March 25, 2015

 While staring at kids take their state assessments today I came up with a decent testing analogy. The only benefit of spending hours a day watching kids test is that it allows for a lot of time to get lost in your own head. I guess that is a 'for better or worse' scenario. Anyway, my analogy. Or realization. I don't really know. But here it is. Testing really is a race, despite teachers always insisting that it is not. It is set up in class tortoise and hare style, but each are running an entirely different race with different end goals. The goal of the hare is to finish the test as fast as possible because their goal is to get to whatever they are missing, whether it be recess or PE or music or anything that isn't testing. Then we have the tortoise, whose goal is life or their future, whether they know it or not. The test is important to them, for whatever reason, but lead to better results on the test and potentially better results in life. Something to think about.

So, we had more testing today. Four tests in total, all as boring as the ones that have come before. The last test of the day was fourth grade, who were retaking the first Reading test that they all flew through. It kind of proved my point in wanting them to retake it when one of the kids called me over. He pointed out that all the questions were already answered and I explained to him again (because the principal had literally just told him what was happening) that we reactivated the test so it still had all his old answers. He was confused because he said he had never seen the passage before and didn't remember answering any of the questions. I told him that was probably because he hadn't actually read the passage the first time and just clicked through the answers really fast. To almost all of their credit, they did take their time today. Minus the one kid who I watched once again stare at the clock for awhile, then click one answer (on a question asking for two or more) and then going onto the next question, clicking an answer before he could have even glanced at the question, and then moving onto the next question. I had him go back but his score will still probably be awful. He definitely needs someone sitting with him and making sure he stays focused on the test, not on what he might be missing, like recess.

I might not have to worry about his score though, or the scores of the other two kids who hadn't finished yet, because when they did finish, they all got error messages saying that the test couldn't be saved. It appears that the server crashed for the first time this year. Perfect timing, right before we start testing whole classes next week. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into the absolute clusterfuck that was state assessments last year, but it doesn't bode well.

When I wasn't testing, or coming to realizations about testing, I edited baby pictures. I scanned two and managed to fully edit four or five. Not bad.

After work I stopped to get Chipotle. One of the slow girls (and I mean her work speed, not her mental speed) was working at the end of the line, being slow, but there was a manager there and things got awkward. I'm not entirely sure what was happening but near the end of my order it seemed that he was swapping the slow girl with the first girl, so she would be doing the initial tortilla, rice, and beans stuff, and the other girl would handle everything else. The slow girl got really flustered and didn't speed up but she did accidentally put the guacamole spoon in the cheese. I will say, however, that she finally managed to wrap my burrito decently, so she is learning the right techniques, if not building her speed quite yet.

Tonight I watched a couple videos on linked data and the semantic web for class. They mostly went over my head so I'll have to try them again. There was a third video lecture on linked data but it was presented horribly with a lot of long pauses and mistakes and I couldn't make it more than five minutes before giving up. Maybe after putting so much time and effort into my recorded presentation I have become a bit of a snob when it comes to that sort of thing, but now I know what is possible. No excuses ladies and gentleman.

I spent the rest of my night writing my discussion post. I still need to read the chapter for this week but that might not happen until I get home from class this weekend. I didn't practice my presentation at all and that only leaves tomorrow. But I will be rehearsing the hell out of it tomorrow. And fingers crossed I don't present on Friday night so I can go over it again when I get to the hotel. I just don't want to suck.