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.

Tag! It's it...

So, Mike shared del.icio.us with us and discussed social bookmarking at our last tech. coach meeting. Wow, it's a lot, as usual. Thankfully, Mike streamlines and picks/chooses what he doles out to us. Social Bookmarking though seemed like a great concept, but I didn't quite grasp it all; for example, I could not figure out nor follow instructions to "invite" a friend. It really was quite simple when I sat a day or so later with it.
Since opening my own account on del.icio.us.com, I have transferred many of my webpage links from my webpages and webpage sources to my network links. This is much easier to manage and access, all at one place and just one time. I also fowarded my data link to a colleague (who has yet to make a del.icio.us account, so I could not just invite her to view). I think this will be a very valuable way to manage web links, as well as share web links. Already, I have spoken with Sabra Gerber as she has inquired about making more links available to students. Were she to have her own account, she could easily enable students to view all vital education link she has on her account, while hiding the non-education links.
Better still, is the tagging of the links. I love attaching a "tag" to a link, such as "Macbeth" so that all links per category can be easily accessed without hunting through pages of information. Tags are wonderful!

Tablet Intro

After spending several days developing a 3minute "Here's Tablets" introduction for the English department, I finally presented yesterday at our 6:50a.m. meeting. The intro went long, about 12 minutes, oops, but it did go very well.
I showed some main features (spinning screen, stylus use, inking on documents, PowerPoints, and the desktop, and I showed OneNote. While presenting I offered use ideas and what my experience has been, along with fielding a question or twelve.
I am very optimistic about the department's eagerness to embrace the tablets as a new and useful tool for teaching. AND I'm beginning to book more one:one meeting; for example, I met with Andrea Olsen yesterday for some one: one work on the tablet.

A funny thing happened on the way to the ...FORUM

I'm doubling blogging this: curiosity on forums. Are they something we can use effectively? Or , just another tech trick with which to play? Even if that is the case, would students dance with delight at the opportunity to use a forum for class, enjoying the trick we use to enlighten?
Currently, I'm blogging way into the forum thought, after passing through the town of Wiki. We will see what I stumble upon in my curious quest.

It's been a week...

...and a busy week at that. A disgruntled projector in room 116 needed attention after school. As 'problem solving manager', I enlisted Mike B and Tony's help after not completing the fix myself. It really can take three people to change the proverbial light bulb. But that was only yesterday; more of the past week involved preparations for enlightening English department members on uses of the tablet so that they can better choose to use one next year. I began an interactive power point to show and use with the tablet on our next late start morning meeting. Also, I discussed with Mike and Minnitti (separately) technology and tablet thoughts; the give and take provided insights and concrete opportunities for moving forward on the tablet front.



And, as always, there were the on-the-spot questions from various individuals, some about printing, scanning, form issues, Internet issues...it is nice that often when someone asks for help on a 'broken' or 'why isn't this working' sort of problem, merely standing over his or her shoulder does wonders to repair it. I know I've often experienced the same such mystical intervention. Technology, go figure.

Dept-ditties

So the department rolls on with advancements in technology. Over the past weeks, a handful of English members commented on interest in tablet use. I continue to use it visible, like at department meeting, hoping to illustrate tablet use to more individuals. Still, other technological opportunities have been seized, while others fell flat.

Quickly today, for example, I showed Sabra how to better use labels in her blog; other individuals blogging in English are Gina and Leah, whom I helped initiate into the blog-land during a lunch area. This occurred more by orchestrated happenstance as I was working in the office when I overheard Leah discussing blogs and jumped on the moment. Getting started blogging really only takes a lil' nudge. Others, too, have ventured into blogs with ease of trial and error.

Many more of my projected offerings to show or teach an element of technology die cold deaths. Most teachers during a free or lunch period reject the immediate "let me show you...." unless already answering a question that necessitates the computer in front of us. We are all busy and scheduled into slots of time. Even more, out of school day hours are less used, though more advertised via Mike Bachrodt. I am talking more to Mike about ideas on getting teachers to accept invitations to learn more about what technology will be in the future classroom that we will all be using. For now and with the greatest success, I snag moments of sharing to pique curiosity for more; eventually, someone will ask for more training on a given topic or tech. device.

There is always so much more and new to learn that it is difficult to keep abreast of it all. The "it" being technology, as well as course content information. We continue to push ourselves to be better teachers with the content; we develop new aspects for each class after assessing successes; we grade; we learn every new technological advancement that is available to us.

Right. Not quite on that last point. There simply is not enough time in the year to do it all. My personal frustrations lie in the adage, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, as well as balancing my own learning and work. Overall, I sincerely believe we are doing a fine job as teachers with keeping in line with new technology; and I believe as tech. coaches we do make a difference. We're all good.

Wha'z'ah Wiki

Even though it sounds a bit "Buck Rogers," it's not. Okay, maybe a bit with the forward technology since the early 80's. (I admit, I had a crush on Twiki.)

Currently, Mike is showing us much about them, and allowing us to play around a bit on them. Learning more about them will take some time of playing around on the various sites. As I test out what I can do, I hope to find an outlet that I can use and manage easily for classes. Or do like Trish Weidig and have the kids do it. Why not?