Category: Blog

The biggest reason I’m not at NECC is money, Washington DC is too rich for my blood — well, yeah, I’m going in two weeks but a) the trip is on someone else’s dime and b) prices are cheaper then.   Plus I get three days to play.

I have not gone to NECC, and I might next year, depends on the budget, but going to the Games Cruise is my priority.

I’ve been to TCEA twice and was really disappointed.  I’ll say that one of the workshops I paid extra for was really good though I haven’t actually used the idea.  It’s still in the back of my mind, years later though. My biggest problem with TCEA has been the CS to other ratio and the availibility of space to actually sit in a room and get anything out of the presentation.

I understand now they do at least a full day of Computer Science only but haven’t tried.  Also with the reimbursement system my district uses, it still cost me major money if I can get them to pay for it.  It’s also during the school year, so the opportunity to stay home and teach is much more attractive.

I’m going to look into some alternative funding arrangements for NECC next year, maybe try to raise funds via Twitter or something — which is sort of an interesting idea for the Games Cruise now that I think of it.

I’m also glad I didn’t go this year because of the Middle School Girl’s Camp — we still have 3 days with the girls and I really want to spend the time with them. I’m going to show them how to use Windows Movie Maker on Monday.

I will say that the CSIT is the absolute best one day event I’ve every been to.  I went to San Antonio last year and there was only one bad session (I really should have picked the other one).  It was very dull but the rest were very good, and I might have liked it if I were more into Open Source things. Alfred was mean and teased me about not being there earlier.

Someone just asked me for a good source of C#.

I’ve programmed professionally in about 8 programming languages (included assembly), and have taught in 4 different languages, plus was taught lots of programming languages in college. 

So here’s how I learn a new language — which is very similar to the course I took in college.

I pick a project to work on in the new language: when I wanted to learn PHP, I built my classroom website, when I wanted to learn how to do a website in Visual Basic, I did the school website, etc.

So first, pick a project you want to work on and make sure that the language was suited for it.  When I want to do C#, I write a Windows/XBox/Zune game.  There are other things you can do in C# but it’s suited for it.

So I’d use Dan Water’s Book on Zune programming, and the website at http://www.begingameprogramming.com/ to play around until I came up with a game I really wanted to write and go from there.

In other words, I’m pretty practical, and don’t just program for the sake of programming.

I used Camtasia to make a video of what I was doing in CS4 Contribute and sure enough it was a user interface problem (user wasn’t interfacing properly.

Here’s the recording that shows me what was going on:

As you can see – when I clicked on the new entry button I was automatically going to the CS blog.  Here’s why:

So I’ve got it set to automatically post to the diabetes blog and I have to change it to go to this blog.

It is anything like I expected and it’s been a good thing.  We’re half way through the camp experience and I’m really enjoying (and am really going to enjoy the pay afterwards).

First of all, we don’t get the same girls every day.  We’ve had one that has come every single day and we’ve had some that have come most.  At our most active, we had 12 girls.  Yesterday was our smallest at 4.  I don’t get that.  If my mother could have sent my sister and/or I somewhere every Monday – Thursday from 8:30 – 12:30, she’d have done it gladly, and we’re free and we feed them breakfast and lunch.  My mother would have been in ecstasy. Love my mother, but she was good at farming us out. We spent weeks each summer with her parents and went to several Vacation Bible Schools.

We are supported by a group called "Big Thought", they gather the students, take attendance and bring them to us each day.  Well, occasionally they get busy and they send us the girls.  They also pick them up.

I usually show off something cool at the start of class based on a question I got asked the day before.  We are doing Alice and I’ve shown them how to get a character to juggle a ball — based on when a girl asked me how to get the characters to play a sport.  I’ve shown them how to drown the ice skater and make her skate forever, based on a girl wanting to do that in her story.  Also taught them how to record their voices and how to download sounds — I think I need to do that again.

My original curriculum was to have them journal but we’ve dropped that since not seeing the same people every day didn’t make much sense.  I am hoping to do a web page and to have them make a movie, but that’s going to be hard with the rotating schedule.  Alice is hard enough, but we’re doing it.

I love the schedule, I get up early (okay, later would be nice), and I’m done at 10:30.  I have been working at Buckner after but I’m on a break from that, and I have the rest of the day to do whatever I want.

I’m obviously behind in my reading.

My favorite saying is that programming is all about cutting and pasting and the good programmers know which code to paste.  I have my students copy the code out of our book, code I write, etc.  I honestly feel I would be dishonest if I didn’t since that’s the way I’ve always programmed.

Oh, sure, there are times I write original code — I’ve been doing a ton of that showing examples of Alice code to my middle school students, at the same time, I expect them to copy and use my ideas — and my co-teacher copies my code in front of them.

Quoted from http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/06/13/real-life-is-an-open-book-test.aspx:

Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Real Life Is An Open Book Test

I don’t remember when I first heard someone say “real life is an open book test” but it really stopped me on my feet one day. It also influenced me as a teacher.

I’m one of the lucky ones and I love Google Voice — you can pre-register for it.

I have all of our phones forwarded to this is we don’t answer.

Quoted from http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/06/19/google-voice-to-offer-phone-and-messaging-services/:

Google Voice to Offer Phone and Messaging Services

Google Voice wants to be your phone manager, SMS and voicemail provider. The service is rumored to be almost ready for public access.

One of my voice mails – send to my email address.:

hello my name is cynthia ble blah cross blue shield of texas in the blue care connection department i’m calling to speak with kathleen weaver please give me a call back at (866) 412-8795 extension 2886 bye my office social on monday through friday 8:30 AM to 5 o’clock P M thank you very much and have a great day
Play message

I keep having problems posting to the wrong blog, and I’m not sure if it is a:

• user interface problem — meaning I’m not interfacing with the program correctly
• default settings problem
• bug in Contribute

Since the district is providing CS4 and we’re teaching it in Web Mastering, I’m trying to use it rather than an easier to use interface.

So until I figure it out, I’ll have posts on the wrong web site for a few minutes to a few hours.

But at least right now, I’m posting to the right blog!  Oh coursae, it took me for every to figure out how to set up comments to default…

Quoted from http://commonsenseeducation.blogspot.com/:

Education For The Future

Between the Health , Freshman Speech , and Tech Apps classes there are approximately this many teachers involved based on this ratio.

I’m sorry, but since I teach CS, I’m only worried about the Tech Apps classes.

Talked to my speciialist boss and he wasn’t worried since we’re still required to teach the classes — but it is up to the teacher and the individual school to attract students.  It’s ALWAYS been that way.  I’ve always “competed” against BCIS and the other technology classes that count.  Some years I’ve done better than others — this wasn’t one of the good years, and I’m paying for it.

It would be nice if Rick would veto it.

I love the Gmail Java app — though I wish they would right it in Windows Mobile, but I won’t use it if I have to remember to click on "Java" and then select Gmail.   So I created a shortcut.

I used notepad to create a file called Gmail.lnk and then put the following command in it:

 45#"\Windows\jbed.exe" -run 6

You have to guess on the last number — 6 means it’s the 6th Java app installed.  I started at 0 and changed it by one until I got the app I wanted.

I knew to do this by looking at the Shortcuts under Games and Apps.

I’ve had Windows 7 on the Gym computer but yesterday decided to hook up a printer to it.  Nice HP All-In-One printer in an effort to get better at scanning stuff.

Well, the CD that came with didn’t know anything about Windows 7, and there were no drivers on the HP Website so I decided to restore my Vista backup for that computer — I was also frustrated because my Haugpage USB device didn’t work either.

Man, restoring is sweet.  Grab a flash drive, copy the drivers off the server, put in the PC Restore disk and about an hour later your machine is back.  This one was a bit more difficult because I’d been running Windows 7 for 2 months, lots of updates missing, but it’s back and working, plus the new printer/scanner works.

Happy camper!