How a computer works

The most important part of the computer is the motherboard. The motherboard is responsible for ensuring that all parts of a computer get power as well as are able to communicate with each other. The main function of the motherboard is to contain the central processing unit, or the CPU. The CPU functions as the brain of the computer. The speed of the processor controls how fast the computer can operate. The motherboard also contains the BIOS, Basic Input/Output System, (as it will be described below) as well as the computer's memory.

Hitting the power switch on your computer sends binary codes to the motherboard to start the boot process. The computer will start the BIOS chip to perform a self-test. The BIOS directions are stored on the read-only memory, ROM. The BIOS sends out information to the different parts of the computer to check they are working and start their start-up process. Once this is completed the operating system, OS, should be ready to work with the various input and output devices. Once you open a program on your OS sends a signal to the CPU which then needs to be broken down into procedural steps and works with the RAM, random access memory. Information sent to the CPU goes through the instruction register, IR, which gives instructions to the pointer of the location of where to store the output information from the ACC. Programmers attempt to write code that involves the fewest steps while taking up the smallest amount of memory.

Specific hardware can not work without software and vice-versa. Operating systems come with some software but do not contain all the software needed for specific types of computer use. You can not play a DVD without having a DVD drive as well as a DVD player installed on your computer. These are ways that the computer needs to interact between input, software, and output.

OS Activities - Part II

I decided to speak with a "techie" and called my friend John. He works in the tech department at a Hospital in Madison. I asked him which is his largest frustration about the OS they use at the hospital. He said they use Windows XP and gets frustrated by people who do not try to think of the simple reasons their computer has an error. Usually he wouldn't need to come if the users would know some simple maintenance. He also does not enjoy how frequent problems pop up, but it keeps him in business.

The next activity I did was update and install an OS patch for my computer. This is very easy to do on the Mac because you just simply click on the apple and then select "Software Update." The update that it cam up with was an update to JAVA so that it is more compatible with the OS X operating system. It took less than 2 minutes to do and as so as it was done, my time machine automatically started to back up the update.

The final activity I did was learn about different features of my operating system. I learned about the ability to set parental controls on the Mac (OS X 10.5.8). By creating an account for the child, you can limit the amount of time they can use the computer as well as what is the computer will log them off. You can also limit the websites they visit as well as who they can chat with and email. I also learned about expose. I have accidentally clicked on the of the F3 button and the any windows I currently have open snap into a grid on the screen. You can sort them alphabetically as well as by what type of application it is. Spaces is great because you can manage all of the windows that you have on your desktop without having to move them over and minimize them. While expose just shows what you have, spaces allows you to work. The next feature I investigated was VoiceOver, this application allows individuals with visual impairments to scroll over text and hear the words. This would be great for students with disabilities as well as ELL students. File sharing is another handy feature in the Mac. This allows you to share documents with other Macs and PCs without sharing a google.doc. We have used this with out in-laws as an easy way share pictures. Another features is Spotlight. This allows you to search your Mac for documents easily with key words as well as pictorally with thumbnails of documents.

OS Activities - Part I

Just this week I watched ht video "Pirates of Silicon Valley." It was different to watch a movie entirely on YouTube, but it worked out very well. The movie was very interesting and I watched it after I finished watching Triumph of the Nerds. I found the perspective of the film interesting that you were able to follow both groups of men and see how their stories overlapped as well as the relationships between them. After watching the film I did a little research on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to see what they have done since the movie left off. Most of us are well away of Jobs' return to Apple but I did not know about his acquisition of Pixar. As for Wozniak, it was interesting to read more about the plane crash and the amnesia that resulted from it.

Overall it just struck me how fortunate all of these men were at the time. They were in the correct places at the perfect time. If most of them wouldn't have quite college, the history of the personal computer would be very different. All of these men displayed a sense of confidence, except for Wozniak, and it was enough to convince many people to invest and believe in them.

581 Week 1

I came into this class with very little knowledge about computers and their parts. I knew enough to manipulate the features needed for my computer. The only prior experience I had to opening a computer was when I was trying to install my wireless Internet port into my PC in college. The videos that we watched inside and out of class were very interesting. The history of the computer is very mind blowing to think about. Many of time inventions occur to fit a need or made life easier, but for some of the situations they discussed in the film, just seemed to be so removed from what was going on. The inventor who created the grate to protect trains also wanted to invent a computer. The other types of first computers were also very interesting. I have felt a little overwhelmed with the amount of acronyms used to name computer parts but I know they are easier than the true names for the parts. I am excited to see how each of these pieces play a part in the little invention we could not live without now.

Week 5

This week we spent more time talking about Twitter. Having explored Twitter for a couple weeks now I have found a couple people that I am interested in following. I have logged onto Twitter to see what people have tweeted in the past couple days. Some tweet more than others and I have found that some people are not tweeting what I have expected them to post. This summer I would like to spend more time searching for professional development sites that could enhance my teaching. I am looking for tweets to help keep me up-to-date with technologies available to be implemented into the classroom. I would also like to search for more math professionals on-line. As for posting tweets myself, I find it difficult to find ideas on what to add myself.

This week we were also asked to create a TokBox video message. This was very easy to do and I think could be very useful this upcoming year. I feel like this will be an easy way to communicate with my class as well as with my long-term sub. This would also be a great way for students to pose questions. Often they have difficulty expressing themselves through words and math symbols so I feel that many of them might be able to pose their questions more articulately if they were able to do it verbally with visuals they pose in front of the camera as well. I look forward to seeing how I can use this professionally.

New Ideas Week 4

Screencasting tools are very easy to use and I think they are a great way to communicate information with students, clients, and parents. There are so many different ways to create them and publish them. You can find them on YouTube or "How To" sites, companies have even made their money creating and editing them. You can make elaborate ones or you can simply just show the step you go through to do something. There are a lot of things we can expect students to figure out on their own, but for some learning types they need visual cues instead of just words. This is one way to get all students the necessary information in the most efficient way. I am excited to use screencasting in my classroom.

Screencasting would be a great way for students to share and express sites they have found. This would allow them to show and demonstrate how to interact with a site they have found. For me,

as a visual learner, this is a great options instead of having students write papers and reviews of sites. Students would have to create a "script" to ensure there is a flow to to the screencast instead of choppy fragments of ideas.

RSS - A Good Time

RSS aggregates are very handy. This week we have been exploring using aggregator for RSS feeds. It's so wonderful to have all the updates go to one place then you aren't wasting your time going from Blog to Blog in search of great resources and inspiration. It has been nice spending the time to search for blogs and then search the people that follow them or even ones they follow. There are some great ideas out there and blogs are one way to make the discussion grow from outside your department to outside of your district and on to the entire world! (What a idyllic fact.)
The video we watched for a group was interesting to watch as well. The guests discussed some of the problems with the current education we have in place. We seek to individualize everything for our students to meet their needs the best we can. One guest even said that the way we currently teach will look different in the year 2050 because we will just be coordinators for students from a distance. I don't think you can take teachers out completely because that is not the way the world functions. It reminds me of the movie, WALL-E. If we had less than 120 students in a day this would be great to do. Individualize every lesson and subject for our students, but a teacher's day isn't magically longer because they have more work to do. I feel that this would be very difficult to incorporate and be successful at in our current structure and under the current governmental rules.

Wiki Wiki Wiki

For me Wikis are an interesting option for my classroom because of the formulas needed to be expressed in mathematics. After searching and viewing so many other blogs and wikis people have created, I can use these for sources of inspiration. I can link these sites and use what I already have created on my webpage to make them useful for myself and my students. Sometimes it's as simple as reading a post a teacher wrote to spark an idea or help you learn a new way to reach your students. I'm excited to keep exploring for more useful resources.

Blogs, Wikis, and Read/Write Web... Oh My

Today in class, and out of class, we discussed the advances of the read/write web has made on education. We currently use blogs in grade class to document our weekly growth as educators and reflect on what we have learned. This is a common use for blogs, people sharing information in a format which solicits feedback and conversations about the content. I think it will be a helpful reflection piece when we are doing our final comps. I enjoyed the time we had this week to look for professional blogs which might help advance our teaching. I would be interested to get those on an RSS feed so I can regularly check them. I would also be interested in putting a comment Q&A section on my class website for students and parents to use, not sure if that can be done with our restrictive site, but we can always try.

As for wikis, I struggle with this. It is difficult to assign Internet work to students who do not have access at home and do not have a study hall. Yes they can come in at lunch and after school, but I don't think the equity is there. Maybe for those students we could use a call-in podcast for them. Another aspect that I wrote about in one of my book responses was the fact that many programs do not have equation editors to use, such as blogger. This makes it very difficult and time consuming for students to write mathematical responses and I know they will spend more time focusing on how to use the technology as opposed to focusing on the content. We shall see... I'm still not convinced of it's use for my class the way it is currently. I can see it as a good place to share ideas and have students reflect upon their learning, maybe I will explore this route. We shall see.

Change - It's taken place

Throughout this class we have been asked to participate, read, and research what it means to be a leader. I feel that my definition of leadership has been altered from this class. Prior to this class, leadership has been, to me, a job role title. Now, I feel that it isn't just a job title, but a way that a person approaches change. Do they take a lead to effect change or are they the Will of the group and just sit back and wait for others to start the change process for them. As a teacher leader, you can be involved in many levels. Just because you work in a high school, you can be a lead other places outside of department head. Any teacher leader can spearhead the acquisition of new technology and software.

Throughout this class I was given more confidence to be a teacher leader. In my current teaching position I have always seen myself as one day becoming the department head, and my current department head has indicated she will see me succeeding in that position. I have started to see myself as someone who can make a push towards getting new technologies to help move our department forward. Through my questioning and persistence, we have been able to acquire a SMART Board for our department. I take every opportunity to learn new technologies that become available to us. I am currently in a group of teacher who are piloting clickers and mobis. I don't think I would have taken that on if I had not seen another opportunity to lead in my department.

I do agree with the book that we need to "improve technology from within." The people making decisions about education in our communities rarely have experience in education and just try to put band-aids on leaks. They need to spend time finding the cause of the leak and figure out the best way to fix it. No one can disagree that teachers are creative. We need to find new ways to work our budget and ensure that our teaching is suitable for the students we currently have, not students we had 10 years ago. My license is built upon the improving from within theory, through PDP's. We need to make ourselves knowledgeable about what is available and out there but we can't always get the new shiny object just because it's desirable. We had a teacher in our school ask for a SMART Board and the principal refused her because she already has a mounted projector, an ELMO, and t.v. If she can improve on what she has, she does not necessarily need a piece of equipment that costs a couple thousand dollars. She needs to find effective, efficient ways to utilize what she has to enhance her curriculum. The technology is only useful if we are willing to use it and it is the best way to implement the subject. I try my best to use what I have and not ache for what I don't. I can only tell myself that my students will learn daily from me.

Change Game

I think this was a really interesting game to play. It would be interesting to see how different teams of teachers would approach this if grouped by the number of years they have been teaching. Would one group do better than other? Would it matter if one group consisted of people you were typically involved in things compared to those like our slow three?

In our group I believe things ran pretty smoothly, but if we would have done a little more planning, it could have been even better. If we would have spent some extra time making a solid map, or plan or where we would like to go throughout the years, we might have avoiding some of the blocks we encountered by not having the ground work ready before we made the move.

This game made me appreciate a little bit more, the amount and effort it takes to try to make a change. Sometimes it is taken for granted how many moves need to be made to make an effective change. We are quick to spot out when there were not enough moves made for the ground work, but going through this, it solidified the fact you need to do the ground work first before you can implement a change. Hopefully this will stick with me for a while.

Change CEDu 527

Change is something we were talking about today during our professional growth day. We are starting to look at standards and are in phase 2 looking at technical plans. We spent the afternoon as a department discussing our program and our standards. We are trying to make a cultural school change towards greater collaboration with respect to planning as well as more common summative and formative assessments. We met with our principal and our curriculum coordinator and looking at the map of change toolkit, we have departments all over the map. Some departments are just starting to work together and others use summative and formative assessments daily. Our administration is recognizing that we are all at different points, which is nice. They are not trying to make us conform to the same structure. The readings we had for this week discussed how effective change can take place and what is needed for it to take place. As we change to improve our teaching, we must not forget that this takes time. It can not be something we pull out once a year, only during professional growth days. We need to make commitments to ourselves and our departments and create time lines for our change and implementation of these changes. If we don't we are just "saying" we'll do it, and just doing it so appease our boss. We need to buy into what we are doing and/or make it something we can buy into if we don't agree with the projected outcome. I hope our department can continue to work well together to change for the better.

Change

This week during in our class we looked at a couple of different power points about Change. The presentation which resonated the most with me was "Who Moved My Cheese?" This week we spent a day at school discussing Power Standards and picking which of the state standards we were focusing on in Algebra 1. There are a couple teachers in my department who are close to retirement. One of their philosophies is "This too shall pass." I find that a little sad. While the state of education has changed a lot over the course of their teaching career, they should be more willing to adapt for the benefit of their students. My entire educational practice and education has been built on standards so I am quite familiar with it. As educators we need to be open to new ideas and new ways to look at things. That does not always mean that you need to agree with every thing, but you need to be willing to be open to it.

In the slide show the mice that were willing to go out and seek new cheese sources reminded me that I need to be a little more proactive in my own leadership and teaching. Our district is not always forthright with the technology available or some glaze over it. Our entire department was solicited to participate in a Clickr piloting session and I was the only one who responded that I would be willing to go and when I got back and started telling my co-workers about it, they they took an interest. We need to be willing to try new things and seek out new technologies to enhance our effectiveness as educators. I know that with budgets constantly tightening we will need to do more as a department to seek outside funding and since I am one of those people who would like to work with it, I need to step-up and find out additional sources for raising money as a department to acquire more interactive whiteboards for our classes. We teach our kids that if you want something you have to work at it, so why should it be any different when we are adults. It isn't always ask and you shall receive... but that would be nice!

Week 2

This week, we talked about data during our on-line class. Being a math teacher I find the data interesting and something that is very over looked. We often test and test and research but look for the only data that supports their claim. Our district has changed to rules for how we mark students tardy to class. They can be marked tardy for up to one minute after the bell rings, once it has passed the one minute mark, they are considered absent. Recently we were presented data that the students who were marked tardy to first hour was down by 20%. We were, however, not presented data on the number of students who were marked absent.

Data can be a powerful piece towards getting others to support our viewpoint. When we make students take standardized test data is generated for us. We need to create a team of teachers and administrators to analyze that data. The data is pointless if it is not able to be used to better the students that take it. One of the biggest issues withe the WKCE is the timing in which educators get the results of their students. We need to start examining the data we are offered and differentiate when necessary to ensure our students are getting the most out of every year.

Another thing we were asked to examine this week was being a teacher leader through our readings. When I applied for my current job the head principal started listing the number of people who would take part of my face to face interview and it was up to eight people. Having worked with my department, I can't imagine having someone else do a "blind hire" for our department. When we speak of when I was hired they noted that I was a good fit for the department. We all share an office and need to be able to be effective communicators with each other. I did participated in interview where there was just the principal interviewing me and it was frustrating when they were finally forthright at the end that they have had a long-term sub who has also applied for the job. I know that my department was comfortable with the decision they made because they were respected enough to have their opinion asked for. So many times it is easier and/or more efficient to make the choice ourselves, but when you can collaborate with colleagues a community is built and you have a better chance of being an effective teacher and group of teachers.

Cedu 527 Leadership

This week we started to discuss four different styles of leadership and some of their characteristics. It is important to be able to demonstrate all four of these types to be an effective leader. I can see how I have used each of these in my classroom, just by what I say or how I try to motivate students. It is interesting how mostly subconscious it all is.

When we did the jigsaw I was able to read the article about ten different types of leadership roles teachers can take. I have notice that I do some of these, but others I would like to do. Being the youngest person in my department by eight years it is sometimes difficult. My department chair has children my age, so the first couple years it was difficult to find a voice as a leader outside of my own classroom. I am lucky enough to work in an amazing department. We all share a common office so there are many opportunities for me to be resource providers to each other. This actually saved me my first year teaching. Everyone was very willing to offer information, lesson plans, and assessments. I have also stepped up to be a building representative for the union, which was actually some really good advice I got from a second year teacher. She said that I had no clue what they were talking about at general membership meetings, so she ran to be a representative so she would know what is going on.

Being so young the first couple years I often felt a little underutilized. Sure I was the go to person if something needed to be chaperoned, but was rarely asked my opinion outside of my department. I might have the most technology experience out of my entire department, including but young teachers are rarely asked to be on the technology committee. We are the ones that are most recently trained in technology with the latest applications available. I am also a person who is willing to seek out information on my own, where as some teacher won't even the ones who are presented with different ways to approach curriculum. I should start to step-up more around my building because the senior staff member won't be here forever.

Web 2.0 Tools

This week in CEDu533 we explored Web 2.0 tools. Our instructor created an amazing mind-map filled with tons of resources. I already shared it with my mom, who I know will in-turn, pass it along with the rest of her school. There are many different way to encourage student learning using these resources, but for me, they aren't always the best.

For high level mathematics, I find it often difficult to use some of the Web 2.0 tools with my students. It would be different if they each had their own laptop, but I can't justify the time spent going to the computer lab when using an overhead, or the Smartboard, is more efficient and just as effective. I understand that I should try to find appropriate opportunities throughout the semester to try to incorporate these learning tools, but it is also often difficult to have the computer lab open at the perfect time, for all classes. The Zoho tools like very useful when students are working on their collaborative fractal presentations, as is the Google.docs. The polleverywhere also looks like it could be a quick in-class or out of class way to get some feedback about their knowledge, provided they have a cell phone with text messages. I could also not assign this if students didn't have a cell phone plan which requires them to pay per text.

Another tool which I can see using is the Certificate Street. This website has so many different downloadable templates to choose from, far more than Word has. This could be useful for my extra-curricular programs and in class. Overall, there is so much out there that is available to teachers for help and to make some things easier. Just spend a little time looking and it might save some time or be the best thing for your student.s

CEDu 533 Class #4

This past week in class we had time to play around with multiple web-page building sites. These sites offer many different templates for web-sites to be used in every different type of instance. Working with these, it has solidified how inadequate our school's "school center" web software is. This past week I tried to upload the JAVA applet for the graphing calculator, because it would be such a great took for students to have at home, just-in-case they left their calculator at school. I got a couple of the documents uploaded into the document manager, but when I tried to upload the .jav, it said the site would not support this type of applets. HOW ANNOYING! I'm just trying to make my web-site better for my students to use and the program won't let me.

Having the web-site it has given me one more line of defense from excuses. My students can no longer state, I didn't know what the homework assignment it was... it's posted in two different places. I update their grades on a daily basis, listing the homework on SMS, PowerSchool, which all students have an access code for. I have also, surprisingly, been very diligent about updating my class web-page daily. I have been updating it daily for two of my three class, mainly because I am on the SMART Board for those classes and it is so easy to upload the notes from class. I would like to change my web-site but right now, my students know where to go, and how to go through the process of hunting for it, since it's hosted by the school, the URL isn't that friendly, so should I wait to switch it at the end of the year?!?! Not sure if there's a perfect answer to the questions, but I can also link items for now to help out my students. We'll see how it goes.