I hate technology!!!!

I swear the technology God's are against me this semester. Between issues at school and home I am so disconnected right now. I know this post is late but I need to just get this  posted to get it out of my head. We have lived here almost 3 years and have never had issues with internet it wasn't always the fastest but it was enough to get school work done, surf a bit and maybe stream a movie once in a while. We had an outage of our entire area the beginning of the semester and since then we have had slower than dial up speed. Come to find out when the internet came back on we were re prioritized and lost our high speed internet slot. The way internet works in some villages here in Germany is there are only a few high speed slots available and you have to wait for one depending on where your house is. We were lucky enough to get the slot of the people who lived in teh house before us so it was no big deal until now. So this was doable with computers at our library, until they reduced the amount of time you can be on a computer because so many people are now using them. So I was reduced to one hour at a time of computer use. Unless there was no one waiting them I could go over. Crazy I know but its my life.

Fast forward a few days and my school computers started acting up. It wasn't the computer but my ID card that we need to log onto the computer at school. Apparently my chip got a scratch on it and I had to go get a new card. it was either wait 4 weeks for an appointment or take an entire day and sit and wait. I opted for the sit and wait. So after watching Cars 2 twice and reading almost entire novel they issued me a new card and I could now log onto the computers at school.

I am ready for a break from technology!!! It can be so wonderful allowing me to see and communicate with family half a world away but when it goes wrong it can go so wrong!!!

Assistive technology .... make it work!

A few things have happened to me this week that have really brought this topic home. First of all I was offered to hire on as the paraeducator that I have been substituting for since the beginning of the school year. I work with a few students that would benefit from assistive technology but are not getting it for a variety of reasons. The cases that bother me the most are the parents that are fighting the use of it.  I do not know first hand the situations that facilitated these decisions but I hate to see a lack of knowledge stand in the way of a student's education. Personally I have been pushing for my son to be able to use a computer for notes and assignments for 3 years now. Finally this week he will be assigned a laptop to take with him from class to class. Unfortunately, he got sick and was not able to begin with it. I am curious to see if it is a bigger distraction or a help for him. If things are set up properly from the beginning I feel this could be a great help to him. He is currently struggling in his health elective because his notes are poor and by the time he gets home he forgets what they were suppose to be about. The teacher just let it go because "he's special ed and I thought a C was ok for him". I was completely shocked by this response. I understand that students need to earn their grades but not allowing a student to have that opportunity to do so and not even consider that a student could do better was a slap in the face. After I calmed down and explained the situation to her she had a different opinion. My son will be given his note packet on computer and be able to fill in the blanks legibly. I think sometimes as teachers we have to remember that all students need to be allowed to achieve at their level and we need to learn what that level is. Some students are just not going to be A students. They do not have the drive or the interested or maybe even the ability to achieve at a high level in certain subjects. However, if a student is interested in a class and participates and can show demonstration of knowledge in another format we need to look at that. Just because they cannot put a pencil onto paper and write out an answer does not mean that they deserve a lower grade - unless as my teenager just pointed out to me its a penmanship class. This was an interesting article from University of North Florida about preparing regular education teachers for an inclusion classroom Inclusion

Blogging in science.....

I can see how easy it would be to blog in Language arts. Daily or weekly journal entries, book critiques, even just practicing with spelling words the list goes on and on!! However, in science those ideas just don't come to me as easily. When I look at what my kid's teachers and what my colleagues do I have a hard time seeing the possibilities. So with my limited internet this week - I totally feel the pain of my students with limited internet access now - I decided to do some research into how I can use a blog in a science classroom. I found a few blogs but nothing that really got my ideas flowing. Until I got to this http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=4771 . It is the blog site for

Chimacum's Science Blogs-Mr. Gonzalez's Science Classes in Washington state. I liked that it had not only scienctific articles that might be of interest to the students. Often things that a teacher might not have time to discuss in class but could provide a place for online discussion in a blog. There were also entries on things that could help the students like how to make a Power Point presentation and an informative presentation on Multitasking. 

I also found an article from The National Science Teacher's Association  http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=51966 . Unfortunately it was an older article but still had some good ideas in it. It was difficult to find a blog just about science for older students. Much of what I found were websites as opposed to a blog.

Let's Get Started aka lassen Sie uns beginnen

For some reason this week have been very challenging to me when it comes to technology. From home to school nothing was working when I needed it to. Our entire area lost internet for 48 hours earlier this week. So not only did I not have internet at home but all my alternative internet sources were out as well to include my smartphone. Talk about a challenge for those teachers that had a tech heavy class planned. Our home internet is only partially back online. Something happened to our German router so our upstairs network is not working, but our downstairs network is working so at least we can all get some work done. The way German houses are built often a wifi signal will not be strong enough to get through to other floors of the house so we have boosters to bring internet through out our homes. We also have a vpn address that works through one of our routers to allow us to stream TV and use services from the United States.
 All of that back story is leading to my blog creation experience. Sat down today to finally get my blog created. I hate waiting until the last minute but sometimes that's just how it happens. I click on blogger.com and a message comes up that the domain operator will not allow me to use the site. I thought this was odd but maybe because it was my UMUC school address I couldn't use it. Continued on using my personal gmail account. Once again the domain administrator will not allow access to this site. Now I am super confused. I went back and looked at all of the blogs that were posted already and saw they were all blogspot accounts. I even posted a message within my group asking for help. Once again my technology gifted son comes in to ask what is wrong because he can hear me getting frustrated. He goes in and turns off the vpn so it is no longer blocking our IP address. Tada!!!! It works , but everything is in German. I eventually figured out how to change languages to English and have now completed my first blog post. It was a very frustrating experience. Living in another country can add some unique challenges to my life especially when it comes to technology.