May-Day! MAY-Day!

The full and busy month of May had me weeding through small department problems at computers and fertilizing tiny seeds of tablet intrigue in the department and faculty. Most of the trouble shooting was on the spot , or, "hey, Nicole.." moments of availability. Many discussions circulated around the DEG, attendance, amount of email and time eaten by email and how to handle email efficiently, Apperson scanners, and time eaten by technology (and not just the glitches and email!)
More on that below.
For now, Mike hosted a Tablet OneNote session for tech. coaches, and I will attend the summer class on Tablet use in the summer. I'm looking forward to it. I did not know some of the OneNOte features that I may utilize, like the templates. That really opened some doors in my mind. Also, Karl Craddock mentioned some of how he has used it, and how he envisions using it more, which gave me ideas. I suppose I could keep ALL my planning on the program, with the links and EVERYTHING I need a click away. I will have to grow into that rather than leap; I think the sharp, chilling shock of the metaphorical water will cause me to panic and consequently drown. That'd be bad. I am looking forward to building at least one course in on OneNote over the summer course.
Back to Apperson Scanners: OMG. omgomgomg. (I'm also trying out more text language in my tech. advancements.) So, we have to give frosh. 3 assessment tests late in the year, specifically editing and lit. in the month of May. Well! We now also have to scan them into the DEG, a diversion from faculty services assistance. Not a big deal, unless it takes FORTY minutes to scan 17 tests. augh! The sensitivity is TOO sensitive, and students make mistakes on their id's, as well as the directions on their id's, so it can be messy. Besides, sometimes the scanner just doesn't want to help. As a result, several answer sheets didn't work. The computer identified that the id was wrong. So, I erased the errors. It still misidentified the id.
I erased more.
Nada.
I scratched at it to remove paper bits.
Nada. The extra numerical value was still apparent to the Apperson scanner.
I peeled the paper off the id area, leaving a white middle splice of the answer sheet: it worked.
I repeated that process several times with many grunts, aurghs, and hurrumphs in between.
In the department others complained about the same error; in fact, Jim Weaver asked me to help. I explained the problem and process of recovery. He opted for the white-out technique offered by Minitti. The scanner read the same extra numbers, plus additional ones where the white hit.
Much noise and many minutes later, Weaver opted to remove the offending 2's from the answer sheet with a set of scissors. Surely the scanner could not perceive marks on numbers that no longer exist, he rationalized as he morphed into McGyver.
The scanner still recognized the 2's that were now hiding in the garbage. The period ended without the ONE test making it into the grade book. In short, grading those assessments into the DEG takes dramatically too long, from loading the key to getting the scanner to accept the sheets without fussing, rejecting, and eating time from the work day. I realize that is a complaint without solution, but it is identified.
For the email conundrum, we are growing more aware that time seems to be less available to us in education, and find that an entire planning period gets lost to emails. With increase of communication between parents/us and students/us (in electronic for, at least). Speaking of emails, I have a few to coordinated right now, so this blog with have to wait along side the grading.