A group of us spent the last three days discussing technology integration and planning the tech fair for fall. It was a fun time and I think some good ideas came out of it. We have begun a wiki of resources for online technology integrated lesson plans. I think this wiki will grow as we all learn and get a little more comfortable with the collaboration process. I will eventually put a link to it on my blog.
I’m very excited to be presenting on blogging this fall. I am fairly new to blogging myself and lately I have been realizing that more of the public is peeking in. It inspires me to try constantly to improve the content. If people read and comment there is almost an implied contract that you as the author promises to have articles worth reading. It also causes me to rethink blogging as a whole. Who is your intended audience? Do you write for yourself or to share with others? Up til now I have posted on whatever was most on my mind at the moment and so as I look back over my posts it looks as though I have two entirely different blogs mashed together. Matbe I need to have a separate place to put personal stuff. I will spend a little time looking around and some other folk’s blogs with this thought in mind and try to decide if I want to change the way I have been approaching this. If anyone has any thoughts on that please share.
Author Archives: Dee
Don’t Use Powerpoint As a Weapon!
I was reading some articles about PowerPoint today on Presentation Zen and stumbled on a few good things to remember. First was one I had heard before – the 10-20-30 rule. Ten slides, twenty minutes, thirty point font. Someone asked Guy Kawasaki at a presentation what to do if you have to use an hour for your presentation and he said not to worry – it would take forty minutes to get the projector to work with your Windows laptop. How true!
The second article had to do with design and the author described the rule of thirds. You divide your slide into vertical and horizontal thirds. Position text and images along these invisible lines for a more interesting design. Use the image to draw the eye to your text. He had some great examples.
I’d like to see our students better educated in the proper use of PowerPoint. When I see students attempting to put an entire term paper on a presentation I ask them to pretend they are driving down the highway reading billboards. Would they be able to read their slide do 50 miles an hour without causing a ten car pile-up? If not they probably have too much information.
Another problem some students have is getting past playing with the bells and whistles to gathering the actual research done and putting the information on their slides. I tell them to imagine they have been asked to bring a Birthday Cake to a party. You don’t frost and decorate a cake before you bake it so the same principle holds true with presentations. Make the cake and then using good design ideas – decorate it!
Linux???
I promised an update on using linux and while I haven’t had as much time to play as I would like I have to say that I have had no problems. While at the hospital with Dale this time I was not able to get internet access but the few times I could get to the Health Science Library I took my trusty jump drive and would quickly save entire webpages I wanted to read on to it and then back in the room I would transfer them to the laptop. I saved them to a folder on my desktop and could right click on a file, tell it to open it with Firefox and take my time reading. I kept an Open Office document open to make notes and a few times used Abiword the same way. I wrote my post on Blogging as Staff Development that way and saved it to my jump drive. When I got back to the Library to upload it I found I had a little problem with compatibility but I ended up opening it in wordpad, saving it as an RTF file and then just had to delete a little leftover formatting code before I could copy and paste it into my blog to upload. If I had stuck with Open Office I wouldn’t have had that many steps – it would have opened it Word no problem. I will remember in the future to either use Open Office or save the original in RTF – lesson learned. All in all I was pretty pleased. I spent a little time trying to learn Scribus which is a desktop publishing program much like Adobe PageMaker (which I have not used) and found that the tutorial I had saved to my laptop was for an earlier version so I need to go looking for more up-to-date tutorials. I played with GIMP a little too but time was limited and if you have ever been in the hospital you know that there are a lot of interruptions – don’t go there planning to rest – sheesh.
One thing about reading and writing offline, I found that I took more time and thought out what I wanted to say and edited myself several times before I felt my post was complete. I usually tend to write stream of conciousness style and then look back and make sure there are no glaring errors LOL. Sitting there propped up on my “chair/bed” (ugh – those things work but end up being uncomfortable both as a chair and a bed) while Dale napped, I found I enjoyed thinking, reading what I had written, thinking some more, making changes and just walking through the process instead of running as fast as my fingers will type.
I think both ways are fun and I want to remember to make that point when I teach others about blogging. The versatility of blogging lets you determine how involved you get according to the time you have or want to put into it.
I’d like to take a class in the basics of Linux just because I would like to understand how things work behind the scenes a little but for now I’m just doing the normal things the average person does on a computer – surf the web, compose and read email, write, and oh let’s not forget play little time wasting games! There is one called Anagramrama that my daughter is addicted to. It gives you a word and times you as you try to make as many words as you can out of it before the time runs out. It displays your words in blanks below with blanks shown for the possible words and when the time runs out displays all the words you could have made. I still fall back on mahjong and the old standby – solitaire which has a ton of variations on the linux version.
My daughter wanted to check it all out before we left for the hospital and she loves it. When I opened it up at the hospital for the first time I saw that she had created a picture and saved it. I found that changing your desktop wallpaper is easy and now I have a black background with neon looking letters that say “I love You Mom, Jessica”
On a side note, I am watching the news about all the fires in Arizona. Years ago when Dale worked on the pipeline we traveled through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon and it breaks my heart watching these areas that are burning. It was some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. I wanted to live there in a little cabin and just paint and sit on my porch and look at the scenery, maybe sell my paintings in a little studio in Sedona.
Update on Dale
We are home and he is definitely better. We have some issues to deal with and he still has a long hard road ahead as far as recovery but I think for the most part we are headed in the right direction. We are very tired and just trying to take baby steps and be grateful for every move forward. We are also immeasurably grateful to every single person who has come to our aid in so many ways. I don’t know if I will ever be able to express how blessed we feel. Prayers, emotional support, and love have come to us from all directions as well as physical help from food and money to canes and walkers, rides for my kids and people calling to check on them when we have had to stay at the hospital. God is amazing. We even found and gave support to other patients and their family members we met in the hospital. When I start giving in to the anger and despair at what has happened to Dale I try to remember those things and they pull me through. We continue to believe that God has a plan and we know that He will reveal things to us along the way if we pay attention and continue to have faith in his providing grace.
Blogging As Staff Development
We offer staff development classes that are aligned with 8th grade student technology skills and we approach technology staff development as though it were something we have completed after everyone has taken their assessments and demonstrated their proficiency. The truth is that technology is changing so rapidly that there needs to be continual education for learners. Arranging a staff development class entails arranging time, place, and trainer. It is often frustrating to the learner because there is either too much information or not enough depending on the users level of knowledge and interest.
Learning often takes place in a more permanent and efficient way when it happens at the exact point that it is needed.  A lesson plan calls for a specific task and a teacher needs instructions on how to complete that task. If the experience is successful then there will be repeat experiences and the initial knowledge will be a basis to build on. If that teacher is supplied with a vehicle in which to communicate that experience that is not only easy to use but allows for relevant sharing of information then the knowledge base will grow and be enhanced by the input of others with similar experiences.
The vehicle of blogging gives anyone with access to a computer a voice and the system of allowing comments offers immediate feedback. This can take place in a protected environment limited to a community of our choice, or it can be open to the entire world which gives access to a much more diverse source of knowledge. The convenience of being able to enter the dialog any time or place would promote integration of staff development. Instead of having to take several hours or an entire day, staff development is embedded in our job experience and tailored to individual needs. Users can link to specific information or print what they need.
Accountability and collaboration happen naturally as bloggers benefit from being a part of a community of lifelong learners that develops with the give and take of comments and shared expertise. Our mission statement is to create lifelong learners and blogging about our experiences with technology and it’s use in education is one way we can model that for our students.
Would like to hear more opinions about this.
Here we go again
We are on our way to Baylor again in the morning. There is still an abscess and hopefully they will just put in a drain again. I am praying he doesn’t have to have abdominal surgery. There are some other issues that we need to address while we are there this time and as much as I hate being there I will try to make Dale stay til he is really ready to come home. I think we came home too soon the last time.
I am taking a laptop with me this time and will spend some time playing with linux. So far I am very impressed. I know that there is a lot to the nuts and bolts of installing linux to begin with that I have no clue about. Once it is installed though it is wonderful! I have been able to surf the net, check email, install applications, create a few spreadsheets in OpenOffice, and listen to my music on it. I intend to spend some time learning a little more about the gnu graphics app gimp and maybe playing with Scribus a little while we are in the hospital. I don’t have wireless yet but I can get on the internet in the health sciences library at Baylor and I will have my jump drive with me. I also saved some webpages to it today so I could read them later. It pops up and tells you when there is an update and goes about it’s business without bothering you a bit. I plan to write some posts for my blog and then upload them later. It recognized my jump drive immediately and my mouse as well. So far – big thumbs up!
Smacked Upside the Head
It has been an incredibly long day and we are back home from the hospital temporarily. I have already cooked tomorrow’s supper and I’m going to get in a quick post before I become unconsious. I was reading one of my favorite blogs tonight and the post was about sharing creative thinking as opposed to hoarding it. As I read it I felt like I had been smacked upside the head. In everything – staff development at work, the medical community, our city council, even my personal life – change doesn’t come about because of something we do – it comes from a change in thinking. We are so busy “doing” these days that we are not paying attention. We are each stuck in our little narrow path and while the corporate world may want to hoard ideas and information, I think the majority of us just don’t take time to HAVE ideas much less share them. This isn’t a new lesson for me – a friend used to have a saying that went “I can’t always change my situation, but I can always change my attitude towards my situation.” We don’t have to think most of the time to get through our job, our day, our lives. It’s a gift we should give ourselves as frequently as possible. For myself, I know that most of the mistakes I make in my life are from spur of the moment, emotionally driven actions – no thought involved there. I know I drove home from Dallas today on autopilot – nearly a hundred miles of non-thinking. If you were on the highway coming from Dallas this afternoon, that realization should give you pause. I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Again
We are headed back to Baylor in the morning and we don’t even want to think about it so just know that we will pull it together and do what we have to do but other than that it just sucks. The vacuum cleaner lives by the way – if you read my last post you know I was premeditating murder. I got it fixed – I rock.
Another Day, Another Project
Last night was Dale’s first night back on dialysis at the center and right now he is so weak that dialysis just kicks his butt. He had a low grade temp and his blood pressure was high so we were up til midnight just checking his temp and praying we were not headed back to Baylor. He feels better this morning but we will watch his temp closely. We are hoping that it is just dialysis having this effect and that it will get better if we can get him built up some. We need a little break here.
I have to go continue a fight with my vacuum cleaner that I started yesterday. I tried to run the vacuum and it wouldn’t pick up. I checked the bag and it was full so I changed it. It still wouldn’t pick up so I figured it must be the belt. I couldn’t find the manual at first and I of course being the person I am, googled it and put in my model number trying to find instructions and evidently Hoover considers my model too old to bother with. I found two buttons with coin slot type ridges on them that said closed or easy access. I turned them but still couldn’t figure it out. While trying to look underneath the thing while sitting on the floor I managed to drop the heaviest part directly on my knee. It hurt so bad I couldn’t cry or cuss – I just laid there a minute and wished I had just thrown the thing over the fence before it attacked me. I finally found the manual and it had the cutest little picture of how to pop the front off to get to the belt. After pushing, huffing and puffing and jerking I finally managed to get the thing off and sure enough there was the broken belt. I wrote the part number down and headed off to Wally World to get a new belt. I bought several and of course six other things I thought I desperately needed (not) including a handy battery powered screw driver for my next project (hanging rope lights on our back patio) and headed back home proud and confident that I could star in my own version of Tool Time. I replaced the belt and scornfully told my son to stop trying to be “the Man” and let me do it myself. I managed to get the belt on the demon-possessed machine, replaced the cover, closed the little buttons, plugged it in and prepared to do battle with dirt. A smell like burning rubber, no suction, and difficulty pushing it across the carpet and a few choice words later and there I am taking it apart again. The second belt broke too! I stood the thing in the corner and glared at it for awhile and by that time I needed to start supper. I decided our relationship was in such a state that we needed a little time and space so I decided to wait til today to attack it again. Dale suggested I open it up and turn it on without the belt to make sure the shaft is turning. If it isn’t then it’s the motor and in all good conscience I can terminate the Hoover with prejudice. By this afternoon I will have a clean carpet or I will be guilty of “Hoovercide”!
We are home. We hope to stay home this time but I’m still taking it one day at a time. It was wonderful to sleep in my own bed, take a shower in my own bathroom, and cook food that Dale can have on a renal diet that actually has some taste and that he likes. Things I hated were Dale being in pain and having to go through so much physically, being alternately hopeful and terrified, leaving my kids here on their own, sleeping on a pull-out chair, having no privacy, having sleep constantly interrupted, missing work and the seniors graduation, being afraid that no matter what I did – it wouldn’t be enough. Things I am so very thankful for are Dale while still being very weak physically is now more like his old self and feeling more positive, for my kids being able to keep things together and finish school without us here, for meeting folks that were often in much worse condition than we were and finding that we could all pray for each other and hold each other up, for doctors and nurses that cared, for finding that I can drive in Dallas, for Robert at Hicks who scotch-taped my air conditioner together to keep it working for a little longer, for the prayers and concern and calls and emails from all the people who love us and who we dearly love, for Jack at the dialysis center who paid attention and realized that Dale had something else going on and needed to get back to the hospital, for all the people at the dialysis center who called us in Dallas to check on us and who gathered around to welcome Dale back tonight and probably much much more. I’m still running on adrenaline and I think I will probably crash and burn this weekend. I’m planning on a long Saturday afternoon nap with the kids here to look after their dad and maybe a long soak in the tub.
The Saga Continues
They are now telling us we will be here through Monday. I counted up yesterday and as far as I can tell we will have had 25 days total in hospital, 7 procedures, 4 antibiotics, 5 CT scans, 5 trips to dialysis and I have no idea how many docs. I can find my way to Target and back and my list of hints if you are ever at Baylor is as follows:
Laundry can be done on the 12th floor of the Wadley Building – carry quarters for detergent and softener sheets – the machines are free
Computers are available in the Health Science Library but no one tells you this – you have to ask. Just go to the Truett Lobby and go down the hall towards the chapel. Turn left just before you get there and go through the double glass doors. Go to the end of the hall and turn right and you are there. They tell me the reason they don’t have a program with laptops for patients is because they haven’t figured out the wireless thing yet. (maybe you should hire yourself out for a huge consultation fee Tony!)
Parking is insanely expensive, but for five dollars you can purchase a package of five parking passes. This means a dollar each time no matter how long you are parked there and ordinarily it would cost you $3.50 a day.
Go to Target if you need personal items like excedrin or toothpaste – the pharmacy here is outrageous. You can get on Washington and go straight to it and come back on the same street which is wonderful since so much of the streets here are one way and you can go in circles for awhile seeing Baylor but not being able to get to it!
If you know someone is going to be here and the family members will be around a lot, a gift certificate from Starbucks might be a nice thing since there is one located next to the Truett cafe. They also have loadable cards in the gift shop for the Atrium Cafe and probably Truett as well.
The gift shop has prepaid phone cards and for ten bucks you can get 250 minutes. Cell phone service is iffy in some parts of the hospital and my little trac phone is worthless but the phone card has been very helpful.
That is my list of things to remember if I ever know ahead of time that someone is going to be coming here. I think it would be a great thing if Baylor had a little welcome packet available for people that had this info in it but at this point all I care about is coming HOME.
Yesterday my daughter said she cleaned out the refridgerator while my somn was gone to debate practice. Eveidently she did a great job because he had to do the dishes when he got home because she was at bible study and he was not to happy about it. I bet when we get a new dishwasher they will pay close attention to instructions on the operation and care of it. They have never been without a dishwasher before and this has been a learning experience. They both seem to managing the laundry thing okay as well and I plan to let that continue when we get home. I am planning on working and I think their laundry can be something they can continue to handle. Maybe some of this experience will end up being a good thing as far as their ability to cope on their own. My usual way of handling everything is to yell and complain and then do it myself. That has come to an end. I am letting go of some control!
We are ready to come home – sit on the back porch with the ceiling fan on and a glass of tea, turn on the sprinkler and watch the grass grow!
Still Hanging In
Well for those of you that know me we are back at Baylor. We have been here since Friday morning of last week and are really hoping to come home this Friday. Dale had a huge abscess in his abdomen and according to the docs they removed a liter of “impressive” fluid from him. Evidently impressive is not a word you want the docs to use when they are talking about your body but we are having another abcess drained today and maybe that will help us turn the corner. This has been the least fun experience of my life so I can’t imagine what is has been like for him having to actually go through all this stuff. He has improved enough that I borrow a wheel chair and take him down to the garden here. It’s funny but everytime I feel whiny we meet people who have so much more on their plates than we do. I met a lady yesterday who has a nineteen year old diabetic daughter. She had a kidney and pancreas transplant and because of complications they have been here for 11 months! We are blessed that we will not have to be here much longer and that we have friends supporting and praying for us (as well as keeping an eye on our kids!) More later and hopefully posted from home very soon!
Nice Software, Nice Price
There was a good article on free educational software on NewsForge.The author talks about his childs elementary school class having several older Windows 98 computers and no educational software to run on them and then lists some very good open source software that he installed for them. I know we have a few computers that would fit the bill for this. I’d really like to try setting one up for use in the lifeskills class.
There was a some discussion on Digg about the article and I looked at some of the software. GcomprisX looks wonderful. there are math games, typing, geography, mouse skills, colors, sounds, and more. TuxPaint is a very neat little graphics program and TuxMath is based on the old Missile Command game and lets the kids shoot missiles if they get the correct answer. Anagramarama lets you find as many words as you can in as short a time as possible. It teaches spelling among other things. There is so much more available than there was when my kids were little it almost makes me wish they were little again – almost….
Technodreams
I did some thinking the last few days about what I would do with the computer lab at work if I could make the decisions and had the money to implement them. Here is some wishful thinking. I would cover the existing chalkboards with whiteboard. I would install shelves under the whiteboard for backpacks and books so I wouldn’t be tripping over them anymore (plus it would be a little harder to smuggle food and drink near a computer). I would knock down the wall between the lab and the classroom next to it and make it all lab. I would of course purchase newer equipment to replace the computers already there. I would add a color printer. I would use the new added space for several centers. One would be for graphics oriented projects – several computers (at least one mac since I’m dreaming), a scanner and color printer and software for graphic editing. Another center for video and audio editing complete with headphones that could be wiped down between users. Both centers would of course be equipped with appropriate software. There would also be an area for assembling projects. A few large tables with scissors, glue, staplers, highlighters. It would also be great to have a walled off area for teachers with computers and a coffee machine. I would wish for fairly short – maybe thirty minute tutorials on software and technology integration available where teachers could come and just kick back and get help if they need it or work on their own in an atmosphere that made it seem more like a break than staff development. No fluorescent lighting – an arm chair or two and space to spread out and work if needed. I could probably think of more given the time but I know it’s all a daydream anyway. If you’re going to dream you might as well dream big!
Passing the Test
The preliminary result for the blood culture they did on Dale shows nothing growing. This is a very good sign so we are hopeful. He is at dialysis tonight and he will feel better after that. It’s amazing how small your world becomes and what you get used to very quickly. It’s also amazing how you find joy in tiny everyday things that used to go completely un-noticed. We have spent more time alone in the last few weeks than we have in years and we have realized how lucky we are. We have each other, two great kids, and wonderful friends. We also have decent health insurance which a lot of folks do not have and I wonder how they manage and if the quality of care suffers. I know it must for the most part. I know that we have a lot of folks praying for us and I feel in my heart that prayer has made the difference. Time to go to the center and pick Dale up so more later.
Whispered Hope?
Well if I try to assess things objectively, Dale is complaining more today so that means he is better I think. He still can’t eat as much as he should but in the last two days he has gotten bathed and his hair washed and while those things pretty well knocked him out it was a very short time ago that he didn’t even care. He is still running temp and maybe we will get news about that tomorrow. He is up a little more and likes to go for a ride just to get out of the house. He is asking questions about the time frame of the last few weeks – he lost at least a whole week and that has to be pretty unsettling. His vision is quirky but that can happen when you aren’t getting good dialysis so we will ask the doc about it if it continues. He still gets hiccups and loses his breath and that causes pain but it seems to be happening a little less frequently and with a little less severity. I’m afraid to be hopeful so pretend this blog is written in a “whisper”
Still Here
Well friends are bringing supper every night next week. I broke down and admitted that I just can’t do it all. I can cook for Dale and right now I’m pushing protein shakes at him, but the kids are being neglected and I just can’t seem to get it all done. Today they are helping me get the house cleaned up and that will help my frame of mind. I worry about them. The line between parent and child gets blurred around here pretty often right now. My emotions are all over the place and they are spending some time petting me. I’m tired and I know it isn’t that I’m tired physically – I’m tired from worry and I’m trying to get a few things done today just to keep my mind from working overtime while we wait for the results of the blood culture. I helped him bathe this morning and maybe this afternoon after some food and hefty napping we can tackle his hair. We sat on the back porch for a little while with the sprinkler going and it was relaxing for both of us. We talked about what to do next if this infection is not a problem. He had talked about going back on peritoneal dialysis but had some apprehension about the possibility of peritonitis happening again. From what I am reading there is a higher chance of that exact thing and there is scarring that occurs with the infection so it is possible he would not get as good a dialysis if it would work at all. We will probably end up with him getting a fistula in his arm and getting hemodialysis til he can get a transplant. This means some lifestyle and diet changes for awhile but you have to be infection free for so many months before you can be a candidate for transplant and I’m not sure his body could handle going through this a second time. Break time over – time to get back to work. The bookshelves have about an inch of dust on them and I hear them calling me…
Has Anybody Seen My Mind?
If so please give it a a hug, a snack, and clean jammies and return it to me – I need it. Dale has had hiccups off and on (mostly on) since 4:30 this morning and my washing machine drain is being cantankerous. Sometimes it doesn’t want to work and when that happens I remove the drain hose from it’s little compartment in the wall behind it and insert a funnel and pour in some super drain de-clogger. I set a timer and wait fifteen minutes, pour some warm water in to flush it out and voila! Theoretically a nice clean working drain. I went through that process today. While I was waiting for the timer to go off I thought I would have breakfast (at 10:30 in the morning) and two phone calls later I was pouring the water in and thought I’d go ahead a start the laundry and then maybe I could go finish my breakfast. I started the washer and went to add water to a cup of bleach to pour in and when I walked back in there was water on the floor. did you know that when the drain hose isn’t in the drain pipe that water runs out as fast as it runs in? Duh. Luckily I had another load of dirty clothes sitting there waiting so I stopped the washer, mopped up, re-inserted the drain hose and went back to eating breakfast. I finished at about 11:30 – just in time to start fixing lunch. I’ll fix Dale something healthy but I’m thinking Bailey’s soup for me…