April 16, 2015

 April is half gone already. Time really does seem to move faster the old you get. Or the more busy you are. I'm participating in both activities at the moment.

We had our first MAP test today and I was quickly reminded how much more I like it compared to the state assessment. The set up sucks, having to log all the kids in, but I don't have to mess with tickets, and I feel like I serve more of a point by writing down scores at the end. The scores are also nice because teachers can get immediate feedback on how the kids did. There are a lot of kids on the state assessment who fly through it or take hours and there is no way to tell how they did until scores come back, months from now. It's nice knowing for a fact that they bombed it and having them retake it.

After the MAP test we had a state assessment. Then I had a short lunch because one of the kindergarten classes wanted to come in at 12:25PM. I was working on MAP stuff when the teacher came in and asked so I stopped that and got all the computers set up and then clocked out around 12:10PM. So I nice fifteen minute lunch instead of a half an hour.

This afternoon there was another state assessment and then the fourth grade performance. They sang a whole bunch of old Rock 'n Roll songs. One kid dressed up like Elvis, another did a high-pitched “Wooo” for Litter Richard, and they all danced. It was pretty good.

I didn't really have much downtime today but when I did I was either entering MAP scores or getting my score sheets ready for the coming MAP tests. I decided to add in the main score from last time so teachers can see how the new score compares without having to go look it up.

Tonight I didn't really accomplish much academically. I have a DVD that has all of the X-Men comics on it from 1963 to August 2005, which is apparently over 485 issues. They are all PDFs and I went through and randomly picked several of them, screencapped the cover, turned it into a JPG, inserted it into my Prezi, and arranged them for a background. I figured it would be easier to cite the source of those pictures because they're all coming from the same place, as opposed to all over the internet. Still need to figure out the information for the slides. And I'm hoping that it will all fit on the page I already made because I like it and it would be nice if I didn't have to remake it.

Tomorrow I will be focusing on the information. My goal is to have the presentation pretty much, if not completely, done by Saturday. Then I can spend all of Sunday coming up with a topic for my research paper and gathering sources. It all sounds kind of easy and straight forward when I write it out but I know it's going to be a struggle every step of the way. I'm having to create all of this stuff, not just copy stuff out of a book or memorize facts. At this point I kind of miss memorizing stuff for tests.

When I finished the comic book cover thing, and finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to get any more work done, I played a little guitar, while watching the Neebs livestream, and then played some GTA5. I did a few main missions and a few side missions but probably spent more time driving around the map. It is such a huge map. I managed to make it over to the other side but there are still a lot of areas I need to explore in order to see them on the map. Originally the map is covered up but as you go to different places, the map is revealed. At some point I'd like to reveal the whole thing. Which I imagine might happen just by playing through the story.

It's two o'clock now so I'm going to go to bed. We don't have work tomorrow, which is why I'm up so late, but I need to sleep so I can wake up and work on my presentation. A fun-filled day.