Teaching CS in Dallas

Trying to be Two Places at Once

I was invited to be at a focus group for Teacher Evaluations both today and tomorrow.

At the same time, I was required to be at a meeting to Kickoff Test Writing today.

There was no way to tell the first group that I needed to be at the second group. The second group didn't really know what the first group was doing, so I tried for both.

The first group was a bit odd. First they didn't know our bosses "name". He is Mr. Miles, not Dr. Miles. He actually seems to like to go by Mike Miles, but I'm not comfortable with that either. If you have to call him something other than Mr., you could probably all him by his Army title. Not sure which one though.

You never go wrong with Mr. or Ms. In fact, I won't correct you if you call me Ms. Weaver, but I will introduce myself as Mrs. Weaver.

I did tell the person who kicked me out of the first group and misspoke the bosses' title that it would have been nice to have an email to have a conversation with someone about the situation. I'm sure that won't happen.

I did get to see our campus officer and he did get to find out why he was there. And now I have an afternoon and a day to call my own. Have to test write on Wednesday (or whenever my partner can join me this week).

Want to learn how to make a movie that will play on a DVD Player?

I've been having all my students do this the last week and a half we've been at school and it's gone pretty well. I took all the movies I made down – which sounds really weird when you say it – I made a movie on how to make a movie – and I've posted them on my own moodle.

DM me on twitter, email me, post comments or send me smoke signals and I'll set you up on the course so you can play with it.

Flexible Year – Making Movies

So we've got something this year called the "Flexible Year". Seniors are here for part of the day, but not in classes. The kids that met the requirements were released last Thursday. We have kids who failed classes or missed too many days until June 12. We're out on June 13.

We can't change any grades but the current 6 sixes. We've already covered all the material. I'm bummed because my husband can't take any vacation from June 15 until sometime in September, so he's off on a vacation.

Solution: Declare it summer camp and have everyone do something fun.

I'm covering how to make a movie and giving them time to make their own. When they go home next week, they are taking home a movie burned on a DVD. All summer camp stuff.

I'm making movies of the course I put together and putting it on my Staff Development Moodle so that others can see it. Free to the people in my building, cheap for everyone else.

Making lemonade out of lemons.

Why I think Conferences Should be on Boats

Here's what I don't like about typical teacher conferences:

• Having to make decisions: Especially on which talk I want to go to.
• Transportation
• Food

CSTA almost solves the problem by putting everything in one hotel, but they do it in two days so they have something like 5 concurrent sessions.

The ultimate conference was on that I went to in 2008. I think there were some times when there were two sessions at once and it wasn't hard to decide which one to go to. The best thing was that there were few distractions. When we were in port there were no sessions (hint, stay on the boat, as few people do, and the ship's staff isn't busy).

The other thing about being on a boat is that it forces the participants to socialize which is really good with tech people. We don't typically socialize.

So when the conference is on a boat, you get on a boat and the people who are world's best at housing and feeding mass numbers of people do it. And having it for 5 days with only the boats activities to do, makes you a captive audience. Best yet, pick a boat that doesn't have a super lot of distractions, so that you can focus on the conference – something I've not sure they did with the new boat.

But one of the great things about the cruise conference I went to before, is that the organizers set things up from the first day so that people felt comfortable with socializing. All of us were encouraged to sit down with conference attendees and just talk – I got to have dinner one evening with one of the guys who wrote the book, and did the talk earlier in the day and ask him in more questions – and he didn't seem to mind a bit. I've never gotten to do that before or since.

My favorite conference is back on the boat

http://www.foundationsofdigitalgames.org/ is my absolute favorite conference and I will admit that the biggest attraction was that it was on a cruise boat.  I went for the conference in 2008 and it was the last year on the boat.  They just announced that they are back on a boat.  Yes, and I already checked, there are provisions for service dogs.

Coinstar win

Haven't used Coinstar in years as they take almost 10% of your money, but now they do gift cards. Amazon.com even! So I just dropped in $30 in coins and now can buy some Kindle books. Even better, was able to drive a block and put the code in at the local McDonald's hotspot.

Are we setting them up for failure?

I have a young man on my Robot Team who isn't a very good student. I'm not sure why, because I haven't had him in the classroom, but I'm concerned right now, because he has been STAAR testing for 3 days, and will be testing for the 4^th.

Apparently he didn't do well enough on the 9^th grade STAAR tests so we had him retake those tests on Monday and Tuesday. He's a 10^th grader, so we're having him take those tests. What is 11^th grade going to look like for him? Is he going to have to continue to retake the tests?

When does he give up?

Dulce has her clown moments too

I've a full time classroom teacher and Dulce and I spend most of our time being pretty serious. We both have our moments though….

Yesterday morning she decided that she needed to demonstrate that she didn't have to know how to walk on a leash. She had one of my coworkers in complete stitches because she first wrapped herself leash around one of my legs, not once but TWICE. Then she had the leash wrapped her body.

Now Dulce is completely capable of untangling herself. All of my beagles have obtained that talent from puppyhood.

In fact, as soon as my coworker was out of the hall, Dulce untangled herself. But when she spotted her again, she was back tangled.

Guess a laugh was needed for the start of the day.

Installing Office 2013

Office 2011 comes on my computer but I have to pay for it to use it. I have purchased Office 365 Home Premium for one year. I have it installed on 4 computers and took it off the old Vario to put on this one.

I had trouble installing Office 2013 before and don't remember how I did it.

This time, I uninstalled the Office that was on the computer first. Then I tried to install from the website and got the lovely "something went wrong". The Office 2013 Click to Run was still running.

I went to a chat assist and he couldn't get it to work either. Both of us tried deleted the registry keys and running a fixit that was supposed to delete.

So here is what worked.

• Made sure that Office was uninstalled.
• Made sure that all directories with Microsoft Office in them were deleted.
• Made sure that all the registry keys with Microsoft Office in them were deleted.
• Ran the FixIt to delete Microsoft Office.
• Ran the program to delete all temporary files and clear out the Recycle Bin
• Turned off the Firewall.
• Made sure all updates were done and complete
• Did two complete shutdowns.

All things suggested by the different supports sites about this issue.

It finally worked.

Seemed a little bit like performing an incantation.

Successful Computer Move (but some rough patches)

I'm using ANOTHER new Sony Vaio Touchscreen Ultrabook. My third.

Bought my first the day that Windows 8 came out – and yes, I know. But I'd been waiting for a new, expensive (for me) computer for months, and I'd always wanted a Sony. They haven't done a good job with this model.

The Friday before New Year's, the screen on the first one broke. Nice hairline crack and the touch screen stopped working.

Microsoft treated as if it was user damage, though I didn't drop it. Theory is that I carried it by holding it by the screen – not sure about that …

Anyway, Sunday, I was using the second one, doing normal laptop stuff and the hinge cover fell off. After dealing with everything I did before, I was not putting up with that, especially since the screen did go off at one point.

So back to the Frisco Microsoft store I go. They were great, did it was a manufacturer return, and I left with this, a shiny new Sony Vaio laptop. Frankly I'd rather have the ASUS they have for sale (oh, I do have an ASUS but not that one), but there you go.

Restoring was the easiest. I have been keeping some of my normal software on an external hard drive, saving me from having to download. I've also been keeping most of my development stuff on Virtual Machines. However, I had a real issue with installing Office 2013, which I'll do another blog post, as it will save me from problems in the future and maybe even the next guy.