Monday, August 18, 2014

August 18, 2014

Good news, all of the student information returned to Type To Learn over the weekend. This means I didn't have to manually enter in all the students. I only needed to divide them back into classes, which didn't take me too long. I also found out when the first class came in to use the program, that I needed to change the password for everyone. I was quickly able to do that for the class in the lab and then spent an hour or two changing it for all the other kids in the school. Apparently the default password is different this year and that information wasn't sent out, along with the information that all the students would be wiped and reset in the system. But now it should be all good.

Later in the day I was able to go up and finish installing the program on all the fourth grade laptops. That still took about twenty to twenty-five minutes per laptop. Even with as many as five laptops going at a time it still took me close to two hours to put it on ten laptops. Tomorrow I'll be putting it on three laptops for one of the second grade teachers. None of the other teachers have expressed an interest in having it put on the laptops in their room and I am perfectly okay with that.

I made another trip out to the preschool trailer to help install SMART Board software. It gave me a chance to walk on the new turf on the little kid playground and it feels pretty cool. It also smells like a tire factory so hopefully that goes away. I also didn't borrow a key from the secretary so I ended up having to walk all the way around the building to the front door to get back in. It would have been a nice walk if it wasn't close to 100 degrees outside.

I worked with the Librarian to relearn how to change staff passwords. That took longer than it should have. The whole process is very convoluted and way less intuitive than it should be. I think I figured out how to cut out a few steps so that should be good. Hopefully one of both of us remember how to do that for more than a day or two so we won't have to learn it all over again.

We're still trying to figure out guest access to the wi-fi for student interns. It kind of worked last year but it wasn't great. So far this year it hasn't worked at all. I played around with it a little today but I'm going to take my laptop in tomorrow so I can mess with it some more. The problem with school laptops is that you have to log into them with staff or student information, which then automatically connects to the wi-fi. Even if you disconnect and the reconnect to the wi-fi it will use the information used to log into the computer, so we weren't able to try the intern information. At least according to the instructions, the Librarian has done everything correctly in setting up the username and password, so who knows. I came up with the solution of just using kindergartener login information, because it is relatively simple, and the interns won't have automatic access to a firewall-free internet, like they do with the guest network.

I started making sub charts today, which are just pages for each class with the pictures and names of all the kids in the class. These are helpful for substitute teachers. I'm using school pictures from last year and then I'll have to go around and take pictures for all the new kids, and the kindergarteners considering they're all new.

I got the form that the principal filled out when she nominated me for the award at the district meeting. It makes me sound awesome, which is really cool. I don't like a lot of public attention, so I'm glad I didn't win and have to go up in front of everyone, but every now and then it is nice to hear that all the work I do doesn't go unnoticed. It makes me feel good inside and I really appreciate it. I'm a fan of feedback, whether positive or negative, so I can continue doing what I'm getting right and so I can fix what I'm doing wrong.

After school I went and got my haircut and then I came home and started reading over the assignments for my first class. There are only seven assignments, two of which are just participation for the two weekends we go back to campus. There aren't a lot of points to be earned which means a lot more effort is going to be required to do well. I'm up for the challenge but I'll admit it looks a little daunting at the moment. I'm not sure about the second class because the new instructor just got access to the online environment today and sent out a message that he was hoping to have everything posted by the end of the week. Not the best start.


Tonight I watched YouTube videos, continued reading about the assignments, and wrote a little blurb introducing myself to the class. A lot of them have already submitted theirs and it seems like a majority have quite a bit of experience working in libraries. I have very little. That is intimidating but I also look forward to the opportunity of learning from them and gaining more insight into the field from their perspective on things.

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