Geekery

Reader be warned: serious geekiness to follow.

I started summer classes this morning and, mind you, I'm exhausted, but it was fulfilling in a way. I started off the day with my Topics in Technology for Mathematics Teachers in which we are focusing specifically on calculators for two weeks. General calculator use in the classroom would have been nice, but we're focusing specifically on one calculator.

Anyone that has taken math classes or taught than recently knows that most schools have standardized the use of Texas Instrument scientific calculators, and so you'd expect that our class would be focusing on them. We are, instead, working with a very cool Casio. Its a Casio ClassPad 330, essentially a calculator that took a note from Palm and made a touch screen tool with a very nice interface.

instead of having many hidden functions, I think the menu system works more like computers, so that students that are coming back to school aren't necessarily learning two completely different technological interfaces. Granted, I also don't see Casio becoming the big name in education anytime soon, but its a really nice tool for teaching if nothing else.

I'm already looking for one to purchase. Perhaps Fry's carries them.

On a far more comprehensible note, I started observing a friend's class today. She had asked me to visit her course and I offered to take a more active role. So I am taking notes on her interactions with her students and the extent to which she allows students to lead the conversation (a really really hard thing for any teacher to do). Also, on Wednesday, she will be presenting an activity that she hopes to use for her research in the fall, and I am specifically looking for the ways in which she leads the activity.

I've made the decision to be a full time student in the fall. I don't know what this means for work, but I am in the process of finishing an application for a part time instructors position at a local community college. I don't have a back-up plan right now other than falling back to very very part time at the music school.

On Thursday I will be heading to Idaho with Alex and his father to meet up with the rest of his immediate and extended family for a wedding. Luckily I have managed to get the software for the Casio to install on my computer. For those that don't know (though you likely don't care), I am running Linux on my laptop now, as it is completely useless running windows or macintosh operating systems. If I can make this machine last another year or so, I'll be happy. To make a long story short, installing a program written for a windows operating system in a linux operating system took researching the translator for a .exe file, installing that, and then installing the program for the calculator.

Its really a very trivial thing for more technologically savvy people, but it made me feel good that I accomplished it in under a half an hour.

Alright, enough for now, I should get to some homework as long as I'm sitting here.