Logging in, computer problems, laughing at the Student Teacher, etc.

It is Thursday, August 19, 2004. The first day of the block schedule here at Cache La Poudre Junior High School. Mr. Jewett and I have classes for period 1, 3 and 5, each lasting about 88 minutes. 7th period, also known as right now, is a planning period, so I am blogging in the media center.

Today, we worked on getting each student logged into their computers, change their passwords, open their student folders and save a file to their folders. Of course, with the start of school and the installation of a new server, we were bound to have some problems. Some kids seemed to be able to log right in and change their password, others couldn't. At first, we thought that students had to log in under the PSDSchools.org server, as this is the way things were last year. This year, they have to log in under the "Students" server. Still some computers worked well and others didn't. Having students change computers seemed to help on occassion, sometimes not. Jeremy (Mr. Aragon) came down from the server room to help. He is the new tech guy and was a student here at CLP 4 years ago. He helped abit.

Student folders seemed to be opening in random places, sometimes in the student directories, sometimes in the "year of graduation" directories. This turned out to be a scripting problem and should be fixed soon.

Most kids were able to login eventually. In some of the more basic classes, Mr. Jewett and I began by going over some basic computer terminology, such as "network," "LAN," "Internet" and so forth. For the Web Publishing class, we began by having the kids start a webpage using only HTML script. This was actually kind of fun and the kids all seems to get excited about the smallest things, such as changing the background color of their webpage. They put in a link and a picture from the Internet.

Our Computer Skills II class began working on their Scavenger Hunt. Mr. Jewett put this together and the project has students searching for the answers to questions on the internet, such as "Who is the President of Mexico?" They had to include the answer as well as a posting of the web link on their answer sheet. A couple of kids got the entire set of questions completed within the 25 minutes we had left in the period. Alot of kids got stuck and only managed to answer 2 or 3 questions.

We will be completing this Scavenger Hunt about three more times. Just to stay involved and understand what went into the creation of the project, I just completed my own Scavenger Hunt. It is saved to my resource file on the server and I will have kids work on this tomorrow and Monday.

Mr. Jewett and I seem to be working together pretty well. I think he likes having me in class to help answer questions for kids on one side of the room, while he works the other. I have also been able to contribute on occasion, such as pointing out that the html code for colors does not necessarily have to be a hexidecimal, but can merely be the name of a color.

Mr. Jewett has been taking time from most classes to try to help me learn the names of our kids. I have been doing the "Name Circle," having each student list their name and the names of each of the students in line behind them. I then have them change all of their positions while I am out of the room, to see if I can get their names right. I tend to fail miserably and everyone laughs. That's OK. I am batting about .300 or so, but I am at least getting a couple of names down.

While sitting here working on my blog, I was introduced to our new Superintendent, Nancy Wright, as she toured our building. She seems like a very nice and enthusiastic person.

I am almost done with my planning period, so I will be heading off to Study Hall, a 30 minute "mini-period" at the end of the day, Tuesday through Friday. In this study hall, students are supposed to be working on homework, class projects, etc. No sleeping, no music, no goofing off. I think that we have a stack of papers to hand out to the kids today. I believe that we have to review the student handbook and some of the new rules for the year, such as the dress code, the electronic equipment ban, etc.

I may log in for another word or two later. Maybe not.