Category: Blog

Okay, she didn't trash the whole room, just the place where people first see it.

It's partly my fault.  I hate chalk boards.  I have two in my room.  Can't get to them, because computers are in the way.

So I bought some dry erase paint.  It works, but it isn't meant to change the color of the surface.  I didn't know that.

One of my friends has a student teacher who offered to paint the board for me 8 weeks ago.  YES, 8 weeks ago.

She didn't bother to read the box.  I watched her, and kept telling her to read the directions.

She got paint EVERYWHERE.

EVERYWHERE!

It didn't cover evenly — you can't write on it, but it looks hideous.

I have white paper rolls with blue borders coming to fix it.

I can't stand it — the paper we have in the building is yellow.

I'm going to see if my study halls kids can fix it.

I'm pissed.

She's an idiot.  She couldn't even stay in my room for 5 minutes at a time, didn't clean up the paint after herself.

If she walks into my room again, I might kill her.

Seriously.

My husband is SO wrong — I swapped out my phone today.  It stopped charging batteries, not sure when.  Anyway, I had called last week for help, and the trouble shooter told me I could take it into a place here in Dallas.

I thought I had to use my insurance, but I have a year warranty on the phone from last June.  Then I have to go to insurance AFTER that.

So they swapped it out.

Great thing — MyMobile by Microsoft, had it all restored within an hour.  I still put in my email accounts manually and some of my software, but all my data is on the phone now.

After going through an extremely frustrating process, I have had my Zune HD for a week, and my dock for a couple of days.

LOVE IT!

I've shown it to my kids and made a deal out of the fact it's personalized.  I really think that will slow most of the kids down from taking it.  I do need to lock the screen ….

I really don't have a problem with theft of electronics — except for the district cameras.  I've had a lot of money stolen, but have learned not to take money to school.

Anyway, I love the new Zune software, especially the DJ picks.  I'm having a small issue with play lists, but also love the Podcasting. 

I'm keeping my 120 gig Zune and have my collection of Audible books.  I like the service but have enough to listen to to last several trip.  The only real benefit left is the New Yorks times subscription but I rarely get time to listen to the whole thing.  Maybe I'll go with it again next summer if I get to do a summer camp on a long trip again.

I also am starting to play with the Zune games again — my dean sort of sanctioned that the other day, and I want to do some development in front of the kids.

PS I am giving the "post in the future" feature of Typepad a try, so I didn't really post this when I had a class.

I've had my blogs on TypePad for almost a year now, and I love them. 

There are lots of ways to post, but I keep finding that the best way is to just go into the user interface and doing it. 

Yes, I could and probably will install my own blogging software, but with this one, no nagging messages that I have to upgrade, and they do all the heaving lifting.

I've used Contribute to blog  with Typepad — and it works well, but I haven't figured out a way to automatically post on Twitter.  I could look it up, but why bother when the Typepad user interface works so well.

Plus I can post from the mobile phone, either using their software or through an email message.  And I can put up stuff from Snagit — like this screen shot, in a very easy way.

Some other cool things:  I can actually post from SnagIt.  I am sure I can do the same with Screencast / Camtasia — something I need to play with.

Something else I really like is the Microblog — when I want to say something longer than 160 characters, I just post there, especially if it really doesn't fit the subject of my blogs.

But it's definately worth paying someone to do the maintanence and have a good platform to blog.  If I just had the time — going to try to do better about carving out time.

Updating it with new information is easy — even had a teacher this week who wanted her picture up rather than wait for the Yearbook one (probably didn't like it), and I've got her picture up now.

I still have some minor coding to do, but nothing drastic. I got the site design from the Microsoft Small Business Starter Kit.

http://www.hillcresthsdallas.org/

I've got the important stuff done.

I have a website up that the PTSA is happy with – http://www.hillcresthsdallas.org — the space donated by http://myhosting.com

I've got my grades in with only one student failing.

I think I'll make it.

I have a bunch of little projects I have to get done, but they aren't as rewarding as the website.

The campus technology part.

Absolutely insane.

I've finally stopped working from my email and am working from a real live ToDo list that I can get to anywhere.  That helps.

Here's the deal.  I officially get 45 minutes to do tech stuff each day.  I have a huge list of things to do, even working full time on campus tech stuff I'd never get it done.  It just expands.

As it is, I usually do about 30 minutes of desk work each morning (emails, trouble tickets, etc.)  Since I can't eat lunch (see other blog), I end up working both 4th and 5th period doing tech stuff and it often bleeds into my planning period.

Okay, it almost ALWAYS bleeds into my planning period.

So here's how it works, I spend most of the day working campus tech, sometime during 7th period I declare that we are "out of weaver" and I go home and spend another hour or two on the computer working on it.  Tonight was no exception.

At least I stopped and took time to get a flu shot.

I don't check my personal email until 9th period. (Yeah, we have that many now).

Started out with a parent conference called by the parents.  I jokely said "Oh, this is torture, Jane today!"  Yeah, it was (oh, and her name isn't Jane, and her parents aren't the Does).

When I finally tracked down her counselor, I told her, if I had been alone in the room with just parents and girl, I would have taken girl to my house and called CPS.

Couselor assured me it was being dealt with.  And one of the other teachers followed me upstairs and was equally upset.

Then technology period was supposed to be set up the new website but

I got grabbed in the hall and drug into a portable — seems a kid had uploaded a Trojan horse and the teacher couldn't take attendance as a result.  I thought I fixed it but nope.

So I downloaded my old standby, Spybot Scan and Destroy and I think it's gone now.

Fun day.

It's been an interesting 5 weeks.

I started out with less than 10 students in each of the three classes.  We have severe behavior issues, and they sure didn't want another study hall.  Neither did I.

Then I woke up and there were over 20 kids in each class.  ARGH.  I got smart and asked that the class be closed and I haven't had any more.

Oh, and I ended up in the principal's office over one child's behavior.

There is no way on earth I can have these kids work in groups and work independently.  They can't sit still in a chair for 5 minutes.  Some of them can't do it without hitting the person next to them. 

My first bright idea was to have them make a movie.  I think 10 of have been turned in (yeah, do the math).

I finally decided to have them do Alice and started it today.

The good news, once I kicked one kid out for 10 minutes, 2nd period was absolutely quiet.  7th period had moments of pure silence, and 8th period wasn't bad, but at one point I yelled at one group and said I was sick to death of them acting up.

Yes, some kids drifted off to the internet occasionally, I drifted them back, but we did something without driving me nuts.

First assignment — have two characters talk about a math assignment.  I picked the husky and the wolf for my example, and made a version with some talking and some bubbles.  You can talk in Alice by recording sounds in Alice though some times it crashes.  You can also have your characters 'say' something and they come in bubbles.

The best part, if you don't do the tutorial right, it won't go forward.

Twice this morning I had questions that only Camtasia could really answer for me.  One on the phone, one an email.

The phone one?  The main office was convinced we could take attendance as a Pep Rally day.  Well, we couldn't.  Pulled on the headset, did a screen recording and narrated what I was doing, produced it,  uploaded it to my ScreenCast account, emailed the link and was all good.  Not only that, but the email could be forwarded to anyone who needed to see it.

The email?  Was a question about Alice — and where a photo might be worth a 1000 words, a movie is certainly worth more.  Again, pulled on the headset, and in less than 5 minutes, solved the problem.