Blog

Yes, I had made arrangements to go to #ghc2012.  I had paid an Early Bird Registration, booked a hotel and flight, and even made reservations with Super Shuttle.  Had been discussing it with our Associate Principal with Instruction.

However, I didn't realize that our approval process on Staff Development had changed and I was asking the wrong person permission to go.

BUT the real reason.

The kids.

I've ended up with a much bigger course load than I had expected.  In fact, I had expected an easier year.  We have a lot more students at our school that we expected and the technology electives are down a teacher.  That means I have a lot more students than I have ever had.

It also means that my students are at a lower level and less independent.  I just finished making a movie over an assignment for my AP students.  If they had been my PreAP students they would have knocked out that assignment in about 5 minutes, and gotten it right.  Okay, maybe a whole class period. 

I left one class early by 30 minutes for a doctor's appointment and no work got turned in.  I can't imagine what chaos will happen if I am goine for 4 days.

Seriously.

So when you develop a large program, be it an operating system, a time keeping system, or any other large piece of software, you are doing the exact sort of thing that you do when you develop the curriculum for a new course.

You have documentation to start with – in the case of a course, the TEKS and the standardized testing that might go with it.  AP Computer Science course description and the AP Computer Science test is one example.

You have an IDE.  In my case, Word and Moodle.

You even get to do some user interfaces, etc. 

Each week  I have each of my students look up the vocabulary for the week.  It’s my first assignment for the week.

I started that with my web mastery course.

First I believe strongly in consistency.  My students know that on Monday morning they are going to see a new topic and they are going to get a new set of vocabulary words to look up.

Second, it gives them a chance to sharpen up their internet searching skills.  One of my favorite, mis-defined words of the week this week was class for my web design students was “class”.  I wanted the definition as it relates to XHTML, and they gave me lots of other definitions.  Not all, as they had already caught on to the fact, I wanted a very specific set of definitions.

Finally it helps with the exam.  We have a district final and both the students and teachers struggle with it because we don’t have a clue what is on it.  One of the test writers (I’m often one), got the brilliant idea years ago to produce a vocabulary list as a review and that’s helped a lot.

Some of us give the kids the vocabulary list at the end of the semester, but I’m finding it’s better to give the list as we go, and then use the list as a review.

Besides, then the kids know what I am talking about when we discuss our assignments.

Now don’t get me wrong, if I get a scholarship to #GHC2012, I am taking it, gladly.  I was very concerned as I had done some extra work for my district to pay for my #GHC2012 Hotel bill and had gotten that money in my August check so I was getting cold feet.  I’ve got a single room at one of the cheaper hotels, but still, its $150 a night plus all the assorted taxes.  Yikes!

And while I had a roommate I didn’t know last year and that worked out really well, I really just like to have space to myself.  Especially with all the diabetes baggage.

Well, I looked at my pay stub today and the pay was there!  Yeah! Cold feet are warm again.  Still can’t really afford it, and should spend the money on something else, BUT that’s what I was working towards.

Dulce and I are looking forward to the trip.

Even mentioned it to some of my school coworkers today and they said that was the perfect time to visit Baltimore and I had to visit the harbor.  They thumbs up the hotel choice.

Not long to go!

I have a Google Tablet and I am attempting to create a blog post.  It isn't easy, let me tell you.  No client, and could use the email program but that is never as easy as something like writer or word or contribute.

Oh well.

Forget about writing a program.

I liked it better than events we have held in the past.

I remember three things at AAC, but we might have only physically gone twice:

Female superintendent driving a bulldozer to jail – though it took a few months.

A really bad motivational speaker.

A really good kid motivational speaker.

For me, traveling to those things were a mess.  The easiest was when I took a Dallas County Bus.

This time, we took a Dallas County Bus to a Dallas facility, Ellis Davis Field House, one much nicer than Loos near the house. .  Started out with a flash mob that the Superintendent joined, and then an okay multimedia presentation by the man, featuring the man and his favorite film clips.

I finally figured out his age.  He’s the same age as my husband, so he graduated from West Point as the first class of women entered.  I would have in the second class had I accepted my appointment.

I thought it would be more fun rocking a blue uniform with a pencil skirt on Tuesdays and Thursdays and letting the Air Force pay for me to major in Computer Science at University of Southern Mississippi.

Rather than crashing in a plane myself, one of the upperclassmen I dated failed to learn to fly, crashing in a training mission.  Always makes me sad to think about it, because Tim really wanted to be a pilot.  Sucks to fail.

Then again I crashed a bicycle through the windshield of a car, not near as exciting and I did walk away, sort of.

Any way, hoping the presentation is online as we will be looking at copyright and fair use next week and examining it would be a fun exercise.

By the way, I also stick to things a bit longer – over 10 years at Texas Instruments as a Systems Analyst and 20 years as a DISD teacher.

Speaking of which a former student and former teacher at my school, walked up to me and said she couldn’t believe I was still there, I drug her over to my principal and told him to tell her to stop, she was being rude.  She also did it to one of my coworkers who has been there longer.

Seems the high school teacher day won’t be held this year as in year’s past, which was the main reason I went last year. 

However, it wasn’t the part that charged my batteries so much. 

The good news:  I was able to change my plane reservation without costing any money (in fact, I have a credit with the airline now, of less than $40.00).

I am able to stay one less night in the hotel, saving almost $200 in expenses.

I’ll plan all that once we get past this first week or two of the school year.

Wasn’t bad.  They made an effort at modeling good teaching.  I still think it would have been better if they had emailed them in advance, but the copies were still warm when we got them.

Our library chairs are really great for the first 20 minutes.  Not so much after.

Probably better than any other set of mass chairs in the building.

My room is still a mess. 

Contractors ripped out three of the Ethernet ports (do we still call them that?) and I can’t figure out how to get them fixed.  I’ve got to get a long cable for that work station and I think I’ve given those all away.  Or get them repaired.  STAT.

Two of my CS classes are overbooked according to Gradespeed. 

Diabetes Dog is unofficially approved, and man do  I need heard.  Four days without her have been hard on me, even though I keep the meter close to hand and stick to Slimfast without her.  Hopefully she’ll be with me soon.

Oh yeah, and having trouble sleeping, and all the websites I need to prep are down.

I had to go look at the new Khan Academy Computer Science lessons.

via gflint.wordpress.com

What he said…

Except I thought the speaker was going at Warp 10.

But yes, the Khan Academy is doing a poor job at teaching programming and programming is only a subset of Computer Science.