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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Three days of One-to-One

Wednesday, August 8 marked our first day of school.  The first day of our first year as a one-to-one school.  All of our students have their own laptops; those who are buying or leasing from the school have Macbook Airs, while other students have chosen to purchase their own Mac laptop of whatever variety.  (Our school's tech policy is located here.  It's pretty long--40+pages)

So I was expecting glitches to happen.  They did.  During first period on Wednesday we were supposed to walk our students through signing up for our Moodle classrooms.  Moodle is a course management system.  It has tons of features.  We as teachers did some minor training on Moodle this spring and we are expected to use Moodle in some way for our classes.  Since I teach English, I plan to use this a lot.  There are so many features that, once I get used to them, will make my life easier, especially in the sense of being paperless.

But enough explanation of Moodle.  As I said, we had to walk our students through signing up for Moodle.  In my first hour class a couple of kids couldn't get in, so I sent them to our tech director ASAP, as he requested.  Before I go any further I shall state that I have four sections of a class called "Introduction to Composition and Literature", which consists of freshmen and sophomores.  Teaching freshmen is an especially challenging task.  One reason is that not only are you teaching the material, but you also have to train them how to be high school students.  They make mistakes and do goofy things mostly because they are just clueless about the high school environment.  So teaching freshmen takes a lot more energy than teaching the older high school students.  Needless to say, walking these kids through signing up for Moodle took a little longer than with older kids.

Throughout the rest of the day there were still 2-3 kids in each class who hadn't gotten set up in Moodle for a variety of reasons.  On Thursday and Friday there were still some students who weren't set up BUT I think everything is under control now.

Another glitch centered around the enrollment in the Moodle classes themselves.  I and my colleague are teaching these Intro to Comp classes.  Somehow I could only see the freshmen participants and he could only see the sophomore participants.  The problem has been solved...our tech guy started 2 new classes from scratch.  On Friday I walked students through a process of moving something from the original class to the new one.  I asked the students to let me know if they did not have the new link, so I could let the tech guy know...he thought he had everyone in the right place but thought there might be a mistake or two.  Fifteen minutes AFTER I asked this in one class, a student raised her hand and informed me that she didn't have the new link.  Arrrgh!

Another "funny" happened with my Expository Writing class, which consists of juniors and seniors.  I had given them an assignment in which they researched their names and wrote a short paragraph about the meaning of their names and how it fit their personality or not.  They were to submit this assignment in Moodle.  One of my students raised his hand and told me that after he clicked on the link to submit the assignment, the connection timed out, all his work was lost, and he didn't feel like redoing it.  My answer was simple but probably harsher than it could have been.  I told him that if he wanted credit he should redo it, and that the assignment was available until 4 pm.

Things actually have been smoother than I expected.  Our network seemed to be handling the extra traffic and the students have been doing well with navigating the Moodle environment.  Granted, it's just been 3 days in, but I'm really excited to see what we can accomplish with this new tool.


Sunday, August 5, 2012

Complaints of Olympic Proportion

As I wrote previously, I love the Olympics.  My television has pretty much been on a channel with Olympics coverage if it's been turned on.  I've watched a couple of episodes of Jeopardy, but mostly I've had the Olympics on the telly.  I'm a little sad that school starts on Wednesday because I won't be able to stay up until midnight watching the coverage.

Yesterday, Oscar Pistorius of South Africa was the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics.  He competed in the Paralympics in Athens, but now he's in the spotlight in the London Olympics.  In the Equestrian event this morning, a 71 year-old competitor from Japan, Hiromi Hoketsu, is the oldest competitor in the Olympics.  If you watch anything related to the Olympics, you will see athletes proud to perform as representatives for their countries.

However, I'm a little distressed that in light of success, someone still seems to find something to criticize.  Gabby Douglas, who has 2 gold medals, has been criticized for her hair, and some feel uncomfortable with her statement of faith.  When she said, "And I give all the glory to God. It's kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to him and the blessings fall down on me," Christians admired her and non-Christians reviled her.  You can see her response to the hair controversy over on USA Today's Olympics page. (Image Source)

Additionally, on Fox News, the USA gymnastics team (and US fans) apparently aren't patriotic enough.  The hot pink and purple leotards worn by the USA women's team don't show enough USA spirit.  Not enough USA fans are chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A".

There will always be controversy surrounding the Olympics.  This Olympics isn't without it.  This year, 8 athletes were disqualified from the badminton competition because they deliberately threw matches in order to get an advantage in the next round.  Yet we're outraged that the US athletes aren't patriotic enough or that a young girl boldly states her faith.

I guess I'm enough of a Polyanna that I enjoy the Olympics for the competition and the overall pride in my country.  I'm amazed and inspired by the hard work and dedication it requires to become an Olympic-level athlete.  I said in another blog entry that I like being able to be see sports I've only heard of (this morning I watched some water polo).   I enjoy watching just to watch.  If the US wins, they win.  If they don't, they don't.  It disappoints me to watch our team lose, but I don't live or die by it.  If an athlete wants to express her gratitude to God, to her parents, or to her imaginary friend, let her do it.  If the uniforms aren't in-your-face patriotic, so what.  It doesn't change the fact that these athletes have worked hard to get to this level.  Have you worked as hard as they do to achieve what you've achieved?