Forgot to Mention Book Bytes....

I completely forgot that last week I completed my Book Bytes form for the students to use. Kids will fill it out for a favorite book, and the best of those will end up podcast and available on the school website. I have high hopes of getting a few good ones up this year, and maybe getting into it more heavily next year. While I was out for training last week, I had all my language arts students fill out a form for a book they've read this year. I was sorely disappointed by the results, but there are a very few (3 or 4?) that are potentially usable. My next form to invent or procure is the one for getting permission from parents to post students' voice recordings on the web.

Then again, I wonder if I could use something cuter for these? Like a Voki? I bet my kids would LOVE designing their own talking avatars, recording audio, and letting the characters "read" the review aloud. That would maybe entice some of my shyer kids into participating.

Here is the Google Docs form of the Book Bytes paper. The formatting is all munged up, since it's originally a word document, but it lets you see the form the script would take.

General Network Maintenance

Spent a couple of hours working on what Curtis called "general network maintenance." We checked a misbehaving SMARTboard (I figured out what was wrong!), took the server down and brought it back up, rebooted all the switches, found and removed a broken Ethernet port, and checked a computer in a CTE classroom. It wouldn't let students access the share drive, so Curtis showed me how to tell if it was accessing the network at all (blinky lights where the cord plugs in), then how to figure out what tree it was accessing. All that stuff was fine, so Curtis shared with me a time-saving philosophy. He explained how he could potentially spend three hours going through the computer a step at a time until he found the one thing wrong and fixed it--or he could reimage the computer in a matter of minutes. I'd never really thought about how much easier reimaging is, but it makes perfect sense. I also talked to Curtis about all the images he has made, individual ones for each computer model and year of purchase. He said that's part of the reason why the technology donation policy is in place in Gaston County--if each computer model has to have its own image created so it can talk to the network, then it would potentially be a severe rear-pain to accommodate a bazillion different kinds of donated computer models.
After Curtis and Marti left (by which time it was dark), I helped another teacher who couldn't log in. Okay, maybe "helped" is too positive a word. I was able to figure out, based on what Curtis showed me, that the computer was talking to the network (blinky lights), but that it wasn't switching to the right tree. Unfortunately, I have no clue what to do about that. :) I also went back in the server room and confirmed that yep, there were cords hooked into all the switches for this teacher's classroom. He was able to log in to the big computer lab across the hall, so at least whatever it is isn't a school-wide problem.

Setting up new lab computers

Last Monday, I lucked out. I had no meetings at all, and I knew Curtis was coming to set up the new computers we got to replace the old skeezy ones in our CTE lab. Twenty-five of the little guys, all stacked in boxes inside the library. So...I had all afternoon to help Curtis and our sysop unpack, connect, name, and reimage the lab.
Here's what I learned: setting up the first two computers is fun. Unpacking and connecting the third and fourth computers is annoying, especially since every single component is wrapped in at least three different kinds of packing material--twisty ties, heat-sealed plastic bags, taped-on foam, cardboard supports, and the ubiquitous styrofoam among them. Everything after computer four becomes a sort of exercise in Zen boredom. Squeak out the styrofoam, pull off the tape, stack the boxes, cut open the bags, untwist the twisties, plug in the component, repeat. Om....
Setting all the computers up for a multicast session after we'd assembled them was more complicated. I'd never messed with a computer's setup menu before, at least not since DOS was the operating system of choice. It had also been a long time since I'd told a computer to do anything at the command prompt, but we had to go through a multi-step routine to set each computer up to "listen" for a multicast session so it could be reimaged and thus compatible with the network. By the last computer, I had the routine down--but the first three or four were utterly frustrating. "Um, Curtis, what's the name of the Networks editing program again? And what keys to I press to interrupt it again? Um, Curtis? I've never seen this screen before. What did I do wrong? Um, Curtis...?"
It took several hours, but we finally got the lab set up and functioning. On Tuesday, I walked past the lab during planning and saw all the students working busily away on their spiffy new flat-screen computers, blissfully unaware of how much effort had gone into the setup process. It made me feel like I'd made my first significant contribution as assistant sysop.