Author Archives: Dee

About Dee

I am a working wife, geek, and mother of two with opinions about just about everything which I plan to share here.

The Speed of Incompetence

Life is in fast forward right now. A filter has to be tweaked on every single computer that is in used by a teacher to input grades and as I try to touch them all I sandwich fixing little problems. At some point I try to eat lunch. The other day I looked at the clock twice all day – once at 11:30 and once at 3:20. I don’t know where the time went.

I have come to love tutorials because I have students in the lab and that is the only time I have to be there so I get a chance to read email and make a list of what I already know needs to be done for the day. When it gets this crazy I start making mistakes and forgetting details so I while am doing more things I am doing them less well.

I know it will slow down some after the filter is done and I am working towards that. I miss having a locking desk drawer since my desk was a casualty in the summer break-in so I carry more baggage around with me – literally and figuratively speaking.

The bright spot has been the new laptop the technology director bought me. It’s a MacBook and I have named her Iris. She has to be female because not only is she packed with geeky goodness but she is also pretty. She does everything that my desktop did better and with style. I am trying to learn more about her inbetween all the gradebook and email “fixing”

My lab is needing attention badly and as soon as these filters are in place and working I will be spending some time working on it. Everytime I walk in the door I feel like I need to apologize for letting things slide with it.

Another day is beginning and while I would like to spend more time writing and reading and thinking, 3:45 will be here before I can sneeze!

Teacher Work Day

Yesterday was the only day this week designated for teachers to work in their rooms. I heard my name over the intercom about ten times and people found me wherever I was working and added their needs to my growing list. People emailed me which was problematic because there wasn’t much time to check email.

Students start Monday and teachers needed GradeBook and e-Attendance working. They needed computers moved and E-mail set up. I new it would be crazy and it was. By the end of the day I was mean, mad, tired and not done. I had to leave on time because it was a dialysis night. I was grouchy with my kids when I got home and I know Monday will still be a day of running around like a chicken, trying to get everyone’s problems solved.

Every year I learn something new and work towards adding that to my list of things to prioritize but I think that if I ever get it right, it will all change and I will have to start over.

For next year I have got to remember that new teachers (or teachers on new computers) need to be added as administrators on their computers or e-attendance won’t play nice. I think E-mail and attendance need to be the priorities and Gradebook can be taken care of after all that is done. They need E-mail as soon as possible so they can keep up with the announcements as they are sent out and they have to have attendance the first day. Setting them up as administrators can be done without them being there so I need a list early in the week of where everyone is going to be. That was another problem for me this year. I had no list til late yesterday. If I have the list of who and where, I can check off what and when.

Lab scheduling issues were coming up and the lab itself has a ton of work to be done so Monday it all begins again. My promise to myself is I will try not to get so mean and mad and to remember that there is always another day.

Tech Fair is Over

I was honored to do a morning and afternoon session and there were some good questions, great participation, and a few people who created their own blogs. If I’m honest I think I was better in the morning than the afternoon – more energy. The afternoon group didn’t seem to have as many questions. I have added a link on my wiki to a bloglines tutorial for those who are interested. I walked both groups through the process of setting up an account but I did not provide a handout for this part so if you need something to refer back to you can try this link.

The only drawback to TechFair is that the presenters are busy presenting and so can’t attend other sessions. I would really like to have sat in on the Elmo presentation and the MySpace presentation. We are going to have to start recording in video or at least in audio. It would be great to podcast some of these sessions. With the proximity of several school districts it would be fun to have one big event over several days and have folks from other districts present as well.

Monday I co-presented with our awesome librarian on email, copyright issues, lab scheduling, computer repairs, and library resources. I created the first part of our slides in OpenOffice using a laptop that runs Ubuntu. I saved it as a .ppt file and sent my part to our librarian who was able to add her slides without even knowing that it hadn’t originated in Powerpoint. I have had no problem tranferring documents back and forth between Microsoft and Ubuntu and so far I am very pleased with Ubuntu.

Ready or Not Tomorrow is TechFair!

I didn’t accomplish everything today that I wanted to get done but it will do. I will go early tomorrow and it will be fine. I have some anxiety, not because I don’t know the material. My concern is my ability to teach it and to impart my enthusiasm for blogging to the group. I see rss feeds on our school webpage in the future. I imagine conversations that don’t end with the school year and possible continue throughout a students high school career. I know everyone won’t embrace this new technology but if even a few take it and run with it I think it will be worth it. I want to make sure that they all walk out subscribed to blogs and with the knowledge to show their students how to subscribe as well. I have tutorials for creating blogs and we will go through that process as well. I have an activity to show the semantic connections and I have some sample blogs to show them. I want to just touch on podcasts and wikis just to introduce the ideas. That is the plan so if all the equipment works we should be able to make good use of the time.
I got home late, rushed in and cooked dinner, Dale ate and took some cold medicine against my better judgement and was violently ill. I’m sitting here typing with my feet propped up while I should be doing some laundry. I also need to cook tomorrow’s supper because it will be a dialysis night and Dale will need to eat before I get home so he will be ready to go on time. I will eat a bowl of cereal later – I’ve learned not to eat when I’m “fizzing” around as Dale calls it.

Thursday will be another “hit the ground running” day. All the new school year work that needs to be done on teacher computers is already being done by some but others will need help. Joe is beng run ragged and I feel bad that I couldn’t help today. Everyone wants everything done right NOW. I plan on wearing comfortable shoes.

“The Messengers”

I have started watching a TV show called “The Messengers” I am not a big reality TV person – I get enough reality in real life. I prefer fantasy for entertainment. This show however is different. A group of people who are already experienced speakers compete for a book deal. To do this they are taken on a different field trip every week where they have to immerse themselves in a particular life. Last week they had to spend time in the fields with farm workers and then give a two minute speech on struggle They picked vegetables til their backs hurt and then kept on picking. This week they are handicapped. Several have to spend time in a wheel chair – shopping, using public restrooms, navigating everywhere. They can’t use their legs at all. They not only have unique experiences but the relationships they form with the people have a lasting impact on them.The speeches they gave on struggle were amazing and so far tonights speeches on perseverance are just as awesome. Not only the mechanics but you can see and hear the emotional impact on their faces and in their words. I wish we could all “roll a mile in another man’s chair”. Half the group had to function without eyesight. They were taken to Union Station and had to buy tickets and ride the train. Two got off in the wrong place and couldn’t find the others including their blind “guide”. They finally got together and all went outside to experience walking across a city street. “Perserverance is about the critical decisions that we make at the turning points in our lives” and “Just ask God to help you go beyond what your eyes can see” were two of the quotes I took away. So far I am impressed with all the speakers and if I had a complaint it would be that someone will leave every week and I like hearing the different perspectives. Maybe some of them will start blogging.

My Favorite Firefox Features

I have been using Firefox for several years and have always been an advocate for the browser. Lately I have used one feature more than any other. From the main menu click view, text size, increase. I do this several times til the text is easy for me to read without so much eye-strain. This may not be a big news flash for some of you but it has become a necessity for me!

Tabbed browsing has become second nature and I don’t know what I did before I had it. I always have at least four tabs open switching between them constantly. I keep one tab open to google so I can zip over and search for anything that catches my eye on the other websites I am currently browsing.

My bookmarks Toolbar is another essential feature. I have my everyday links listed there so I can just go to the menu and click a button and read the local paper, check my gmail account, or subcribe to a blog with bloglines.

Del.icio.us has a plugin for Firefox that places buttons on your browser that let you click a button to either tag a webpage or go to your del.icio.us page to browse your saved tags. I used to send links from home to work or vice versa. Now instead of clogging my email I can tag it and find it from anywhere I have internet access.

Firefox not only lets you have a searchbox for google right on your toolbar, but you can add search engines to it so you just click on the icon in the left side of the box and bring up a list of search engines. I have Ebay, Amazon, Food Network Recipes, Weather Channel, Wikipedia, and more. If I am reading an article by a favorite blogger and they reference a book that sounds interesting I can open up a new tab, click in the search engine box and change to Amazon and put the book title in to find the pricing, reviews, and if I like it, add it to my Amazon growing wishlist.

These are other Firefox tools I use but these are my everyday, can’t do without, A-list.

Dale is Better

He still has a long way to go but today he fixed the toilet. He replaced the fill valve. He has been getting around the house with a cane and yesterday he put a coat of primer on some cabinet doors for me. I don’t think he even realizes how much progress this is. We seem to have moved to a new stage. Different foods give him problems because his belly is still real sensitive, but he at least is awake all day, wanting to do things, and wanting to eat. He still needs the walker if we go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot where he will have to do a lot of walking and he has trouble with his balance so he has to go slow and he tends to stay near things he can hold on to but progress is progress and I thank God and each and every person who has prayed for him.

We try to go somewhere twice a day so he can get out and walk a little. It’s too hot to walk outside so we have to find inside walking places. I am nearly done painting the bathroom cabinets and we went to Home Depot and bought new handles and hinges to go with the new towel bar and paper holder. I discovered that Zinzer BullsEye 1-2-3 primer covers pretty well but if I want to do my kitchen cabinets I will be buying a lot of primer and it is going to take a long time. It will take two coats of primer, a coat of paint, and a coat of glaze to do what I want and because they are dark the inside needs to painted as well. This may be an ongoing project (like painting the living room!)

This week my daughter is at church camp and so I am going to “help” my son clean out his room. We will use her room for a temporary storage place as we take everything out of his room, clean it and hopefully put less stuff back in. If no one sees me for a week please come looking – it’s a jungle in there!

Just an Update

I haven’t posted in a little while because it’s been a calm period  and I hate to even mention it because Dale is still having stomach pain occasionally and I feel like another trip to Baylor is in the future, I just don’t know when.  He fights it because he just hates to go.  I just hope if we go it is soon – before school starts.  I am determined to try to miss as little as possible and that may mean driving back and forth and I’m already burned out from running on adrenaline.  My sister-in-laws came for a visit and he really enjoyed it.  Today was Jessica’s fifteenth birthday and we spent some girl time shopping and eating ice cream.  It wasn’t much but she knows things are shaky right now.   She has grown up so much this summer.  She has been such a lot of help and so has Kinsey.

I should be learning how to use a MacBook by next week.  I am so excited.  I have been reading online about it as much as I can but I will learn much faster by doing.  I promise to write more about it as I learn.

Interesting Times

I read a post by David Jakes that likened all the fuss about blogging being the way we will change education as one big taffy pull.

I get excited about new things whether it is software, gadgets, a new book by a favorite author, and yes – blogging. I don’t see it as the answer to all the things that are wrong with education.

I see it as an appropriate tool to enhance what is right with education. It is a fairly new tool and like anything new, we will experience growing pains and we will change it and mold it according to what works for us and it will eventually evolve or be discarded for the next new tool.

That’s what technology does. It changes. Change isn’t inherently good or bad. That’s why we have to constantly learn, test, evaluate, and adjust.

Our young people constantly dive into the pool without always checking the depth of the water. We can’t always stand on the side waving a warning they will find relevant if we refuse to go into the water ourselves.

Kathy Sierra has a post that talks about the space between the notes – where the music is. The important pause, the time to reflect.

“But real learning takes place between exposures to content! Long-term memory from learning happens after the training. The space between the lessons and practice is where the learning is made permanent. If we don’t leave that space, new content keeps rushing in to overwrite the previous content, before the learner’s brain has a chance to pause, reflect, and synthesize the proteins needed for long-term memory storage. “

I’m glad that there are people like Mr. Jakes who caution us to stop and look around as we try to navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology. I’m glad that there are people like Kathy Sierra who urge us to take time and space to reflect on where we have been and where we are going. I’m also grateful for the folks that urge us to wade in and get our feet wet.

We live in interesting times….

Bloggers Are Just Nice

I have been working on putting together material for teaching blogging to teachers and as usual find that people much more experienced that I am have already charted a lot of these waters. I have tried to be vary careful about obtaining their permission to use their work and without exception I have not only gotten permission to use and modify, but the responses have been enthusiastic, encouraging, and helpful. It just proved what I already knew – bloggers are just nice.

And So It Goes..

We may well be going back to the hospital Monday. Dale stayed home three weeks this time with one week of no antibiotics but he is having pain and fever again. I have packed just in case and had time last night to save a bunch of webpages to my jump drive. I will load them on my laptop so I can continue working even if I don’t have internet access. I have been getting my presentation on blogging together and this week I will work on suggestions for rubrics to facilitate assessment. I have completed handouts for reasons for reading blogs and reasons for writing and some basic instructions on using a feedreader to subscribe to blogs. I think the first step in getting teachers interested in using blogs is to show them some great examples and get them reading.

It’s funny to think about it now that I am so excited about blogging in education but the blogs that hooked me from the very start were not anything to do with public education. I began reading WaiterRant on a regular basis. There is some adult content there but I love his storytelling ability. The next was Creating Passionate Users and I never fail to get a boost of enthusiasm and excitement there. There are others on my blogroll that I read all the time and several are education oriented and I have learned so much from them and will continue to do so but in all the excitement of this tool for learning I will remember that like books, sometimes you just need to read for the pure enjoyment of it.

It’s been a very emotional week for me. The shock of walking in and seeing (or NOT seeing to be more accurate) my lab had been broken in to, and then the panic mode of realizing that Dale was showing signs of infection again, my son leaving for a two week trip – I’d like to borrow a cup of boredom from someone. If anyone out there has some to spare – please send it! If you are bored and want to make a trade we can talk…

Hard Lesson Learned

I am a very disorganized fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. I am constantly fighting this side of my nature. Today I learned a hard lesson. I went in to school to try to get some work done and as soon as I walked in I realized something was not right. Someone broke in and took some of the nicer equipment from the lab.

I just this year gave in and ordered a large flat screen monitor for myself. I hate to spend budget money on something that only benefits me but a good part of many of my days is spent staring at spreadsheets and I was having a lot of headaches. My computer, monitor, and mouse were gone. Also gone was the data projector, an older digital camera, an older but larger computer that the lab had just inherited, plus a couple of older laptops. I haven’t gone through my desk yet and may not even remember some smaller items. The laptop cart door was pried open and so were my desk drawers.

It seems like whoever did this didn’t have anything out for me personally. All my pictures and some wooden things I had painted and had sitting on my computer were all just set aside. Nothing was actually torn up except what was needed to gain access. I am thankful for that.

What hurts is that money that could have been used to upgrade out-of-date equipment will now have to go towards replacing what was stolen. My dreams for this lab are for the benefit of all our students and staff. I wish for cutting edge technology that will help our students get ready for the outside world, allow them to express their creativity, and furnish tools that instructors can use to enhance lessons. I am so sad that this happened. In the big picture it may not seem like much but in my little picture, my second home was broken into and things entrusted to my care to help others use were taken with no thought of how others might be affected.

If this stuff were to show up on my front porch in the middle of the night I would not look any further and I would know that the person or persons who took it realized that in the long run they were hurting every student at the school and felt bad about it. I know it isn’t realistic to hope for that but I will pray about it.

In the meantime I am slowly realizing that now I have lost many of my email addresses and documents I have saved that pertained to the lab and other aspects of my job. I also lost four years worth of stuff that I can’t begin to remember never mind replace. I will probably keep anything important on a laptop that goes with me from now on and I may ask Santa for an external hard drive that I could back up everything to and store somewhere safe. I also have learned that I should password protect anything and everything. I will clean out files on a more regular basis so I can remember what I have, and I will not let this make me not trust people.

Do We Guide Them Or Just Hope For The Best?

Students on the internet mean students will get off task sometimes. I live with two high school students. They belong to me. One of the hardest parenting responsibilities with teenagers deals with how much to let go and how much to hold on. Once your child gets that drivers license you realize how little control you have over their time and how it is spent. Once they walk out the door and get into that car – they drive off to 1. the place they told you they were going, 2. for the length of time they old you they would be there, and 3. for the purpose they told you they were going (and of course they go no where else). You also trust that all those driving lessons and talks about safety on the road will be taken to heart. I know my child would not get distracted tuning in the radio or finding the perfect song on his mp3 player while he was driving and I know he would not get frustrated with the slow driver in front of him and hotrod to get around them. Okay – you can stop laughing now. My point is you have to trust them because you have no other choice. They are moving away from you as a parent and making their own choices which hopefully will be ones they can live with in the long run. This prepares them for living their own lives. We as parents have already given them the skills they need (we hope) and now we just guide when they will let us and pray that we haven’t left out that one important thing that we should have taught but didn’t.

The same thing goes for our students and technology. If we don’t teach them – what choices will they make and who will then be responsible?

Vicki Davis puts in succinctly:

” Zero tolerance for mistakes is limiting our growth

I also think that the legal system in America will hold back our schools from giving such liberty to students. We will bleed on the cutting edge, however, we’ve create a zero tolerance for allowing mistakes to happen. Kids should be informed up front of expectations and consequences. Their behavior should be monitored vigilantly. When they do not meet expectations, they should experience consequences. Thus, we create net citizens who realize that their actions on the Internet have consequences.

The Trapeze Artist Metaphor

If our students don’t understand that there are consequences to their blog postings, it would be like a trapeze artist who trained with nets until he was 18. Every time he fell, he landed in the soft net. When he turned 19 and went to a circus, no one told him that there was no net. So, he was unafraid of the consequences of falling. And when he fell, it did permanent damage. He knew how to use the tools but did not understand consequences of making mistakes.

Conclusion

We need to teach effectively. We also need to create good New Net Citizens.”

We have the gift of an opportunity to reach far into the future as well as making the present much more pleasant. The concept of blogging doesn’t work if it doesn’t happen in the context of a community. If I was the only one who ever read this (and sometimes I think I am) then there wouldn’t be much of a point to it. I could keep a journal on my computer using any wordprocessor and add to it whenever I take a notion. To me the point of blogging is to network with others, to have an ongoing learning learning experience by reading, writing, commenting, and receiving feedback. It means that we become inspired by reading others thoughts and as we process what we read, we filter it through our own experience and viewpoint and write the results of that process. If we leave no room for mistakes then we leave no room for learning.

Timely Information

Vicki Davis has an article about Myspace on her blog – good stuff to know.

“Amazingly, THERE IS A WAY to remove things from Google cache. And with the National Association for College Admissions’s recent article on Myspace in College Admission, this will be a great thing for you to teach students to do after they clean up or delete their myspace accounts.”

Vicki has also been blogging the NECC 2006 conference and has tons of great information. I have enjoyed wandering through her notes and links. The same process during SXSW in Austin is what hooked me on blogging to begin with. I read everything I could find that was being blogged at that conference and discovered some of my favorite bloggers and web designers. At that time I was in the process of becoming a beginner at Cascading Style Sheets and while I am still definitely a beginner at least I know where to go for resources when I have time. Vicki is a great resource on blogging in education. Blogging is a great way to share conference notes with the folks back home who were unable to go. I hope that next year we will have some teachers blogging from TCEA!

All The News

They really need to make this guy a regular columnist:

What about Isreal?

To the Editor:

We went to war to make Iraq a democracy, but we ignore Israels lack of democracy. Israel has no Constitution or Bill of Rights. There is no private real estate in Israel. You may only lease land from the government. Gentiles are banned from burial in Jewish cemeteries and there are no jury trials. Christian missionaries are banned from Israel and it is a crime to try to convent a Jew. Jews are forbidden to marry Gentiles in Israel. It was odd of God to choose the Jews.

Roy Bunch

I know a couple of Christian missionaries living in Israel which makes this even more amusing. My only question would be is the headline from Roy or the paper? “It was odd of God to choose the Jews”? I wonder if Roy has discussed this with Him….

Word Hanging Indent

Students working on term papers in the lab have to cite their sources. Often this requires using a hanging indent which seems to give everyone trouble. It isn’t hard to do but it also isn’t easy to find if you don’t know it’s there. The easiest way I have found is to go ahead and type your sources with no indent. Double space between each source. When you have them all typed, highlight the entire section and go to format/paragraph on the menu bar. A new menu will pop up.

Click the drop down arrow next to the word “special” and choose “hanging”. Your entire section should now be formatted with hanging indents for the first line of each section. See? Easy to do – not exactly intuitive to find.

Blogging is like Shopping

Reading blogs online seems a lot like shopping for clothes. Guys may not get this but ladies will. Sometimes you can shop and shop and see things that are sort of what you are looking for but not quite. You see things in other store windows and continue to roam around finding almost but not the perfect outfit. Then there are those times when you walk in and there are multiple items that would be perfect and they are “gasp” all on sale for half price! That’s the feeling I got this morning. I have been searching the internet for resources to put together the quintessential presentation on blogging in education. I want to wow everyone, generate enthusiasm, and have them walking out the door talking excitedly about the plans they have for blogging with their students, already making mental lists of uses that will take them far beyond the starting point I give them!

Presenting to groups is not my strong point. I am better at one-on-one instruction, so I plan to have very clear material and step-by-step instructions as well as some wonderful examples to show to try to make up for that.

This morning I read a post that really shows what the end product can be. Konrad Glogowski has a post about his eighth grade students blogging that shows how an instructor can use blogs to share what they are doing and how students can be blogging as a unique learning and research experience. Read the post to see why I am excited.

The teacher describes how his students are researching separate topics and learning from each other’s research and how it relates to their own. Other students reading and commenting on each other’s blogs created debates and caused each student to build on his own topic.

Instead of students simply responding to a teacher-directed topic they have moved on to become researchers and are motivating each other to continue the learning process. To me this is exactly what we want to see happen. This is my ultimate goal.

Decorating My House

My house on the web that is. I haven’t had a lot of time to play but I finally dug around enough in the files to change the images a little. I hope Mr. Kubrick, the original creator of this theme approves. Changing the images was the easiest part as it turns out. What took the longest was finding the place I needed to change so that my name didn’t show up as a link on the header image. It seems that in making changes in the appearance the trickiest part as in real life was in the littlest details.