September 4, 2013

Another successful morning of exercising and I feel great about that fact. Keep up the good work, me.

This morning I went up to check on the SPED computer that I left updating yesterday and it was more broken than when I left it. So all three of them are now help tickets. I was able to redeem myself a little later by getting a projector to work in there, and I'll take the victories where I can get them.

I found out that safety week is next week, which will interfere greatly with the first week of MAP testing. After getting the safety week schedule I sent out an email to all the teachers so they knew who would be affected and would be more understanding about accommodations for the inconvenienced teachers.

I spent a good chunk of my morning, and some of my afternoon, checking out Type To Learn 4. Last year we had Type To Learn 3 but it has disappeared this year and I assume it is a compatibility issue, maybe. Regardless, the principal sent me a link and asked me to try out the free trial, so that is what I'm doing. Right off the bat it seems way better than the previous version. Mostly just because graphically it doesn't look like a computer game from the 90s. It also starts with typing test to determine where your skills are at, that way you start the lessons that are at your level, not at the beginning when you have experience typing. I don't know how accurate the test is because it didn't include numbers or symbols but whatever.

Through various typing exercises last year and this year I have learned that I don't always use the correct fingers. Instead of my left pinky finger for the 'Q' I shift over and use my left ring finger. I also exclusively use the left 'Shift' key unless I am typing with one hand and need the 'Shift' key on the right-side of the keyboard. And according to Type To Learn I am supposed to use my left hand to hit 'B' but I use my right. I really don't think it matters though because it is in the middle so it could go either way. Lastly, typing gibberish is hard. My WPM is apparently in the mid- to upper-sixties, occasionally in the upper-eighties, but I slow to a crawl on some of the nonsense stuff. When I'm typing real words I don't really have to think about the keys I am hitting, I just type the words. But when I'm typing nonsense I have to take that fraction of a second to think about where the keys are that I'm trying to type. The program also has one test where you type the letter that appears on the screen and it gives you a WPM for this, and mine is always awful. The letter pops up, your brain has to figure out what it is, then it has to remember where it is at on the keyboard, then it has to move the correct finger. It's more of a reflex test than it is a typing test.

Anyway, I think Type To Learn 4, overall, is a good program. I'm going to continue messing with it though. I looked a little into the reports and things that teachers can print off for students and those seem way more informative and easy to use than the previous version. Hopefully I'm not just looking into this to waste time and the district is actually planning on buying the software.

Second grade reading groups were pretty uneventful today. Which is good. The kids were having to unscramble sentences. Most of them understood how to do that after I explained it, and caught on that all of the sentences were arranged in the same way (ex. The purple robot jumped on the trampoline. The green robot skips rope. The pink robot balances on the ball). And there were pictures for each sentence that helped quite a bit.

In the lunchroom I wiped a bunch of tables, talked to a bunch of kids, and opened a bunch of milk cartons and other food packages. It is interesting to see the various levels of understanding sarcasm between kids. I was talking to some kindergarteners and they asked why I wasn't in the computer lab. I told them I escaped but they usually lock me in overnight. Most of them thought that was pretty silly but one kept asking me about how I got out if they locked me in and seemed kind of concerned.

This afternoon I didn't have a lot going on so I continued adding guardians to my student directory. And at the end of the day I went down to the library because the librarian had the lead tech from the ninth grade center and one of the tech guys come to explain help tickets to her. It took forever to get the librarian assigned as the lead tech at school so the old lead tech kept getting the emails and help tickets and was having to forward them to her. Then when she got all the rights and privileges, we couldn't figure out how to actually pass the help tickets on to the tech guys who could actually fix the issues. And the lead tech from last year couldn't help because we're using a different system this year. But all of that stuff was explained today so the librarian is feeling at least a little bit like her head is above water now.

On the way home I stopped and picked up Jimmy John's and Chipotle. Dinner was interrupted by another dog fight instigated by the UPS guy ringing the doorbell. Tanner was obviously involved because he always starts them but I got in the middle of things because Beau could get wrapped up in it and I inadvertently gave Alfie the upper-hand. She usually wants to get in on things when Tanner and Beau go at it but we get her shooed outside. This time I was focused on getting Tanner away from Beau and kind of trapped Tanner next to Alfie, who got his ear and then latched onto his back before I could get him corned and Beau and Alfie could be pushed outside. As always, Tanner ended up being the only one bleeding. He always starts the fights, but he can't fight for crap, and he's a bleeder, which doesn't go well with his mostly white coat. We kept everyone separated for awhile and then crossed our fingers and opened the door. They all sniffed each other and all was well with the world again. Later on in the night Tanner and Alfie laid together in the living room and cleaned each others wounds. There is such a weird dog dynamic in this house. For the most part I find it to be very annoying.

The rest of the night was spent watching YouTube videos and a little time was spent writing my monthly report for my volunteer thing. Now I am listening to dubstep. Kill The Noise is my new favorite dubstep/electronic guy and I can't stop listening to his stuff. It sounds like what I expect dubstep and electronic music to sound like, if that makes any sense. It just makes me want to dance. Or at least bob my head.