Thursday, November 20, 2014

November 20, 2014

I didn't start my morning by dumping a bag of chips on the ground while making my lunch, so that was nice.

This morning at work I was supposed to help out with kindergarten literacy centers but there were student teachers in the room so I wasn't needed. I went into the other room, which was wrapping up literacy centers to see if I could at least move the baskets over but that wasn't needed either. Just so my walk to the other side of the building wasn't entirely pointless I helped move the tables back to the right spot. The teacher saw me doing that and asked if I had been there the whole time and I made a comment about how I just showed up to the move the tables. He said that he didn't know that table moving was a service I offered and I told him it was a passion of mine. On my way back to the lab I ended up walking with one of the kindergarten parents and she told me that if I ever wanted to move more furniture she had a few things I could move. That was pretty funny.

I had one of the first grade classes in the lab before lunch and I had a good conversation with the teacher, as always. We are very similar when it comes to how we handled our academic lives. Very much into procrastination and doing just enough to get a good grade. We also talked about books, because her and her husband wanted to get rid of all the clutter. He ended up pulling out her books and she ended up pulling out his books, so they ended up not getting rid of any books. Then we talked about high school reunions and her son (who's my age) and other things.

After lunch I helped a second grader take a Reading Counts test. He was the one from yesterday who ended up having his computer unplugged in the middle of his test. Today he was testing over a different book and I didn't see the book but I did see that he liked the book, so he couldn't have done too bad on the test.

At 12:45PM I clocked out and headed up to the high school for my meeting about being a trainer of teachers for Compass Learning. I parked across the street from the high school and as I was about to cross the street I heard someone say my name. I paused, and there was a car that had stopped for me so I waved them along (and they took awhile to figure that out) and looked to see who said my name. Turns out it was a girl from the theater. She said she had just gotten back from student teaching. Or maybe she was going to student teach. I'm not too sure but she was headed to the high school so we walked and talked. When we got up to the building we were greeted by my friend's sister, who is a senior this year. I actually saw her earlier today because she came to the school to give a presentation to one of the classes about an animal. I'm not exactly sure why she was standing out in front of the high school but whatever.

After I signed in I followed a few other people who were also going to the meeting. The high school really looks nothing like it did when I went there but I think the room we were in used to be a bathroom. Like they knocked out the walls separating the boys and girls bathrooms and created a small computer lab. I could be wrong but there is no way to tell. Which is a lie but I'm not going to look into it any further.

The meeting was actually really informative. I'm not used to going to meetings and actually learning things. It's weird. It makes me actually want to get more involved with the program and get teachers to use it more productively, not just as a way to fill time. I would say most teachers do use it productively at our school but improvements can always be made. I also learned different reports I can run to track progress and other things. I'm going to have to try some things out. I'm glad the first grade teacher put my name out there to become a trainer because I already help teachers out with Compass Learning and it is nice to actually learn a few things the official way rather than having to figure things out myself when a teacher asks me a question.

The meeting ended up wrapping up around 3:15PM instead of 4:00PM so I headed back to work. I got there when third grade was in the lab and found out one of the kids hadn't been able to log into Type to Learn 4. This is the same kid who wasn't able to get in last time and I ended up having to add him in and add another number to his lunch number (which is the username) because his lunch number was already being used. That happened earlier in the year and I discovered that at least on one occasion it was because some other random kid in another school was already using the number. Even though lunch numbers are unique. So after the class left the lab last time I went through, school by school, and ended up finding the kid at the school he was at earlier in the year. Had I known which school he was at earlier in the year I would have started there but whatever. I transferred him to our school and added him to the right class, and thought all was good. Apparently not.

I sat down and logged into Type To Learn 4 and saw the kid and added him to the class and then tried logging in as him but it said his account was inactive. I went back in and tried creating a different account for him and then tried other things and went around and around trying different things. And then it turned out I was an idiot. I found a little checkbox that would allow me to see the inactive students and the kid popped back up. Then I noticed there was a checkbox next to each kid that you could check to make a kid inactive. I had clicked it accidentally when I was trying to highlight the kid and save my changes. So I unchecked that box, saved it, and was able to log in as the kid. Success.

Today I popped the battery off my motherboard and awhile later I was able to check it with my multimeter and the voltage seemed to be good. That kind of sucks because that pretty much means my motherboard crapped out. I don't know if I had a warranty on it but the ones I saw online were three years and I hit the three year mark about five months ago. So I would have been screwed anyway. Now I need to start researching motherboards. Or rather, finish my schoolwork for the semester and then research motherboards. The hardest part will be figuring out which one will be compatible with my CPU. It seems confusing but I'm sure I can figure it out. The next hardest part will be replacing the motherboard because everything is attached to the motherboard so I will have to take everything apart and then put it all back together. Again, I'm sure I can figure it out.

Tonight I watched the Neebs livestream and made no real progress on my reflective journal entry. I thought about it a lot and have some ideas for where I want to go with it but need to actually write it. I'm getting a grade based on the thoughts once they are in word form, not when they're still in my head.

I also need to read the chapters and watch the lecture video for this week and write a discussion post by Sunday. I keep forgetting that. I work at the theater tomorrow night but don't have to work at the school so maybe during the day I can knock out the reading and the video and write my discussion post. And finish up the reflective journal entry. I would like to finish the one I'm on and write another one over the weekend. At this point that seems like a pretty lofty goal considering how long the current one has drawn out.


Now I'm going to call it a night, at least in terms of writing this entry.

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