April 2, 2016

 I somehow forgot the coolest part of yesterday. When I got to class the guy who has been my partner on several projects now handing me a drawing. Awhile ago in a message he spelled my name wrong, I pointed it out, he apologized and spelled his own name wrong, and all that eventually led to a talking about Viking and dwarf librarians. It was an amusing journey. I had pretty much forgotten about it but then he handed me a drawing of a dwarf librarian wearing a bright green cardigan. It is great. For his undergraduate degree he went to an art school and I think he wanted to be a cartoonist. Something he totally could have done because he is really good. The dwarf librarian is amazing. I'm going to scan it so I have a digital copy and then I'm going to have the physical drawing framed. It is actually a copy from his sketchbook but the coloring is real. Definitely worth framing.

I didn't sleep well last night which left me feeling tired today because that is how it works. For class this morning we talked about e-rates for schools and libraries and we had a presentation from the resident tech lady. She has a lot of experience with makerspaces so she talked about those and it was really interesting. Then we split the class in half and while one half stayed in the room to research technology plans, the other went to see a 3D printer making stuff and then got to go play with a lightboard. This lady made the lightboard after seeing Duke University and somewhere else make one. Those were apparently around $6000 and didn't look that great in terms of aesthetics. The one we saw cost around $1500 because she 3D printed a lot of parts, made her own frame, and did all the work herself, with a little help from her son. The idea is that the board is a giant piece of glass with a row of LEDs along the bottom which light up the entire piece of glass. A teacher can then stand behind it and write on it with neon EXPO markers. This is recorded and the video is flipped so that everything the teacher has written will appear the correct way. So it isn't meant for live instruction, but it is meant to allow teachers to teach while looking at and engaging the class, instead of having to turn away from them and write on a board, or stand off to the side of a board and divide the students attention between the teacher and the material on the board. The coolest part is probably that when you see the video of the board in use, it looks like the person is just writing in thin air. It's a cool effect.

There was a track meet at the stadium today, which shares a parking lot with the building our class was in. When we went to lunch there was a long line of people walking around the parking lot, which I first had to cut through to get to my car, and then wait for them to be stopped in order to get out of the parking lot. I think it was a walk to bring awareness to suicide. They had a really good turn out. Going back to the track meet, the parking lot was filled with cars. When I came back from lunch I managed to get a spot that was one building away and it was the only spot I could find. Thankfully it was a nice day out so the walk was nice.

This afternoon we broke into our groups that we will be making out technology plans with and spent close to a couple hours getting that all figured out. The idea for the project is that an old lady wants to donate a lot of money to update a library, in our case an academic library, that hasn't been updated since the mid-90s. The furnishings and building stuff are already covered so we have to develop a technology plan that covers all of the technological updates that need to be made, like new computers and databases and things like that. We weren't given a price limit so it will be kind of fun to go all out. Right now, I think the hardest part of the project will be giving the presentation because it has to be done online. We'll have to find a time where we can all be online at the same time, with the professor, and give the presentation to her, as if she were the board of directors or the lady donating the money. It will be interesting.

When we were done with that we came back to the room and got to play around with some new tech. That was a bit of a fail. There was a Makey Makey piano created using bananas which was interesting but it didn't quite work when we tried it. I tried setting up the Raspberry Pi but I couldn't get the TV to recognize it. I heard some of the other groups got it working so it was probably just me. There were also a bunch of camera lenses for iPhones but one of my group members couldn't get those to work on his phone. The Google Cardboard was apparently pretty cool but I didn't get to try it. So there were a bunch of interesting ideas but they weren't really working for us.

We ended up getting out an hour early, which was nice, but it was also weird because I'm pretty sure that was my last in-person class meeting. I don't think I have to go down for any of my classes this summer. I will see a lot of these people at graduation, those that are walking, but there are a lot I'll probably not see or talk to again. Even though I'm not a social person and didn't really go out of my way to talk to most of these people, we have still been going through this experience together for almost two years now. It's kind of weird to think that a major component of it has come to and end.

My drive home went well. I didn't really get stuck behind anyone and I was able to drive at my own pace. There was a lot of burning going on around the area, which meant there was a lot of smoke in the air. At a couple points the burning was actually right up against the road and the visibility was really poor. I ended up smelling a bit like a campfire, even with my windows closed and the inside air turned on. It is kind of annoying to smell like a fire without actually getting the fun of playing with a fire.

When I got home I had dinner, did laundry, watched YouTube videos, and replied to a discussion post. I still need to post to the ERM discussion that has been open for two weeks. I replied to a question last week but haven't been able to make my own post yet because the ERM demo is still very intimidating to me. I just find all the information overwhelming. It's due tomorrow so I'll just have to make something up.

I wanted to quickly do the school stuff and take the rest of the night off and play video games but the school stuff dragged out. I need to reply to a few discussion posts tomorrow, along with posting the ERM one, and post a tech list for my group project, but hopefully I can get that done before lunch (maybe) and then take the afternoon off. Although with my poor sleep last night, and the late night tonight, I might sleep through the morning. We'll see.