I've Enlisted

This morning as I was cleaning carpets at my early morning custodial job it dawned on me that I have enlisted in the Army...the TWIT Army. In case you aren't familiar with TWIT, it is a round-table podcast by Leo Laporte on issues in technology. Those who listen and participate are members of the TWIT Army. I listen to podcasts on technology, I use my Mac laptop daily, and I am constantly learning and improving my technological prowess. The computer project that I am about to embark on is the cleaning up of our HP desktop PC at home. It has so much garbage on it, and is slow. I'm sure it is infested with viruses and spyware. I want to get that all cleaned up. The second part of that project is to copy all of the family photos that are on that PC on both a CD and on my Mac. We only have one copy of those photos, and they are in the worst place. Kara would die if all those baby photos and glimpses of the kids growing up were lost. I want to be able to something more with them than we have done up to this point. I think the family website I am building will be an awesome place to post our favorite photos of our wacky kids. Also, someday we'd like to have physical copies of those pictures and I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen with them sitting on that PC.
As a member of the TWIT Army I dream of the day when I have a new Mac laptop and we have an iMac at home. Then I will set up a wireless network. Kara says she doesn't really have a desire to be really computer literate, but I'm not sure I believe that. I think she just needs to feel more confident with what she's doing on the computer. It will also help when the computer she is working on is fast, and has software on it that she would actually use. I want her to be able to do all the fun stuff that I am able to do on my laptop on a daily basis.
It feels good to be that resident computer geek in the family. I don't turn to people to solve my computer problems anymore, I now know where to find the answers I need. Geek to live!

FreeMind

I want to offer some thoughts on some freeware I just downloaded and started using this past week called FreeMind. I would have to describe it as a kind of brain-storming/intuitive note-taking application. When I downloaded it, something said that it was awesome, but took a bit of getting used to. This was true. I started playing with it on Saturday, and quickly began to like it a lot. The first project I undertook with it was to map out the family website I am currently designing (Anderson-web). The way it works, is that you start with a central "node", and then branch further and further away from it using either sibling (on the same level), or child (one level below) "nodes." You can add icons, colors, fonts, font-sizes, etc. to your "mind-map". I feel that the way this works really is along the lines of the way I think. I have found that in regular note-taking I find myself leaving extra lines or writing in the margins next to an item because I always have something to add. I also have a hard time personally with re-reading notes that I take in order to study, or just find the most important things that I wrote down to begin with. FreeMind eliminates both of these problems. I started using it for note-taking, scripture study, and more stuff for my website. I think it will be one of my most-used apps from here on out. The fact that it is freeware is so awesome also. I have a budget of $0 for software, so I appreciate the work freeware developers do to make my life better. I would recommend this application to anyone who needs a more efficient way to keep track of their scatter-brained life. I'll try to keep mine under control with it.

State TSA Competition

Yesterday I spent my morning and early afternoon at the State TSA competition at UVSC. I volunteered to run the systems control technology competition. It is basically a lego robotics competition. I came up with a challenge that required the participants to detect white pieces of tape inside of a tube. Upon detection their robot was to make a noise, and keep a running total of how many pieces it found inside the tube. Ryan and I built one to work earlier in the week. Suprisingly, not one of the 4 middle school and 3 high school teams was able to complete the challenge. Two teams didn't even have working transmitters to program their lego bricks. There were some really bright kids there though. It was interesting to watch them work. My observation was that they lacked skill in trouble-shooting and problem solving. Also, design was an issue they struggled with. It makes me wonder how I would have prepared a team to compete in such a competition. What would I do to help my students overcome the same struggles that I saw those students having yesterday? I think that the subject matter I will teach as a teacher isn't so important as learning those skills of critical thinking that I saw lacking in those students. I still don't know what I want to teach, but I want to teach kids to solve problems.

From Consumer to Creator

I love to consume all the wonderful and interesting media that is out there on the web. However, there are frequently times at which I am unable to find exactly what I am looking for out there. That drives me crazy. This along with the fact that I have recently discovered how to build webpages has brought me to the conclusion that in order to find the content on the web that I want, I must join in the fun by becoming a creator of content. My first project is a family website for my extended family. I want us to be able to share important calendar dates, email, photos, and stories easily in one location. I am going to build an awesome website for this to happen in. My second project will be a website for my younger brother and the band he is forming. I want to be able to post free, downloadable music on his site. I am just beginning to discover the power at my fingertips with my laptop. I used to think that without the Microsoft Office Suite on my laptop, it was useless. This is why it sat collecting dust in my closet for about a year. How pathetic is that. There is so much more that can be done on a laptop than Office.
I have just recently learned to write in html using css. I have tried a little javascript, but don't really know how and why it works. I can't wait to learn more so as to be able to incorporate it into my content. As an aspiring high school teacher, I can't wait to teach my students to create content to share on the web. That's what makes this whole thing so interesting: everybody just shares what they are doing in a collective space. I am a creative person, but I don't feel that I have the right medium for displaying that creativity. Hopefully in this way I will be able to share something substancial and meaninful with others. There is so much to learn, and so much content to create, but so little time.

Teaching Skill but Lacking the Content

I have one year left in the Technology Teacher Education undergraduate program at Brigham Young University. After taste-testing from several majors, this is where I have ended up. My wife and I felt so good about this program and about becoming a high school teacher, that I quit my full-time job, we sold our home, and I went back to school full-time. It has been quite the transition. I have really enjoyed teaching (both youth and adults) through my various church callings. I am currently the teacher development coordinator at church. I love to learn about the techniques involved with teaching and how to engage the students. I have come to the recent revelation that as far as being a high school technology teacher, I do not have a lot of content knowledge. I have one more year to gain some approximation of content knowledge, but I don't know how much more I will really pick up. I thought I was going to teach woodshop exclusively, but now I'm leaning more toward teaching general technology classes. Woods, electronics, Basic Stamp, Illustrator, html, digital video, are all of interest to me. I don't have much depth in any area though. I'm going to be learning right beside my students. I think my problem is this: I learn a new topic in a class where I am given a series of assignments, those assignments have to be completed relatively quickly, I just try to get them done, and then we move on to a new topic. Ideally I would be able to take time outside of class to delve deeper into the topics of most interest to me. I don't have much time outside of class to do that though. As I develop interest in a given topic, I formulate grand ideas of what I plan to do outside of class to push beyond the class assignments, but after I get off work and eat dinner, the will power and desire just aren't there anymore. I have kind of resigned myself to the fact that I won't be the "best" teaching candidate out there, but I will be A candidate. I guess I'm just going to have to get a job first, and then spend my time gaining the depth of content knowledge that I want. I think teaching is going to be great, but it will be nice when I actually know something.

Wanna-be-Geek!

This semester of school has brought me to the realization that I want to be a geek! This may be an astonishing confession, but it's the truth. Geeks control the world, and I want to be part of that. It takes a lot of work to become a geek however. The specific way in which I came to discover my aspiration to be a geek was through the concept of writing code. I have never written computer code before this semester, but it is really cool. My first exposure to it was through the Basic Stamp microcontroller. We learned to write code that would make the stamp turn on and off things plugged into 120VAC, drive around the Boe-bot, make noises, operate solid state relays, and pneumatics. The abiltiy to control the world was on the desk in front of me throughout these labs. And the key was the code. You can know everything in the world about electronics that you want, but without knowing how to write the code, you can't conquer the world. The second code I recently learned about is Applescript for the Mac OS. I have been learning it on my own, and have only written a few basic programs, but I think it's really cool. I want to learn more, but it's hard to find a lot of info at the basic level. The current program I am about to attempt to write will open textedit, create a new document, and will save it as plain text. That leads me to the last area of my current knowledge of computer code: html. I just learned how to write some basic html last week. I think it is so cool to create a webpage by writing the actual code, and not just using an html editor like Dreamweaver to do it. This week I learned some basic CSS to implement into my html code. The key to the internet is html, and I now am starting to feel like I want to make a real webpage, get a domain name, and have it hosted on the internet. That's exciting.
I know I have a lot to learn, but I want to make it happen. I want to know the codes that can make cool things happen. As an aspiring high school technology teacher, I look forward with much anticipation to being able to teach codes to my students. I will turn them into geeks.
If you are reading this and have any useful information about Basic Stamp code, Applescript, or html and css, please let me know. I need all the help I can get.
That's all for now, I have to go to work, and then I have some coding to do.

The Family Leaves Me

My wife and 3 wonderful kids left on a road trip today. Their destination...first, Boise, and then Spokane. They will be gone for 2 weeks. That means I have to fend for myself. It's a lonely thing to have the 4 closest people in my life drive down the road without me. I depend on them for everything...food, love, entertainment, waking me up at night, making sure I have band-aids on my "owees", finding anything I have lost, and more. Here is what I'll miss most about each of them. Alice is my little side-kick. She loves me so much. I can't remember if Randi and Benji were like that or not, but she can go from grumpy to ecstatic the moment I enter the room. She loves to sleep by me, and I welcome it. Benji is the little man in my life. We band together as the boys of the house. He loves to help me fix anything. Most recently it was a broken belt on the vacuum cleaner. I miss laying by him on his matress on the floor as he falls asleep. I used to do that all the time, but now I don't make it past putting Alice to sleep. And Miranda, a.k.a Randi-pants. She is our ever-so-capable big girl. I'll miss her wanting to assist in anything from setting the table for dinner, to vacuuming the living room, to brushing her teeth. She is so smart. I'll miss her being excited to go to her little pre-school. She was wearing my jacket this morning, and said she was going to take it with her so she wouldn't forget about me. I'll miss my wife Kara most of all. She is my only real friend. I'll miss her telling me stories about her adventures with three rowdy kids each day. I'll miss her being appreciative of anything and everything I do around the house, from washing the dishes, to taking out the trash. I'll miss our middle-of-the-night chats after getting a bottle for Alice. Pretty much I'll be lonely for two weeks.
I try to set goals for things I'd like to accomplish while I have all this free-time on my hands, but I lose motivation quickly. Here are a few of my goals for this time. I want to go to the Central Utah Electronics Supply store on State St. in Provo. I want to rake out the area by our house that has tulips and daffodills coming up in it. I want to start building a family website by just coding in html. Along with that I want to find out how much it costs to host a website, and who I contact about that. And lastly, I want to maybe take a trip up to the Gateway mall in Salt Lake City and visit the new Apple store. Maybe I can convince Dad and the boys to go with me. That would be fun.
That's all 'til Monday.

My first posting

I have rediscovered my G3 Powerbook after more than a year of leaving it collecting dust in a closet. Now I want to really do something with it. I'm a thinker, and my hope with this blog is to get my thinking down in print for my own analysis and for the information and entertainment of those who may read it.