Quillstress

Not the piraty kind of argh….this is the “Lucy just pulled the football yet AGAIN” kind of argh…..anguish, gnashing teeth, immediate chocolate cravings, solace seeking.  Somedays…*sigh*  

The Beast…my beloved but much-maligned-by-its-maker laptop was sitting out up and running after a conference call with the Netherlands.  We were packing and having dinner and I did the unthinkable…  I tried to pop up off the floor to put my dishes in the kitchen from where I’d had dinner and managed to slide across the oriental rug and pour 20 oz of Dt. Pepsi into my poor beast.  *sigh*  *shaking head*  *groan*

I dried it out…aired it for 24 hours…did all that good stuff and the Beast, in its usual contrary way, decided to revive.  It ran fine for about two hours…and I put it to bed relieved.  The next day, however, it had reverted to hospital mode…and the geeks tell me its hard drive is fried and the motherboard is probably not far behind.  It seems the intermitten reversion to “I’m fine, let’s go vroom”…is just it finding its brain by accident on the spinning disks at start up.  Ohhh, poor beast.

***Now, for those who care about such inanities and ironies…  I should give some history.  The rest of you can ignore this middle section, as I’ve ranted about it in other places before.

My beast is the Edsel of laptop computing…namely, an HP Pavilion ZD8000 CTO (that means I chose the configuration myself from their website…so it would BE beasty)  It’s the first 17″ monitor they produced, but also the replacement for all the ZD7000 that were recalled in a class action suit.  It has an issue….namely, it was designed by a first year engineering student who flunked out.   The following I have from the second tech to rebuild the beast, a very sweet guy in Canada who wanted to warn me that even after the “rebuild” if my laptop was hot enough to burn, I should shut it down or it “could” burst into flames.  You see, the battery recharger requires different amperage than the rest of the computers components, so owners of the ZD8000 have been sent alternating adapters since day one.  If you use the one, the motherboard fries taking the monitor and all else with it within three or four months…if you use the OTHER adapter, your battery life is nil, the palmrest heats up to the point it WILL actually burn flesh, and eventually burns out the monitor and then the whole rest of the computer within about 6 months.  SO, my beast has been rebuilt more than 3 times by HP in the three years it lived.  Completely rebuilt, three times.  THREE.  On HP’s dime, mind you, because I’d already had ONE HP laptop fiasco and wasn’t having another.  SO, the beast dies at my hands, true, after being completely rebuilt by HP about 4 months ago.   {Don’t ask why HP wouldn’t cut their losses and just replace it…I’ve asked everyone I could find an ext to at that company why for three years.  They will not admit it’s because they’d have to admit the error and reimburse all the uber gamers who built their own systems on this models platform.}  Fun party game….  type the words “zd8000″ and “class action” into Google search sometime.  ROFL.

** rant over, back to the regularly scheduled blog.

So, with the beast dead, I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement.  Firstly, I have very little money.  This is the first paycheck that hasn’t gone to my doctors’ bills from the summer (which, are all gone now, thank heavens) and while I have about $300 I could spend…the cheapest laptop I can purchase that does what I need it to is …gasp….  an HP!!!   (Oh lord..no, not again.)  It’s also on sale at Best Buy for $650 (plus $300 for 3 year warranty) …so I need about $650 in financing if I want to be all “impulse shopper” about it.  Great, Best Buy is doing their whole “18 months no interest so when you spend lots at Christmas and can’t pay we’ll nail you with 29% retroactively” credit card promotion.  I only need about three, maybe four months to pay this off.  So, COOL.   Uh, yeah, except they rejected my application.  ROFL.  

They tell me they’ll “send a letter” to explain why…but I already know why.  Just like we all REALLY know why our economy is in the tank.   I have no credit rating…because I have no debt.  I paid off my car a year and a half ago, I’ve owned two houses for a total of four years and paid all my bills on time, etc…but none of that appears on my credit report because it’s not “now”.  (Though, the credit companies are still reporting my address as one I haven’t lived at in twelve years, so how NOW is that?  LOL)  I don’t have anything on credit cards, all my recurring bills come out of my bank accounts or my paypal account.  I can’t get credit…because I have no debt.  {They missed their golden opportunity to enslave another one.  lol}  What’s fun, of course, is that my contemporaries (30 somethings) are drowning in debt….20-100k in student debt…credit cards multipling and maxed..and they can get ANY credit they want.  Yep…  Americans are idiots.  Our financial institutions are crumbling and we’re surprised?   Oh please. 

So, now I’ll have to be wise despite my momentary lapse into “impulse” mode, because there’s no way I’m applying for their 22% card for “losers” like me to buy a computer from a company I can’t possibly trust to back their product as they should.  lol  I know, it sounds like I’m resentful, but I assure you it’s the farthest thing from the truth.  I’m thoroughly amused and not a little giggly over the fact that NOW I can plan and save and get something beasty, not just adequate.   The fact that Microsoft is ditching Vista at the end of this year is also adding a thoughtful pause to my laptop musings.   More on my quest for the next Beast once I’ve done some shopping…  

Well, this year was one of the first in memory where I didn’t want to go to school one morning..and it was only the third day of school. Why is long, complicated, multi-faceted, and was helped along by the fact that I’ve been breathing at about 50% capacity for most of the summer and I’m just exhausted. I came home and decided I needed a “dramatic renewal of purpose” as Berkeley Breathed once put it in his Bloom County comic strip. So, since I don’t have any video from the Regan era, I turned to YouTube….and Taylor Mali on What a Teacher Makes. I share it here in case you’re wondering why you didn’t go to flip burgers at McDee’s instead of going through those big double doors.

A little widget showing off the organisms I’ve created in the Spore Creature Creator demo version.   You can get the demo for free, the full creature creator for $9.99, and the game for a lot more…but not for 17 more days.  This is the one my gamer friends AND my nephews are looking forward to in the near future.  It is oodles of fun, highly open-ended for creativity…and still manages to be a bit of a biology lesson.  Physics applies and, if you build a bad conformation into it, the creature will manifest this in “play” mode.

I’ve been trying most of the day to get things collected here…and get my digital life organized beyond what I’m normally capable of before school begins yet again.  It’s had me thinking of all that I “value” of all the “stuff” out here on the web.  I ran into particular difficulty trying to get my various “favorites” lists from video hosting sites linked to this blog…and then a friend called me over SkypeCam from Holland.  I’ve been wanting to share this YouTube video with him for a while so I sent it to him.  He loves Vincent…and loves music…and he and I know each other from SecondLife (where the producer of this video built his creation).  For a time he watched and I could hear the music over the camera as he experienced what I had.  That, after all, is what communication is about, the wish that someone else see what I have seen and experience what I have experienced and vice versa.
That is perhaps the reason why I see things like Second Life with a different lens than some and why I laugh or grit my teeth about some of the comments you hear made in the press and the larger culture about virtualworlds in general.  What they don’t seem to understand is the marvel of a technology that allows me to share experiences with people from all over the world and the new cultures that such interaction are creating.  Having a “digital life” in whatever form is mind boggling…but it’s not instantaneous enough..not visceral enough for some of us.  Waiting for a comment back on a blog post is a monumental waste of time compared to going into SL..sitting my avatar down next to my friend from Holland and eating my lunch while he has his dinner and shows me six or seven videos of musicians he loved in his youth, a time before I was born.  Time and Geography lose their importance as anything but bookmarks in this place and that’s why I love it.  It’s a tremendous tool, yes.  It’s amazingly creative, absolutely.  But what has kept me here is the stunning humanity of it…as screwed up as humanity is and as wondrous.

So, I link this video here to share an experience with YOU and I hope it gets you thinking….about what else needs to be said and how it might be.  

Hmm, yeah…Critical Readership 101.

So, I’m following links from sites I got at Tech Matters…gleaning the good into my newly clean-slated Delicious tags when I come across a “100 Best Videos for Teachers” and begin working my way through.  There’s a lovely video on the Bayeaux tapestry I might be able to show the Med/Ren club I sponsor next year…and one on Don McLean’s American Pie as a tool in teaching the cultural shifts between the 50’s and 60’s.   And then I see:

A Brief History of Mankind: This video sums up the history of mankind in just a few minutes, making it a good intro to history classes.

Cool, I think.  How fun is that.   Though I don’t teach history, I am a cross-curricular omnivore by nature and teach Guided Study…which covers everything.  So, I start the video.
Basically it boils down to an assertion that every “savior myth” in history is exactly the same because it’s not about saviors, it’s about astronomy.  And then goes on to say that Christianity is just a load of crap along with any other belief in a “God”.   If you’d like to see it, please do..but promise me you’ll read the comments as that’s where the REAL elucidation of mankind occurs.  (and yes, I threw in my two cents…it’s a mandate I’ve developed in my digital life. lol)

So, I think to myself…this has nothing to do with the history of the world…and I go back to the parent blog where this list is posted and find the following:

101 Ways to Cope with Teaching Stress

By Laura Milligan

50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom

By Jessica Merritt

100 Awesome Classroom Videos to Learn New Teaching Techniques

By Alisa Miller

100+ Motivational Techniques to Take Learning to the Next Level

By Christina Laun

Baptism by Fire: 100 Essential Tips and Resources for Student Teachers

By Christina Laun

The Ultimate Guide to BlackBoard: 100 Tips & Tutorials

By Laura Milligan

100 Essential Web Tools for Homeschoolers

By Alisa Miller

100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers

No byline….no one claimed responsibility for this one..though every other article on the blog appears to be professional and has an author..this one..does not.

Oh, actually, one other doesn’t have an author….

Games Will Improve Your Intelligence and Make You a Better Person

Which starts out by recommending a series of games that haven’t been playable since the first pentium came out.  (I know, I have the last in the series. It’s been a coaster for a decade.)

So, I think to myself…perhaps they just cut and pasted some old posts from somewhere..or something.. But the “History of Mankind” video has only been at that link for 6 months?   So, I go to look…and there IS no webminster for this blog…no “About” section…no information on any of these “authors” or contact information…and the blog posts only started Aug.1.  *blink, blink*

DOH…Julie, you’re an idiot.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY….  Learn what you teach.  Doesn’t matter how good it looks, check EVERYTHING, and here’s why it’s even MORE true for teachers.

I’m one of those packrats….I save everything.  Then I want to SHARE everything.   I’m one of those teachers who would have linked “100 Best Videos for Teachers” directly to her website as a resource for students.  Did you know you are held legally responsible for everything your website links to..and everything THEY link to and so on?  It’s a ridiculous legal caveat, but it’s true.  So, by that logic…  Because I’m a teacher, I’m legally and morally responsible for everything on the web the moment I link to any part of it…after all, that’s why we call it “The Web”.  

ROFL..  Okay, I don’t mean to scare anyone with all of this.  It’s just my usual snarky way of reminding you to be vigilante, people, because the rest of humanity can be really so-so.  ; )  Think you only have to worry about “those people” out there on the net?  The cyber hooligans and haters?   Well, consider for a moment that I got to this list starting from David Warlick’s weblog.   Not his responsibility of course, I only hold people responsible for what they link to directly.  Law and liability aside, that’s just common sense.   But it’s a WEB.   So check…EVERYTHING.

Well, today I woke up to a brand new day..having completed Tech Matters and having promised myself I will clean up my act!  lol    My digital footprints are all over the place and as at least five different “people”.  This identity and organizational crisis is not new to me…poor Troy has been hearing about my quagmire for two years and smiling and nodding knowingly.  If there’s anyone who knows how quickly usernames and passwords mulitply, it must be the guru of techidom.  Thing is…you have to fix it yourself.   So, when first light started burning the foggy tendrils off the lake this morning and woke me from my dreams of cyber clean slates…an entire internet that knew nothing of “me”…I muttered the immortal battle cry of my hero, Spongebob, “I’m Ready!”.

Yes, well, I was.  One breathing treatment and a hot wake up call later I was seated with my laptop and cutting and pasting some few things I wanted to save from the three blogs I have at Blogger..when Skype popped open and started relaying messages from the incomparable Dexter Morph/Moore/Ihnen of Australia.  (Okay, I do have two friends at least who have as much of an identity crisis as me, and Dex is one of them.) lol

For any who don’t know my fixation on the music of this EXTREMELY talented singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/ AND acoustic guitar magician…where HAVE you been?  ;)  Let’s just get this out of the way right now…

Follow all the links and you will not go unrewarded.

Enlightenment of the masses over…, so Skype pops and Dex says Hi and asks how I’ve been and wants to know what I feel/think about some things related to his concerts/career in SecondLife where he’s been performing for almost 18 months I think…..and we have a lovely chat.  It’s 10pm for him..and since the last three nights he’s been up until 3am talking  (He was the one skyping me at the conference at lunch and after) I tell him goodnight and he logs out.

I get back to deconstructing blogs..have three down and one to go when Skype rings.  Someone whose login I don’t recognize wants to voice/video chat with me.  Okay, fine..so I pop it open and it’s my friend JPW’s wife from Holland on her new skype account.  (He was the one who vid called me during the last day of the conference to show off his new webcam.)   She’s managed to get the old camera away from him and put it on her laptop..so she’s testing it by letting me watch JPW go off to work through the garden hedge.  LOL  She is multitasking by cleaning her windows, doing a camera download, and setting up her webcam in turns so I basically get to follow her for a bit and then she goes off to do something on another floor of their home and logs off.

Four defunct blogs are gone and I’m no longer author on two more that never even got off the ground..and then I realize..YIKES, my aunt and uncle are coming from Colorado on Sunday…and the granite counter installer is between his fifth and sixth attempt on the kitchen…and the place is a mess!   So, I shovel some files around…start my virus scan I haven’t had time to run in four days…and go to get some RL work done.  (That’s “real life” for those that don’t have more than one.)

I get a good chunk of clean up and reorganizing done  (Why does this guys keep having to take everything out of my cupboards to glue granite down?) and return to my “I’m Ready” tasks.  I sit…I look at the screen…I open my bookmarks in a hazy sort of way…and let out a big sigh.  What next?  Hmm, yeah, what do I get rid of next.  My bookmarks are really no help as I start listing off to myself everywhere that I have a username and password.  E-anthology? Nanowrimo?  Do I want to keep these?   That MNWP anthology, the four fantasy writing forums I’ve been on with students to critique their work…the four social bookmarking sites I’ve bounced around between trying to find one I liked?  What about all those WoW and SWG and Rappelz forums and private servers I’m on because my bro in law asked me to play with my nephews in the “kiddie pool” servers?  Oh, heavens..and my bloglines needed cleaning out two months after I started it and that was two years ago!  Suddenly, I’m not feeling so “Ready” anymore.

*Sigh*  I tell myself it’s just time for a break, that’s all…but then..I haven’t gotten anything DONE yet.  Something in my German/Gospel background doesn’t allow for that.  lol lol  I wonder if there’s a support group out there for people with this problem.  Of course, I’m sure if there is they have a username and password.  LOL 

The funniest part..what do I do?   I open up the one blog I am keeping as my personal space for my teaching/personal self…Quillstress, Miss Achterberg space, so to speak…and rant at myself for your entertainment.  ; )   Yep.  ;)  But, at least it “looks” like a decision.  That’s a step, right?  I’ve decided to keep this one, heaven knows why.  LOL

It’s the first day of this summer’s “Tech Matters” hosted by the RCWP, so of course we start off with a writing prompt. 

There is such a wealth..and so much variety…in the thoughts that have been shared so far at Tech Matters.  It’s a tremendous amount to take in and process with my own questions and focus.  I don’t have a classroom in the traditional sense, so what people are thinking for their classrooms….and other initiatives in and around the RCWP..it’s mind boggling.  Really articulate, right?  LOL  Well, we’re just on the first leg of this journey and I look foward to the rest..and refining my own plans (both professionally and personally) in integrating technology.

Welcome Okemos Students.   What you’re looking at now is the blog I used to chronicle my summer of technology workshops at the National Writing Project.  Many of the things I have to share with you are from these sessions, and since I’ve had to send you here to link to our destination without setting off the school’s filters, I guess I can’t tell you not to look.  Boring teacher stuff, trust me.  The good stuff can be found consolidated HERE.

Yeah!!!! November is Nanowrimo time, so if I’m a little uncommunicative, it’s because I’m writing or playing on the forums. Check it out at Nanowrimo.org.

Well, the webquests ended up being a bit abrreviated, but it was really interesting playing with the template.   While templates do help people in many instances, I was a bit annoyed with the lack of scope.  I couldn’t find a webquest tailored the way I wanted to do it, not that I couldn’t have used one and adapted what I wanted to do to the format, but why?   I found the Webquest template interesting as a way of learning to build a web-based assignment, but now necessarily the ends.  My own idea was to link a webquest to my “website” I have envisioned in which students would use a Writely document to build a “database” of great studyskills links, but I couldn’t get the templates to cooperate in the way I required.  I think it would be far simpler to build the assignment myself.   This was for several reason specific to my situation (for instance, you couldn’t remove the “evaluation” section of the template, yet there are no “grades” in my study hall) and for more general reasons like lack of creativity in the design…you couldn’t even change the font in most instances.  I think it’s a really good first step for teachers not aquainted with web-based lessons or who don’t spend enough time online to really have a grasp of what is possible, but I’m not either of those.  (That sounded a little arrogant, not the way I meant it, truly.)  I’m pleased the resource is out there, it encourages teachers to step out a little, but I don’t think I’ll be using it except as “inspiration”.   There are quite a few really good examples of lessons that have been catalogued and I love to see what other teachers are doing with the internet.