Computers

I love computers. I grew up using them. I had a Commodore 64, played Commander Keen on it, and even had my VERY OWN computer with Windows 3.1 all to myself. I had Commander Keen on there too. I used it mostly for word processing. I did all of my homework on there when possible. I had my own floppy disks for file transferring.

I've been through three laptops of my own now. My first one was second hand, but still good. The second one lasted three years. The one I'm on now is pretty nice too. 320G hard drive, 4G RAM.

But it had a 64-bit OS.

"What's a 64-bit OS?" you ask. Well. Let me tell you. It's the OS from HELL. Unless you're a gamer (I'm not) or a techie (I am AFTER dealing with this issue), a 64-bit OS is no better than a 32-bit OS. And if you're a music nerd who records, then it's not just not better, it's WORSE. There's almost no software out there compatible with a 64-bit OS. So why the heck is the 64-bit OS getting sold to people like me? Cuz people who sell laptops are jerks. And they figure you won't notice that you're buying something you don't need.

WRONG. I didn't realize it until I tried to find compatible software, and that was JUST AFTER the 14-day return policy ended.

Blah blah, long story short: I pirated Vista (which I already have, so I don't feel bad about it) with a 32-bit upgrade and phoned Microsoft for a valid product key. Then I reinstalled EVERYTHING ON MY COMPUTER. It sucked. It takes FOREVER to download and install drivers, change back your preferences, transfer files, and attempt things you've never tried before to see if they work.

I thought I was doing so well...

Well... today I was a little (read: LOT) disappointed when I realized I am SOOO not as far ahead as I thought I was. On Monday, I finished an assignment that was due on Thursday (today). Or so I thought. At school today, talking to Christine, I realized that I had not done a "How to Assess Using [chosen technique]" webpage, but a "How to [Chosen Technique]" webpage. Apparently, that wasn't the assignment. Upon discussing this with my prof, I learned that it REALLY REALLY wasn't the assignment. Disappointed, I prepared to embark on the journey of redoing a large, large 35% of your grade assignment.

Then I told my classmates I did it wrong. Amusingly, some of them were like, "Wait! Tell us WHAT you did wrong so we don't do it!" Apparently, I'm not the only one procrastinating. Thank goodness. So I admitted my embarrassing error. And what did I find? MOST of the class had made the same mistake I did. WELL. That didn't impress me much! Apparently the description for the assignment was really very ambiguous! In the end, I felt much less stupid, but now I'm not sure if I should bother redoing it, or just wait for my teacher to notice that the rest of the class was as thorougly confused as I was.

Bad part: the teacher had this problem with his other class, so he made sure to go over it with us. SOMEHOW, it still slipped over most of our heads.

Oh well!

The experience so far

Well, I must say, I sure am busy!! Of course, having a friend in town for 9 days sure was most of the problem. But it was still enjoyable. (Just stressful.) Now that I don't have that going on, I am still busy, but luckily I make some time for other important things, such as friends and badminton.

I would like to say that I really enjoy my ABC section. (For those of you not in Ed at the UofL, you just need to know that it's a section of approximately 36 students who are in all the same classes together except their teaching seminars, which are broken up into A, B, and C.) I sit with different people every day, and I get to know them. It doesn't feel cliquey. We are very tight. I am tight with my C section too, but I just really enjoy the family feeling of ABC. I hope DEF, GHI, JKL and MNO are having just as much love.

SMARTBoard

Today we started planning lessons using a SmartBoard. I chose to start teaching about the Grand Staff, how to draw a treble clef and bass clef, and how to remember the notes on each staff. The interactive part involved drawing the clefs on the board. I wish the SmartBoard could handle more pens at once, because it could take a while for all the students to try on the board. I suppose, however, that they could follow the directions on the board and try on their own paper, and then I could pick a couple students to show their work.

Editing bad PowerPoints in class: enjoying each other's stress

WELL. I would just like to say that I thoroughly enjoy editing things. I love proofreading and I love fixing presentations to look nice. Starting with other people's horribly formatted text and fixing it gives me great pleasure. I'm not sure what happened in this class! Perhaps it was working with a MacBook Pro, or perhaps it was just that I didn't feel connected to the assignment, but I didn't love it as much as I usually do. One thing that I think we all enjoyed was listening to each other be confused by Macs. Teena was stressed out and that made me laugh. Then when I got stressed out, she laughed at me. And when one of the boys couldn't figure out why his computer was typing all in caps (his CAPS LOCK was on), we all laughed.

Five things I changed from Marlo's original, wonderfully horribly formatted original PowerPoint:

1. I took all of the text and put it on a total of six slides instead of the original three.
2. I added some relevant photos
3. I edited some of the text, as there were some grammatical errors, spelling errors, syntax errors, etc.
4. I added a decent first page with an interesting and beautiful photo and a descriptive title.
5. I chose colours that were associated with the topic of fire (orange and black) for the background and fonts.

My version is obviously superior. Looking at it at the end is definitely enjoyable. But I think I like this part the best - the explaining what I did. Or perhaps the part I liked best was the part where Maurice and I learned how to "print screen" with a Mac (ctrl+shift+4 and then select the area you want OR ctrl+shift+3 if you just want to select the whole screen).

Introduction

Well hello!!! My name is Kathleen, but I go by Kate. I come from a small town in the West Kootenays of British Columbia. It`s very beautiful there, and Lethbridge is much windier! I have been here for four years already (I completed my Bachelor of Music this spring) so I am pretty sured to it by now. Currently, I am in my first year of the University of Lethbridge's Bachelor of Education program. I am pretty sure I'm going to be a music teacher in life, whether it's at an elementary school, a high school, a university, or in my own home.


Some of my interests include playing the piano, singing, writing songs, badminton, dancing, taking pictures, roller blading, Scattegories, laughing and having fun. I love chocolate (milk chocolate, not so much dark) more than almost anything in the world and I love to bake because then I get to eat delicious food.

Harsh

I am so very unimpressed!!! Someone has flagged my blog as inappropriate!! This is my Education blog!! This is the very place a person would most certainly not put inappropriate material! I received the following message when signing in.

This blog has been locked and unpublished due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.

This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review.

How uncool. So now I have requested a review. And real people will have to review it before it is back up.

My first blog

I never intended to do this. Honestly. The closest things to blogs I've ever done are "Kate's Soap Opera" (a strange blog-type thing I created in grade eight), and "Notes" on facebook. I didn't really want to write about my life that much - only because it makes me seem like I feel like my life is so important that everyone should read about it.

But now I'm in Education (I'm not even sure this is what I want to do, but I know I'll enjoy it nonetheless) and creating a blog is the first assignment in Ed3508 - Communications Technology. So there ya are. A blog. I hope I don't get addicted. I already have a problem with facebook. However, this one is definitely going to be restricted to Education topics.