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I have two Smart Board Wireless Slates, and so far I have been extremely unhappy.

I got the first one about a year and a half ago, and when I came back to school last year, it completely stopped working.  I charged it, read all the technical support articles and even put in a trouble ticket.  I finally decided that it needed a new battery, ordered it for a small fortune and continued to wait.

Finally in late October (months after the ticket was put in), I got a response and was told how to completely reset it.  It worked!  I was able to cancel the order of the battery and get on with my life.

Then I got a second one in February, but it came with a scratch in the plexiglass.  Filled out a second support ticket, they said they would send me a new cover, but it has never arrived.

So do you wonder why I haven’t called their tech support and asked them for help?  This year the second Wireless slate isn’t working right — the mouse work fine but the pen doesn’t?  I’ve got through their troubleshooting site, reinstalled the software and it still doesn’t work.  It was in June.

<sigh>

Gong good — the bad part about the fact I don’t like to drive in traffic when I can leave 15 minutes early and miss it , is that you’re the first or second in the building and I end up supervising/entertaining, rather than getting something done.

Today went well, all but 3rd period spent all of hte class period on Alice (Okay, people could have snuck off and I didn’t notice but came back).

Third period wanted to know how to blow things up (well, one kid did), showed him out to set something on fire (make flame small, use a for loop to increase it size), and suggested using Alice to throw body parts around.

I always START them thinking but don’t give the entire answer.  Works well for me.

Stil having fun, and the admin in charge said that one group of kids said my class was the most fun.

It’s going well, we have somewhere around 30 students, not bad for a program that has gotten very little publicity.  We will still be enrolling tomorrow.

I’ve got about 5 students each of 4 class periods.  Nice kids, though the third period didn’t want to play, and I have run into one kid who claims to have done Alice before.

We signed supplement pay forms for last weeks hours and this weeks, don’t have biometric clock codes, which is fine.

Also found out today that when my pay gets approved late, they are pushing through the pay so that’s why I have gotten paid on the 1st twice.  (Supplemental pay only).  Weird, in years past, they didn’t care how long it took to pay me.

Man, I am so glad to be home and not traveling in the foreseeable future.  Seriously.

This trip wasn’t bad.  Kansas City International TSA was very nice and very kind.  DFW wasn’t bad, but they always stress me out.  Difference I believe – the total number of people they have to deal with.  There were three people in the KCI area when I was going through.  Easily 25-50 at DFW.

I spent a lot of the day sleeping, but that’s okay.  Next week is going  to be busy and I need the extra sleep to heal.  My knees are really bothering me, and I’m seriously thinking of getting a temporary handicapped pass just because any type of shopping is really wearing me out.

I packed well, was only missing one sock and charger for phone.  Not bad considering everything I do need to take with me.

I am REALLY looking forward to the next two weeks and our early start program.  I got told about this about a week and a half ago.

Okay, actually we were asked to volunteer for it back in July.

Basically we’re asking 9th graders to come back early, from 8:30 – 1:30 and we’re going to feed them breakfast and lunch for two weeks, Monday through Thursday.

Training was last Monday and pretty good.  Our goal is to connect with our students so that they know the building and have at least 4 adults they can go to for help.

Hopefully that means we’ll retain them.

It was confirmed yesterday that I can participate.

I am basically going to with them what I did with the 8th grade girls – I am going to have them create an Alice world, using any of the characters of Alice, and I am going to start by having them go through the four tutorials.

Okay, I’m also looking forward to $20 an hour! 

I am finally home and able to reflect.

This was a really great workshop for me.  It gave me three days to concentrate on media computation and how I want to use it.

I am seriously thinking of putting Python in place instead of Raptor, but I still have to find a way to teach flowchart symbols.

I’m also thinking of putting it in at the end of the year instead of Pong.

We’ll have to see.

Super workshop though, and some really good stuff.  Some can easily be adapted over to Visual Basic.  Watch this space.

Some more thoughts on the actual trip:

Most used tech items:  Scottee T-Shirts – wore on the airplane and kept the phone close.
                                          ATT Aircard – used at DFW airport and at the hotel, they almost had WiFi

Most useful place: Walmart – walked over there 4 times total, spent money there 3 times

Kindest TSA – Kansas City International Airport. 

We still have a day to go, but ….

I was sold on media computation before I got here, I just wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in and how to accomplish it.  I’m still not 100% there, but I do want to use it. 

If I only have 1 student in AP Computer Science, which is what I suspect I will have, I may very well go with the Guzdial / Erickson book. He’s a kid that will REALLY like the media computation and I have enough copies of that book that I can teach with — I have at least two.  I may be able to get more copies if I need them.

I’d like to do it with the 9th graders I am going to have over the next two weeks, but I’m not sure I’m ready — I still have that spinning in my head.

Here’s the deal, I know what I did with Alice worked, and I’m not 100% sure what I will do with the media computation itself will work. 

I am thinking of pulling out Raptor for the PreAP kiddos, and doing a few weeks of Python with media computation instead.  I would probably do the "hello world" stuff with the pictures and video.  But I’m still in the thinking stage and I have some time to work that out.

I also think that doing a movie at the end of the year would be as fun as the pong game, but again, I have to work it out.

HOWEVER, here is the biggest thought, and maybe this should be it’s own post.

The biggest problem with adoption of any new material seems to be the infrastructure supporting the class.  What I has hearing from my classmates is that they weren’t sure that they could load the files needed for the course, because of their network standards.  That really sucks and I am getting more and more tired of seeing and hearing of problems being caused by the support staff.

It’s just as bad to not be able to do something in a course because the network administrations won’t support it, as not being able to hold class because the custodial staff won’t turn on the lights.  Network administrators are SUPPORT staff and should never get in the way of the main mission which is to educate students.  If network administrators are in the way, then heads should roll in that department!

Oh, yeah, that’s why I bought an air card — plus I was sick of sucking the juice out of my phone and not being to use my phone because I was using it as a modem.

Capping the TO on purpose.

I’m at North West Missouri State University in Liberty, MO (I think, the university itself is in Marysville but the workshop is in Liberty and I flew into Kansas City).

Media Computation by Mark Gurdail. Now he teaches the way I want to learn.  Still a lot of talking BUT most people need a lot of the background.  I’ve done both pictures and sound for a long time, and am comfortable with them, but I recognize that not all CS people are.  Comes from ham radio and some other of my hobbies, plus a couple of years of teaching engineering.

I’ve also done some media computation his way.

Here’s what I like — lots of hands on examples, just you can type and try as he’s talking.  And stuff you can tweak.  Plus he doesn’t mind that.

I’ve been doing that a lot today.

He also does some "homework" — we had an hour in class to work each assignment and we’ve had a picture and a sound assignment.

Now doesn’t get me wrong — the Tapestry workshop is good and I’m still working on digesting that material. It’s just that this style fits me well, and fits most of my students.

Of course, my teaching philosophy tends to be –> point in the right direction and stay out of the way until they get stuck.

It’s staff development season for me right now, and it’s time to learn how not to teach.

I’ve just been through one.  The Tapestry one, which was good, but could have been better, but they needed loads more time.

I’m going to one on Monday from the district on our 9th grade enrichment camp, and went to one before our 8th grade enrichment camp.

I’m going to one on Tuesday, which I am looking forward to, as they have already sent us the agenda and told us what software to load on our laptops.  It’s done.  I’ll be back Friday night and the internet set probably won’t miss me at all.

Then I have the start of school staff development.

Here’s what I absolutely hate in a workshop:

Sitting around waiting for someone to pour knowledge in my brain.  In other words, lecture type workshops.  It’s worse when they read the power points to me.  People, I have a master’s degree, please, I can read.  Okay, maybe most of the people in the room have their bachelor’s degree, but I bet they can read too.

I also hate the fake activities.  At the 8th grade enrichment camp they played Simon Says.  Okay, that’s a great game, but it had nothing to do with the content!

Another problem I have with workshops is workshops with group activities when they don’t manage the groups.  I was at a workshop recently when I was put in a group where the group wasn’t acting correctly and I was shut out of the activity.  That would have been a perfect time to show us how to manage that problem — I’m not good at that myself, and it would have really helped me.

Oh, I’m betting that the giver of the workshop doesn’t do a good job of that themselves, which is why the chaos was allowed to happen.

I give staff development myself, and here’s how I do it:

I recently did a workshop on Camtasia, a program used to make movies of classroom presentations.  I spent some time showing the participants the Techsmith website, showed them a short movie I had made for my students and then showed them how to make a short movie.

The rest of the hour was spent with the participants making movies while I wandered around the room and helped.

By the way, that’s exactly how I teach my students.  I spent 5-10 minute on the front end of the topic showing them the new topic, have them do an example program in the book, dig them out of their holes — and I often broadcast their screen and let the class dig them out of their hole, and at the back end of the assignment, if they are having trouble, I’ll show them my answer.

Maybe I need to call my sleep doctor and ask him to prescribe the restless leg medication he suggested … I might need it over the next few weeks….