Category: Blog

I’ve got the new kweaver.net site. Created it with Microsoft Expression Web 3 which is NICE! Anything that can help create a site that easily is #1 in my book!

http://www.kweaver.org

This paper argues the importance of a further shift to "Meddler-in-the-middle". "Meddler-in-the middle" positions the teacher and student as mutually involved in assembling and dis-assembling cultural products.

via www.eric.ed.gov

One of the people I follow mentioned this, and it's very much like I teach.  I demo what I want from them, then cut them  loose and while they are working, I'll "unstick" people, grade, or work on my own projects, from campus tech stuff, to personal projects. 

See http://org.hillcresthsdallas.org/InstructTech/

I’ve create a series of short movies describing my courses. I used Camtasia to make each movie, used Camtasia theater to organize them and put them together. I think I need to do that with my school movies and start using the school website for them.

@Pearson Chancery Sucks

Seriously.

My password expired today. There was no message indicating that my password expired, I just couldn’t log in.

This is not good.

Especially when I’m teaching a tough class with pullouts, who can’t leave until I take attendance.

Also, everyone in my building’s head is going to explode as much as mine did, and guess who the campus tech is?

Thank you for the next stress filled days.

See http://www.kweaver.net/Test/ – a very rough draft.

Yes, the same program I use to make movies for my students.   I'm trying to front load the important information.  Each course description will start with the audience, major portions of the course, and some sample work product.

I'm using Camtasia Theater to create the main page — and making each of the subjects a seperate "movie".

I'm doing this in small pieces and may be finished by January, just in time <smile> but I think it will help our counselors, and better yet, help me find the best students for my classes.  I should probably include the Tech support class. 

I just downloaded the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta – got it from MSDN. Seems to work well , setting up my exchange account was easy.

I had been running the Technical Review, and was pleased with it, and ran into no problems at all, but haven’t done any “production work with it”. Giving everything a shot now, including uploading this blog entry.

I did have a bit of problems, as I did this backwards – started typing and then decided to make it a blog entry. Registering my Typepad blog was a piece of cake (but then that’s why I moved my blog, let someone else do the heavy lifting.

So far, I’ve tried Outlook and now Word. I’ll let everyone know how it goes – though I know I’m already lost without TwInBox.

There has been article in several papers, about how teachers are starting to sell lesson plans over the internet.

Our district policy has been, if you make money while working with the district, you must share the revenue.  I'm not sure how it is worked in other cases, but I am familar with one.

One of our CS teachers came up with the "Texas TAKS Web Tutor".  Basically, it's a series of math problems for students to solve, does some profiling, etc.  He found a web host, set up a company, etc.  Here's how he had to share the revenue — in his case he had to provide it free to the district and otherwise was left alone.

I know that I get paid to write curriculum for the district.  All of that work product is owned by the district and it would certainly be wrong of me to sell that product and I would probably get into deep trouble if I did.  When people have asked me about what I have produced, I refer them to the curriculum department who I worked for.

I'm guessing I would have to come up with a totally different set of lesson plans if I went to work for another district, but they might be nice to me.

This is going to be an ongoing post, that I update as I go.  I'm going to try to be as anonymous as possible.

Monday – 1st Period – trying to give students time to work so that they will pass my class, and helping them as we go.  Middle of the period, clerk interrupts because her printer hasn't been working in a week and TAC wants some things checked. 

Monday - 2nd period – again giving students time to work, they need supervision as pretty immature.  Security guard comes to watch class so that I can help administrator logon to Chancery.  Not sure why but resetting his password helps.

4th period is my official time to do tech support.  I went to the closet to see about the request made during 1st period.  There were techs there working on the internet in the portables and I asked him about the port.  It seems everything is number MDF A/11, B/11, C/11 and I had MDF 11 and MDF 12.  I double checked in the office and yep, those were the right numbers.

So I came back to my room, looked up the original ticket where the clerk's workstation was not on the internet, and the printer ticket, wrote an email and asked the tech helping us what happened and she said she'd send a tech out.  By the way, once the tech put the clerk's workstation on the internet, the printer stopped working, and I'm fairly sure it's because her workstation was plugged in the printer and the printer was in the wall and now it isn't.

Also had a parent stop me in the hall and ask me about making a link to the musical site from the main website, and I said I would be happy to.  School website is at http://www.hillcresthsdallas.org and is written in Visual basic.  By the time I got to my room, had an email with the link, tweaked the website, and then published it. 

Tuesday

Before school

Someone had let themselves into a locked classroom, used the computers and left porn on them.  Put Powerup passwords on two of the computers, left instructions for a third, but could not do the same with the administrative computer.  Sent an email to the principal and to TAC about the matter.

One of my coworkers brought me a laptop that needed the virus software updated.  He left it with me and I ran the program during class.  However, couldn't log back in, as I don't have his password and didn't want it.  He's going to pick it up 4th period which is my lunch/tech support period.

During 2nd period, the techs came by to fix Monday's printer.  That was easy, in and out.

Two things were driving me nuts about Windows 7 and the Lenovo — the USB Webcam won't work and I  can't find the drivers.   Also , I couldn't get iPrint to work.

SO, I backed up the Windows 7 install to the HMS, and put the XP back on.  There are several issues on that OS bothering me, so I have fixing them.  There is a file that wouldn't let me shut down the computer automatically, and a couple of other programs that automatically load that I have to shut down each time, or they are in the way (Lanschool and SmartBoard). 

I've also fixed an Outlook issue.

All in all, it does make the experience much more pleasant!