tengrrl’s thoughts & news on teaching writing, literacy, and literature
February 4, 2006
Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail – New York Times—just what we need. What I find intriguing about the argument behind these charges is that spammers and other annoyances wouldn’t pay for the privilege of sending e-mail through AOL and Yahoo too.
February 3, 2006
Got to work just 3 minutes after. A major accomplishment. Continued work on the science fiction lesson plan. Had it live by mid-afternoon. Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction through Paired Readings is live and ready for the teachers of the world :)
As I was working on it today, I kept looking at one thing and finding that the cursor or arrow was some place else altogether. Turns out that in the world of computers, visual focus != cursor focus.
Did the traditional Friday night grocery shopping and started catching up on the long missing entries. I don’t know how I feel so far behind. Well, part of it may be something problematic that happened to a friend, and then once I fell behind, I couldn’t get going again. I saved drafts and snippets, but I couldn’t managed to get them published. I have it in my head that I can’t do new, current entries until I have all the gaps filled in. Stupid really I guess, but that’s my head. At least the process is underway. There’d be more done if I hadn’t foolishly taken a nap from 9 to 11:30. I have no explanation for that nonsense.
February 2, 2006
It’s Groundhog Day, which means I am to regale my brother-in-law with “I got you babe.” We have no excuse for this tradition really.
I had my update with Sharon, and went over my list of things I need to do and whatever I had questions about. It’s my first update since January 6 because of various things that kept both of us from being in the office at the same time during my scheduled update this last month.
Spent the rest of the day doing various odds ‘n’ ends, mostly upkeep and maintenance. Updated the virus checker on the server. I’m considering buying something else for it. This version just isn’t updating automatically for me in the way that I’d like. Did editing work on a 6-8 lesson on science and science fiction. We got a first draft of an interactive that we’re designing in house. It will let students make book covers and dust jackets. I hope to have it live by the end of the month, but we’re doing testing for now.
I am going to be nudged about the book manuscript again soon. At least that’s the word I was given today. It’s so hard to carve out time for it or concentrate when there are so many other things that I have to get done at work. Everything else seems to have unyielding deadlines, and as a result, I never get work on it. Sigh. I really have to get more done more quickly.
MarcoPolo has brought the LinkScan work in house. Took them a while to get things set up and configured. Yesterday we got the first report on broken links in over a month. Made my first pass through the document tonight. Because it’s on a different server, we lost our configuration set-up so things that were set at exceptions are showing up as errors again. Sent out a list of the changes that I need MacroPolo to make this evening, after I had to type it twice because of Exchange server nonsense.
February 2, 2006
I was intrigued by Dear Folks: No Time to Write, which talks about politicians who supposedly start blogs and then don’t post anything. I thought it amazingly naive to think that all these politicians are writing their own blogs. Sure, just like they all write all the letters that go out under their signature and all the speeches that they give. Uh-huh. Now don’t get me wrong, as someone who is unendingly behind on her own blog, I am in complete agreement that when people say they are going to write these things, they need to follow-through. But it seems to me that the problem is more likely a staffing issue. I wonder how many of the politicians even know that they are supposed to be posting?
February 2, 2006
Geek to Live: Survive IT lockdown – Lifehacker—information that you hope you don’t have to use, but that you know you better save.
February 2, 2006
I wish that I’d saved the RSS feed description on BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Net abuse ‘starts in primaries’. The article is about kids plagiarizing and what not. Misusing online resources. Bullying. Problems with “e-safety” (please. e-safety?)
The feed description on Bloglines suggested that the Net was the actor and the students were the object of the sentence. Something like “Net abuses elementary and secondary students.” Probably someone’s error that has been corrected, but I found it interesting to blame the Internet as if it were a responsible participant.
February 1, 2006
Late to work again. I seem to be stuck in my own dystopia while I work on the dystopia lesson plan. Fortunately, I finally finished the lesson so maybe the dystoppia will end. Decoding The Matrix: Exploring Dystopian Characteristics through Film is now live. That makes 33 lessons and a nice content report turned in today.
January 31, 2006
Continued work on the dystopia lesson plan, which uses The Matrix to explore the characteristics of dystopian society in various texts. Unfortunately, I found that part of one text was borrowed from elsewhere, so I had to redo some of the work :(
Had another team meeting and discussed what we need to do to make the network files work better for us. Watched the State of the Union address, but didn’t really think it was all that amazing. Nothing new or catchy really.
January 31, 2006
MacDevCenter.com — Tweaking iTunes—some basic information on how to take control of iTunes, in case it ever gets out of line.
January 30, 2006
Apparently watching Wonderland before going to bed last night was a really bad idea. I couldn’t go to sleep for thoughts of someone breaking in and crashing my head in with a tire iron. Not good. As if I don’t have enough insane thoughts in my head.
I finished editing the March entries on the ReadWriteThink calendar. I moved our files from the old fileserver to the new server and set up some preliminary permissions. We’ll do testing and change things as needed.
Worked through a pile of little to-dos: updated the 100s chart with the latest lessons. We’re up to 32 now. I turn in a content report on the 1st, and I hope to get some more completed before then. I fixed some errors in printouts for the Story Map Interactive, and updated the list of Inbox topics to date, which I mainly use internally to figure out what I wrote in the past. Did some work on a dystopia lesson plan this evening. That and laundry.