I have come up with perfect gift for prom, mother’s day, etc. A Zune, but not just any Zune, but a preloaded one.
For Prom, load it with some of the songs from Prom night, load it with the Prom pictures.
Same type of thing, for mother’s day, especially if you’re an adult and have children. Load it up with the children singing, maybe even some videos along with the pictures.
Best yet, take it somewhere and have the back laser etched with something meaningful.
I love Twitter. I’ve used twitter for a long time and I use it a lot. I’ve gotten a lot of good out of it and have posted about it in the past.
What I have been doing is blending my blogs with Twitter.
If I feel something I want to say takes more than 140 characters, like this post, I go to one of my two blogs and blog about it. I have both blogs set up so that when I make a post, in a few minutes the post is tweeted by Tweeterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/)
Also, if you go to my blogs, both of them have a twitter feed going on the side, so anything I post to twitter appears on the blog.
It works really well for me, and I get a lot of good interaction that way.
I hate online testing. Especially since we only have computer labs for computer classes. Nothing that isn’t being accessed most of the day by an assigned class.
Today was the first day of testing and we got through it.
However, I had installed the software as soon as we returned from spring break. It was fine in one room but all of the icons were missing in the other room.
I punted, installed the testing software over Deep Freeze in my classroom, we tested the first group in my room, and sent my students to the original testing room which gave me time to figure out what happened.
Found the software, and used Lanschool to fire it out over the room. Worked okay but there are some additional problems with that lab.
I pushing hard to get Deep Freeze installed in all the labs since the business teachers not only don’t supervise their students but teach the students how to use proxy to get to blocked websites. <sigh>
The bad part, since I manage my lab and students well, MY students suffer for it, were without a teacher most of the day because administration decided they didn’t really need a sub for me. I should have called ofr a guard each time I left the room but there really wasn’t time.
it crahsed last night!
I needed to reboot it, and so I did, and then it got stuck in the boot up process. Cycled it through the boot cycle server times and got no where.
This morning tryed a System recovery and got no where again.
Called HP, gave them all my information and they walked me through a recovery. It’s looking a lot like one of the drives went bad.
Oddly enough they want me to do the factory restore on the biggest drive which I am doing now.
Hopefully I’ll have good news, but I’ beating that the Seagate 500 gig drive that came with it went south and is one of those that need the firmware patch.
So now my server is restoring itself.
Whew!
I got what I thought was all the updates, and tried to restore my backup to the server but there was no place to do that and no place to setup the external drive as a System Backup. Everything I had said that if I added the drive to the server it would reformat.
NOT GOOD!
I also had discovered that the drive that shipped with the server has failed.
Decided to get both resolved.
Tech support looked up my S/N and sure enough it was a bad Seagate drive so they are shipping out a new one.
And why I couldn’t restore? Hadn’t installed all the service packs.
So I am happily restoring now.
I’m in the process of doing the rebuild. The first step is scary as it just ends. Seriously — it gives you a message that it is going to reboot a few times and it does it thing, and then the box disappears.
You are left however, with a purple health light and a purple drive light.
I’m currently installing updates and it seems to be going well, though I still can’t get into the server itself to try to restore my data.
I love Microsoft’s Mesh service. Seriously.
I keep my curriculum stuff there and the projects I am working on .
It’s at http://www.mesh.com and although the website is blocked by the district, the client still downloads and works.
Basically it syncs your files between computers, allows you to share those files with others and gives you remote access to the computers you have it on.
It’s cool, it works, what more do you want?
I enjoyed it. First session was better than the second.
My district’s instructional technology department put on an event today to teach technology. Called it 21st Century Technology Conference.
They had on hands sessions in the computer labs – I did two, repeating the same topic – and they lasted 1 1/2 hours. They also had regular sessions that lasted 45 minutes.
I was asked very early to present and I think I am getting paid for it.
I gave them the choice of two, and they accepted Snag/Camtasia. TechSmith sent me some freebies which were a real hit. I covered Screencast.com, Jing, SnagIt and Camtasia, which was probably too much and gave everyone time to play with each part. I think they enjoyed it – one teacher complained to the workshop coordinated that I didn’t spend enough time on Camtasia so I did it at the beginning of the second session and mentioned it again at the end.
One of the teacher unions (ATPE I think) provided lunch, but oddly lunch or passing periods were not put in the schedule.
It was about equal to teaching the AP kids last week (face it, it’s hard to get over children saying thank you!)
Right now I’m hanging out waiting for the closing session / door prize session (okay, I’m waiting for a door prize but didn’t get one, not that I needed anything they were giving – I already had one of everything they were giving). A teacher from my school won a Smart Board.
And as I just told the director of the department – right now I have the best of both worlds. I still have my own classroom but I get to influence the rest of the district through curriculum design and teacher staff development.
And it looks like I’ll be doing the middle school camp. Was warned about that today also.
Mine broke today, primarily because our elevator hasn’t been working all week and I’ve been dragging it down the stairs. Note to self don’t do that.
Last time I had one break, local Office Depot replaced it for free so I thought I would try that again. Didn’t work but did one almost as good — a blue one for $3.18 with tax. I swear the shelf said $24.95 but may be they are on sale. I paid for it quick and left fast!
I like the Blue much better.
And sadly they have REALLY cut their hours, opening two hours later than before. Means I can’t hit them on the way to school any more. <pout>
Quoted from http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/987304/Office-Depot-Brand-Mobile-Folding-File/:
Office Depot Brand Mobile Folding File Cart 16 H x 18 W x 15 D Black Gray by Office Depot
Office Depot® Brand Mobile Folding File Cart, 16″H x 18″W x 15″D, Black/Gray
Microsoft can continue to provide high school teachers with great resources.
I have taught Computer Science for 16 years. I have taught regular Computer Science, with QBasic, VB6, and not teach with VB .NET and through the years my students and I have benefited from many Microsoft programs.
When we went to VB6, Microsoft provided software to our district. They have also provided curriculum materials through those many years.
I’ve used the Microsoft Educational website MainFunction while it was up and running. In fact, I provided a lesson plans for teaching VB6 with Alfred Thompson’s Teaching with Fundamentals and won a grant through MainFunction.
I’ve gone to several Microsoft sponsored staff development opportunities including last year’s game cruise.
I have also given back, and I try to respond whenever they want curriculum or other items evaluated. I don’t always get to get a response back but that means they are doing the job right. I am always ready to take a few moments to add constructive criticism when needed.
I’ve also participated in a local event where programmers code websites for local charities and done in Microsoft’s name.
In other words, I believe our relationship has been synergist and that both sides benefit (though I do believe that Microsoft has done much more for me than I can for them.)