Welcome, Ziggi!

The highlight of this short week - only 3 days due to fall break, with one of those days being PSAT day when 2/3 of my students were out - was the arrival of Ziggi, my document camera!

My husband said I was so excited when it arrived that it was like Christmas morning.  I am really happy to be done dealing with all of the frustration connected with getting my iPad DIY document camera to work.  

Ziggi just connects directly to my computer by USB cable, and here's the result:

I ended up not bothering to write a grant and just bought it myself.  I figured that the time I would have spent writing a grant was worth $99 to me, and this way Ziggi belongs to me, so I can take him with me if I ever move to a different school.

Here's Ziggi in position:

and here are his first two pictures:

Two Way Prepositions Notizen file

I haven't tried video recording yet - I'm still getting used to all of the features, but hopefully that will come soon.

I spent quite a bit of time Friday after school crawling around among the cords and dust bunnies behind my desk to try to figure out the best permanent location for Ziggi.

My conclusion was that Ziggi needs an extension cord.  So that's on this weekend's shopping list.  It's definitely worth it!

Three Words: Short but Long

Even though this was a short 4 day week, it still felt surprisingly long.  

It was great to have the long Labor day weekend, and I got to have coffee with my former student teacher, who is now starting his first year of teaching.  I felt well-rested starting the week, but by Friday afternoon I was wiped out and could barely keep my eyes open past 8:00 in the evening!

Still, there were some good things that happened this week.  First and foremost, my trek up the chain of command, which I started last Friday, produced results right away on Tuesday.  Just as I predicted, after about 20 minutes of work by IT during my prep period, my iPad document camera was up and running! 

Hallelujah! So nice to see you, old friend!

I have still been warned that I will have to give up my iPad in October so I need to keep working on a long-term solution.  The document camera I have been considering writing a grant for is on sale right now at Amazon ($85 instead of $99), so I may just buy it myself with money I earned last summer doing curriculum development and (hopefully!) be done with this annual source of frustration.

In other good news, there were lots of stars for 90% or better on the German 1 vocabulary quiz:

and I have my Marzano scale up as well

so the whole back board now looks like this

In German 2, we tried Past Participles Speed Dating for the first time.  

Two out of three classes loved it!  4th period was less impressed, but I think a few people in that relatively small class (20 instead of 30) were just sort of grouchy that day, which set the mood for everyone.  Ah well, you can't please everyone all the time.

And German 1 tried Learning Apps for the first time on Friday.

So, when I look back at it now, it was a tiring week, but a lot of good things did happen.  Happy weekend!

Three Words: Document Camera Frustration

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I created my own DIY document camera several years ago using my iPad and Airserver to project and record guided notes in my classroom. 

You'll also know that there have been times when changes made by the central IT office have interfered with the functioning of my cobbled together system, and I have to talk to all kinds of people in IT and administration to explain again what I'm doing and why and how their change has messed things up.  It usually takes several weeks of pestering various people until we find a solution which usually involves the IT person taking 15 minutes to flip a few switches, and things are working again.  

To say it's frustrating is an understatement.  I know that no one is intends for this to happen, but it makes it more difficult for me to teach my students in the best way I know how.

Welcome to school year 2017-2018.  Every summer our desktop computers are re-imaged and wiped clean of special programs and downloads.  I was expecting this, so before school even started, I put in my request to have AirServer re-installed and for my computer and iPad to be on the same wireless network.    School started, IT was very busy, and I waited patiently.  And waited.  We're 4 weeks in to the school year, and I finally heard back that because our iPads are more than 5 years old, IT will be recollecting them later in the fall.  So, they won't set up my system because it is going to be phased out.  With nothing equivalent to replace it.  Sigh.

So, for now I'm making do with Powerpoint again.  

And starting the long trek up the chain of command to see how we can solve the problem this time.

And researching document cameras so I can write a grant to get one.

And going for long runs so I don't scream at anyone.

And thinking about becoming an engineer...