Saturday, April 28, 2012

April 23 through 29

This week, I have been pretty busy as tech coach (and teacher and student and family member).

Ms. F was unable to open her Outlook.  This was a problem I'd never dealt with in the past so I had to look up the solution.  It took me awhile, but I was successful!!!

Mr. L - who is totally computer illiterate and doesn't mind telling you so - had issues with his computer and wanted to know why.  I couldn't tell him why but I got him fixed up.  He does everything from "My computer" - which I can totally understand - and when he clicked on it, he got "Properties."  I turned it off and back on.  I don't think he'd ever done that.  It worked, thank God.  He'd also asked me why he wasn't getting any wireless signal, which I had to report to technology.

Ms. W's printer finally bit the dust.  Bobby from technology pronounced it dead this week.  She had another one that she brought from home, which Bobby installed for her.  She got it on Black Friday for $29, thinking she'd need it at home, but didn't, so she brought it to school.

Ms. H next door couldn't get her speakers to work on her projector.  The wire was plugged into the microphone jack.  She didn't think it was when she started having problems, but that solved the issue.  Oh, yes.  I forgot, Ms. W couldn't get her speakers to work either and they were unplugged!  That wasn't her doing... she had a guest speaker who did that.  Anyway... I still have the Engrade project and Mr. W's printer to install on his other desktops.  Bobby tried to install my printer on my laptop, but I think it is a lost cause.  I may be getting a free printer, so hopefully that will work.

I am excited about doing this next year.  I have learned so much, I would hate for that knowledge to go to waste.  We have exciting stuff going on.  I'm glad I did it.

missing week - April 7 through 15

This week, I was very busy being a HOSA teacher and trying to get my students ready for the state competition at Opryland Hotel on the 16th through the 18th.  I also had a huge paper for my other class.  I was blessed - I didn't have any tech work except installing Mr. W's fancy new printer on his not-too-wonderful laptops and a couple of his desktops (he has four or five for student use - a couple I need to get to still as I write on April 28).  And of course, Ms. W's printer from Hell.

going back to the missing weeks - March 26 through April 1 (and yes, I have already written one for this week)

This was the busiest week of the semester by far.  I really didn't have much tech coach work (just had to install Flash for Ms. T, whose classroom is on the opposite end of the school from mine, and who seems to be avoided by the other tech coach, imho, whose room is much closer to Ms. T's), but I had the biggest part of my semester project.

Our school uses Engrade (www.engrade.com), a free program with many options for teachers.  Originally, it wasn't a school-wide mandate, but our former principal began requiring it last year.  Since so many of our faculty were already using it, we didn't realize all the potential of using it as one unit.  Someone discovered the school feature this year and suggested we all get on it.  Okay.  So far so good.  What happened, though, was that most of the teachers had different ways of numbering their students.  Some let Engrade number the students.  Some made up their own ID numbers.  Several of us actually used the system-assigned ID numbers. For roughly 1100 students, we had over 5500 entries!  Most students had at least two ID numbers, and some had as many as seven.  It was a mess.

To make things worse, when teachers enter a new class for their profile, Engrade's first option for the school year is 2012-2013.  Uh, we're not there yet, Engrade!  Do most teachers check to see what school year automatically pops up?  Evidently not, judging from the number of classes I had to put into the correct grading periods.

The easiest thing to do would have been to clean it out completely, but timing was not on my side.  The fourth grading period began on March 19.  The last day to put in grades from the third grading period was March 24.  Even though we had a week of no school before March 19, I had to give the other teachers (and myself) time to get those last grades in.  I had at least one student who had missed her midterm exam and had to make it up and two that were so behind I was trying to help them by giving them extra time (they still didn't get their work in and failed anyway).  I'm sure there were other teachers who had the same thing going on.

I had to rush and get my administrative privileges with Engrade.  That was fun.  The only admin we had on the account was a technologically challenged graduation coach.  I love him to death, but he had no idea what I wanted when I emailed to ask him.  I finally chased him down to his office and showed him how to find what I wanted.  So, I got him to write down the code and voila!

I gave the faculty several days (with the approval of the assistant principal who got me into all this) to print their previous classes' grades and prepare to have the rest deleted.  As you can imagine, this did not work out well.  Several teachers insisted that they knew how to make their rosters with the right numbers.  Meanwhile, I had discovered that I could merge data into correct accounts so nobody's data needed to be lost.  Oh, that sounded so awesome.  What I didn't consider was how long this process would take.

As I am writing this, I am still working on merging data.  It's April 28.  I started on March 26.  Now, the first couple of days I spent 10, 12 hours working on the project... AND teaching... AND taking another course besides this one.  My family was pretty supportive.  I mean, they don't expect much from me as far as domestic responsibilities.  The hubby enjoys cooking (Thank God!) and the son doesn't care as long as frozen dinners are available.  The daughter's on her own now, for the most part.  Anyway, I got very little sleep that week and I was in a daze most of the time.

Because of Engrade's suggestions of incorrect grading periods, I had students who had graduated last year, and probably even a few who had graduated in 2009.  They were easy to delete... Engrade does have a feature for deleting students who are not enrolled in classes for a grading period.  However, if last year the teacher didn't change Engrade's assignment of 2011-12 for the grading period, I had students from last year who WERE enrolled for this year - or so Engrade thought.

There are still probably 20 teachers in our school who aren't affiliated with us through Engrade.  They may have their own accounts.  I am not pushing the affiliation issue.  No.  One problem I have had has been that I have had teachers affiliate after I merged accounts, so that their students from previous grading periods (and I deleted everything before the fall of 2011) were all in Engrade with their made-up numbers.  AAAAACCKK!!!  AND their 2012-13 grading periods, too!  So, no, if they're not already affiliated, I'd be just as happy if they'd wait until next year.

When school starts, I know exactly how to teach the teachers what to do, and how to put in students.  I wasn't sure I wanted to teach again next year, but if I do, I have plenty of jobs ready to go.  The principal told me yesterday he is going to suggest I be re-selected by the county technology department, and he also assigned me another technology-based job at the school.  (It doesn't pay much, but I'll get an iPad!)  All that, and three classes to teach each semester.  I'm not overwhelmed - I'm in demand!!!

I learned that from Ms. T.

going back to the missing weeks - March 19 through 25

In my defense, I didn't post much in March because I was too busy being the tech coach.  It was a very interesting month.  I think in the long run it all turned out fine, but the week of March 19 through 25 was just the beginning of the busy season.  It was the week after spring break, and in retrospect it seems like a long time ago!

First, one of the teachers needed textbook programs installed on his laptops.  He has two.  I think if you put them both together, you might have a decent laptop.  Anyway, I had to install them because he doesn't have install privileges.  No problem.

Next I had a teacher who could not make electronic cards using the protocol she used at home.  Her file was corrupt.  She recreated her card and everything was fine from there.

Next I had Ms. W, the teacher who has needed the most work since I took the job.  The good thing is that we are friends so I do enjoy hanging out in her room.  The bad thing is... well, it's my job so I guess none of them are bad.  I suppose it looks funny when you look at my reports and see the work I had to do - clear out the printer cache, re-connect speaker wires, jiggle the Ethernet cable - but somebody's got to do it, right?  This week I  had to clear out her printer cache.  It has since had to be replaced.  Next week, the big problem...


going back to the missing weeks - Feb. 20 through 27

This week was really sort of boring.  I did have two issues and one was my own.  I really do not like the printer in my classroom (it went on to cause more problems later in the semester).  This week I tried to install the driver on my laptop but they were incompatible.

I also needed to hook up the Elmo document camera to my neighbor's computer.  You see, she and I have to share our Elmo, which brings all kinds of headaches.  She is 5 years younger than me, but not quite as tech-savvy as I am.  (In turn, I am really not as good of a teacher as she is!!!)  It seems that every time I borrow the Elmo or she has a guest speaker, nothing really gets set back the way it's supposed to.  I try to set the Elmo up right but I usually end up having to go back to her classroom to fix something and that week I had to do just that.

going back to the missing weeks - Feb. 12 through 18

Yes, these are way out of order...  I had to look back to see what weeks I hadn't posted anything and fix those.

For the week of February 12, I only had one work order on my list - to fix a printer in a math teacher's classroom.  Now, this teacher is sort of an exception to the rule in my school.  She's at least 10 years older than me (which doesn't make her the exception) and knows what she is doing with a computer (which, when combined with that first fact, DOES make her an exception).  So, she wanted to breathe over my shoulder while I re-installed the software to make her printer and her computer communicate.

What had actually happened was that she did something to the printer's door, so that it will now work if she holds it down.  She seemed perfectly happy with this solution.  I let it go at that.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

April 16 through 22

Well, I missed a week there because I was working on a paper in another class. This week I'm going to go back to the log and post for the weeks I missed. This week I didn't have a lot to do as tech coach. Monday through Wednesday I was with the HOSA kids at Opryland Hotel. I did have a printer issue - mine! I'm going to work on that this coming week. I'm still working on the grading program problem and I had to do a lot of grading myself this week. Not much else to tell... Oh, yes, one more thing. I have a new position at our school. I am now also a data coach, helping the administration manage the massive amounts of data we have to deal with. That's one more thing to do, but hey... I signed up for it.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

April 2 through 6

Yes, it was a short week, made even shorter for me by my trip to take my son (age 17) to the college of his choice, TTU. Well, at least it is a TBR school, I can't complain about that. He wants to go into mechanical engineering, so I can't fault him for choosing Tech. It was originally my first choice but I chose APSU because they gave me a much better scholarship offer. At the time, I was thinking about going to pharmacy school, at the time I thought I was just going to go there for 2 years, so I decided to go to APSU since it was cheaper. Then I changed my major to something I could finish at The Peay. The rest is history.

But that's just a little side note...

I spent plenty of time working on the gradebook program project. I see light at the end of the tunnel, but it's not finished yet. Maybe I'll have it done by graduation.

Otherwise, I spent time answering questions about the gradebook program and I'm supposed to install someone's printer - guess I'll do that tomorrow.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

March 26 through 30

I need to go back to my tech coach work log to write the details from the last few weeks. This past week, however, is easy to remember.

I have had the tech coach project from you-know-where.

About two months ago - I can't tell you exactly when because this semester has been strange like the weather - an assistant principal, Ms. M, walked up to me and said, "I need you for a project." Many of the teachers in our school have used a free online gradebook program for several years. Last year the principal at the time, Mr. H, began requiring all teachers to use it, and earlier this year, Coach B, our graduation coach, wanted us to use it as a school so that he could have access to the students' grades to help those who were in trouble.

The powers-that-be of the online gradebook contacted Ms. M and said, "Your school is killing us!"

It seems that their online roster for our school was about 5500 students long. We had 1061 enrolled. We have about 90 teachers, give or take a couple, and few of them were using the preferred method of using the student ID number as the ID number in the program. I myself didn't use that method last year, but this year I started using it because I discovered that my numbers were the same as some of the other teachers and kids were getting grades for other students!!! The problem with this is that some students had seven or eight ID numbers in the roster. Some only had one or two. Ideally, we could've started this over the summer but that didn't work for the gradebook people. They wanted us to go in and do it for the 4th grading period. The cut off for the 3rd grading period came after spring break. I had to get access to become an admin on the account, then, because some teachers couldn't wait to get their grades in (meanwhile I haven't got ANY in there, a fact I need to remedy before Tuesday), instead of deleting everybody in the program... well, let's just say this. It's a project and I'm learning as I go. It's going faster now but I'm still having to go student-by-student through the 3000 or so names that are in there to merge files.

I just told the teachers how to create their rosters (it wasn't the way I had done it in the past); then I went in and deleted students that I knew had graduated or at least not attended this school year; then I went in and merged files for students by changing their ID numbers. The roster still didn't look right. THIS weekend I learned a trick I wish I'd known at first - I could delete every grading period prior to this year and that would make weeding out the data a lot easier. Now the roster only has about 3000 names which is nice. We still don't have all the teachers on the school site (I predict I'll be teaching this at the first-day-back-before-we-get-students inservice, IF I'm still teaching at that point - I don't know why I wouldn't be, but my life's been so uncertain these last few years, I don't want to assume too much!) but honestly, that is not hurting matters for me right now. I worked about 20 hours in two days doing all this stuff. AND teaching too. AND fixing minor computer issues. AND planning a blood drive.

I also worked on mopping up the grading program issues this weekend. Hopefully tomorrow night I can get all my grades in, and then I won't feel so bad working on the computer stuff.

I have another class too and I've really dropped the ball in it. I've changed my mind on my topic for research three times. I have two weeks to do the research AND write the paper. It does not look good. The good news is that I've done everything else in the course on time, I think, and the prof likes my work, and I think I know what I'm doing now, and... well, that is another class, and not really related to this blog. Ahem.

Let's see... without my log in front of me I can't remember what else I did this week... the gradebook program project has certainly kept me busy, but I had a couple of other issues.

Oh! I remember. I installed Flash on two laptops for Ms. T on the opposite end of the building, tried to fix a corrupted Publisher file for Ms. A.M. on our side of the building... did Ms. W need anything this week? She always needs something, but she got me the week before mostly. I can't think of anything else but I wrote down what I did. Seems like I had to install some programs for Mr. W but that may have been last week, too.

AND... last but not least... I had an observation sometime in the last week or so. I did so-so. I have two or three more. I HATE this new observation/evaluation process.

What made me think I could handle grad school, teaching full-time, attempting (and failing) to run a household well (fortunately, my husband is VERY understanding), typing transcription part-time, being good to my nearly-grown kids, my husband, and my parents, and being active in my church? I don't know. And, one of the cats ran away. I promise, I do feed and water them. The scary part is, I'm actually considering going on to get my doctorate. Am I crazy??? Believe it or not, I'm NOT planning to take any classes in the summer this year. I've got other plans in the works... but again, I digress.

This'll be a short week and THANK GOD. I have never appreciated Good Friday so much...