Technology and CS in Dallas

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  • Campus Tech Rants

    When somone in your building, has all of their stuff with them,has a coat on, and says, "I’m sorry, I’m late for a doctor’s appointment", they probably are, and probably don’t have time to deal with you.  It isn’t personal.  Even if they are lying, they probably have a good reason for it (okay, I wasn’t late YET, but I would be if I stopped and talked with you.

    When you walk into a computer class room, and you see the students all roaming the room with pieces of computer equipment it is NOT A GOOD TIME TO ASK QUESTIONS.  The best thing you can do is walk out and come back another day.  Especially if you received an email saying that the Campus Tech office is closed as I am receiving new equipment.

    Telling me in the hall that your printer is down, doesn’t help.  Filling out the technology form does help.  I will get a ticket in.  Right now, I don’t have to come to and fix things.  Remember, I did email everyone and tell them the office was closed this week.

    I’m the Campus Technologist.  One of my best friends, whose been one calls it "computer janitor". I often feel that way.  Not only am I am the campus technologist but I teach a full load of computer science.  For those of you who don’t know anything about computer science, the further in the year, the more your brain cells are engaged, and interruptions don’t help.

    My best teacher friend reminded me the following today: "You try to hard to keep everybody happy.  Just remember, you always DO get everything done eventually." 

    The good news: all the computers are out of the room.  The chairs were stacked so the custodians could clean the floors well.  I’m going to dog and pony show all my classes tomorrow, and then let the librarians teach them Friday, and I’m going to hide in my room until the installaters come.

    I think I can make it.

  • Favorite Tools – Techsmith’s SnagIt

    SnagIt is a tool I use a lot.

    I use it for two things:

    1. Build tutorials.  It's a screen shot program, and it allows you to draw on your screen shots.  It's create when you want to create a document that needs good screen shots.  For example:

    Example 

    2.  The other thing I use it for is to keep track of Webpages.  I'm the campus technologist and every time I put a ticket in the system, I take a screen capture of it for my records.

    You can get it from http://www.techsmith.com/ and they do give educational pricing.

    I bet if I think hard, I can find other good things to use it for.

  • My Solution for Testing

    I'm not sure this would work for the elementary or middle school students, but I would love to see offsite testing of high school kids.

    Right now, we end up shutting down for over a week for standardized testing (TAKS tests).  We cannot teach anything those days as they are untimed tests.  Worst yet, we are mandated to watch the students.

    It puts teachers in a hard spot — we are responsible for those test scores, and because of preceived cheating, we get blamed and requirements get tougher each year.  Right now, the kids are placed in room randomly and so are teachers.  Wall decorations have to be removed, we have to stare at the kids the entire time, can't use phones, etc.  It's a real hardship for me because I have medical devices that beep — we've got to record that as an exception.  And we have to take up all the kids electronics.  I get it, I don't like to be away from my cell phone either, but most teachers don't.

    So here's my solution:

    Online testing at a central location. 

    Kids are scheduled randomly, they show up for the test and they get on with their life.  They can take the tests in any order and still take as much time as they want. 

    It would work for any size district — in the smallest district where the entire district is in one building they could reserve a room with computers and network.  The largest districts like ours could have more than one center and those centers could be used for staff development or other training through out the year. 

    We already have a GED testing center, so it probably won't be that hard to put up others.  I could even see them using our existing staff development labs — we have 3 in one building at the same site as the GED testing. 

    By using completely different staff it would solve the preceived cheating problem.  It would also solve the problem of not having enough computers — instead of testing all the students in one week, we could do it over several.  Rescheduling would be as big an issue either.   I see it as a win-win for everyone, and takes the entire burden off the school.

  • Making your life easier

    As many of my regular readers now, my year has been really stressful since I became the Campus Technologist.  There is one thing I did last spring, that has really made a huge difference.  Getting a maid service.

    My fellow teachers had been onto me to do this for a long time.  A few months before, my next door neighbor at school had "The Maids" come and do her house and then hired another teacher's maid to come on a regular basis to keep it up.  Years ago, when I worked at TI, I had a maid but she eventually drove me nuts.  I tried a second one, who was worse than having my other around so I'd given up on it.

    This time I hired "The Maids", and it took them almost a full day to get the house caught up.  It had not had a deep clean since we moved in about 8 years.  I had to do a lot of prep work but not as much as I should have.

    I have them come every other week and I am considering changing it to weekly.  Right now, I spend one week enjoying having a clean house and the second week getting ready for them to come back.  That means making sure I have clean sheets, and that I pick up the areas that tend to clutter — bathroom counter, kitchen counter and the dining room table. 

    What does that mean for teaching though?  Easy, today is Sunday and reather than worrying about having a clean house, or having a dirty house and it wearing on my mind, I can concentrate on getting ready for the next week.  I'm putting together review packets, making sure I have every thing ready on the class website, etc.  I also will be doing some grading and updating the gradebook. 

    I really recommend a service like the "The Maids" rather than hiring someone personally, because if they do drive you nuts, they will send you a different team.  In fact, I don't think the same people clean each time anyway, which keeps them from acting like your mother.

  • Twitter?

    I love Twitter and have since it came out.  Since it is blocked at my school, I can't use it to its fullest during the school day but it sure has come in handy this break.

    1) I got to get one of my books autographed by the author.  I have a whole set of shelves that are signed by the author when I personally got to meet them.  Often, and this one was the case, I was providing airport transport, something I honestly don't mind, though I miss the times when you could sit down and visit with the passenger while they were waiting for their plane.

    2) Got some good hints for activities for my students.

    3) Interacted with some fun people.

    4) Won a copy of Microsoft Office in a contest.

    1 and 4 were of course the most valuable.

    So you have find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kathweaver and I only follow people who look interesting.

  • Coping with Website Blocking

    A lot of school districts have implemented some form of website blocking. Unfortunately, valuable teaching sites are blocked.  I've found several ways to keep blocking from stopping me.

    The first way is to have a phone that tethers.  Tethering is the term for attaching a mobile phone to a computer, thus allowing the computer internet access.  You can do it with either cabling (mine uses a USB cable), or Bluetooth.  Unfortunately it is often an extra charge, but at the same time, being able to tether protects YOU!.  I often want to do non-work related activities during lunch or my planning period, and tethering allows me to do it legally.  Frankly, having the ability to tether has kept me a little more sane in a lot of non-campus situations, so it's worth it to me.  Think about it, as long as you have mobile phone access, you can tether.

    The second way is to use some form of web page capturing.  I usually use Adobe Acrobat reader.  Anytime I see a website I want to use later in class, I put it in a PDF and save it.  That protects you from a lot of things besides blocking.  You can save just the webpage without the advertising, especially if the advertising isn't exactly what your students to see.  You can also make notes on it or highlight sections.  It is also helpful is the internet itself is down, as you can retrieve it and display it with your projector.  Or even worse, kill a tree and print it out — something I hate to do, but occasionally everything is failing — for exapmle, we had a school day where we started without power, recently.

    I don't like to use a proxy, as I believe you are teaching your students to do something dishonest.  In fact, a well written Acceptable Use Policy will specify that you and your students are NOT to use proxies.  I will admit to using one in an extreme emergency — at the end of the six weeks and the district had blocked my personal website so students couldn't turn in work. 

  • Love my Zune

    I have a new 120 gig model so mine still worked all day Wednesday.  But I've written date code and it sucks.  I figured that was the issue as soon as the posts started.  By the way, I've always debugged that way — just have known sort of intuively what is wrong.

    Speaking of which I do have a bit of a hardware issue that started with the Zune.  I have a refurbished Compaq and I get a blue system of death sometimes when I connect my Zune to it.  Happens with a few other USB devices so I think it might be related to disk size.  Doesn't always happen.  I like the Wireless sync anyway.

    I have listened to more music on the PC then on the Zune but that's pretty normal for me.  What I really like on the Zune is audiobooks and podcasts.

    I have a subscription to Audible books and have for a long time.  I do a lot of driving — once a week to agility class, and every few weekend to trials, so I really like the Audiobooks for that.  Right now, I'm in the middle of the Ann McCaffery "Freedom Series" so have been listening to it even during short trips.

    I have also started listening to Zune Marketplace Podcasts. I am a huge fan of Scott Hanselman and have read his blog for years — just started listening to the Podcasts, and so far they rock.  Yeah, I'm a geek, I'm a fan of both Scott and Clint Rutkas (i've gotten to meet him) and some of the other Microsoft engineer types.

    Can't wait to take it to school.  I already have a spare set of speakers, so we'll see how it goes.  In years past I've played my own music softly while the kids listened to their own with headsets.  I don't think I should be using a headset, especially our noise blankers.  In fact, I got really ticked off at a teacher using my room who did use them.  Don't see how you can know what is going on around you.

  • End of Generation Purchases

    I think many of you who are ustude will notice that I tend to buy as the next generation of devices come out.  For example, I got my HP Media Server just as the new ones have come out.

    There are lot of reasons why.  Yes, I like to be on the cutting edge sometimes, BUT first releases tend to be a bit buggy.  Also you can usually get a good cost reduction.  I have on each of the major purchases, my phone and the HP Media Server.

    I recommend purchasing this way to both my coworkers and my students — in fact when it comes to OS's, I alway recommend purchasing AFTER SP1, or if you can be patient, SP2.

  • Windows Home Server

    So far, I'm really liking it.  I've got all my computers backing up to it each night.  Also have all the updates, etc. installed.

    I'll admit having a server at school has spoiled me.  I literally do have computers all over the house — I usually keep a laptop and a desktop downstairs, and the two main computers upstairs, plus another floating laptop.

    I've got it set up so I can get to it from the outside world — another plus, as it keeps me from having to keep up with too much data.  Things I want to get to each day, yes, I keep with me, but long term projects etc. I like to keep in a central place.

    I have had home servers before — I had a cute little device that took two drives until it finally died — it was by Linksys and they replaced it with even cutier device that you can hook up USB drives too, but it was never that reliable.  You couldn't do a backup with it for example, without them overheating and crashing.

    I bought a Terastation from Buffalo with my STEM money but it really should stay in the classroom, and I do like to have huge amount of data on it.  I do take it home on breaks and it's home now.  I'll probably keep it here at home until I get the new lab up and running just to keep from complicating things.

    I would also like to learn how to write some add-ins for it, and maybe install some other stuff, but I'm taking my time on it.

  • Twittering

    CBS Morning Show was knocking twittering.  However, I find it really useful and I know some other people do too.

    Right now, I have my blogs, Twitter, and Facebook tied together.  Within thirty minutes of finishing this blog post, the title and the first sentence will be on Twitter.  I love that — as I think one good use for Twitter is letting people know you have posted on your blog.

    The biggest thing I use Twitter for is to ask questions — for example, I might be stuck on figuring out how something works — I'll ask a quick question on twitter and within a few minutes/hours, I get an answer.  It might be a technical question, a diabetes management issue, or even a dog issue.  That's the power of twitter — the quickest feed back you can get.

    Yes, I will research the problem on the internet in the meantime, sometimes finding that answer faster, but not always.

    It's also good for short communication — a lot of times I twitter someone rather than emailing them.  Heck, I don't have email addresses on a lot of my twitter friends. 

    If the conversation gets longer, and is worth a blog post, I'll do that, and then point to the blog post.  That's worked really well in the past and I am sure I'll do that again.

    So far, Twitter has been very valuable.  It's helped me solved problems in the lab and it even helped me give a Twitte friend transportation on a tough day.  So yep, it's useful if you use it right.

    Okay, I'll admit blow by blow twitts on a football game are annoying.  Especially college football.