Category: 30 Days of Blogging

30 Days of Blogging: Day 16

Don’t know if this is Google’s plan, but I have noticed that the recent changes that Google has been making to Material Design, the format it is using for its apps, seems to be very similar to the Star Trek: The Next Generation layouts for computer displays called LCARS. Library Computer Access/Retrieval System or LCARS is the operating system that the computers use for Star Trek during the period when The Next Generation takes place. I would often get and use any type of app, font or layout that used this format back in the early 2000s. I would customize my Windows backgrounds, I even had a desktop background based on this and would rearrange my icons so that they would match up with the areas in the LCARS where someone would interact with those items.

This would be an interesting development and I don’t know if it’s tied into Google’s new operating system, Fuschia, but I would be all over it. I have always thought that LCARS was an interesting way to show and use data on a computer, much better than the linear method that we have been using since the early years. With its blend of graphics, text and touch screen I’m kind of surprised that other companies have not tried to create something similar. Now with all of the rounded corners, half circles, and whole circles, for the labels and other text boxes, it really looks like Google is moving in this direction.

I’ve look in the Play Store and in Chrome to see if anyone has developed something already for any of my devices and it looks like there isn’t a whole lot. So it will be interesting to see where Google takes this

30 Days of Blogging: Day 16

I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld this past weekend and he made a comment that when you do stand up comedy, you are testing your material every night. That’s exactly the way teaching works. I can sit down and come up with what I think is a killed lesson plan, follow all of the rules and use all of the strategies but in the end, it all comes down to the mix of students on a specific day and at the specific time. I can see why so many teachers are able to make the switch from teaching to stand-up and vice versa.

Teaching is a performance art and should be prepared for in much the same ways. Every morning I start prepping my class and my equipment so that I can put on my best show and entertain as I teach. I have tried planning classes where the students do most of the learning by reading and watching videos but that never seems to work. It can’t occupy their short attention spans. I usually try to switch things up every 12-minutes or so and those classes seem to work the best. Even on those days when I’m giving a test, I only let them work on the test in the last 15-minutes or so because if it was a whole period, they would go nuts.

I read once that when introducing new material or starting a new unit, teachers should treat it like the opening to a blockbuster movies. Start with something exciting that grabs their attention so that they hang on for the rest of the ride.  Much like a roller coaster, the first big drop is the best and the rest is just filler until the end. It’s hard to do that but when you start to think in those terms, lesson planning does become a little easier. I’ve also thought that planning a unit should probably follow the hero’s journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell so that its familiar for the students. And if I can make the students the hero in the journey, then so much the better.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 15

Been thinking about death a lot recently. More so since my sister-in-law just had a heart attack and looks like she may not make it. But I’ve been thinking about it for at least a couple of years, since my Dad died. He was in his seventies and my grandfather was in his seventies so it is pretty likely that I won’t survive my seventies either. That gives me about 20 years if I’m lucky. 

I joke with my students at school when we talk about the future that they will be alive to see some of the changes: robots, AI, 3D printing bodies, downloading memories, etc., but I won’t be around to see any of that. But the reality is that it probably will be like that. I’ve also been more aware of it as I’ve been teaching my Health Class this year. Almost every day I’m reminded of how unhealthy of a life I’ve been living and while I have gotten better, I could do even more. I also think about my kids and when I realize that I may not see them married or see any grandchildren that makes me kind of sad.

It makes me also wonder if this is all there is or will there be something afterwards. I sorta believe that there is something beyond this existence and that I will eventually be reincarnated again to work on my next round of karma, but there is no proof, so what will it be? I’ve been reading recently some theories about quantum dynamics and the soul and the author makes a good argument, with some proof that our consciousness could be entangled with our past and future selves and this is how reincarnation works. Some of my own experiences have followed along with this reasoning so there could be truth there. But as usual, there is no way to find out until I’m gone.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 15

I’ve been thinking of writing a book for a while now and I’ve been working out some of my ideas with some research. I want to write something along the lines of science fiction and I always like sci-fi books where there is some real science behind it or at least the concepts hold together even is the science isn’t entirely correct. I’ve been very underwhelmed by a lot of the new science fiction that I have been reading, nothing has been grabbing my attention and making it so that I can’t put the book down. The only thing that has been close had been some of the stuff by Peter Hamilton because his work really does hang together even if it is not always based on real science.

What I need to work on is to develop a method of working so that I can improve my writing. This blog is definitely helping. I feel as though I have been getting better at writing by practicing in this blog, but I also feel that the blog makes a lot of what I write one dimensional. It is mainly from my perspective and I’m not creating and developing characters or coming up with plots, story arcs and all of the other things that go along with writing a good story.

I invested in a Storyclock Notebook which comes at the whole idea of a story as a basic outline that follows some the work of Joseph Campbell. The outline is set up like a clock and your story just follows the hero’s journey as it travels around the clock. The method of the notebook suggests watching any movie, making a note of the time when each part happens and observing the patterns in different types of stories. Then you can use this knowledge with your own stories to develop a well-rounded narrative that doesn’t skip any steps in the story and helps you to develop out different parts.

I just need to practice myself and start working at it.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 14

Teaching computers in a middle school is never an easy job. It’s not so much the crazy kids or the behavior problems, it often getting the right mix of teaching something that is challenging enough for the more engaged students without losing the less engaged students. It can also be about creating a curriculum that other computer teachers, who may not be as “into” computers, can handle.

I often find myself thinking of some exciting and challenging material that I think the students can handle, only for it to be way over their heads or too hard when it comes to the assignments. I can often adjust the assignments as we go but for some, I feel like I have lost them and they are turned off to learning some of these cool things. Then getting my fellow teachers on board with teaching some of this material can really be a challenge if they are not computer geeks.

This year particularly I have felt worn out over teaching the curriculum that we are trying to agree to and I don’t look forward to the future. Every time I try to inject some real 21st century skills into what we teach I get shot down as “they need to learn to keyboard” or “they need to learn to write business letters” or something else along those lines. It’s only been recently that I have won the battle to teach coding in one of our classes. But even that has only been a partial victory since the class is called Creative Computers so that the other teachers are free to teach things other than coding.

In the meantime I have students who want to learn to animate, 3D model, design games and a whole host of other computer skills that we can’t seem to build into our curriculum. One of the things that I would really like to work on is developing a class that is totally project based so that the students can produce a real tangible product when they are done and learn some real computer skills in the process.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 13

Not sure why but I have always been wary of the number 13. I used to stay home on Friday the 13ths, and I tried to avoid anything that had a 13 in it. For my 30 days of blogging, this is my 13th entry and I thought of skipping it so that I wouldn’t have to use it, but I know this is an irrational fear and not grounded in reality.

What is strange is that I have been afraid of it since I was a kid and before I had any kind of context surrounding it. I have thought that perhaps this is a holdover from a previous life. Perhaps the number 13 had something to do with my death in a previous life or perhaps it is something that I need to resolve before I can ascend to be  more enlightened. What is also strange is that both of the important women in my life were both born on the 13th. There does seem to be some connection there someplace.

The only time I broke a bone was on Saturday the 14th which was close enough to Friday the 13th to give me pause. And although I can’t be sure I think the only time I have gotten stitches was on a Friday the 13th. It’s weird but I am always paying attention when a 13 comes to call.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 12

Today was a cold December day so I tried to stay inside as much as I could. I still needed to get my outdoor lights hooked up which I did but froze my fingers off. It wasn’t cold enough that I had to be careful touching anything metal, but it was pretty close. But the lights are hooked up now and they are a Dawn-to-Dusk variety so they will stay on all night and turn themselves off in the morning. I’ve thought about taking them off the switches that they are currently on, but I figure there may be a time when we want to shut them completely off.

The next thing that needed to get done was getting my portable hard drive with wifi set up. It’s the My Passport Wireless Pro by Western Digital and it has been an awesome gadget. I have put all most all of our DVDs, music, ebooks and even photos on it and we take it with us when we travel so that the kids have something to do in the truck. Each kid can watch whatever movie they want to watch or listen to whatever music they like and it’s all available no matter if we are traveling down the road or staying at a hotel. Luckily I have enough content right now to satisfy all the age levels of my kids but I can see that as they get older they may want more diversity. The device also has Plex built in so I would like to get it set up so that it can be our Plex server for our house.

The next thing we had to do was get our Christmas tree set up. Luckily it is a artificial tree so we just get it out of the box, plug it in and put the ornaments on and it’s done. We do it as a family so it is kind of fun working on it and Maya is still pretty excited about getting it done. I put the tree on a Belkin wifi plug so we can control it with an app and I can automate it.

Overall not a bad day and we got a lot done.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 11

Well after just 10 days I finally missed a couple. I knew that Thursday would be tough since I had to take pictures for a boys basketball game and those usually run pretty late. So I needed to do my blogging either after school or before dinner, neither of which happened. Then I missed Friday too which was also tough because I had to take pictures during the school play. Again this was a late night affair and I had to run some errands before we left.

So I missed two days, but I’m going to keep going because I’m not always sure that these 30 day challenges are always consecutive. I can still keep going and complete 30 days of blogging, it will just take 32 days from when I started. I think it is assumed that these challenges will be 30 consecutive days but my goal is to do the task for 30 days so that it becomes a habit or that I can incorporate it into my daily routine. If I can keep going for the entire 30 days then I feel that I can still incorporate the practice into my daily routine.

So I will continue with my 30 days of blogging and hopefully won’t miss any more days. Monday will be tough again because we have a band concert at night. I don’t think it will go as late at night and I think I can still find some time on Monday to get some blogging in.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 10

The winter is tough for getting anything done. The sun goes down too fast and doesn’t come back up fast enough. The weather is cold and rainy or snowy or icy. I would like to get some exercise in but I don’t like to go out when it’s cold and dark. When I get home, I like to make a fire to sit by and just watch TV, read a book or surf the Internet. I know it’s only a couple of months but it sometimes feels like forever. I probably eat too much, especially with no exercise, and don’t eat very good food. 

Today in class we were watching the Supersize Me movie for health class and my thoughts always dwell on how well I’m eating, exercising and staying healthy. Right now I haven’t been doing too good of a job because of the winter days. I just need to make a better effort at eating better (or not at all) and finding ways to get some exercise in. We have a treadmill that I need to get set up and I need to walk to the elementary school to pick Maya up when I can. The last few weekends, we have had leaves to rake which have been good workouts on the weekends, but it is still the in-between days that I need to be better about. My next 30-day challenge will involve some kind of exercise routine so that I can build that into my daily life.

The good news is that it is pretty easy to write in my blog when I’m sitting around just watching TV or getting warm by the fire.

30 Days of Blogging: Day 9

Today I was in a meeting with some of my fellow computer teachers (they like to be called business teachers) and we went over our plans for something that our school district will be implementing over the next few years, Standards Reference Grading. We are planning this switch to better help students (and teachers) figure out what is the most important concepts that they should be learning and testing to see if they are proficient in these. We will still need to give the standard A, B, C, D, and Fs but these will hopefully be better aligned with what the students have learned and how the students are progressing.

I’m not going to go into the details of how Standards Reference Grading works but we spent today creating what is called Proficiency Scales which are 4-point scales to rate our students on based on the specific skills and abilities we want our students to leave our classes knowing. What has gotten better about these meetings, especially with our new teachers, is that we have been able to focus better on what are the most important things that we should be teaching. Before we had one teacher who kind of dominated the discussions and she would try to make us follow what she was doing even if we disagreed with her. She would often make it sound that we agreed with what she had suggested in a previous meeting (or even a few minutes before) when that was clearly not the case. Now I feel like we have some sanity for what is going on and I feel like I have some support for only working on the items that we should be teaching in computer class and not a lot of extra and in my opinion less important items.

Before we had these new teachers, we had a group of teachers who were really living in the past and want our computer classes to be only about typing and making documents (preferably business documents). Now while I feel those are important, there are so many more skills and knowledge that we could be giving to our students with computers. I felt that the road that we were heading down was a dead-end that would only have left us as a support class and not a separate subject in our own right. Today I have a better feeling about what we will be teaching moving forward so that we can make our case for why our subject area is still important and needed.

I think we should be building in more coding, 3D modeling and Digital Media skills but those will come with time. And I will always be able to work those into projects that I have the students do in my various classes.