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I love Twitter and I love Outlook.  As a result when I heard about TwInBox, I knew I would like it.  TwInBox is free and written by a company called TechHit. The TwInBox website is at http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/

Here’s why I love it.

TwInBox lets you treat Twitters just like an email.  You can read them, search them, delete them, file them, etc. just like any email.  You can also do searchs on topics or usernames and have them filed automatically.

You can also do something else really cool if you have OneNote — you can send your Tweets to OneNote.  Why?  So you can go back and refer to the Twitter later.  And yes, I do that.

By the way, they also have a pay Outlook application I like called SimplyFile.

I have been reading several of the blog posts on teaching Computer Science Education and want to chime in.

I have a Master’s Degree from the University of North Texas called Computer Education and Cognitive Studies.  I worked towards this degree for a long time.

I got my teaching certificate while doing course work at Texas Woman’s University which is down the road.  I only had to take one CS class while doing that — and it didn’t have anything to do with teaching.  I did have to take several math courses which DID help me towards teaching both math and computer science (and I am certified in both).

When my district transitioned out of teaching computer math and into computer science, we brought in a professor from UNT who designed a course for us which was a CS pedagogy course. I think I’ve blogged about it before, but as a group we developed the original scope and sequence for our computer science course and a lot of the lessons.

I’ve gone from that point and evolved our district course offerings from there — yes, I’ve been on every committee which has shaped our current curriculum and actually spent last year writing the current CS and PreAP CS curriculum.  I will probably work more on the CS, and have asked for another person to work on the PreAP, hopefully she has time.

The master’s degree focused on just about all phases of CS education.  While working on it, I earned my Tech Applications certification (we didn’t have a test at the time), so we worked on teaching things like web mastering, multimedia projects, but very little of that was directly applicable to Computer Science Education.  However, whenever I was able to define my own projects, I did focus on CS.  Found quite a bit of interesting research towards teaching CS, but there could certainly be more.

Another facet of my degree focused on online education and I’ve even taught CS online.  It’s tough and it takes a very self-directed student, and those are hard to fine.

I think we should have more CS Education programs.  I also think that if it not directly available, the programs can be found.  I do believe UNT teaches the CECS program online — I did take two courses completely online and was very successful.

I’m heading to the Tapestry workshop on Wednesday (with many stops on the way) and have been doing a trial run of my technology.

(Don’t worry, dogs and husband and security system will all be at home, and the police are by our house about every 2 minutes as we are on their usual beat).

I’ve just checked the following:

• Cable and software to connect mobile phone
• Cable and software to connect Zune to both Zune and Audible Books
• Cable and software to connect digital camera and download pictures to Flicker
• Cable and software to connect to the internet via the Air Card.

Yeah, a bit excessive BUT it is a computer science workshop and I will be gone a while.

I am not sure I would ever be able to completely finish clearing out my office but it’s pretty good.  Here’s the trash bags:

As I’ve said before, the room is in a small bedroom.  Here’s one wall of desk:

And the other wall.

It’s perfect work working on large projects, like curriculum as I have two computers and a TV in it — and the TV can be a third monitor when I need.

I can write curriculum on one computer while looking up stuff on the internet from the other.  In lots of ways, especially since everything is networked with a HP MediaSmart Windows Hom Server, it works better than dual monitors on one desk top. 

I thought this sale had ended.  I’ve gone to it was ham radio only and we sold each other our boat anchors.

The sale started as a once-a-month swap meet for ham radio enthusiasts in 1969 but has evolved over the years, adding PC users and another monthly meeting, on the third Saturday of each month.

Computer vendor shot dead at sidewalk sale in downtown Dallas | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

I have a small bedroom that I use as an office.

I have been really bad about not throwing things away so I’ve decided to purge.  I had an old server case, several broken monitors, and old analog TV, etc.

The good news is that we live on a fairly busy street and if I put out old electronics they are gone in less than 20 minutes.  Seriously.

So far, I have pulled out 5 trash bags off stuff — one trash bag is just a mass of old cables I ditched under the philosophy if they haven’t been touched in a while I don’t need them.

I also found the best solution of storage.  Since it really is a bedroom it has a clothing rod in the closet.  I wanted to store bags in such a way I could get to them easily.  Container Store had the perfect solution:

Those are designed to hold sweaters and they do the bags just find.  The velco off the top of the rod — it isnt’ quite a bit enough space to fully extending the shelves but the bottom shelf is still usable.

I’m also pulling all the files off my old E-Machine computer — that will take a while, I’m pulling over 13 gig off of one drive and 50 gig off the other.

One of the reasons I do extra gigs (teach middle school girls, curriculum, etc), is so that I can have some extra money to buy guilt free toys.

Like my phone. (A Fuze)

Like my new wireless all in one printer — yeah, it’s cool, I can scan to any computer in the house.  I need to figure out if there is a way to scan to the Home Server. 

And my latest acquisition is an HP Pavilion Slimline.  It’s eventually going to go upstairs to my office, but I need to take at least 5 trash bags of stuff out of there before I can usually use it comfortably.

I’m also planning to upgrade the memory on all my other computers.  My “gym” pc has 1 meg of memory and locks up all the time, so I’m upgrading it to 4 gig, and taking it’s meg hopefully to the other HP computer upstairs.

I’m going to toss an Emachines computer that is several years old.

I’m happiest with two cheap computers sharing a keyboard and mouse, rather than one big fancy one.

And I hate Emachines ever since they sold the maintenance on my Gateway Tablet to a company that promptly went out of business.

Apparently,
Erin Gruwell just gave a presentation at NECC and I’m sorry, but I’m not a fan. Now, I didn’t read the book and have only seen the movie.  However, my takeaway from the movie was that to be a passionate teacher, you have to sacrifice your personal life, your movie and even your husband.

I’m not willing to go there.

In fact, I went into teaching because I wanted to have a personal life.  I had a job that was literally 24/7 support, and I gave it.  I stayed overnight at the office during closing of the financial books (about 5 days, but yeah, I did get two extra days off as a result and that was my choice BEFORE I got married.  I fielded calls from about midnight until 6:00 am, not quite every night and then worked a full 7:00 – 4:00 day.  I was losing my husband because of that schedule and the level of dedication it took.

I want my Monday nights to train my dogs, most of the weekends from August until March to trial them, and time to be with my husband.  I don’t want to give up most of my income and put it into my classroom, though some days it feels that I do. And I don’t want to take a part time job to pay for field trips.

I think you can be a passionate teacher and only work at it 8 hours a day.  I even manage to do that most of the time and pull off the teacher tech job but there are days I do end up staying late. 

In fact, my students DO say I am passionate about my subject — and of course they don’t get me — but that’s okay.

I think you are a better teacher if you have outside interest — my coteacher this summer coaches volleyball and plays it herself and has seen she was in grade school.  I think that’s a good thing.  I have friends who raise their own children, have a part time job they are really into, or are working on an advanced degree — been there and done that.

I honestly think that the teacher in the movie would have had more to offer her kids if she had had a personal life, as she would be more well-rounded.  And I really think it was sad that she drove her husband away.

Like I said, I have only seen the movie.

I asked my summer school co-teacher and she felt the same way about the movie.

I’ve been having trouble with this computer ever since the tech at Systemwide Testing set up their wireless and their printer. Wouldn’t shut down and half the time wouldn’t recognized the USB ports.  Hate that.

So I did a restore from my WHS server — sometime around May, I’d cleaned up the computer and did a manual backup, so used that one for the restore.  Man, is it lovely.  Copy drivers off the server to a thumb drive, boot with the restore disk, and two hours later your computer is restored.   I’ve restored three computers now that way.

Also did a backup right before I did the restore in case there were files I need (and there might well be).

I did run into one snag, which was very worrisome — I got the Blue Screen every time I tried to load the PC Restore disk that comes from HP.  So I went out to the internet and downloaded the Restore Disk from Microsoft.  It’s a dual boot and the 512 memory version also gave me the blue screen at the same point.  The more than 512 memory version worked fine and I’m all restored and happy.

I really like this idea and plan to incorporate it next with my laptop – digital photoframe project that I’ve blogged about before.  I love Screencast and letting parents know where their students work can be accessed really takes it a step further.

Quoted from http://www.techsmith.com/community/education/inspired/Digital_Hallway/:

A “Digital Hallway” Project Education Community – TechSmith, the world leader in Screen Capture and Screen Recording Software.

But what if the tradition of work-in-the-hallway went digital – into an online space where students could easily display their work, teachers could evaluate it, and parents would come to view and comment?