Tuesday, November 4, 2014

November 3, 2014

I planned on working on my infographic most of the day but I ended up being fairly busy at work today. This morning I had second grade reading groups and then both second grade classes in the lab. During one of the reading groups, I was out in the hall reading a story with three kids. They were all messing around but not as bad as my small group two years ago. At one point one of them told the other two that he didn't want to have to come in at recess to read so they needed to stop messing around. I looked at him and said “Says the man tossing his pencil around.” He looked back with an I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about grin as he tossed the pencil off to the side and out of his reach. It was pretty funny.

Speaking of second grade, I can't remember if I mentioned it before (so I'll mention it again if I have) but I beat a second grader at the 'why' game last week. He kept asking 'why' and if eventually got around to why I had to work at the school (because I need money). When he asked why I needed money my response was that I lived in capitalistic society and needed money to buy things. That threw him off because he couldn't really say 'capitalistic society' and not too long after that I somehow managed to turn it around so when he was asking 'why' he was actually asking it of himself. I wish I knew how I managed to do that because it would come in handy.

Right as I clocked out for lunch the librarian found me and asked if I could come help her get ready for her final presentation for her Library Science degree. It is kind of like the capstone project that I will have to give, summarizing everything that I learned. She was giving it through Google Hangouts to a three-person panel using a Google Presenter slideshow. One of the fifth grade teachers helped her figure out the slideshow because she wasn't familiar with Presenter, but they were both kind of stumped with Hangouts. I have watched several hangouts on YouTube but never actually tried it myself. The librarian wanted to know how to get the presentation to show so that the panel could see it. I messed with it and didn't really get anywhere so I tried some googling and found a possible solution but the presentation was in fullscreen mode so we couldn't really tell if someone on the other end would actually see it or not. I ended up going down to get my laptop so I could join the hangout and get the other perspective. This meant I had to figure out how to join a hangout, and in the end I wasn't able to because I think even though it wasn't a private hangout, it didn't technically start until two o'clock. I thought maybe people wouldn't actually be allowed in until that time. So I tried setting up my own and inviting the librarian. That took longer than it should have but after a few failed attempts I eventually got it working. We then opened up a new hangout on her computer so we could make sure her microphone worked and that the presentation was going to work. And it did.

That all took around an hour and a half. But we got it working, which eased the librarians nervousness a little bit but not much. About fifteen minutes before the presentation the fifth grade teacher stopped by to check on things and give the librarian a little pep talk. As soon as the first panel member joined the hangout, the fifth grade teacher and I left.

I went down to the lab to finally eat my lunch and about ten or fifteen minutes later I got a call from the librarian because the lady couldn't see her presentation when she opened it up. So I briskly walked back down to the library and got it sorted out. I think I suggested the same thing the librarian had already tried but it ended up working and I sneaked out to go finish my lunch.

About forty-five minutes later I her excited shouting outside the computer lab and went out to see what was up. The librarian had originally been told that 30-50% of people usually have to redo at least part of the presentation so that had her worried from the beginning. But, the presentation (content-wise if not technology-wise) and she passed with flying colors. The panel lady told her right then, which is pretty cool. I found out later that the other two panel members hadn't been able to connect so it ended up just being the one lady. Anyway, the librarian survived the presentation, earned her degree, and gave me a big hug to thank me for getting everything sorted out. She later went up to the third floor to tell the fifth grade teacher and they both screamed and jumped up and down.

After school I went straight to the old house to work on my infographic. I decided at some point, maybe last night in bed, I can't remember, that I couldn't just do disinformation because that was basically just restated the information transfer cycle but in the context of disinformation. Instead, I went with Operation Mincemeat, which I think made a lot more sense and was more in-line with what the actual assignment was. So I started going through each step, relating it to Operation Mincemeat. Some of them felt like a bit of a stretch but I think I managed to get everything somewhat sorted out, while watching the documentary once again to get the facts straight.

I finished that bit up after dinner and then started going through the process of copying the text and pasting it into a text box I made in Gimp with the correct size for the inside of the frames on my infographic and with a transparent background. I'm fairly certain it is impossible to make the text small enough using the infographic websites' text boxes, so I was having to go through this process to make the text small, then saving it has a png file and uploading it to the site so I could drag it onto my infographic. I had to go through the same process for my reference list as well. And speaking of, it is almost impossible to find out how to write the reference for a physical dictionary. I found four or five versions for citing online dictionaries before I stumbled across one for an actual book. It still seems kind of made up.

When I got all that stuff added in I remembered that all the examples had the person's name and information and I hadn't really left room for that. It took me awhile to figure out how to put it in so it didn't look too awful. It would have been super easy if there was a way to adjust the size of the document or copy all my information onto a larger document, but I managed. It still kind of looks a bit tacked on but I'm going to live with it.


And now it is after midnight. Way too late for my weeknight blood. Especially because I plan on voted before school tomorrow which means leaving the house about fifteen or twenty minutes earlier than usual. Tomorrow morning is going to be rough.

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