Entries from March 2008 ↓

Like all things that need doing, we want them done now. It is so easy to look at your Goals and think that they’re just too far away and that you’re never going to get there.

I think I have been doing this, big time. It has all been too hard. We weren’t really geting anywhere, well that was my perception anyway.

Reading LG’s recent entry on her Term 1 SMART Goals, I can see that she has been achieving most of what she has wanted to do. My job is to help her do that, to give her the platforms and connections that she needs. And to a certain extent I’ve been doing just that. Yes we still have a few hurdles to get over, but that’s life. So why has it got me thinking we need to do more, and that we haven’t got anywhere.

I think external pressures are coming in to play here. You know those Family/Health issues that we all have to face. I have been playing the role of Carer in my spare time for a long time now. This can range from being a support and helping out, to doing it all and trying to hold all the pieces together.

Recently I’ve had my 3 Children go through some horrendous things. No 1 was involved in a “School Shooting” involving a Crossbow. He was one of the kids that tackled and disarmed the shooter. That was 5 years ago and it’s changed his life, he’s doing it tough. No 2 has done it hard too. He saw his Mum go away in an Ambulance, and she didn’t come back for a long time. This, along with other things, have had a profound affect on him. No 3 had a close friend die of a Heart Attack a couple of years ago, he was 16. Life has dealt the 3 of them a crook hand at times, add to that the on-going Mental Health issues caused by a long term Illness and severe mismanagement of their Mothers condition by local health authorities, and I’m thankful that they are able to function at all.

How has this effected me? I just seem to rise to the challenges. It the strength in me that people keep telling me about. To me I just keep doing what has to be done. And no-where more so than at School. I have a vision for our Students, I have a vision for what Technology, and the 21st Century classroom should be. It’s a part of what keeps me going. It’s something that burns inside of me.

The big task is keeping all of these things in check, keeping that fine balance. When we look at the big picture we need to zoom out at the “whole” then zoom in to magnify what we can do now. Which piece of the puzzle are we working on today. It’s not all going to happen at once. It’s like the way LG eats her Elephant, we need to do it one bite at a time.

Now, I may be about to face a major Health hurdle of my own. I’m looking at the worst case scenario as we are all prone to do. Maybe I need to zoom out and look at the early part of this process too, without going to the nasty end first Like everything else, it will all be a matter of balance.

I love this quote by Jacob Bronowski posted on Scott McLeod’s Through the Keyhole Blog,

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

Mind you, how would you cope with a classroom full of them? As long as they are nice to the computers…..

Now those that know me, would understand that I cant resist some good Comfort Food, well, any food for that matter. So when I saw this meme, started on Dr Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant blog, I had to jump on baord using the Technorati link from the above page. Not sure if I joined the correct meme though, according to Miguel’s Comfort Food Meme entry, we should do this differently.

Miguel says “Having learned my lesson in the last meme, I’m going to encourage you to upload photos of your favorite comfort food to Flickr and tag it with “comfortfoods08″, since the tag “comfortfoods” has already been used.”

Now depending on the weather….

Cold/Nasty Day

• Good Cafe Late
• Tartiflette, or
• Pancakes with “Pure” Maple Syrup, or
• Something sticky/gooey that involves Chocolate

Hot/Nice Day

• Good Cafe Late
• Tartiflette, or
• Pancakes with “Pure” Maple Syrup, or
• Something sticky/gooey that involves Chocolate
• Cheesecake
• Mud Cake
• Any other Cake other than Orange & Poppyseed.
• Brownies
• Most “Slices”
• A Nice Rare/Blue (depends on my mood at the time) Steak, with a good Bernaise.
• Hot Curries
• ….i could go on for ever

OK, so some similarities go without saying……

Oh, and Tartiflette looks like this

What are your Comfort Foods?

comfortfoods08

I just read Miguel’s latest post “To catch a Teacher” and this really got me thinking. It seems all teacher’s in Texas have been given 80 days to get Fingerprinted or they will lose their jobs. I can see the reasoning behind it, but here in Australia it would be a brave decision to enforce.

What are your thoughts on this issue? How would you feel if they brought compulsory fingerprinting into Australia?

This teacher got caught out big time. I wouldn’t be bringing this lunchbox to school again.

http://theapple.com/news/3456-boy-urinates-in-lunchbox-after-comment-by-teacher

To some of you I am from the dark side. I’m one of those Tech’s who try to make it all difficult. Whatever it is that you are trying to do.

Well, we seem to be going through difficult times all round, and no its not me. This has been an interesting couple of weeks, and there has been lots of issues faced by my workmates, friends, and colleagues from everywhere out there in the rest of the world.

1. Graham had very poor response to his Information Night on their new “School Portal”
2. LG had to cope with PowerPoint Poisoning in a class that she had to cover. Pay particular attention to the name of this post, more on that later.
3. Graham had to teach PowerPoint, but would have preferred something a bit more 21st Century(ish)
4. My whole College seems to be running off a very slow (seems slower than Dial Up) SDSL connection. Our new “Fibre E1 Connection” is coming, one day.
5. Graham got questioned on “where are the notes?” and was even asked if he knew what Notes were by one of his students. And this was after he’d spent so much time creating an interesting activity for his girls.
6. Al Upton has his Mini Legends Blogs closed down while DECS does an investigation into the risks involved. The Positive side is that the Education Blogging Community has rallied to Al’s and his Mini Legends, defence with a strong showing of support.
7. LG actually did “Bang her Head” against something, though not a soft Gyprock wall. She had to tackle a Solid Steel TV Cabinet that is the epitome of overkill by design. It’s also mounted at just the right height for the class to bash. Hey, I’ve even done it but all I got was laughs.
8. Im struggling. I’m struggling in a lot of area’s in my life at present, and there’s no easy fix for most of them.

Probably the biggest impact this has had is on my attitude to, and at, work. I’m not my usual self. It’s a struggle to get through the morning, let alone the whole day. But when you look at it, there’s a pattern here. A lot of us are going through issues. The only time this seems to happen is when you start pushing buttons, when you start making headway, when you start pushing boundaries.

LG and I have plans for her class in Term 2. The outcomes in SA could come into play if the shock waves radiate far enough. We are not going to let this dampen our enthusiasm. We are pushing ahead, full steam ahead. Unfortunately, at present, complete with very real Headaches. But that’s not going to stop the drive.

I’m sure you’re all going to push on too. Come join us. Reach your Goals too.

Graham asked in a recent post about how to embed a graphic into his sidebar to show support for Al Upton and his Mini Legends. I’ve had a quick play and this is what I came up with for those of us using Edublogs.

Insert a text Widget into your Sidebar. Give it a tiltle like “I support Al and His Mini Ledgends” Then paste  the text as shown below into the body of the Widget. If the image isnt clear the original is viewable here http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x248/d1ck0/supportAl.jpg

This is using Graham’s graphic, but I’m sure he won’t mind.

In a recent post Graham asked to compare “graphs” of our websites, created using the tool at aharef. Now I’m not sure what the actual “judging criteria” to look for are, but Graham posted his, which looks like this:

Then there’s mine:

And of course Paradise Unplugged

What do you think?

Lately our Internet has been terrible. And thats putting it lightly. We have 2x 512 SDSL Links that are load balanced using a Cisco Router. I’ve decided to do a few tests to see what throughput we are getting. I’m going to use SpeedTest.net to see how we fare. I’ll also have a test doe at the weekend when no-one is there and on a weekday when usage is at its max.

For starters, here is a test done at home. Note that we can basically only get 1.5/256 ADSL. ADSL+ or ADSL2 is not available at our exchange. At School we are also on the wrong end of the 3.5km limit in cable length from the exchange. Over the road DSL is not available because of the distance.

Here is the test from Home:

And fro School on a Saturday. Is that “load balancing” or “load sharing”? I’ll have to find out how our ISP set it up.

More tests to follow….