teaching is fun. for now nearly five weeks i’ve been doing a three hour computer platform class. my students are doing relatively well, but my greatest success is developing the software for the course. maybe course and curriculum development should be in my future. i have several interests: computer science, energy efficient and resource efficient residential contstruction, and DVD production. i’m developing a website for my course, now with all the links filled with correct information (still typos), and soon will renew greenconcepts.com for take advantage of future technologies like PHP and dynamic database linking. i know there are many groups and individuals looking for a competent web architect, along with a good thermodynamisist.
lesson plan
testing day
today is test day at the computer school. i’m using dreamweaver to update my school site and i have a form that anyone can fill out to take the test. try to see if you have enough computer skills to answer the questions.
free mac OS X jaguar
what a deal. apple is giving out free copies of OS X and classic to any teacher. read the details.
NSF approved textbooks
while i teach my computer class in lancaster, ruth has asked me to help her with elizabeth’s science course too. the first step will be trying to find an age appropriate study guide and textbook. doing a brief 15 minute search with google i’ve found several NSF approved textbooks. if you have any opinions on these or other middle school books, send them along. the complete list in in the PDF.
other resources
imovie lesson
yesterday i had my most successful lesson. this week i am covering digital video, and using the 604e chip at 250 MHz, elizabeth was able to not play, but run the playhead over a sequence of DV footage, combine with transitions and clips a simple four scene movie. leave it to apple to make a simple video editor. i’m encouraging the lancaster clan to get a new powermac or even an imac before the bootable OS 9 disappears. all of us have all these old educational and document programs tha still run, but will never run under OS X or even in the classic environment. i have several thousand dollars of software that will not work if apple moves then entire hardware line to OS X. help her out with financial contributions, so ruth can get a modern G3 or G4 machine. prices are dropping weekly, as are the bundles. now you can get a free edition of adobe indesign with any powermac purchase.
disc burning
the burn. it’s quite a pleasure to prepare a disc image for burning. in OS X, disc burning is transparent in the OS, so when you place a blank disc into the burner, it just goes. i like using disk copy, first creating an image, adding media, and then unmounting and burning from the app. so far I’ve delivered four discs and zero coasters. for higher end CD-R i would like to get roxio toast, which can talk to DVD+R discs along with the standard flavors of CD and DVD. did you know sony just released the first ever combination DVD burner? it can record to all formats including DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CD-RW, CD-R, and some other flavors.
computer school
in the fall of 2002, i took it upon myself to begin to develop home home school lessons based on computer applications and basic computer skills. each week i’ve been traveling to lancaster CA to try out the latest teaching methods on my two test subjects, ruth and elizabeth. now three weeks into the course, everything is going well. before class i gather up from around the internet and my hard drives critical system updates and applications for that week. this week we’re covering digital video, so i have the latest versions of quicktime, along with some legacy versions like 6, 5, 4, and even version 3.