Winding Down

This has been an interesting program. There are many times that I questioned if I should have done the program, since I make the salary raise in the first two weeks of summer doing construction. Then I tell myself that some day I will not have to do construction in the summer and I smile.
I have learned a lot throughout the program and will appreciate the extra time with my own kids next year. When I reflect back on the last year, I understand that I took on too much. Thankfully my wife keeps me floating with all of her hard work. With chess club, cross country coaching, carpentry club, coaching hockey and grad school, there was very little time for anything else. This last year was a tough year. I have heard of teacher burnout and I totally understand why now. These last few days I have spent re-roofing a house and it reminds me of why I became a teacher again. The days are physically tough doing construction but working with the guys is just a tad bit different than working in a profession dominated by women. Now if I can just finish this action research thing, I will be able to relax.

How a Computer Works

How a Computer Works
Here are some basics about how a computer works. First off, a computer is basically a machine that can store information in a useful format. How this is done is by converting information from a series of on and off switches into usable code that the computer can read. This is done by some components of the computer. The large processing part of the computer is called the mother board. This is where the CPU chip is stored. The CPU is the central processing unit and it acts like the brain of the computer. That means that it directs the functions of the computer. The information can then be stored in the hard drive which is a series of metallic disks that store magnetic information. Information can also be stored in the RAM which uses a series of magnetic charges to store information. External storage devices can also be purchased to add additional storage or to backup the system. The RAM is only a temporary memory because once the power to the RAM is lost, the information is lost. The amount of RAM that a computer has will determine how fast it will operate. Current computers come with 2 to 4 GB of Ram. Computers can also have multiple CPU’s that are stacked on top of each other for faster operation.
What happens when a computer is turned on is that it goes through a BIOS process where the first instructions are sent to the CPU. This is what takes the computer time to get running. The system must identify, test, and basically let the computer know which devices that it needs to get up and running. The amount of time that this process takes depends on how many software operations you have running on your computer or how many networked computers are using them. This is the booting up process and it can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes depending on your computer speed and age.
Each computer has its own operating system. Operating systems have changed over time and a computer owner will need to upgrade their system to be compatible with new and ever changing software and programs.

Windows 7

Operating System:

I decided to do some research on Windows 7. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing in July of 2009. It came out only three years after Vista. This makes sense to me because I have a number of bad things about Vista (though I have never used it). What makes it unique is that it will be compatible with the older versions and with Windows Vista. Some other new features are a new taskbar, the, “Superbar” and a home networking system called the HomeGroup. The moviemaker will not come with Windows 7 which is not a big deal to me since it always fried when I tried to use it anyway. After my interview with my brother in law, I think our school made a good move by skipping Vista. Many companies are in the process upgrading to this system so to keep up with the times, we will all need to upgrade. These are some of the requirements of Windows 7.
 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
 DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Techie

I talked to my brother in law for the "Interview a Techie" project. He is currently employed at NML in Milaukee. My wife also works at NML as a systems analysist but she does not consider herself a techie. I asked Jason about the opperating system that they use. He explained that they recently changed over to Windows 7 from XP. He explained that for a large corporation, it is not viable to be up with the latest trends so they skipped right past Vista. They have 5000 employees downtown and service 15,000 throughout the country. For them, it is a huge labor process to upgrade. It is also a huge labor process to keep out hackers and remove bugs from the system. Since Windows is an accepterd platform throughout the world, it works well. Although there are some MACs in the company, they are used in the advertising department and mainly used for creative services.

Computer Architecture Activities.

Eric and I watched the Pirates of Silicon Valley last night. I had no idea how devious Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were. I would even say that Steve was a bit if a nut job. The movie was both entertaining and informative. It amazes me that they were able to take something like the Altaire and turn into something that everyone could use. Watching those humble beginnings to what they have become now is quite amazing. After we watched that, we watched the Triumph of the Nerds movie as well. It was nice to watch the movies in that order because it filled in a lot of the gaps. For use as technology leaders, I think that these were very important movies for us to watch. I am still using a PC but I have seen the advantages of each.

Computer Architecture 1

There is hope! Prior to this last class, I was wondering how it was going to be possible to wrap up everything by the end of the program, now I feel there is hope!

On the topic of what was learned this week. The video we watched on computers was very thought provoking. The speed that computers can handle information is amazing to me. I still remember working on a Comodor 64 back in high school. My brother just thought it was the best thing ever. I really didn't care for it at all. I was more interested in games. We have lived an interesting era of being able to watch computers evolve into something completely amazing and transforming.

This week we will be taking apart a computer to learn what everything does. I look forward to it! I intend to take apart an old computer of mine and I will also leave it up in my room for student to view. Why not make it a learning experience for students as well?

tokbox

What I learned this week and how I hope to apply it..
Well, this last week had a number of firsts. I was able to send off a bunch of tokbox videos to friends via email. I also had some students come in over lunch and create a tokbox video. It was actually pretty fun and interesting. I was able to send it via email from my own computer to my school account, then I brought it up on the classroom computer and project the video for the entire class.
This week I also watched a bunch of great videos because I picked up on their links via the Twitter account. What I am starting to like about it is that there is little extra junk that I really don't care to read. It can be short and to the point and harder to abuse because it limits how much people can write.. and I like that.
I watched a very cool post that Louis posted about technology in the future.. it was a wonderful conversation while this guy went out and picked up some Lobsters and cooked them. It was awesome so I reposted it again. (retweeted)
Today was also a new for something else at school. I have been having the students create wiki pages and present them on the projection unit. Now we all open their projects on a laptop at the same time. Then the students can comment on their projects. It was much more interactive this way and the students enjoyed it.
Every day, something new.

New Classroom Blog

http://mrcowentjms.blogspot.com/

Here is a link to my new classroom blog..

blog 4

Wow life gets busy.

What we have learned and how we hope to use it.

Two weeks ago I became rather frustrated with screen toaster. After a couple attempts from school, I was ready to scream. Then once I came home and tried it, it worked like a charm. What I learned was that something like screen toaster could be a very useful tool for teaching student how to do almost anything. The possibilities are somewhat endless. The way that I intend to use it is to teach students how to access their online textbooks and how to use the wiki.
More importantly, I have been asked to do a presentation to the staff on how to create and use a wiki. Since I am not much of a public speaker, I plan to have a screentoaster tutorial all set up so I will not have to say much in front of the staff.

I have also started a classroom blog as an experiment. I have only told a few students about it and the love the idea. I also convinced my wife to check it out and she thought it would be a great way to give parents updates on what is going on in the classroom. I like the idea of having students updating the site with their interpretations about what we are learning about.. or they could even share some funny stories that I could post to the blog. These are just some ideas about. I wonder if I will do away with my classroom website and replace it with a blog next year.

week 3

Where do I begin with this week.

There are a few things I would like to use in the future from this week. We watched a discussion about where schools will go with the added research we now have on brain activity and memory. I was intreagued by the conversation we watched and the opinions of the pannelists on where our school system is going to be in 40 years. After viewing the program, I went on and watched the 2 million minutes youtube video. I plan to use that link at our spring staff meeting right before I start my presentation on wikis.

A very useful thing that we have been using in class is the Etherpad. I found it to be useful and now my brother is going to be logging in on it from San Diego during one of my classes. The students will then be able to ask him questions on the etherpad about the neuroscience that he does for a living. I look forward to using this demonstrate the way people can collaborate online being far from eachother.

I am still learning more about the RSS feeds and started my list of interesting ones. I have done away with the newspaper and plan on using the computer for my news from now on.

This week we also started a chess blog. In our chess club, we now have a small grade level tournament. I have been doing the brackets by hand but now I am going to post them on the blog so that students can see the results online. I wonder if the students could even challenge eachother to chess online to play their games??

So much to learn, so little time.

Blogging in school, week 2

I learned a lot about blogs this week. I have never really spent any time reading people’s blogs and I now find it a great source of information on just about anything. I am inspired to start my own personal blog about school and what is going on each week. When I saw the one that Bryan created, I was inspired and felt like I could actually do one myself. I feel that I should know how to blog successfully before I require my students to start blogging. Something that I worry about is how critical a parent could be about anything I might put in my blog. It would be an easy way for a parent to find fault in a teacher. If I had a few misspelled words or inaccuracies, it could blow up into assumptions that I am not a great English teacher or something like that. With that being said, I would really like to start a personal blog and then become more comfortable with it before I make it public. Once I have done that, I will think about having student’s blog. As of right now, I am very satisfied with the wiki sites we created through PB works.

Cedu 534 Digital Media Day 1

We started the class by going over the syllabus briefly. The next thing we did was to locate our wolfmail accounts and passwords. Once we were all logged in, we examined a few video clips.
The first one was "When I become a teacher". It consisted of a number of teachers with either bad attitudes or worst teaching practices. It made you think of teachers with those attitudes. What we need to do is learn best practices and to pursue them with every subject.
After that, we watched the shift happens video. It makes you think about how schools and countries are changing. It makes you think how rapidly things are changing in our world. The jobs we need to train students for do not even exist yet.
The thing I enjoyed about the class was that we spent time on the computer actively researching. I was able to find some good blog sites I could use for my science classes. One I found was a blog called wired science. There were a lot of cutting edge science discoveries and I could include a link to this site on my web site. Prior to class, I had never heard of Technorati.
One more thing that we did was to examine a blog called WOCSD Tech Talk. The blog was made up of fictitious remarks that teacher who is not susceptible to change might make about technology. We all know those teachers who are not interested in change, and who will do what they can not to change.

Class 1

Final Week

I have never thought of myself as a leader at our school. I have known how to lead construction workers in the past, but there is a tremendous difference when leading teachers.

Now that I am comfortable with the use of wiki’s and Google docs, I look forward to being a teacher leader in these areas. I have also learned some things I will do when I am moved to the 8th grade that will start things off on the right track.

A lot of the reading was geared toward an administrator’s position and I watch carefully how strategic our principal is at each and every meeting. He seems to handle things very well and I admire that. Each day I am comfortable speaking in front of students but I get very nervous teaching in front of other teachers. My principal asked me to teach the entire staff about wiki sites at our spring staff meeting and I am very nervous about it already. People comment that I could be a good leader but I just don’t feel that way. My principal even told me that I really should get into administration. For me, that would be a very stressful and challenging roll.

This class helped me reflect on my role as a teacher leader at our school. I think that with some confidence building, I will tackle more leader-type rolls. In fact, I feel that we have an obligation to do so after completing this degree. With more experience, I think I will be able to lead.

Week 5

Week 5


Going to a restaurant for class is right up my alley! It is very nice to see colleagues outside of our usual settings. As far as the game, it made me think more like an administrator about how change happens in schools. There are many more hurdles involved that I never really thought about. I also never really looked at the budget aspect in much detail before either. At first, I was very confused by the game but we had some good members in our group that made some good calls. Another important thing that we all noticed was the fact that you will always have people who sort of buck the system and do not go along with change. You can try to get them on board but it just isn’t worth the expense some times. Some people are just too set in their ways to accept change. In the long run, the energy was best spent on others who were involved in the change. For me, it was an eye opener about what it must be like to be in administration, and I am glad I did not pursue an administrative masters program.

Week 4

This week we completed a chart explaing a change we took part in. I thought it was interesting to go through something like that and really break the change down into small steps. The change we started at my school was to revamp our sixth grade schedule. Change is not always going to make everyone happy we need to be very political as teachers to be able to make changes and not irritate other teachers. In our case, three out of four us wanted a new schedule but one did not. Once we had a meeting and discussed that it would be better for student learning, we were finally able to convince the other teacher to go along with it. There was a period of resentment that lasted for a few weeks but then it was over and change was accepted.
I think we are all resistant to change. At first we fear change until we fully understand the details of that change. For example, I have been teaching 6th grade here at TJ for the last 5 years and just last week, I was asked to move to the 8th grade. I went through all the emotions that we all go through when dealing with change and now I am totally open to it. We can look at change as something to fear or as opportunities to grow.

Week 3

The “Who Moved My Cheese?” Powerpoint had some really good points. People, (and the mice in this case), fear change and are sometimes too bullheaded to accept change. Like I teach my science classes, populations either adjust to change, adapt to it, or they die off. I keep relating it to the new PLC movement. Older teachers said it was just another thing that would pass. Well, I think this model of teams of teachers working together for common assessments and common practices is here to stay. It really is a new philosophy where we learn from the teacher who has the best practices.
In my own PLC group, I started a group wiki which is being used successfully by the 6th grade staff. I am going to take the clicker class next week because I hope to learn more about that system. I just started a wiki for my classroom and the students really love working with that system. I guess my point is that I will forge forward rather than just sitting there complaining where the cheese went. It is too easy to get caught up in old ways of doing things and we as technology leaders need to push forward. The others will just have to follow when they see the results of the change. I think that each of our fellow graduate students are willing to go out and seek the cheese, otherwise, we would not have entered this graduate program.

Week 2

This week delt with a number of different things. Chapter two dealt with team building. A large potion of the chapter was dedicated to questions one might ask a candidate at an interview. I found that some of the questions were interesting, but a bit impractical for what I would really want to know from a candidate. The third chapter was about leading teams and building a team. I liked the quote by Lambardi about teamwork, "Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a company work, and a civilization work." I really like that statement and I think it best sums up the chapter. For me as a team leader, I need to instill that desire with the rest of my team. This chapter also contained some good advice on how to handle situations to avoid conflict and how to put more ownership on the student. Hopefully I can use some of these tools in the near future. Good communication is the key to a successful team in my mind.

The first class was interesting. I guess I never really thought of the Structural, Human Resource, Political and Symbolic Frames when thinking about leadership. When we did some analysis on situations, it was rare that a specific leadership frame would fit exactly what the need was. It was very prevelant that a good boss needs to fit into many of the categories to be a successful leader. What the class did was make me think back to some good bosses that I have had in the past. One really sticks out in my mind from the construction field. He was a great leader and a caring person. He could be stern when needed but yet lenient once the work was done. I am also lucky to have a good boss at my school right now as well.
As far as my leadership ability, I know I am an ideas man and that I need people to help me along the way. Leading canoe groups to the BWCA each year has taught me a lot about leadership. One problem is that I feel confident around people but very shy in groups of professional adults. I tend to clam up and not say much of anything. Hopefully this course will help me with that ability to feel more cofident in a group setting.

Final Class

Today I created a couple cartoons in my class and the students loved it! I plan to add that to my website as well. I also got a few compliments on the wiki and I got the 6th grade staff to watch the tutorial. I have the feeling we will have wikis for all sorts of subjects in the near future. When I show the students how easy it is to create powerpoints and documents, they get very excited to use them. Tonight I look forward to viewing what other teachers have created and to borrow some of their ideas for my own website.

Web 2.0

I am beginning to understand Web 2.0. So far, I find it very interesting. The first tutorial on wikis was about a group getting set up for a camping trip which was right up my alley! I intend to create one for the hiking group I lead to the BWCA each year. I also tried my hand at creating a 6th grade team wiki this week. Our PLC team meetings could use so many things that a wiki provides that I am pretty excited about it. I hope to go over what a wiki is with the group this Friday at our meeting and then even go into what a googledoc is. Not to be negative, but I know I will have some convincing to do with some of the team members who are not very computer savvy. When I see how useful it is and that wikis are being used at the H.S. it frustrates me. I asked our librarian/technology expert why we can't use these at the middle school level and she explained that it is because we can't allow middle school students to have email accounts. I still find that very frustrating. Are other middle schools using this technology? I read somewhere that other middle schools post questions on their website and students email in their answers to win prizes! Eventually I think it will trickle down to the middle school level.

A few interesting things we learned tonight were the technologies that support strategies that work. I like this shortcut for different technologies when I will be teaching science. I also enjoyed the idea of using cartoons and the Voki. Humor is a useful tool to get students involved and interacting. We were also given a worksheet to the technology selection criteria which I can see being useful in the future as well. Due to some frustration this week, I was not able to access my wolfmail account. I called a few times and each time I never received a returned call. It was a bit frustrating to say the least.

Website Creation

I spent some time reviewing a number of websites. What I have found so far is that the teacherweb.com is very user friendly and contains many features that I see myself using in the future. The online lockers that come with the website are something I could see myself using in the future.
As far as a website creation from scratch, I guess I will struggle through it but I was very impressed with the website creation site available through Googlesites. I would like to create a site for the hiking and canoeing club that I run as well as one for Chess Club, Ski Club and perhaps even my carpentry business. The trouble that I am having with the carpentry website is that I have very few pictures at all. When building things over the years, I really regret that I did not take more pictures!
I think I will now make my focus for the website on the outdoor adventures that I lead. For one thing, there are plenty of pictures that I can access, and for another, new people would find comfort seeing pictures of previous trips to make them feel comfortable signing up.
I am just amazed at what is available through Google. I wonder if the wiki will be gone as well as ning sites after seeing how easy it is to create a site through google. Perhaps Google will provide everything people will need in the future!!