat me well, but there is no such thing as extra food or extra cooking.  Snacks were taken off the budget for meetings years ago.

On Twitter:

TeachTec Teachers – how are you using video in your classroom/lessons to show things you can’t bring to class? #TeachTips

I’ve videotaped connecting to the Xbox to create games, not only shared it with my students but others doing XNA stuff.

Here are the two I’ve made.

Few devices each year have to be set:

Automatically changed

• Chumby's (internet clocks)
• Samsun Frames for phone system
• All of my computers

Manually changed (so far)

• Zune HD (and the Zune 120, didn't get to that)
• Insulin pump (it's meter did it when I changed the pump)
• Various blood glucose meters
• Car radio
• Microwave and oven in the kitchen

Loving the fact that most of the stuff I depend on, like the Chumby's do it automatically.

Wish we would stay on Daylight savings time.

I needed another wandering around the house computer.   Using it now.  Acer One 532h.   I am about to get rid of one of the house computers, but haven’t decided which one.   May give it to the office manager’s nephew but haven’t decided.

This is slightly bigger than my car computer – Acer ZG5 – has Windows 7 and slightly bigger keyboard so may end up being my agility computer.

What I really like is that it uses the same power source as the other computer, so can share the cords.  I really like to keep my cords in specific targeting places, just in case I need one.  This means I have a DC in the car, and at least three others as I got two cheap on eBay.

First, Vista installed right out of the box on my Gateway M275 and worked fine.  Found the drivers etc.

Second, you should be able to install the Tablet version of Windows XP and it will work without drivers.  Since I finally have a break, I’m going to see if I can find a place I can put the drivers so people can download for a small fee. (Probably $5.00)  Give me a few days, I’m at dog agility trials.

But you can’t copy and paste large sections or complete articles from other bloggers posts directly into posts on your blog or website.

How Do You Feel When Someone Copies and Pastes Your Post? | The Edublogger

It’s even worse when they use the RSS feed to bring it into their blog as if it is their own work.

Yes, it’s happen to me on my diabetes blog, several times now.  Don’t do it, I might actually go find a copyright lawyer, understand lawyers come pretty cheap lately.

I have been completely overwhelmed.  Between the new furniture and being sued by a special education student’s parents, I haven’t been sleeping.

I have managed to start doing a major purge – I sent a large box full of new cables back to the district, threw a way another box full of mice with no balls – and am doing a little bit each day.

Unfortunately I can’t say much about the lawsuit – have probably said too much already, but I haven’t been sleeping as a result, and it is a major topic in my mind, all the time.

This spring break, I am just de-stressing.  I have an agility trial today, went to bed when I was tired enough and woke up when I was ready – We’re not due in the ring until sometime after 1:00 pm, so I am taking a leisurely morning to get there.

We've been doing some beta curriculum for XNA for the past few weeks (we're at Chapter 6 and working on building a "Button Blaster" game.

Took in my XBOX, hooked it up (felt like being a REAL spoiled brat, and maybe will tomorrow, and hook up two projectors, since I have them) and did a demonstration of deploying a game to the xbox.

It's pretty cool, and even worked in the classroom even though we got XBox live errors because the firewall.

I started out with the test game, deployed it to the xbox, and then compiled a real version. 

Then I had them help me write the tug of war version, deployed it and played it. 

I have several students with XBox's, don't know if they have Gold Live but hoping they will give it a try over Spring Break.

Will give it another try tomorrow, with the other version of Button Blaster.

Now that we have room —

I've set up my Smart Board — weil, not exactly mine but one that has been loaned to me.

One of my remedial math kids asked me about Algebra Tiles and since they were invented when I learned algebra, and also were invented after I learned to teach Algebra, I sent her to some websites.  Since last night was parent conferences, I had a minute and downloaded some lesson on Algebra Tiles from the internet.

It worked best with the smaller group.  In fact, the Smart Board didn't work at all with the 7th period, not sure , but I think the Bluetooth got unplugged.  How does the rest of the world cope?  I know, they call me.

One of my kids even videotaped it.  He had a tripod and a camera with him, why I don't know, and he's going to make a movie later in the week.

Pretty cool.

Okay, I was 90% sure I left my phone at school.

I had rearranged my classroom so well, I couldn’t find my car keys.  Oh, and we had parent conferences and I was trying to get out of the building before I ran into another parent.  So once I found my keys, I kinda of left and left my phone and camera behind.  Didn’t know they weren’t with me until I got into the car, so there was the possibility of having lost it.

Here’s the cool part, I hadn’t purchased the Premium services yet!  I was able to purchase the Premium services without having the phone in hand, AND find it with the MyPhone service.

COOL!