Thursday, July 1, 2010

As stated before, Wednesday was an exhausting day. It actually all started Monday night.

A few weeks ago I took a class on Elluminate, which was basically a tool that could be used for creating virtual classrooms. The Madison School District was offering this class to teachers interested in using technology and those trained would receive a certificate that would allow them to train other teachers. Upon completion of the course it was expected that you fulfill other outside requirements. One of these requirements was to prepare a lesson that was to include various components. No problem. You would then present this lesson, online, to the instructor. A virtual observation. No problem again. I preplanned what I would do and stored it in my memory bank, figuring I would put this together a couple days before my observation as it really didn't seem that complicated. That is, unless, something goes wrong with your computer. Which, of course is what happened. I sat down to put all my ideas together Monday night. Unfortunately, I couldn't access the internet which is where my virtual classroom was located. Usually it comes back up, so I waited but when it didn't come back I decided I better check to see what was the matter. Well, turns out the router was shot. Would not power up at all. And it was too late to go pick up another one. Okay, still, not a big problem. I would just pick one up Tuesday, reinstall it, and finish my project. Not that simple after all. We had an appointment for my son in McFarland that lasted an hour and a half. Then we had to take him to Stoughton for camp. It was already noon by then and we had to pick up my daughter. We went home, had lunch, relaxed for about a half hour and then went to get the router. They really are not that hard to install. Unless, you have a really old desktop that takes about 45 minutes to boot up. I tried first installing it on one of the laptops but kept receiving errors on both. Then I tried installing it on the desk top. It said a file was missing. I clicked on the ok button and it totally shut down the computer. After 45 minutes of waiting for it to boot up and access my CD drive, it shut it down again! Now what? Okay, still not too panicked, I would just go out and pick up and external Ethernet adapter. No luck. Nobody had one. They could order it for me online but I did not have time for that. So I ate my dinner and went to the other side of town (after picking up my daughter from driver's training), but still no luck. Then I realize there is the option of installing without the CD by using the Internet options. Ok. So back to the old Dell desktop, another 45 minutes for booting up, and finally accessing the Internet. Then a long, long setup as the computer took forever to load each necessary page. To make a long story short, still did not work. I worked until 11:00 pm switching cables and adjusting settings, returning to the internet set up until finally it worked. But, now, it is 11:00 pm, I haven't started my assignment, and my observation is scheduled for 10:00 am the next morning. So I stayed up until 1:00 am getting it as ready as I could and hoping for the best.

4:45 am came really early! Off to boot camp. Dustin was our leader today. We did the picnic table workout. We were in groups of 5 and lifted the picnic table over our heads and carried it to a designated cone. Then we set it down, did 10 pushups, 10 tricep dips, and carried the picnic table back to our starting point. I laughed to myself as I thought, "This must be what the Hebrews in The Ten Commandments must have felt like when they carried Nefretiri's barge to the mudpits to see Moses!" We did jumping jacks then until it was our turn to do the circuit. To be honest, I was still so tired from the previous night that I can't remember what was all in the circuit. We did some lunges with overhead dumbell presses, we did some rows, and some other strength training exercises. Dustin kept us motivated so I didn't just go through the motions, I gave it wall I had. After we carried the picnic table a couple of times and did the circuit a couple of times, we focused on more core exercises. We used the weights and did V ups, russian twists, and various types of planks. It was a good, intense workout. It amazes me that we do so much that it never seems like it is early in the morning. We are just up and going and not thinking about the time of the day it is. However, again, I'm always glad to see those six-fifteen people arriving.

After class, went home and got the boy child ready for camp again. Dropped him off and went straight to school for my virtual observation. I could have done it at home but was not willing to take the chance that something would happen again with the router. I arrived at school early so that I had about an hour and a half to refine and test my presentation. The observation went well, the teacher actually said she was impressed with my lesson and now that part is done. I still have an online quiz to do but it is open book so shouldn't be too bad. Of course, I'll probably wait until the last minute to do that too!