A Much Needed Three Day Weekend

Well, if you notice, I haven't posted anything to this blog since last Thursday and it is now Monday (Labor Day.) It was a long and exhausting week and I haven't felt much like thinking about school since we got out of class on Friday. Thus, no blog entries.

On Friday, we had our first "Technology" class with Mauricio in his computer lab. This has been our first extended experience with Mauricio, the fourth member of our instruction group for PP. He is an enjoyable teacher and I enjoy his accent. I particularly like the way that many Hispanic speakers alter the accented syllables in words. It makes them sound much more musical, in a way.

Anyway, back to Technology class. Our textbooks for the class were apparently delivered to a hallway in the Education Building somewhere, where another Technology class scooped them up. We are working off of the online textbooks until the next shipment comes in. We spent much of the first class period learning how to open our student folders online and how to create and copy files. This is the same thing that we covered with my 7th grade Computer Skills class a couple of weeks ago, so I have the skills down pretty well.

Mauricio introduced us to our first assignment, the production of a course outline, which addresses units, essential questions and unit questions. This is very similar to the assignment in our "Methods" class and I am hoping to be able to combine the two assignments into one grand production.

I did manage to learn some great things in Mauricio's class, however. First, I learned that I was inputting the incorrect password into the computer to open my account on campus. I had to type in "newuser" as my password to be able to get onto the system. Before, I could not get on the CSU computers, now I can. Second, I learned that the dorms at CSU offer meals to all students, not just dorm residents. Cost is 5.50 for lunch. All you can eat, plus you can take out food if you like. This is much more reasonable than the food court over at the student center. Third, I learned how to connect to the CSU computer system from my computer at home. With the download of a simple client program, I can log on to the CSU system and have full access to my files and the CSU programs. Unfortunately, my modem is a dial-up, so the connection can be very slow.

In the afternoon, we attended Terry's "Planning" class. In this class, we will again be talking about plotting a course (literally and figuratively.) There will be another assignment for this class, this time a "Teacher Work Sample." This will be an example of our work as a teacher which will go into our employment portfolio and impress the hell out of some principal someday.

The day did not quite end quickly enough. On this long Labor Day weekend, I slept for 4 hours on Saturday afternoon and did nothing but play games on Sunday. Today, however, I have had to get back to work. I have already completed my deliverable for my "Methods" class, a short paper regarding our Vocational Education philosophy. Now, I must spend some time working on my units plans....