comp day

What I Did This School Year
Come and share how you used technology this year in the classroom. Let us know if it went well, or share your horror story. We’ll discuss how it could have been better, or worse. Feel free to bring products of the lesson to share. If you have a digital copy of the lesson bring that along also and we can post the file on our Starcast page.

Here is the mp3 file from the April 22 Star grant meeting. 23.6 MB (25 minutes 50 seconds)

Cell phones in Learning
Cell phones have the capability to become the “Swiss army knife” for student research and organization. First, we explore using cell phones as data collection tools: audio recorders, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. Additionally, we consider how classroom projects can be developed for cell phones: creating ring tones, text messaging, mobile WebPages, and mobile surveys. Finally, we contemplate the future features of cell phones and how those features play a role in learning.

There’s some line that I’m not literate enough to quote about the best laid plans of men, so I will not try. Our topic today wound up being “technological musings.”

There were only three of us present and before we got started recording a pretty good discussion about technology emerged, so we turned on the microphone and went from there.

Enjoy.

The discussion will be audio recorded, converted into mp3 format, and posted on the internet for listening as a podcast later. Come and share your favorite feature tips / tricks about the operating system you use. This will be a best / favorite practices podcast of how we use an operating system and how we (try) to make it more efficient to meet our needs on a daily basis. We will have Windows and OS X machines here so that you can show others what helps you make this piece of technology called a computer work for you.

My machine returned this morning. According to the paperwork included neither the logic board nor the cable were replaced. Only the hard drive was replaced, which means that everything I had was now gone.

I plugged in the time machine at the proper prompt and things started moving along. The experience wasn’t quiet flawless. Once it hung up and I rebooted, and there were a couple of small application issues that were easily resolved. After years in a pc world, I would rate this experience with time machine pretty close to perfect. In under an hour or so everything was like I had left it at last backup.

The only exception is the partition for windows. My time machine didn’t back this up (I knew this ahead of time) and I didn’t choose to reinstall windows. I believe I can live without it.

Monday at about 3:30 my mac died. I had been using the machine all day in class and was attempting to print a roll sheet for the tech class coming up. My machine froze. Odd, I thought but attempted to reboot. When trying to reboot only a gray screen would come up, upon trying again I got a flashing folder with a question mark. A quick google search yielded death of a hard drive. Great, I packed up the machine to take home, maybe toss out the window on the way.

At home, after a bit more intensive search there were some differing opinions and the suggestion to try and boot to the install disk. I tried this and guess what, it didn’t work. Not only did the mac not recognize the hard drive but did not recognize the disk either. AND I could not eject the dvd. Further googling I found that the manual eject doesn’t exist, but you can hold down the mouse button on boot and the dvd will eject itself (nice to know.)

I closed everything back up and emailed our grant person. I was told that my email would be forwarded and would be advised how to proceed. I received the machine about nine months ago, so the 1 year warranty should still be in effect.

Another colleague happened to email that I could check the warranty date on Apple’s site, so I did. Surprise, the warranty was “estimated to expire” in three days. I forwarded this to the proper authority and was told that it would be passed on.

I ended up rooting around in Apple’s support site and found that our warranty does provide one year of repairs, but we are only able to call Apple, now, for a fee of $49. I kept poking around their site and found that I was able to request a waiver and get permission to speak with tech. support without a fee if granted this waiver. I requested and said waiver was granted.

Once again I emailed my contact person and requested permission to speak with Apple (I didn’t want to step on any techno toes.)

The call to Apple was as pleasant as any tech support call I have ever made. The tech. guy was from the states (I didn’t ask, but am willing to bet) and very patient. We went through some trouble shooting steps and he determined that my mac had issues (duh!) He said when they received the machine the logic board would be replaced first, then the cable to the hard drive, and then the hard drive if necessary. He did warn me that if the hard drive was replaced all of my data would be gone. I mentioned that I had been using the time machine and was told that if my hard drive was replaced I could plug in the time machine drive and my machine would be restored to exactly like it was before death.

He also commented that I was “lucky” as to the timing of this because of the warranty expiration looming. I have to wonder what would have happened if I had not been told that I could check warranty expiration dates online and just waited on the tech. people involved in our district (and grant writer’s district.) I’m guessing I would have a pretty white doorstop given our financial straits.

Oh well, my machine is now gone. Hopefully in a couple of weeks it will return.

Here is the mp3 file from January 27 Star grant meeting. Star0127 23.2MB (25 minutes 23 seconds)

Let me first say that the audio quality is fair at best. The sound level is low, so after you download crank up your volume. I take the blame for this, I had equipment failure and my backup machine wasn’t quite up to par.

I’m not sure that we cleared up much with anyone there about CSCOPE. There seemed to be a lack of knowledge about CSCOPE and how to implement, how much to use, and I don’t know what.

As much as I hate to say it, we might need some sort of staff development. I will surely regret saying this, but I wouldn’t mind being a part of the staff development that got everyone on the same page with CSCOPE.

Oh, let me say thanks to Craig. I didn’t realize how much he was carrying me through this before today. He makes facilitating these discussions look easy.

Craig, Charles, and Dale McCurdy (CSCOPE Content Area Coordinator, Science for Region 16) discuss CSCOPE. There seems to be a fair amount of confusion about what this is, why this is, and how to use it. We hope to clear the muddied waters a bit.

Here is the mp3 file from this discussion. 6.83 MB (29 minutes 50 seconds)

Dale also gave us a pdf of how to use a feedback tool in CSCOPE, so if you are using and want to give feedback check this out.

Here is installment number 2 in the sock puppet series.
For those that are youtube.com deprived here is a link to the file.

Next week Craig and I will discuss CSCOPE with Dale McCurdy. Dale has had a hand in the development of CSCOPE and was with Region 8 for the past few years. He is current title is CSCOPE Content Area Coordinator, Science for Region 16. We hope to produce a podcast with an overview of CSCOPE.
If you have any questions or comments that you would like me to pass on to Dale either comment below or email me if you do not wish to have your name associated with the question/comment in any way.
After this discussion with Dale I hope to have another STAR grant meeting on the specific topic of CSCOPE. Your listening to the overview with Dale would make a good prerequisite to attending.

Here is the anticipated first episode of sock puppet theatre!
I’m not able to get the embedded youtube player here on this page, so I’ll settle for the link. If you know how to get the player here on the blog page let me know.

For those that are youtube.com deprived here is a link to the file.

Here is the handout for today’s class.

Here is the page with the audio file.