Category: Blog

First, I am seriously thinking of moving to TypePad.  It is the easiest way to migrate, and frankly I’m tired up hosting my own website.  I need to find out if I can move my email address to one place and the blogs to another, and how.  It would cut down on expenses too.

I’m also not interested in keeping up with Linux/Unix stuff, it is REALLY a pain.  And it seems once I get everything working again, Movable type does an upgrade I have to install.

The nice thing is that Adobe Contribute works REALLY well with Typepad.

I am teaching staff development on Tuesday.  And yes, I will know acknowledge that probably doing staff development during the school year only is probably going to save the district money, as I am teaching this session for only 3 people and did the rest of the computer science teachers last summer.  They would not have to pay me Tuesday if they required us to do the staff development on the same day.

Here’s how it’s been working — they offer staff development in the summer — my session was only one day since there was about 12 computer science teachers in the district.  If we do the staff development in the summer, we don’t have to do it during the school year.  Thus, I have Monday off.

So what am I planning to teach:

• The first part will be done by my specialist. It will probably take two hours.
• Raptor
  • How to download
  • How to do a basic flow chart
  • Details in graphics and animation.
  • Short hands on assigment, probably bounce a ball around the screen
• Alice — will be loaded on the new computers
  • Overview on Alice and how to set it up so it does Java code
  • Short Alice assignment
• Java —
  • Overview of A Plus materials (probably not needed) since we’re using them
  • Do a A Plus lab
• Java – Computational Media – where are the resources
• Visual Basic
  • How to download VB Express
  • Coding For Fun – Cowbow on the Mobile phone assignment
  • Creating Websites – my personal and Hillcrest Website
• C++
  • How to download C++
  • combination of Visual Basic and Java
  • Allows Zune and Game development

Probably won’t get through EVERYTHING but its better to overplan and if I guess correctly on how is going to show up, a lot of this will go fast.

Quoted from http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001188.html:

Coding Horror: We Are Typists First, Programmers Second

 

Coding is just typing.

 

He’s right.  First, at one point in my life, I typed over 150 words a minute and was even faster at 10 key.  Why?  Because I wanted to know what my program was going to do.  I’ve have lovely ideas, but I couldn’t see them come to fruitation until I got them entered.  I was also extremely accurate because we were doing punch cards.

Worse, yet, I’ve often described my programming classes as a really bizarre typing class.  It takes a LONG time for students to get programming and start writing their own programs. Its’ more than just typing though, they have to read and follow the directions and let me tell you 9th graders are horrible at it. 

By the way, I just got a lovely email telling me my passing rate is over 20% and I have to fill out a ton of paperwork. Sadly, I let a lot of kids get by because a) they were trying things, and b) it cuts down the paperwork.

I’ve had my Chumby for 2 1/2 weeks more than a year, which is why I am a bit disappointed.

Here’s my Chumby today:

I contacted them the forum in September.  At the time, I couldn’t find anything about a warranty on the website, and no one from Chumby responded to my post, so I assume it was a 90 day warranty.  Wrong, it had a one year.

However, they won’t honor the warranty because I didn’t discover the truth on the warranty until yesterday.  Yes, I should have just shot an email to their support and asked but I have been so overwhelmed at school I wasn’t up to it.  However, I was yesterday.

But no budging, I even offered to go halves on replacing it but no dice.

Would I spend $179+ on a chumby having had one for a year? Nope.

They are about the size of a softball, maybe a bit bigger.  They play Flash files and function as an alarm clock.  WHEN they function.   A year later, and it is not reliable enough to work as an alarm clock/internet clock radio.

Plus there are some features I have not seen implemented that I think are essential.  I should be able to adjust alarm settings from the internet, and while I can SSH in and edit the alarm files, it’s not well documented.

It also doesn’t have a snooze function through people have written scripts.

Basically it’s just too expensive and too unreliable for the functions it currently has.

Oh, and my biggest issue? Made in China with typical Chinese quality control. But at least they not only kill our pets, but they kill their own babies. Oh, and the sick people in Columbia they killed. Almost forgot.

In order to get paid for being Campus Technologist, I have to get the computer inventory done.  No inventory no check for tech.  <smile>

The good news, is that most of the people in the building are helping.  The inventory is done yearly, so I could give each person their last yours inventory so it’s a matter of checking the inventory and making additions and deletions.

At the same time, I’m getting new equipment.  Yeah — great timing.  I’ll find out when on December 2.  So I have to arrange the lab for new equipment.  The rules are no daisy chaining of power supplies.  I’ve had a pod of 10 computers in the center of the room forever, BUT it violates those rules and has since the initial install.  Several years ago, new drops were put in, but they aren’t that convenient to place.  I’ve got a really long narrow room.

So the old seating chart looked like this:

Now it is going to look like this:

I have to put a storage area in the center because:

a) there are some drops imbedded in the floor there from "Round 2" of wiring the lab.

b) My room is currently the home of all the dead equipment in the building.  I am hoping that I’ll get it moved out before the new computers come.

That stuff will all be under some tables I’m using for lunches, time outs, etc.

I’m still working on these, but it’s going well.

Last year we instituted an in-house staff development where in-house people presented training before school. I lead several last year — one on behavior (because the principal was leading and he wanted someone else to do it), and one on technology.

The technology one drove me nuts, because I’d prepare something, people would show and claim they new the subject and sign in.

This year I changed the technology strand drastically.  Instead of 6 weeks of a topic, now I do mini-ones.  I also make them shorter, starting at 8:15 and ended at 8:40-8:45, but of course you’re welcome to stay and continue playing or come back later in the day for extra help.

Today was the most successful.  I advertised last Friday late — next time I’ll do a second advertisement then, I’ve already done the advertisement this week.  I had 5 show up.  They were all engaged, and two were not technology teachers.  Also gave me time to "sell" the server.  Something just instituted. 

Next week I’m doing Flckr and have invited people to bring an digital camera with a USB cable.  Since it’s election day I thought I would go a little fun, and people do use Flckr for educational purposes.  It is probably blocked by the district but I’ll see if I can’t get something done in the meantime.

Some actually approached me and asked me for an Excel session, so what I think I’ll do is overview how I use Excel (not much), and give them the links to the tutorials I make my kids use.

Just finished watching “Without a Trace” — love the WHDVR — and the “moral” sure applies to teaching.

The old boss was talking to the new boss and said he’d been given advice by his old boss.  The part that applies to teaching is “don’t take the job home”. The new boss said “How was that working for you”, and the response was “Doen’t do much for my sleep, but it gets the job done”.

Man that sounds like the story of my life, especially THIS year.

But bringing it home, does get the job done.But then I don’t get much sleep.

Quoted from http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/10/23/announcing-small-basic-from-microsoft-devlabs.aspx:

Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Announcing Small Basic From Microsoft DevLabs

Small Basic is a new development tool for beginners

  I love this, I can see building a course with both it & Raptor. Probably at the middle school level. Too bad I can’t stand those kids. Love my high school babies put prefer -a "real" language for them.

Hopefully this won’t get me noticed, BUT…

I haven’t purchased an issue of the Dallas Morning News, and restrict myself to reading their feeds as much as possible so as not to give them advertising revenue since they helped cause the Davidian Incident.

Davidian — Waco incident where the Waco News and the Dallas Morning News got a bunch of members of a cult killed.

Here’s the latest reason I despise them ….

The published a RIF list from Dallas ISD.  First, the person who sent it to them should now move to the head of the list.  Second, they should never had published it.  I went through the list and immediately knew how was RIFed out of my building, and quite a few others.  As my husband put it, they should have waited until the "next of kin" had been notified.

But at least I wasn’t on it and I didn’t see any CS certifications, BUT there were a lot that were only described as teacher.

And please, teachers, unions, etc, please don’t do anything more to upset the students. They are really suffering from this.

I’ve had three kids working with me on the campus technology stuff.  I’ve been dragging them all over the building, having them watch stuff and do in front of me.

Today, I had three rooms that I didn’t think were getting internet access.  All three needed to be troubleshot (spell check is nice, I couldn’t and the kids couldn’t figure out the right work). 

Since I’m getting out of crisis mode, I took a leap of faith, pulled out my old district laptop, handed it to a kid and said make sure you have the internet working in this room, I don’t care where.

Also, the way the kid makes noise, I didn’t care where he was, as long as he wasn’t in my earshot.

So he claimed he had it working, so I gave him the list of rooms, second kid volunteered to go to, and I’m getting he did the work.

First room, she said it was already working.  Second room, they claimed that the Network connections was disabled and all they had to do was enable it.  Third room, they called teacher was typing in https:// instead of http:// and they claim the internet is working in all three rooms.

In the meantime, I got a bunch of other stuff done while the other kid was in the room and quiet. 

Man was it nice!  Hope it continues.  That was my original plan.