Category: Blog

I am REALLY looking forward to the next two weeks and our early start program.  I got told about this about a week and a half ago.

Okay, actually we were asked to volunteer for it back in July.

Basically we’re asking 9th graders to come back early, from 8:30 – 1:30 and we’re going to feed them breakfast and lunch for two weeks, Monday through Thursday.

Training was last Monday and pretty good.  Our goal is to connect with our students so that they know the building and have at least 4 adults they can go to for help.

Hopefully that means we’ll retain them.

It was confirmed yesterday that I can participate.

I am basically going to with them what I did with the 8th grade girls – I am going to have them create an Alice world, using any of the characters of Alice, and I am going to start by having them go through the four tutorials.

Okay, I’m also looking forward to $20 an hour! 

I am finally home and able to reflect.

This was a really great workshop for me.  It gave me three days to concentrate on media computation and how I want to use it.

I am seriously thinking of putting Python in place instead of Raptor, but I still have to find a way to teach flowchart symbols.

I’m also thinking of putting it in at the end of the year instead of Pong.

We’ll have to see.

Super workshop though, and some really good stuff.  Some can easily be adapted over to Visual Basic.  Watch this space.

Some more thoughts on the actual trip:

Most used tech items:  Scottee T-Shirts – wore on the airplane and kept the phone close.
                                          ATT Aircard – used at DFW airport and at the hotel, they almost had WiFi

Most useful place: Walmart – walked over there 4 times total, spent money there 3 times

Kindest TSA – Kansas City International Airport. 

We still have a day to go, but ….

I was sold on media computation before I got here, I just wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in and how to accomplish it.  I’m still not 100% there, but I do want to use it. 

If I only have 1 student in AP Computer Science, which is what I suspect I will have, I may very well go with the Guzdial / Erickson book. He’s a kid that will REALLY like the media computation and I have enough copies of that book that I can teach with — I have at least two.  I may be able to get more copies if I need them.

I’d like to do it with the 9th graders I am going to have over the next two weeks, but I’m not sure I’m ready — I still have that spinning in my head.

Here’s the deal, I know what I did with Alice worked, and I’m not 100% sure what I will do with the media computation itself will work. 

I am thinking of pulling out Raptor for the PreAP kiddos, and doing a few weeks of Python with media computation instead.  I would probably do the "hello world" stuff with the pictures and video.  But I’m still in the thinking stage and I have some time to work that out.

I also think that doing a movie at the end of the year would be as fun as the pong game, but again, I have to work it out.

HOWEVER, here is the biggest thought, and maybe this should be it’s own post.

The biggest problem with adoption of any new material seems to be the infrastructure supporting the class.  What I has hearing from my classmates is that they weren’t sure that they could load the files needed for the course, because of their network standards.  That really sucks and I am getting more and more tired of seeing and hearing of problems being caused by the support staff.

It’s just as bad to not be able to do something in a course because the network administrations won’t support it, as not being able to hold class because the custodial staff won’t turn on the lights.  Network administrators are SUPPORT staff and should never get in the way of the main mission which is to educate students.  If network administrators are in the way, then heads should roll in that department!

Oh, yeah, that’s why I bought an air card — plus I was sick of sucking the juice out of my phone and not being to use my phone because I was using it as a modem.

Capping the TO on purpose.

I’m at North West Missouri State University in Liberty, MO (I think, the university itself is in Marysville but the workshop is in Liberty and I flew into Kansas City).

Media Computation by Mark Gurdail. Now he teaches the way I want to learn.  Still a lot of talking BUT most people need a lot of the background.  I’ve done both pictures and sound for a long time, and am comfortable with them, but I recognize that not all CS people are.  Comes from ham radio and some other of my hobbies, plus a couple of years of teaching engineering.

I’ve also done some media computation his way.

Here’s what I like — lots of hands on examples, just you can type and try as he’s talking.  And stuff you can tweak.  Plus he doesn’t mind that.

I’ve been doing that a lot today.

He also does some "homework" — we had an hour in class to work each assignment and we’ve had a picture and a sound assignment.

Now doesn’t get me wrong — the Tapestry workshop is good and I’m still working on digesting that material. It’s just that this style fits me well, and fits most of my students.

Of course, my teaching philosophy tends to be –> point in the right direction and stay out of the way until they get stuck.

It’s staff development season for me right now, and it’s time to learn how not to teach.

I’ve just been through one.  The Tapestry one, which was good, but could have been better, but they needed loads more time.

I’m going to one on Monday from the district on our 9th grade enrichment camp, and went to one before our 8th grade enrichment camp.

I’m going to one on Tuesday, which I am looking forward to, as they have already sent us the agenda and told us what software to load on our laptops.  It’s done.  I’ll be back Friday night and the internet set probably won’t miss me at all.

Then I have the start of school staff development.

Here’s what I absolutely hate in a workshop:

Sitting around waiting for someone to pour knowledge in my brain.  In other words, lecture type workshops.  It’s worse when they read the power points to me.  People, I have a master’s degree, please, I can read.  Okay, maybe most of the people in the room have their bachelor’s degree, but I bet they can read too.

I also hate the fake activities.  At the 8th grade enrichment camp they played Simon Says.  Okay, that’s a great game, but it had nothing to do with the content!

Another problem I have with workshops is workshops with group activities when they don’t manage the groups.  I was at a workshop recently when I was put in a group where the group wasn’t acting correctly and I was shut out of the activity.  That would have been a perfect time to show us how to manage that problem — I’m not good at that myself, and it would have really helped me.

Oh, I’m betting that the giver of the workshop doesn’t do a good job of that themselves, which is why the chaos was allowed to happen.

I give staff development myself, and here’s how I do it:

I recently did a workshop on Camtasia, a program used to make movies of classroom presentations.  I spent some time showing the participants the Techsmith website, showed them a short movie I had made for my students and then showed them how to make a short movie.

The rest of the hour was spent with the participants making movies while I wandered around the room and helped.

By the way, that’s exactly how I teach my students.  I spent 5-10 minute on the front end of the topic showing them the new topic, have them do an example program in the book, dig them out of their holes — and I often broadcast their screen and let the class dig them out of their hole, and at the back end of the assignment, if they are having trouble, I’ll show them my answer.

Maybe I need to call my sleep doctor and ask him to prescribe the restless leg medication he suggested … I might need it over the next few weeks….

In an effort to continue with my vacation and contiue having fun i did some touristy things in dallas.

after seeing my chiropractor – and my old one deserted me! – i made my way to the Woman’s Musuem at Fair Park. its very nice,good exhibits and good gift shop. i went because of their twitter feed and met their twitterer.

the i went downtown and headed towards the west end. downtown is harder to navigate with the trains. had lunch at favorite place spaghetti warehouse and gave my parking slip to the people who got my space when i was done.

i am hoping my waitress gets in touch with me, a cute kiddo who said she was interested in CS. i offered to help her and hopefully she will take me up on it.

i was good eating my protein first – okay i did have a few bited of sourdough bread first and had a few bites of spagetti and garlic bread.

now i am chilling and waiting for my sleep doctor.

This has been a fun and productive summer.

So far, I’ve taught summer enrichment camp — girls going into 8th grade – Alice, Web journaling, and movies without cameras.

I’ve worked on the district final (Computer Science I VB).  We call them ACPs.  I don’t know how many hours total I put into that, but will find out with the next check or so.  I think we wrapped it up today, but we might get called back.  I worked on that with another individual.  I was supposed to work with two, but she never returned my phone calls.

I went to a teacher workshop that paid money (I’ve gotten smart, they didn’t take money out of the check for taxes, so I’m taking an extra $25.00 a month out for the rest of the year).

Monday I’m taking a training session for a camp that I hope makes. 

Tuesday, I’m leaving for a workshop that is free, plus $200 for expenses.

Then the summer camp I was just mentioning that runs from August 3rd for two weeks.

Not much time off, but I did take in Washington DC when I went to the first teacher workshop.

Love the extra pay!  It’s not much but better than having to go through the process of looking for a job, though findiing a part time job that pays $20 a hour isn’t easy, even when times are good.

I have heard from both my students who took the AP Test – the AB student made a 3 – I wanted him to take the A test but you know teenagers….

My A student made a 5. That’s consistent with the results I’ve been getting the last few years, I don’t get a lot of students, but they do well on the test.

Got an email yesterday morning that the ATT Home Manager was on sale for $99.99.  SOLD!  Seriously.

This is a system I’ve wanted since it came out, but $299.99 and $199.99 were just too expensive for what you get.  And you get a lot.  The base station, a frame and a handset.  But $99.99 is definitely worth it.

It’s very easy to hook up.  You take the base station and plug it into your  network via ethernet, plug in a phone cable and the power.

Frame and handset are even easier.  They each have a base that plugs in to the wall.  It took a while for the frame and handset to see the system.

I also got an extra frame — and it was missing the March update but got updated in the night.

And an extra handset.  You can add two more handsets so I am going to get them and completely replace my old system.

The frames are great — they are a beautiful photo frame — best resolution and quality we’ve seen. They also don’t sound like a speaker phone and at $49.99 a piece a good deal. However, you can only have two frames on the system.

The handsets are good too.

There some things lacking — until July 13th, you could sync your mobile phone contacts with the system but since it didn’t work with the iPhone, ATT is eliminating the service — that’s a major fail.

It needs a web browser and a configurable RSS reader.

I would LOVE for it to do twitter and that’s just a software thing.  Same thing with Facebook.

But for a wireless phone system, it’s all good.

However, I haven’t actually done it with a participant and am hoping that the workshop I am going to next will embrace it, in fact I just asked them to.

What is it?  Backchannelling.  There is an article about it at http://pistachioconsulting.com/twitter-presentations/ and I would like to find a way to do this with my students.  I’ll need to look at our moodle site and see if there is a way we can this.

Here’s what I REALLY like to do at a workshop.  I like for the presenter’s notes to be made available electronically and I like to put them in one-note and put my own notes along side.  I find it make easier to pay attention and be focused.

I will often put a note on the screen for the person next to me and have even handed them my notebook for a response, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a “real” backchannel to discuss the goings on.

And yes when the talk is really bad, I’ll go do something else.