Category: Blog

I love TRS Active care — I am answering this because another teacher on Twitter asked.

I have always gotten max coverage, doesn’t matter which employer I worked with.  I’ve been with Dallas ISD for 16 years, and we’ve had okay coverage until TRS Active Care.

I think the last plan we had was Aetna, and I’m really glad we left A.  (From their commercia — Aetna, Glad to Meetcha, not so much).  I had a major battle getting my insulin pump covered.

I have TRS Active Care – Teir 3.  Since we’ve been with them, they have covered 2 insulin pumps with absolutely no problems.  In fact, this one they upgraded a month early.

Last summer I was in the emergency room and hospital for a 3 day stay and total cost was less than $500.00  I had already met my copay.

Here’s a list of things I’ve had coverage for with no problems:

• 2 insulin pumps and their assorted supplies
• 1 AutoPap Machine (for sleep apnea) and all supplies, they cover new masks very frequently I am thinking 3 months.
• Cardiac Catherization and complete workups ever couple of years.  There was one item they didn’t cover, which I did do.  Cardiologist wanted it, primary care physcian thought it was experimental — it was something they do to keep from doing the catherazation.
• Lap Band surgery which I am currently dealing with and it is costing me total less than $750.  That includes the cost of jumping through the hoops — 6 months medically supervised diet came out of pocket.
• Symvist in knees and physical therapy.  I think that worked, but I have to really hurt before I go back for that.
• Chiropractic care for shoulder

Medco — the pharmacy plan — drives me absolutely nuts.  I’ve blogged about Medco at http://www.kweaver.org/blog  My favorite is that they spend more money shipping a $15.00 birth control injection than they do for $600.00 of insuln or Symlin.

While I am at it, i also recommend doing the Flexible Savings Plan.  I just recently maxed out that — and it is super.

Here how it works in our district.  You tell them to take out money for Flexible Saving Plan.  Pretax dollars.  You get a credit card.  You use the credit card to pay for everything until it’s maxed out. I maxed out this month.  Note that I still have medical expenses coming so I have to now pay for them with regular payments. Also note that I was able to spend the money before it was all put in.

LOVE TRS ACTIVE CARE!  Especially the Tier 3 BCBS Version.   Would NOT work for a school district without it.

I’m going to teach Middle School Girls Technology Camp, two different weeks in June (two sets of girls).

I’m going to write district ACP’s and district curriculum.

In July, I’m going to Virginia for a Tapestry Workshop which pays $1000, and a week later go to a Media Computation Workshop that pays $200.

And I have some time to relax and reflect for a change.   Maybe.

I knew it was going to take two classes periods to administer the Physics EOC Field test and wanted us to made those allowances.

They didn’t — only allowed for one class period.

We’ve had to punt, but it’s going well.

For me, it’s a three day at school week as I am having surgery on Thursday.  Details on that on the diabetes blog if you care.

I’ve got to Field Test all the physics students on Wednesday.  I need to change the proxy on two of the workstations next door just in case we have to use them.

I had to come up with an paper assignment for my students that day — I’ve put together an exam review packet.  I am going to have the physics teacher pick them up and give them to me and I’ll hand them back out next week.  I am also going to have the kiddos put their answers in online and have a grade for them that way too.

I have to come up with lesson plans for next week and notes for my substitute.

Finishing installing Rosetta Stone today — I think I just have to add the management part, everything else should be installed.  And that has to be done today.

And push on TAC to get the wireless up for our new principal.

And I’m sure someone else will find something I just HAVE to do, like the Rosetta Stone project.

School districts turning to Twitter to speed up communications

School districts turning to Twitter to speed up communications | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat

Of course, my district is blocking Twitter.

But speed is one of the things I do like about Twitter.  I’ve got certain people that I am really interested in going to my mobile phone, the rest go to regular Twitter.

Though I might not get to go …

I got an email today asking me if I wanted to go to the Tapestry Workshop in Virginia in July — well it said last we they asked me but I swear I got an email saying it was full …

And the cool part is that they pay you to go.

Hope it works out, if so, I’ll drive to Virginia and back and even let my family torture me.  Might take a side trip to DC since I’ve never been.

Yes, I have a Chumby, http://www.chumby.com — did you expect anything less? Well, I actually have two and one on the way.

They have a mother’s special going on — will probably go away or become a father’s day special and I bought one which arrived last week.  It solves the clock problem in the living room, but still doesn’t solve the really dark pixels on the one in my bedroom.

I was really disappointed when the pixels started going dark and dummy me didn’t look at the warranty until it was too late. I would have replaced the first one long ago, if they had given me any sort of price break and so with the Mother’s day, I jumped for it.

So I bought another one, and it’s on its way.  I think the wireless radio is starting to fail on the original one. Considering it’s been on and working for quite a while — I got one of the first, I don’t feel too bad about replacing it and it will give me one to play with.   I’m just about ready to ditch the clock radio.

I also got back into Chumby development and starting to program in Flash.  I figured out last night, with the help of a person on the forum, that the graphics front end of Flash scares me and makes all my logical fly out of my brain.  Now that I understand that, it’s going better.

I now have my Chumby in the living room programmed so that at 10:00 pm it tells me to go to bed, and stops that behavior at 12:00 pm Wrote a little flash widget that displays "Go to Bed" text.

I have it working in CS3 but haven’t tried it again in CS4.

And this is freaky — the Chumby people even accepted it as a Widget!

One of my jobs, both as Campus Tech and as being one of the teachers in my district with long seniority is to teach technology classes.

Plus I get to take a ton.

When I organize a technology training, but it for non-CS teachers or for CS teachers, I focus on what the tool I am teaching will do for the teacher in the classroom.  I like for my training students to come away with a project that they have done and they can go back and think about it.

I try hard to keep my talking to the group to a minimum.  I’ll introduce what we are going to do, do a short demo and then walk around the room and help people do their own projects.  I also try to break things into as small as things as possible. Typical organize is:

• Introduce the topic in the morning.
• Demo 1
• Hands on activity
• Reflection time as a group
• Demo
• Hands on activity
• Reflection time as a group.

I try to get the group together to share what they have learned, what problems they had, etc.  I’ll often remember what I helped someone with and ask them what they learned from the experience.

I find when I’m in the classroom and it is organized that way, I learn more. I figure my brain works the same.

I don’t get to twitter as much as I would like to.  As a result, I’ve come up with some ways to organize Twitter so I can use it to the max.

During the school day, I’m supposed to be teaching, but since I’m project based, there is a 10-15 minute Window while students are organizing their work.  I use that to grade previous classes but sometimes I’m caught up on that too.

There is a key core of Twitters that I have been keeping up for a long time, they include @alfredtwo and a couple of other teachers.  They don’t twit a lot but when they do, they give me really good ideas.  I have them set up for device updates and get them as text messages.  I also keep a couple of news feeds set up the same way.

If I do want to twitter, I have to use my own personal account — I do that when I have TAKS hall duty, during my planning period if I have time, and during my tech period again if I have time.  I was using Twirl for that, but I’ve installed OutTwit.  One of the reasons I’m liking it, is again I can keep important Twitters in seperate folders and just check those.

In the past, I would look up them up individually using Twirl or using the website.  This seems like it will be more efficient.

By the way, have I said lately how much I love Twitter and the ideas I get from it?