Creativity is Key

As I prepare to be a high school technology teacher, I think a lot about what I want to emphasize in my classroom. I'm not going to give tests. I'm not going to give homework. I want the students to be learning hands-on 95% of the time. There are times when I'll need to give a mini-lecture to communicate some valuable information that will help them, but hopefully not too often. I want my students to be doing projects. Videos, podcasts, robotics, computer programs, woods, metals, anything. I want them to learn to work in teams as well as individually. I want my students to become personally invested in those projects. By being invested in their projects, they will come to class and be ready to work, they won't cause discipline problems, they will have fun, and they will push themselves to learn more than I would probably teach them on my own. These projects will come about because of creativity. Creativity is the key. I will start off the school year with exercises to help my students tap into their natural creativity. We all have creativity within us, although sometimes it may be difficult to access because it isn't regularly exercised. By getting the creative ball rolling, they will be able to come up with the most amazing things. I have seen it in my own life and can't wait to see it in my students.

My Computer Code Book

I do custodial work at a law school, and today as I was taking out the garbage, I noticed in their recycling bins they were throwing out a lot of big, old legal books. One bunch was titled "United States Code Service". I thought that was an interesting title (not that I would ever read one of these books. But I got to thinking about an alternative use for them. I came across this link in my RSS feed reader a few weeks ago about altering books to use them in a more creative way. I thought it sounded like fun, but had yet to come up with my own unique idea about what to do myself. I have gotten into coding Java, xhtml, some javascript, and a little AppleScript. I'm thinking what if I buy a cool bright marker, and write helpful bits of code or other things that might help me out with my coding directly on the pages of this book? That could be cool. Also, I think I'll carve out little nooks and crannys in the back pages of this thick book in which to store the markers I use to write in it with. It will be a great reference book to lug around with me. Storing helpful things on my Powerbook is great, but not too unique or personal.

Learning Java Programming

I am taking my first computer programming class this year. I want to understand programming better to teach it at the high school level. I also want to be able to program microcontrollers better. I will do cool things with robotics someday!! I am using the Mac app TextWrangler to write my code, which is a great app. I thought I was going to get trapped into sitting in the computer science labs typing my code on windows machines, but yesterday I figured out how to use TextWrangler to write my code and how to compile and run that code in the Mac terminal. That is really going to be helpful during this Summer term. TextWrangler is the poorman's version of BBEdit, and if you haven't checked it out yet, do. See what my C S 142 class is up to on the class website. Happy coding.

Using links with Macjournal

This is a test to see how links work with macjournal. I want to try to link to my RSS feeds on Google Reader.Google Reader

Testing, testing with Blogger

This is to test how this app integrates with my blogger account. I hope it works well.
Todd