Technology and CS in Dallas

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  • Disclaimer: I don’t have a DISD P-Card

    The latest issue being attacked at DISD is the P-Card, or procurement card program. I actually have a friend that has one — she teaches the business variety of Coop along with other things.

    I get things the old fashioned way. I get a budget with x amount of dollars, I spent it, mostly through the warehouse (there is a better name for that), and through Office Depot. Mostly paper, toner, blank CDs and a few electronic items to make my students life a bit better. I have purchased a scanner, hard drives for our server, and a few other things. I also get books through Borders.

    It takes several months to get the items after I ordered them and I always lose a bit of money in the budget, any left overs are put in the general fund and occasionally I’ll get to order items from that.

  • Summer School Money

    Every time I make substantial extra money from the district — like my summer school money — I set aside a portion of it to do something fun and meaningful. In the past it’s been a computer specially set up to make my life easier, and once it was my file server. This year it is Macie, a beagle puppy, and I’ll be blogging about her at http://www.kweaver.org/macie

    I think that doing something like this is good for recharging your batteries. In years past, the extra money has been for things like teaching an extra class which took a lot of energy. I also know that other people in my building do the same thing. One of my coworkers put a heater in her pool for example. It’s a tangible reward. For example, my principal even said in his summer school introduction, that he was using his summer school money to take his family to Disney (I think the Florida one) in the winter. I think that is really cool since the whole family is losing him for most of the day during the summer, and I think he usually spends a lot of his summer with them doing sports.

  • Changing Schools

    To Change a School – Change the Principal (Education Blog On 10)

    This is very true, and the change can be both for the good and the bad. I’ve had 5 different principals and the school climate definately changes. Not always for the good.

  • PreAP Online Course

    I’m very excited because I have a new assignment from my school district — create an online course for Computer Science.

    I picked PreAP, primarily because I know what is on the district final.

    One of the real exciting things about it for me, is that I’m getting to use my Master’s Degree. In fact, the person who I’m ultimately doing this assignment for, was my professor of record.

    It’s a lot of work. I am basically setting up the entire course so it can be taken online and I need to have the majority of the course designed before the school year starts. I have not idea what I am getting paid for it, but I have a feeling that it, like the webmastering course designed last year, will be made available to the other teachers.

    Once the school year starts, they will be recruiting students. They are hoping for 12, and are hoping to issue the student labtops. I will be the teacher of record if we get students to sign up. It will be available for Dallas ISD students.

    It’s on Blackboard, and best yet, I managed to get the first unit designed tonight. I’m sure I’ll tweak it but at least I got started!

    This gives me lots of good opportunities and puts me on the ground floor for other potential online courses.

  • Going well

    Today I finally felt at home in my classroom. I could find things without walking across the room and getting in the other desk. I could see all my students.

    One of them was playing games with their workstation and making noise when we were working on problems together. I think I figured out who — my biggest clue was that the speaker icon was showing in his desk tray and I have the computers set up so that it isn’t there. I pointed that out to him, and didn’t have any problems after that.

    I have to be out Thursday, at a Computer Science workshop and I think I have all my copies made. Tomorrow I’m going to write instructions and organize everything.

    It is feeling good!

  • Getting better

    Most of my workstations are where I want them. I have some tweaking to do. I also need to move some equipment.

    Also, I am supposed to lose some of my Algebra I students about the end of next week, my principal has hired another math teacher. I move that we give him the majority of Spanish speakers as he is more comfortable teaching in Spanish — however, I don’t believe in teaching high school kids in Spanish. As long as the tests are in English we need to speak English!

    I’m also having problems with the Novell server. I use Examview for assessment etc. I run it on my Novell server. We did an assessment in first period and everything was fine. My second period comes in, after I do a reboot on all the workstations and we get a “Tree or Server” not found. I’ve got to find a better or an alternative way, as this makes me crazy.

    I’m not exactly sure what is happening, but it seems to me that there must be a table on the server similar to a DNS table that keeps track of where the Novell servers are at and mine got lost. I can never get a good answer on that, so if anyone reads this and is a Novell expert, I’d love an explaination.

  • Posting from Treo

    Here is a test post from my Treo

  • Summer School

    Well, sort of says it all.

    I’ve now got 38 students in Algebra I Spring Semester which meets 1st period. I have 28 computers. So far we’re spending the majority of the class period working problems, off the overhead. I had them all log in today.

    I’ve starting putting the lab back where it should be where this many kids can work. So far, I have 4 workstations on one wall, 4 work stations on the back wall, and 10 workstations on another wall. So my plan for tomorrow is to use the workstations as an overhead, putting 3 kids on each set of 2 workstations, working problems. I figure we’ll rotate about every 40 minutes or so, with two kids in front of computers, and the third in the back.

    I had to kick one kid out today. He put his head down and did nothing. I had an A/C observing, so I had her take him down to the office with a note. He didn’t return.

    I am actually hoping to lose 10 students, so that things will work right, but I’m not holding my breath.

    Sad to feel that way, and sad that we seem to take all comers. My niece is in summer school and they limited the number of students who could sign up, she was on a waiting list and got in because someone didn’t show. We should do things that way.

    Or hire another math teacher to teach Algebra.

    But our biggest issue is no A/C.

  • This is exactly why I got out of programming and into teaching

    Coding Horror: The Noble Art of Maintenance Programming

    Timely Post

    I will admit that I didn’t try hard enough, but the only programming jobs I could get was as a maintenance programmer, and the hardest part of that was the hours. I literally was on call almost before pagers and cell phones, (back in 1983) almost every night and almost every weekend. The only way I could get off call was to go out of town and be unreachable. We used to take turns. Hmmm, I could have lied, but I lived to close to the worksite, and knew I would get caught. In fact, I think I did once.

    As a teacher, sometimes I think all I do these days is maintenance — fixing the kiddos programming mistakes!

  • Can’t Sleep again

    I actually had fun with summer school today and am looking forward to tomorrow, but I’ve gone to bed twice now, laid down for two minutes and realized I didn’t feel comfortable about tomorrow.

    I think I have everything done now — my Fall semester — which is 2nd period is set up on all the websites we’ll be using — AgileMind, Texas WebTutor, Examview and my website, though I need to get their grades together.

    My Spring class just lacks having Examview set up but I can’t do that until tomorrow.

    I’m thinking seriously of giving each kiddo an index card to write down all the passwords and logins — everyone is slightly different, and since I’m having them keep a folder anyway — or maybe I can just have them right it down on their folder. I should have enough sharpiers for them to pull that off.

    First period is 23 students right now, and second period is 13. I think we can get more students tomorrow, obviously since there were students still waiting to get registered today when I left — and I just checked the district website, so I can figure on more students through Wednesday.

    I also think I have enough to keep them occupied — though Spring semester is tough — we have a 2 hour and 40 minute class period and I’ve never had to keep students busy THAT long.

    The biggest problem is trying to eliminate paper. Wednesday will be my first day of doing that. It will be interesting. It would be best if we had Adobe Acrobat (not reader on each computer, but I think I only have one copy). — no I double checked and since my lab is a Webmastering lab, we should have 29. I’ll have to get it installed. Of course, I can just have my students write the answers to their assignments on paper and not include the questions, which are on the computer.

    Most can’t type and are not very computer literate in English — though some are more comfortable in Spanish, but no I am not allowing to them switch interfact languages, because the math test is in ENGLISH!

    One thing I am also working hard on with them is vocabulary. They weren’t sure what a meteriologist was today.

    All in all, I’m excited. Yeah, I need to get some sleep!