Friday
After my morning crossing guard job, I took our pyromaniac student to class (see the previous post on that one).
I dropped off a backpack that a parent had brought for a student who had left it had home.
I had 2 - 4th grade classes back to back, each on researching online, however two very different styles. I was only able to cover a very small part of what the students need to understand about the internet and how you search on the internet. I used the tablet (finally) so I could walk around the class and still control the computer.
The second 4th grade class, the teacher did the instruction and it was very quick, very brief but only covered a few points on how to search and what to search.
Our tech from the District IT dept. came and we got the A/V and VGA working in the back of the lab.
We also got the morning announcement system working. All of this in 15 minutes before the music class began.
The music class went well, we talked about how we would define music to an alien, we put the kids in two groups to come up with and write down all of the places we hear music, and then I was able to do the video demonstration I made Tuesday night of the different music set to the same video clip. All of it went well, but the impact of the different types of music to a movie was really made a big impact.
Next was 5th grade, but in between, I heard from the tech that the printer in a 3rd grade class wasn't working because there were network issues with the ports in the classrooms. I'm glad I had the tech check it!
By the time 5th grade came in, I received an email from a former staff member who now works at the District office and asked for copies of the dvd's I made of some professional development that occurred last school year. I began the task of copying the dvd's - in whole onto my laptop, so they could be duplicated. This is one of the wonderful things about owning a Mac, this is something not easily done on a Windows machine unless you have dual drives, and even then sometimes the software will not work as you want it to. With a Mac, it's all very simple and everything works as it should.
I sat and had lunch in the lounge and visited with co-workers which was really nice. It's a nice way to relax and visit outside of the stress in the classrooms.
I went back to the lab to continue with the copying onto my laptop. It was taking about 30 - 45 minutes for each one, and there were four to do. By the time I finished with the third, I tried getting the fourth on, but part of the way into it, I was getting a message that my hard drive was almost full. Then I checked to see the size of the files I had already copied and found they were each almost 4 GB each. I stopped copying and began the process of burning onto dvd the 3 I had already done.
I had to stop to do my afternoon crossing guard duty.
After returning, I got a call from a 7th grade teacher. The middle school students stay late on most Fridays in order to meet the state's requirements for instructional hours in a school year. The students were staying until 3:30 (by this time it was about 1:45) and because of the professional development that was going on there was a problem with the lesson plans the 7th grade teacher had in mind, so she decided to see if they could come into the lab from 3:00 - 3:30. I didn't think there would be a problem with this as I was thinking we were going to be doing some planning from about 2:00 - 3:00. No such luck. The professional development ended up getting the other teachers hooked in until almost 4:00.
I got an idea and set up the computers for the 7th grade class while still burning dvd's. Again, because of the size of the dvd files, it was taking a while to do this.
Then the person requesting the dvd's came to see if they could pick them up, but I only had one done and it was one they really didn't need. I wish I had known that.
I visited with this friend until the 7th grade class came in, and they left.
I continued with the dvd burning during the 7th grade class and showed off my new laptop I purchased last night while at Office Max. This will be explained in another post.
At 3:30 I had to go back out to do a second round of crossing guard duty for the middle school students.
I continued burning the dvd's, and then copied and burned the final dvd.
I left at 5:15 pm.
I went to Mom's house for a few minutes, but she was busy and I was tired and had a car full of stuff to bring home.
I came home, it was 6:00.
Showing posts with label my crazy day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my crazy day. Show all posts
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
After my morning crossing guard job...
I walked our pyromaniac student to his classroom. That's no joke, he was caught lighting a fire at a local Wal-Mart.
I signed the form showing I still have my college degrees. They have my transcripts on file, but the government makes me sign this form every year.
I received the new dongle from IT, and sent back the one that was dying. I keep a spare in the lab, and one of the teachers needed a new one on Tuesday. I switched mine out for the teacher's and am getting mine replaced. This is so that it doesn't interfere with the teacher's instruction time. By the way, the dongle is an adapter that allows the computer to be hooked up to a projector.
I mailing the printouts from the online calendar I have for the mobile cart, the Smartboards and the Document cameras. The district is wanting to know how much of these are getting used in each of the schools. At my school, I have an online calendars set up within our email system, that way everyone can readily see what has been reserved. The teachers then email myself (for the mobile cart) or the librarian (for the SmartBoards and Document Cameras) to let us know when they would like to reserve the technology.
I just finished assisting a teacher with a powerpoint activity they made on their home computer using the latest version of PowerPoint. The problem is that we use an older version of PowerPoint that is not compatible with the new one. Thankfully I also have the latest version on my laptop here at school, so I'm able to use one of my external hard drives to retrieve it off the teacher computer, take it to mine, open up the PowerPoint (I've also done this with documents) and save as the older version. Then I give the older version back to the teacher so they can work it off of their laptop. It takes longer to explain than to do it, but I try to explain to the teacher why their file isn't working.
Attempted to get the alternate A/V and VGA to project, but it is not working. Submitted ticket online to the IT Dept.
Taught some formatting basics to a 6th grade class.
Updated the librarian's computer.
Sent 2 emails to IT, one with the list of student ID#'s that won't log in, another for a couple of students ID#'s that will not open MS Word.
Updated a first grade teacher, the teacher also requested updates on Firefox and Macromedia flash.
Printed all new class lists. We've had some of our kinders sent over to Head Start - those who were not ready for kinder, but have also added new students, including a family of 5 who have moved into the area.
Received phone call from one of the administrative staff saying they could not change the background. I verified what they were doing was right by using mine, and then called IT. They are looking into why some of the laptops are working while others are not.
I set up the computers for the third grade class, their teacher wants them to use the BBC dance mat typing web site.
I competed with the third grade kids (and the teacher) on Dance Mat Typing. Yes, there are some perks to my job.
I logged the students off the computers and checked my emails.
I did my afternoon crossing guard duty.
I checked to see if the appointment I had for after school was ready, turns out she was in a meeting she must have forgotten about.
I spent some time talking with the librarian and she called the full time music teacher for our school to schedule some planning time for the three of us for after early release on Friday. We already have a game plan for music class #2 tomorrow.
I had some last minute emails to take care of after that, and by the time I shut everything down and locked everything up it was 4:45 when I left the school.
I drove to Costco and put gas in the car.
I still have to go to Office Max and get some folders for the class tomorrow. Something I forgot for Wednesday's class.
I'm tired, but after having eaten some mini pizzas I'm feeling better. Off now to Office Max.
I walked our pyromaniac student to his classroom. That's no joke, he was caught lighting a fire at a local Wal-Mart.
I signed the form showing I still have my college degrees. They have my transcripts on file, but the government makes me sign this form every year.
I received the new dongle from IT, and sent back the one that was dying. I keep a spare in the lab, and one of the teachers needed a new one on Tuesday. I switched mine out for the teacher's and am getting mine replaced. This is so that it doesn't interfere with the teacher's instruction time. By the way, the dongle is an adapter that allows the computer to be hooked up to a projector.
I mailing the printouts from the online calendar I have for the mobile cart, the Smartboards and the Document cameras. The district is wanting to know how much of these are getting used in each of the schools. At my school, I have an online calendars set up within our email system, that way everyone can readily see what has been reserved. The teachers then email myself (for the mobile cart) or the librarian (for the SmartBoards and Document Cameras) to let us know when they would like to reserve the technology.
I just finished assisting a teacher with a powerpoint activity they made on their home computer using the latest version of PowerPoint. The problem is that we use an older version of PowerPoint that is not compatible with the new one. Thankfully I also have the latest version on my laptop here at school, so I'm able to use one of my external hard drives to retrieve it off the teacher computer, take it to mine, open up the PowerPoint (I've also done this with documents) and save as the older version. Then I give the older version back to the teacher so they can work it off of their laptop. It takes longer to explain than to do it, but I try to explain to the teacher why their file isn't working.
Attempted to get the alternate A/V and VGA to project, but it is not working. Submitted ticket online to the IT Dept.
Taught some formatting basics to a 6th grade class.
Updated the librarian's computer.
Sent 2 emails to IT, one with the list of student ID#'s that won't log in, another for a couple of students ID#'s that will not open MS Word.
Updated a first grade teacher, the teacher also requested updates on Firefox and Macromedia flash.
Printed all new class lists. We've had some of our kinders sent over to Head Start - those who were not ready for kinder, but have also added new students, including a family of 5 who have moved into the area.
Received phone call from one of the administrative staff saying they could not change the background. I verified what they were doing was right by using mine, and then called IT. They are looking into why some of the laptops are working while others are not.
I set up the computers for the third grade class, their teacher wants them to use the BBC dance mat typing web site.
I competed with the third grade kids (and the teacher) on Dance Mat Typing. Yes, there are some perks to my job.
I logged the students off the computers and checked my emails.
I did my afternoon crossing guard duty.
I checked to see if the appointment I had for after school was ready, turns out she was in a meeting she must have forgotten about.
I spent some time talking with the librarian and she called the full time music teacher for our school to schedule some planning time for the three of us for after early release on Friday. We already have a game plan for music class #2 tomorrow.
I had some last minute emails to take care of after that, and by the time I shut everything down and locked everything up it was 4:45 when I left the school.
I drove to Costco and put gas in the car.
I still have to go to Office Max and get some folders for the class tomorrow. Something I forgot for Wednesday's class.
I'm tired, but after having eaten some mini pizzas I'm feeling better. Off now to Office Max.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Last Two Days
Things have been crazy, actually for three days, but I've already chronicled Monday.
Tuesday morning was less eventful, the power remained on so I was able to get more sleep.
Arrived at work at 7:15. At about 7:45 I got asked by our Librarian to try to get the morning announcement system working, but I wasn't able to get it working. I had the librarian call the A/V guys at our IT department at the district to come and get it up and running again. I could probably get it working, but I didn't have time to get it done before my Crossing Guard job began at 8:00.
After my crossing guard duty, I booted up the computers. Apparently yesterday's updates took out the timer feature I had set up for the computers to turn themselves on.
I spent the morning putting out computer fires, trying to get with the librarian so we could plan our general music class and getting with the teacher whose Friday Computer Lab time was going to have to be moved. It got moved to that morning, and the teacher requested I use the lesson I did last year on doing some layout editing on Microsoft Word. The students don't get a lot of time in the lab, so their knowledge of a lot of the software is limited and scattered from a period of some years. And that's for the kids who have been with us since kindergarten, we have quite a few who came from other schools with varying degrees of experience on the computers at their former schools, however some come with no experience at all. By the way, this class happens to be a 6th grade class. Anyway, thankfully I was able to find it quickly on one of my external hard drives and once the kids came to the lab and logged in I was able to push out the project for them to do.
After that class was finished, I had a small window of time to meet with the librarian to plan the music class. I then had to run back to the lab (thankfully it's right next door) as I had a 5th grade class trying to operate without me. Most of the kids already knew how to log in, however some of the logins didn't work. I had to work on that and push out the web site the kids were working on (the one I made yesterday) for their project.
Once I got everyone logged off I checked my email and found a kinder teacher sent an email requesting a video on fall, pumpkins, something like that to talk about the life cycle. I don't know when she needed it, but it sounded like she was going to need it before the end of the day. I logged onto Ideal and found a few segments of video on fall and why we have seasons. I downloaded them onto my laptop, then using bluetooth transferred them to my teacher computer, before pushing the videos out to the laptop for this kinder teacher. These are videos that are already cleared for classroom use and are found to be within the curriculum standards the State Dept. of Ed requires. Ideal is a site through the ADE (Ariz. Dept. of Ed.), and is supposed to be for teachers, however since I have a substitute certificate filed with the ADE, I qualified for access to this. After pushing the videos to her computer, I walked down to her classroom to explain to her what I found and brought the cables she would need to project the videos onto the classroom television.
I finally was able to stop for lunch at 12:30 and relax for a few minutes in the staff lounge.
At 1:00 I began prepping for the last round of classes, consisting of 2 - 1st grade classes, a 3rd grade class and a 2nd grade class.
The first grade class teachers requested during my lunch break for their students to type a sentence on Microsoft Word. They furnished the sentences. After seeing the first teacher explain this, I was able to better assist the second - 1st grade teacher with her class. The third grade class also decided to type on Word and brought in their spelling words for this. The second grade class opted for the Dance Mat Typing site, which required a change.
Once those classes were done, I quickly finished my crossing guard duty after school to log off and shut down the computers. School gets out at 3:30, I'm usually done with my crossing guard duty at 3:45, and I had a meeting in Tempe for the School District's bond election (see the Yes For Tempe Schools logo on the upper right corner of my blog page) at 4;00. I was done early with the crossing guard duty, so I was able to get things shut down and locked up for the night and leave with barely enough time to make it to the meeting.
One thing, though, I checked my emails one last time before leaving to find the agenda for the meeting from 5:00 - 7:00 for the District's Regional Design Team group #4. This meant I would need to call my visiting teaching companion to cancel my plans to visit teach after the bond meeting.
Both meetings went well, and I stopped by Costco afterwards and picked up some writing tablets for the kids to use in the general music class.
I finally made it home at 8:00. I was so tired I was ready to drop, but still had some work to do. After taking a break and watching a little bit of television, I finally turned off everything in the rest of the house and started on the work to prepare for the general music class. I brought home a dvd of Ghosts of the Abyss, and uploaded onto my computer one of the chapters of the movie. I then loaded the movie into Garageband where I took out the audio and replaced it with different music.
Today saw a little less activity, but still a bit of craziness by the end of the day.
I had a few minutes to sit and relax this morning after finishing the crossing guard job.
I posted a few emails, namely one letting the 7th and 8th grade teachers to have their students bring pencils with them for the class. Then the eruptions started. First was the librarian who told me we were supposed to wait to discuss this with the principal today, rather than actually starting today. I had already spoken with the music teacher the kids have been with up until now, and she was already under the impression (as was I) that we were starting today. Oops. I apologized, but I did indicate that I had already gotten the lesson taken care of, and the supplies bought (which I did). Then the librarian brought up an idea she had for a lesson and she thought we should start it off with what she had in mind. I didn't take it wrong at all, my attitude was, okay, let's do what you had in mind and we'll do what I planned for on Friday. Bonus! :o)
The class went through just fine, and we gave ourselves a little pat on the back. The kids did fine with what the librarian had in mind, and we finished with the first installment of having them journal about their feelings while listening to a song. The song was Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. I chose this song because it's upbeat and sends a very powerful message, if you can get the kids to listen to the words. After playing it twice and talking about what our feelings were for the song, and writing a few on the board, the kids started writing and I could tell from their comments that the messages in the song were sinking in. It was something they hadn't heard before.
I had about a half hour to prep for the two kinder classes I have next, and they went well.
After kinder, I had a 30 minute lunch break and a 30 minute prep for a 1st grade and 3rd grade class, back to back. While I was at lunch the math coach came and spoke with me about my substituting (as well as the librarian) for the math coach on their middle school math interventions when the math coach is away for meetings or illness. The interesting part about this conversation was when the math coach told me I should have no problem with my schedule in fitting all of this in. After all, I have all that spare time first thing in the morning, right? It's right there on the schedule! I explained to her that while there are blanks on the schedule, that doesn't mean I'm in the lab twiddling my thumbs. I have a lot of other things I do, and still need to get done. Such as:
Locating 4 iBook laptops on the mobile cart that hold the charge the longest to use for a kinder center. This begins on Monday. Oh, and by the way, I also need to schedule this on the calendar for the mobile cart.
Finish getting the inventory of computers, telephones, printers, projectors, speakers and any other technology device in the school. IT at the district just sent out an email talking about the upgrades in computers that will be occurring soon, which will render the inventory obsolete, and I'll have to do another inventory when the equipment comes in. We already have gotten some mounted technology installed earlier this month (while I was out sick), which is what I've been getting the serial numbers for. I already have gotten a lot of this information written down, I just need to type it onto the spreadsheet.
Put the new toner cartridges the school just purchased into the classroom printers that have run out of ink.
Send back the used printers to the district warehouse.
Update the teacher's laptop computers.
I need to clean the keyboards, mice and screens in the lab computers.
Check on why a printer isn't working for a 3rd grade teacher.
Meet with the Reading First Demonstration Site specialist on creating a brochure to send to schools interested in visiting.
That's just a partial list of stuff that needs to be done, I'm sure I'm forgetting things right now as I type this.
Towards the end of the 1st grade class I got a call from a 6th grade teacher. Apparently the teacher is taking a Smartboard class and needs the software on his computer upgraded in order for him to be able to work off of his laptop in the class. I tried to do this remotely from the lab, but it turned out there were problems with his computer and I had to snag it and take it to the lab. While getting started to work on the computer, the 1st grade class left and I had to reset the computers for the 3rd grade class. During this time, I tried to run the updates, but there was no space left on the laptop's hard drive, so I had to take the laptop back to the teacher, have them log back in so I could go through and delete out the stuff from his hard drive that was causing this. It turned out one of the teacher's own children had put a file full of family pictures on computer and it was taking up 16 GB of space. It took about 30 minutes to get the file transferred to one of my external hard drives, so I could get the update run. By this time, I was running (literally) through the school to grab an extra stop sign in the office and do my afternoon crossing guard duty.
Thankfully I was able to get it done quickly so I could go back to the teacher's classroom to get the updates done.
Was my day over yet? No. I already had an appointment with a 5th grade teacher after school to show how to plug their laptop into the newly mounted projector and speakers in their classroom.
By the time I left, it was 4:30. Technically, as a classified (hourly) employee, I'm supposed to leave at 4:00.
I think I'm finally tired now.
Tuesday morning was less eventful, the power remained on so I was able to get more sleep.
Arrived at work at 7:15. At about 7:45 I got asked by our Librarian to try to get the morning announcement system working, but I wasn't able to get it working. I had the librarian call the A/V guys at our IT department at the district to come and get it up and running again. I could probably get it working, but I didn't have time to get it done before my Crossing Guard job began at 8:00.
After my crossing guard duty, I booted up the computers. Apparently yesterday's updates took out the timer feature I had set up for the computers to turn themselves on.
I spent the morning putting out computer fires, trying to get with the librarian so we could plan our general music class and getting with the teacher whose Friday Computer Lab time was going to have to be moved. It got moved to that morning, and the teacher requested I use the lesson I did last year on doing some layout editing on Microsoft Word. The students don't get a lot of time in the lab, so their knowledge of a lot of the software is limited and scattered from a period of some years. And that's for the kids who have been with us since kindergarten, we have quite a few who came from other schools with varying degrees of experience on the computers at their former schools, however some come with no experience at all. By the way, this class happens to be a 6th grade class. Anyway, thankfully I was able to find it quickly on one of my external hard drives and once the kids came to the lab and logged in I was able to push out the project for them to do.
After that class was finished, I had a small window of time to meet with the librarian to plan the music class. I then had to run back to the lab (thankfully it's right next door) as I had a 5th grade class trying to operate without me. Most of the kids already knew how to log in, however some of the logins didn't work. I had to work on that and push out the web site the kids were working on (the one I made yesterday) for their project.
Once I got everyone logged off I checked my email and found a kinder teacher sent an email requesting a video on fall, pumpkins, something like that to talk about the life cycle. I don't know when she needed it, but it sounded like she was going to need it before the end of the day. I logged onto Ideal and found a few segments of video on fall and why we have seasons. I downloaded them onto my laptop, then using bluetooth transferred them to my teacher computer, before pushing the videos out to the laptop for this kinder teacher. These are videos that are already cleared for classroom use and are found to be within the curriculum standards the State Dept. of Ed requires. Ideal is a site through the ADE (Ariz. Dept. of Ed.), and is supposed to be for teachers, however since I have a substitute certificate filed with the ADE, I qualified for access to this. After pushing the videos to her computer, I walked down to her classroom to explain to her what I found and brought the cables she would need to project the videos onto the classroom television.
I finally was able to stop for lunch at 12:30 and relax for a few minutes in the staff lounge.
At 1:00 I began prepping for the last round of classes, consisting of 2 - 1st grade classes, a 3rd grade class and a 2nd grade class.
The first grade class teachers requested during my lunch break for their students to type a sentence on Microsoft Word. They furnished the sentences. After seeing the first teacher explain this, I was able to better assist the second - 1st grade teacher with her class. The third grade class also decided to type on Word and brought in their spelling words for this. The second grade class opted for the Dance Mat Typing site, which required a change.
Once those classes were done, I quickly finished my crossing guard duty after school to log off and shut down the computers. School gets out at 3:30, I'm usually done with my crossing guard duty at 3:45, and I had a meeting in Tempe for the School District's bond election (see the Yes For Tempe Schools logo on the upper right corner of my blog page) at 4;00. I was done early with the crossing guard duty, so I was able to get things shut down and locked up for the night and leave with barely enough time to make it to the meeting.
One thing, though, I checked my emails one last time before leaving to find the agenda for the meeting from 5:00 - 7:00 for the District's Regional Design Team group #4. This meant I would need to call my visiting teaching companion to cancel my plans to visit teach after the bond meeting.
Both meetings went well, and I stopped by Costco afterwards and picked up some writing tablets for the kids to use in the general music class.
I finally made it home at 8:00. I was so tired I was ready to drop, but still had some work to do. After taking a break and watching a little bit of television, I finally turned off everything in the rest of the house and started on the work to prepare for the general music class. I brought home a dvd of Ghosts of the Abyss, and uploaded onto my computer one of the chapters of the movie. I then loaded the movie into Garageband where I took out the audio and replaced it with different music.
Today saw a little less activity, but still a bit of craziness by the end of the day.
I had a few minutes to sit and relax this morning after finishing the crossing guard job.
I posted a few emails, namely one letting the 7th and 8th grade teachers to have their students bring pencils with them for the class. Then the eruptions started. First was the librarian who told me we were supposed to wait to discuss this with the principal today, rather than actually starting today. I had already spoken with the music teacher the kids have been with up until now, and she was already under the impression (as was I) that we were starting today. Oops. I apologized, but I did indicate that I had already gotten the lesson taken care of, and the supplies bought (which I did). Then the librarian brought up an idea she had for a lesson and she thought we should start it off with what she had in mind. I didn't take it wrong at all, my attitude was, okay, let's do what you had in mind and we'll do what I planned for on Friday. Bonus! :o)
The class went through just fine, and we gave ourselves a little pat on the back. The kids did fine with what the librarian had in mind, and we finished with the first installment of having them journal about their feelings while listening to a song. The song was Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. I chose this song because it's upbeat and sends a very powerful message, if you can get the kids to listen to the words. After playing it twice and talking about what our feelings were for the song, and writing a few on the board, the kids started writing and I could tell from their comments that the messages in the song were sinking in. It was something they hadn't heard before.
I had about a half hour to prep for the two kinder classes I have next, and they went well.
After kinder, I had a 30 minute lunch break and a 30 minute prep for a 1st grade and 3rd grade class, back to back. While I was at lunch the math coach came and spoke with me about my substituting (as well as the librarian) for the math coach on their middle school math interventions when the math coach is away for meetings or illness. The interesting part about this conversation was when the math coach told me I should have no problem with my schedule in fitting all of this in. After all, I have all that spare time first thing in the morning, right? It's right there on the schedule! I explained to her that while there are blanks on the schedule, that doesn't mean I'm in the lab twiddling my thumbs. I have a lot of other things I do, and still need to get done. Such as:
Locating 4 iBook laptops on the mobile cart that hold the charge the longest to use for a kinder center. This begins on Monday. Oh, and by the way, I also need to schedule this on the calendar for the mobile cart.
Finish getting the inventory of computers, telephones, printers, projectors, speakers and any other technology device in the school. IT at the district just sent out an email talking about the upgrades in computers that will be occurring soon, which will render the inventory obsolete, and I'll have to do another inventory when the equipment comes in. We already have gotten some mounted technology installed earlier this month (while I was out sick), which is what I've been getting the serial numbers for. I already have gotten a lot of this information written down, I just need to type it onto the spreadsheet.
Put the new toner cartridges the school just purchased into the classroom printers that have run out of ink.
Send back the used printers to the district warehouse.
Update the teacher's laptop computers.
I need to clean the keyboards, mice and screens in the lab computers.
Check on why a printer isn't working for a 3rd grade teacher.
Meet with the Reading First Demonstration Site specialist on creating a brochure to send to schools interested in visiting.
That's just a partial list of stuff that needs to be done, I'm sure I'm forgetting things right now as I type this.
Towards the end of the 1st grade class I got a call from a 6th grade teacher. Apparently the teacher is taking a Smartboard class and needs the software on his computer upgraded in order for him to be able to work off of his laptop in the class. I tried to do this remotely from the lab, but it turned out there were problems with his computer and I had to snag it and take it to the lab. While getting started to work on the computer, the 1st grade class left and I had to reset the computers for the 3rd grade class. During this time, I tried to run the updates, but there was no space left on the laptop's hard drive, so I had to take the laptop back to the teacher, have them log back in so I could go through and delete out the stuff from his hard drive that was causing this. It turned out one of the teacher's own children had put a file full of family pictures on computer and it was taking up 16 GB of space. It took about 30 minutes to get the file transferred to one of my external hard drives, so I could get the update run. By this time, I was running (literally) through the school to grab an extra stop sign in the office and do my afternoon crossing guard duty.
Thankfully I was able to get it done quickly so I could go back to the teacher's classroom to get the updates done.
Was my day over yet? No. I already had an appointment with a 5th grade teacher after school to show how to plug their laptop into the newly mounted projector and speakers in their classroom.
By the time I left, it was 4:30. Technically, as a classified (hourly) employee, I'm supposed to leave at 4:00.
I think I'm finally tired now.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Something to laugh about...
Okay, so I'm home a little early from work. Here's just a part of my day.
For the last three weeks I've been recuperating from a gastro - intestinal infection (stomach flu), two rounds. Because of this, my doctor told me I had to be off the meds for two weeks after the "action" (for lack of a better word) had finished because the infection tears apart the inner lining of your stomach.
So, last night, it had been a week since I had my last "round", so I took 1/2 of my dosage of one of my meds. Unfortunately, I awoke feeling really loopy. This takes the better part of the day to wear off.
7:00 am: I went to school (yes, I drove) feeling somewhat loopy to a morning meeting (7:30 am) being held in my computer lab because the district IT (information technology) was providing some training for the teachers, so I had all kinds of people from the district (and the entire school staff) stuffed into my computer lab. The IT people came just as the meeting was supposed to start, but there was a survey I needed the staff to take, so I handed that to them, for the staff to work on while our guests set up. Because I had questions fly from both IT staff and school staff, it was pandemonium.
At 8:00 am I have to go outside and start my morning crossing guard duty. Because the campus doesn't open for students until 8:15, I have to hold people off across the street until then (which usually has at least one disgruntled parent angry).
8:45 am: The last of the stragglers who either walk or get dropped off finally cross and I can go inside the computer lab and changed from my crossing guard outfit to my computer lab outfit. But before I could do that, I had to answer a call from a teacher who couldn't get her internet working on her computer. Thankfully some of the IT people were still there (pushing updates remotely from the lab to teacher computers), so when my efforts didn't pan out, I took the laptop to them and had them show me how to fix that. After that, I assisted the IT people with getting the last of the computers updated, which involved a trip to the portables to get one of the computers up and running.
9:10 am: I'm finally able to change into the lab assistant outfit 25 minutes late. :o) I got a call from my endodontist, I had a root canal scheduled for 11:00, but it got changed to 10:30, which meant I would not be able to get students called into the lab for make ups on their NWEA testing. I was already running late, and the students wouldn't have been able to finish the test, so I decided to forgo the make ups until next week.
10:00 am: I explain to the Office Manager at the school that my appointment got changed so I was leaving to go to my appointment. This is so that she knows the lab will be closed until I get back.
10:30 - 11:30 am: I have a nice appointment with the endodontist (I'm not being sarcastic about this, he is very, very good and a really nice man to talk to). The rest of his staff are equally capable and wonderful as well. I highly recommend him if you need to have a root canal done.
11:30 am: I leave the endodontist and stop off at Dairy Queen for a milk shake. It's a tradition that my mother created, that I always get a strawberry milkshake from Dairy Queen (no one else will do) after a dental appointment. The only time I cannot do this is if I leave with stitches in my mouth. Otherwise I still keep the tradition going. :o)
12:00 pm: I arrive back at school and realize that I will probably not be able to last there for very long once the novocain wears off, so I go to the classroom of a teacher who had asked me to help her with a powerpoint presentation she is preparing. She's adding a video that she knew I had to the presentation. I go to her room and work while she's teaching measurement to her wonderful first grade students. Then I asked her the all important question, where does she have the video located on her computer? The answer? I don't have it. I knew you did, so I thought I'd have you help me get it. Do you see where this is going? I went back to the lab, got the video on my personal laptop that I bring to school and use (the school district seems to think I don't need a laptop to work off of), and used the bluetooth to push the video from my computer to my teacher computer in the lab. The teacher computer has a program called Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) that can control the other apple computers on the network, whether it be a computer on campus or on another campus in the district. I used this computer to push the video onto the teacher computer so I can finish what she needed.
1:00 pm: I finish making the first 3 slides for this teacher, including the slide with the movie on it. Yes, I said making the slides, because she hadn't started making the slideshow yet. I also found a picture for slide #2 that she had also indicated that she needed and inserted that for her. This is the reason why I haven't been stressing too much about whether I have a job next year, I figure as long as people are asking me to do these things for them, it's job security.
1:30 pm: I change back into my crossing guard outfit and do the afternoon crossing guard duty. This is one of those things that is different from corporate america: in public school, you not only have your job, but you also have extra duties assigned to you to do. Some people monitor the cafeteria during lunches, others have playground duty during recess, others handle needed work either before school or after school. Everyone does it, whether you are a certified teacher or a classified employee.
2:00 pm: I get paged to come to the office, to find this same teacher is facilitating the afternoon staff meeting and needs help setting up the projector and speakers. Usually when people need for me to do stuff like this, they give me some advance notice. On some things I need more advance notice than others (such as needing to bring my camcorder to record a guest speaker). I was almost shut down and ready to leave for the day, as by this time the novocain had worn off and I was in pain. It ended up being a good thing I stayed, as they needed to play a dvd and this teacher's laptop had not been set up to play a dvd. This requires administrative passwords that I don't give out, so they would have had to call the IT department to have it taken care of, but it was faster for me to do it. After assisting with a different powerpoint and the dvd movie, they no longer needed my assistance so I left and went home.
4:00 pm: I'm home and getting on the computer, after having fed Rachel, eating lunch and taking a pain med for my mouth, and could sense something itchy under my shirt. After scratching a few minutes I reached under my shirt to see if there was something there irritating my skin to find I had spent the entire day with a dryer sheet underneath my top. This has been a long explanation of my day, but for some reason, after all of the places I've been and people I've seen today, I just had to laugh that I had a dryer sheet under my shirt the whole time.
For the last three weeks I've been recuperating from a gastro - intestinal infection (stomach flu), two rounds. Because of this, my doctor told me I had to be off the meds for two weeks after the "action" (for lack of a better word) had finished because the infection tears apart the inner lining of your stomach.
So, last night, it had been a week since I had my last "round", so I took 1/2 of my dosage of one of my meds. Unfortunately, I awoke feeling really loopy. This takes the better part of the day to wear off.
7:00 am: I went to school (yes, I drove) feeling somewhat loopy to a morning meeting (7:30 am) being held in my computer lab because the district IT (information technology) was providing some training for the teachers, so I had all kinds of people from the district (and the entire school staff) stuffed into my computer lab. The IT people came just as the meeting was supposed to start, but there was a survey I needed the staff to take, so I handed that to them, for the staff to work on while our guests set up. Because I had questions fly from both IT staff and school staff, it was pandemonium.
At 8:00 am I have to go outside and start my morning crossing guard duty. Because the campus doesn't open for students until 8:15, I have to hold people off across the street until then (which usually has at least one disgruntled parent angry).
8:45 am: The last of the stragglers who either walk or get dropped off finally cross and I can go inside the computer lab and changed from my crossing guard outfit to my computer lab outfit. But before I could do that, I had to answer a call from a teacher who couldn't get her internet working on her computer. Thankfully some of the IT people were still there (pushing updates remotely from the lab to teacher computers), so when my efforts didn't pan out, I took the laptop to them and had them show me how to fix that. After that, I assisted the IT people with getting the last of the computers updated, which involved a trip to the portables to get one of the computers up and running.
9:10 am: I'm finally able to change into the lab assistant outfit 25 minutes late. :o) I got a call from my endodontist, I had a root canal scheduled for 11:00, but it got changed to 10:30, which meant I would not be able to get students called into the lab for make ups on their NWEA testing. I was already running late, and the students wouldn't have been able to finish the test, so I decided to forgo the make ups until next week.
10:00 am: I explain to the Office Manager at the school that my appointment got changed so I was leaving to go to my appointment. This is so that she knows the lab will be closed until I get back.
10:30 - 11:30 am: I have a nice appointment with the endodontist (I'm not being sarcastic about this, he is very, very good and a really nice man to talk to). The rest of his staff are equally capable and wonderful as well. I highly recommend him if you need to have a root canal done.
11:30 am: I leave the endodontist and stop off at Dairy Queen for a milk shake. It's a tradition that my mother created, that I always get a strawberry milkshake from Dairy Queen (no one else will do) after a dental appointment. The only time I cannot do this is if I leave with stitches in my mouth. Otherwise I still keep the tradition going. :o)
12:00 pm: I arrive back at school and realize that I will probably not be able to last there for very long once the novocain wears off, so I go to the classroom of a teacher who had asked me to help her with a powerpoint presentation she is preparing. She's adding a video that she knew I had to the presentation. I go to her room and work while she's teaching measurement to her wonderful first grade students. Then I asked her the all important question, where does she have the video located on her computer? The answer? I don't have it. I knew you did, so I thought I'd have you help me get it. Do you see where this is going? I went back to the lab, got the video on my personal laptop that I bring to school and use (the school district seems to think I don't need a laptop to work off of), and used the bluetooth to push the video from my computer to my teacher computer in the lab. The teacher computer has a program called Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) that can control the other apple computers on the network, whether it be a computer on campus or on another campus in the district. I used this computer to push the video onto the teacher computer so I can finish what she needed.
1:00 pm: I finish making the first 3 slides for this teacher, including the slide with the movie on it. Yes, I said making the slides, because she hadn't started making the slideshow yet. I also found a picture for slide #2 that she had also indicated that she needed and inserted that for her. This is the reason why I haven't been stressing too much about whether I have a job next year, I figure as long as people are asking me to do these things for them, it's job security.
1:30 pm: I change back into my crossing guard outfit and do the afternoon crossing guard duty. This is one of those things that is different from corporate america: in public school, you not only have your job, but you also have extra duties assigned to you to do. Some people monitor the cafeteria during lunches, others have playground duty during recess, others handle needed work either before school or after school. Everyone does it, whether you are a certified teacher or a classified employee.
2:00 pm: I get paged to come to the office, to find this same teacher is facilitating the afternoon staff meeting and needs help setting up the projector and speakers. Usually when people need for me to do stuff like this, they give me some advance notice. On some things I need more advance notice than others (such as needing to bring my camcorder to record a guest speaker). I was almost shut down and ready to leave for the day, as by this time the novocain had worn off and I was in pain. It ended up being a good thing I stayed, as they needed to play a dvd and this teacher's laptop had not been set up to play a dvd. This requires administrative passwords that I don't give out, so they would have had to call the IT department to have it taken care of, but it was faster for me to do it. After assisting with a different powerpoint and the dvd movie, they no longer needed my assistance so I left and went home.
4:00 pm: I'm home and getting on the computer, after having fed Rachel, eating lunch and taking a pain med for my mouth, and could sense something itchy under my shirt. After scratching a few minutes I reached under my shirt to see if there was something there irritating my skin to find I had spent the entire day with a dryer sheet underneath my top. This has been a long explanation of my day, but for some reason, after all of the places I've been and people I've seen today, I just had to laugh that I had a dryer sheet under my shirt the whole time.
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