Teaching CS in Dallas

Today is a staff development day and since I did 17 1/2 hours this summer, I have the day off. Of course, I always do more than the required hours (22 hours).

Anyway, I have noticed that the hard drive in my home office system has been whining and this morning I woke up to a black screen and the drive light lit. When I rebooted, I got a SMART drive error, telling me to back up my data as the drive was failing.

I did.

So I hadn't planned this, though today is full of mundane errands, I'm replacing the hard drive. It's a Maxtor and I bought a new Maxtor -- 200 gig at $49 after rebate. Not a bad deal.

The nice thing is how much easier it is these days to replace a hard drive, I was dreading it, and still am, but all I am having to do is run the MaxBlast software.

And I can wait until the whining disk is out of the system!

Posted by at 6:18 PM | Permalink

I made it through the entire six weeks without writing a referral.  Without sending a kid to the office.

I have not been cussed at.

Students have not torn up equipment.

They don't hit each other.

They haven't written on the hall with black marker -- and the kid that did that is even in my class.

They actually do the assignments I give them.

What a difference a year makes.

Oh, and I got to tell my principal "I told you so".  He and I were working on a project during summer school and I told him that I knew we were going to be a "Recognized" school again while he was principal.  We got some news today that indicates that I might have been right.

PRETTY COOL STUFF!

P.S. for those of you who haven't been paying attention ... last year I was teaching remedial math instead of CS.

Posted by at 9:47 PM | Permalink

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : Ten Programming Languages You Should Teach - You may want to learn them first

Alfred posts about an article at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016415,00.asp which is a very good article. Oddly enough, my classroom website is written in PHP, and I do recommend it to my Java students as the next thing they need to learn.

I also teach Visual Basic, and have taught some form of basic for 14 years.

AJAX is on my list to learn, as is Ruby, but I haven't had a chance, the others I have written enough code in each one to get something working I wanted working.

I would stress also that Assembly Language is something ALL Programmers need at some point. I've taken it at the college level twice, and it really helps you to understand what is going on under the hood, and I think it makes you a better programmer.

Posted by at 2:37 PM | Permalink

I blogged last week about how I had gone 4 weeks without sending a kid to the office.

I am now at 5 weeks.  I honestly doubt that has ever happened in any school year.

Seriously, this has been the coolest school year.  Right now, I'm sitting in my Webmastering class and every kid is on task and doing their assignment.  Okay there are only 9 kids in the class.  I had one who started to argue with me over the restroom rule a couple of weeks ago, and after the second exchange, she's since stopped even arguing.  She knows she'll get the pass when the 5 minutes is up, and she's cool with that.

We only have 3 more days and it will be six weeks, wonder if I will make it.

Posted by at 9:36 PM | Permalink

At least my own -- I have gone 4 weeks (and a day), without sending a student to the office.  In fact, I haven't had to send many to tardy center either.

I made sure all the administrators knew that today, because they were on my case last year because I had a group of frequent flyers -- except that I saw them in the office during my planning period too -- AND on the disclipine list. 

I haven't even had an argument with a kid -- though I have pulled two out to the hall and read them the riot act for playing instead of working.

Posted by at 4:08 AM | Permalink

Alfred and I are having a conversation on what is computer science...

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson : High School Computer Science - What's it all about?

And part of the problem, is that I do teach the office products during the first weeks of class. I take it MUCH faster than BCIS (what we call our office applications class). I did Word in a week, Excel in 3 days, etc.

I basically want my students completely comfortable with computers as tools before we start programming.

After we do the tools, and I include the internet, email, searching, etc. with that, we do basic hardware and software. That takes up about 9 weeks of the first semester and we've yet to even think about flowcharting in that time.

Posted by at 8:48 PM | Permalink

My evaluator is in love with a book (I have the title and author around here somewhere), and he insists that you have to display student work.  Well,  don't see printing programs.

I also brought in a digital photo frame that I picked up at Office Depot for a $70 rebate.  Ativa 3"x5".  My husband has one I gave him for Chirstmas.

I got the bright idea that it would be really fun to display screen shots of work -- but I couldn't get them to display.

So I finally did an internet search on the picture frame and found out how to do it -- you have to open the file with paint and save it with paint.

Posted by at 7:52 PM | Permalink

My next favorite tool (I also list this in order of how much I use).

Ghost is used to take an image of a hard drive.  I use it over the network.

I love it.  I keep as many as 5 working images at any one time.  When I want to do anything more than change one parameter or two on a workstation, I "thaw" it, make the changes, and then take an image.

I may tweak that computer a few times, but once I'm ready to go, then I use my image to install the software to all the other computers.  I usually do about 4 at a time, since we're sending the bits through the network.  While I am doing 4, I can tweak the 4 previous ones, as you need to reboot the workstation and make sure Windows OS sees all your hardware and change your machine name, otherwise they all end up with the same name.

Posted by at 4:53 PM | Permalink

I really do want to beat my head against a wall.  My evaluator just asked me if I can program.  I told him I wanted to beat my head against a wall.

I got asked what we do in Computer Science by a counselor the other day, too.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem.

Posted by at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

The next tool I couldn't live without is Deep Freeze.  We have the Enterprise Edition and I use it the most.

I don't have my students shutdown, so they can work bell to bell.  Instead, I use a couple of mouse clicks to shut down the computers are they are leave.

The other thing it does, is make an image of the computer -- that way the students can do whatever they want to the computer during the class period, including change the appearance of the desktop and when the computer reboots, it is back in the state I wanted it in.

I can't tell you how nice that is.  I was away to TCEA several years ago, and I ended up having to uninstall programs off of every computer, they were an absolute mess.

Also, if a computer starts acting up -- not uncommon when we're programming, we often inadvertively cause a memory leak, we just reboot and life is nice again.  Of course, we need to fix that program.

I do have to remember to turn it off when I use the next tool I'm going to write about -- Symantec Ghost.

Posted by at 3:20 PM | Permalink

The first tool that I love and can't live without.

LANSCHOOL!  See http://www.lanschool.com -- I have used a version of Lanschool since the day I started teaching in a modern networked lab.  It really really helps keep students on task.

Plus it is much cheaper and easier than dealing with a projector.  I just wish we had bigger monitors so we could do more on the screen at once.

Posted by at 4:43 PM | Permalink

That drove me crazy last year, but never had time to research it.

And an addition. If you are using a network share, for your URL, put

file://SERVER NAME/DIRECTORY/*

Setting a Trusted Location

With Visual Studio .NET (including 2002, 2003 and 2005) files on a network share may give an error. This error is caused by a security setting designed to protect the machine that Visual Studio .NET is running on. This is a set of instructions on setting the network share as trusted so that you can operate without the error message.

Posted by at 4:17 PM | Permalink

Alfred Thompson checked on the trip for me and the person he got information from said that the trip was too short to do anything productive.  I think I am going to email the organizer and decline, but state I wouldn't mind doing something like this in the summer and for a longer time period.

Posted by at 6:08 PM | Permalink

I have been curious about MySpace after all the media reports and what my fellow teachers have said.  Plus several of my students requested that they learn about MySpace.

After the walkouts, my district has blocked MySpace so we can't do anything in the classroom, but I do plan to talk about it soon.

The good news, is that Safari just made a book availabled called "My Space Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking from the Directors of BlogSafety.com"

By the way, BlogSafety.com is worth checking out.

I like the book so far, and I like their approach -- don't try to control your teenager but do teach them to act responsibility.  That's what I try to do.

I personally prefer leaving the websites on and getting onto kids when they go to the wrong place or at the wrong time.  I don't get to make all those choices, as the district does use Websense to block things.

Posted by at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By the way, I absolutely love this service.  I like to read, BUT I just don't have the room to store all the books, especially technical books and lets face it, they are obsolute at least a year later. 

I hate wasting paper!

Posted by at 5:58 PM | Permalink

My evaluator thinks I should go.

My Dean of Instruction doesn't.  She agrees that it is a bad time to be away from school and that we should do it in the summer.  She also agrees it costs a lot.

I haven't run it by the principal yet.

Posted by at 2:24 PM | Permalink

We had "Meet the Teacher" night Thursday night.  I had a good turnout, about 20 parents.  I gave them all my email address and asked them to record theirs, though I haven't done anything to contact them.

I have given a few parents links to their children's progress reports.  In some cases it was good, and in some, the parent started nagging both me and the child.

Posted by at 1:07 PM | Permalink

Apparently I have been invited to go to China.  See http://www.ambassadorprograms.org/upcomingprograms/education/clarence_ellis.asp

I'm not sure if everyone gets invited to it, or why I was picked.  I looked up the person who invited me, and I do not recall ever being at a conference or workshop with him, but I could have been at the same workshop several years ago in Austin.

I've shown the link to my husand and he doesn't think going to China is a good idea.  (Actually he said getting a 6 week old beagle puppy was a better idea).

My mother also doesn't think it is something I can handle, and I'm inclined to agree.

First, it would take me away from my classroom for week.  I am very disinclined to be away from my students that long, unless there is a very substantial reason for it.

Second, I am diabetic, insulin dependent and on an insulin pump.  Traveling right now is problemic for all diabetics, since we really need to travel with liquids, not just our medications.  Plus I am on a CPAP machine, and while mine travels very well, its emergency battery can be a problem.

Third, it cots $4,195 to go from LA.  While Dallas to LA flights booked this far in advance will probably be cheap.  I really can't afford it.

So I really doubt I will go, but it is an interesting idea.

Oh, and I have never had any desire to go to China.

Posted by at 4:11 AM | Permalink