Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Category: Weekly Review (Page 3 of 6)

Weekly Update 2023-09

AI Art

I started another AI Art session. This one is with a “challenging” class of all 8th grade boys. We’ve had a minute to come to grips with my expectations.

Bronco

The Bronco had a voluntary recall. I scheduled the service a couple of weeks ago. We arrived to drop off the Bronco on the night before. Upon arriving at the dealer to drop it off, my wife waved me over to let me know that there was still cold air coming out of the vents (we’d driven far enough for the air to have warmed up). So, I left a note on the drop-off slip about the cold air.
I got a call at the end of the day. The recall was all set, but the cold air was the issue of the water pump failing. Bad news, the water pump is on backorder and not available until the end of the month. Then, we just did one last week under an “emergency” and got the part in two days (uh oh, now it sounds like a more common issue). The timing couldn’t have been better in one respect. Apparently, the water pump led to the loss of anti-freeze. So, because of the recall, I was able to get the issue addressed without major damage.

Battery

Since the Bronco is still in the shop, a spot is open in the garage. So, out I went to move my little old Focus into the garage for a nice warm overnight stay (yea, no scrapping windows). Er, except the Focus wasn’t starting. Being old and having experience, I knew immediately that the battery needed replacement. I pulled out the Mustang and gave the Focus a jump (confirming the battery issue).

In the morning, I jumped the Focus again and headed off the fix-it shop. Upon arriving, I asked if they had time to replace a battery. (Why not replace it myself you ask? I’ve had the battery replaced once and it is tucked under the vents and crammed in.)

Winterize

I took a day to prepare for winter. The patio table has been put away. The flower pots on the deck have been relocated to the shed. Markers to line the driveway for snow removal have been put into place. Heat mats for the steps out the back door have been installed.

Kennebunkport

Every once in a while, we like to head off to somewhere we haven’t been. Kennebunkport was the choice this week.
Kennebunkport was a nice visit. We found some nice shops and a wonderful beach. Since it is after Labor Day, there were several dogs running around the beach. There was a nice coffee shop, a vinegar shop, and more.
Kennebunkport will be on our return list.

Vault

The Vault was this weekend. Since it is after Halloween, the focus was Christmas (insert eye roll here). We ended up purchasing a bi-level tray for the kitchen and a serving tray.

Kitchen

The kitchen is finally tiled. After waiting overnight for the tile to fully dry, I reinstalled the appliances:

  • Dishwasher
  • Stove
  • Refrigerator
    D1 swung by to help me relocate and “nail” down the island. After having the island up on dollys for quite a long time, the island now seems low. I’ll get used to it, probably pretty quickly, but right now it just seems low.

I still need to clean up the cabinets and refinish at least one.

Voting

This November 7th was voting day for Maine. On the ballot were eight citizen initiatives. I made sure that I voted.

Shoeshine

Since my wonderful wife and I enjoy movies, I’ve subscribed to Delphi’s Screening Room. The latest movie available was Shoeshine (1946). This is an Italian movie with subtitles.

Snow

First bit of snow this morning. Not enough to “stick”, but counts as first snow.

Week Note 2023-08

Week note appears to truly be a misnomer. This is the first one in a while.

Kitchen Redo

The kitchen floor was scheduled for this coming week. Monday night I got a text asking if they could start tomorrow. Well, no. There were plans for Tuesday. However, Wednesday was cool to start.
So, Tuesday night I pulled out the fridge, the dishwasher, and the stove. They showed up on Wednesday. Since we picked a smaller tile, there was a discussion about the tile that we had chosen. The tile is a smaller brick style. This takes longer to install; there is more of it, more spacing, etc.
The job was planned as a three-day job. Wednesday was the installation of the backer board and prep (mostly backer board, as I had leveled the floor and removed everything). Thursday was installing half the tile. Friday was installing the next half, well, almost as there was one corner that is a tight fit between the cabinets and wall to finish. So, no using the kitchen over the weekend. We did go to D1’s house on Friday, with friends, pre-planned. Then, we went to D1’s house again on Saturday to make and eat dinner. Rm went to D1’s house to cook up some soup on Sunday.
Monday, tilers finished grouting the kitchen. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow (Tuesday) to clean up and start putting the kitchen back together.

Picture of white, bricks on a kitchen floor

Breakfast and a Show

On Saturday morning, since I couldn’t make pancakes, we went out for pancakes. We went to a local spot. We sat at the counter. The counter faces the servers and the kitchen. There was obviously a mistake made in entering another order. There was lots of discussion. A server came to get our order. More discussion between the cooks and the servers. Next, our server went into the back area and came out wearing a coat. She then walked out the door. The servers were confused and concerned. (** I truly hope that she is OK and whatever she is dealing with gets resolved.**)

Breakfast was terrific, it’s always good. I got the 2-2-2 Riverview. 2 pancakes (big as my head), 2 eggs (over easy), and 2 slices of bacon.

Screen Door

I made progress on installing the front screen door. I had to create a transom to support the door in the open position so that I could install the door hinges. I made an error in failing to account for the spacing of the hinges. This was a quick adjustment, and now the base of the door is installed. (It’s also painted, not shown.)

Front door of a house. The screen door is missing the glass panel. A ladder is in front of the doors. There are three wooden steps. There is also a drill laying on the steps.

WordPress Auto-Generated

The kitchen floor renovation began on Wednesday and finished on Monday. Due to space constraints, one corner took longer than planned. Accustomed to at-home meals, the author visited a local restaurant for breakfast while the kitchen was unusable. They witnessed an unexpected incident involving a suddenly emotional server. Meanwhile, they made progress installing the front screen door, overcoming minor errors in hinge spacing.

Weekly Update 07

What a week this was. I base that largely on one event.

Disseratation Defense

My youngest successfully defended her PhD. She is now a Dr. Her dissertation, THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF AWNS IN THE GRASS SUBFAMILY POOIDEAE, allowed me to learn a bit more about what she does.

We left to visit. The night before involved a bit of last minute sewing and dinner. She was obviously very ready to defend her dissertation.

It was really wonderful to meet some of her colleagues. It was especially nice to her others describe her and her work.

She did the work. All credit goes to her. I’m just impressed and proud of the work that she has done.

Parent Night

I’ve also scheduled a Parent Tech Night for work. This will center on student use of devices, what the school does to help keep students’ safe, and what parents can do.

Karma

I posted an issue on Reddit about Darktale (menus not displaying correctly). It was deleted (pending moderator approval) as I don’t have enough Karma points.

Darktable issue was quickly solved through the Darktable forums though. And then I wrote it up.

Karma Part 2

Then there was this article on leaving teaching and going to work for Costco. Someone trying to tell me something?

In truth, the ex-techer makes more now as she has risen up to do training for corporate. The article headline is thus, a bit misleading.

Volunteer Sheet

I had to update the Volunteer Sheet. Thankfully, I had fully written up this process on this site. For some reason, I had to re-add the filter individually. Not sure why I had to do that, but everything works perfectly now.

Weekly Update 2023-06

Well, it’s been a summer. I have once again failed at keeping up on posting a weekly update. Hopefully, with the restarting of school, I can return to regular updates.

In the meantime, here is a quick overview of the summer.

Kayaking

I only got out a couple of times to kayak this year. In one trip, I watched some of the Sturgeon jumping on the Kennebec River. It is an amazing sight.

That trip was cut somewhat short as while attempting to pull Hazel back into the kayak, a nice little wave hit, and I capsized.

This led to the realization that I was not fully prepared with kayak re-entry procedures.

Bird Removal

Part 1

While dog sitting for my eldest daughter, I arrived to find a robin hanging out in the attached porch area. It took a good bit of broom work, the robin kept flying up to the ceiling fan, but the robin was eventually freed.

Part 2

A hummingbird decided to enter our mudroom. It is interesting how incredibly still they can be. Anyway, a bit of collaboration between my wife and I, and one hummingbird was returned safely to the wild.

Kitchen

Painting

The kitchen is now mostly painted (still a bit of touch up work to do). The difference is phenomenal. The kitchen looks so much better.

Floor

Tiling the floor turned into quite the project. A friend, Joe, and I ripped out the tile to see if the floor below was redeemable to be refinished. It turned out not to be a good path forward.

So, I had the kitchen measured to have someone else tile. Originally, I was going to do the tile, but there’s a story. Anyway, the measuring guy “forgot” to say that the floor really needed to be leveled. The tile company said to get a general contractor to level the floor. Now, to be fair, I’m not really looking for the floor to be level, just not quite as far off level as it currently is. For example, when we bought a cabinet that was about four feet wide, it sloped down 3/4 of inch over those four feet. Anyway, Joe and I went to work to make the floor flat and closer to level. It was quite the job, but I’m happy to report that the floor is now flat and close to level. It took five sheets of subfloor and about ten bags of leveling cement. Oh, and about 500 screws. Anyway, it looks good. Hopefully, we can get on the tile schedule soon.

Oh, redoing the floor meant a few weeks of applicances out of the kitchen. And, of course, we had to grind one section down, so dust is now present throughout the entire house.

Week Note 2023-05

Well, technically not a week, but a “weeks” note. I apparently fell off the posting regularly wagon once again.

AI

AI continues to dominate the thoughts and news (around education and in general). Some are saying that this will bring about as big of a change as mobile phones did. I’m not sure that I’m there yet, but I do think that there is “something” there. Currently, I’m thinking that AI will be more and more integrated into other tools. We are already seeing a good bit of that.

Mother-in-Law Visit

My Mother in law visited for a couple of weeks. In order to increase her comfort level, we’ve added a day bed to our setup. I think that she had a good time visiting a variety of places.

Continuing Redecorating

We headed off to the Vault and ended up picking up a couple of lamps. The original goal was to pick up a desk and chair that Rm had previously spied.

Rm also found a cabinet for the kitchen. That one was the result of the trip to see D2 at D1’s house. The real struggle was getting the cabinet (two pieces) into the Bronco. Ultimately, we failed. D1 came and took the top half of the cabinet.

Indictment

One of the biggest news pieces this week has been the indictment of Donald Trump (which he referred to as being “INDICATED”, in all caps of course). There were tons of people (especially politicians) coming out in defense of Trump before the charges were even revealed. Trump is, of course, using this as a fundraising opportunity – (Hey, I’m a billionaire who is really business smart, and you make minimum wage, but I need $47 from you for my defense).

Principal Fill In

Due to the Principal and Vice Principal being out, I did some duties as the Administrator. The challenge for me has been the difference in culture. The most important thing in filling in is to support the vision and culture existing in the school. Some of my expectations and requirements are very different from what is in place.

BookWyrm

I’m exploring Bookwrym as a reading tracking site.

Week Note 2023-02

Snow Day (s)

Friday was a snow day. We ended up with about 4 inches of snow.
Now, Monday is another snow day. The weekend was cold, but no additional snow. This will be our last traditional snow day. From here on out, we will be utilizing remote learning days.

Heatrak

I purchased some Heatrak mats for the stairs going out the back door (not cheap, but the stairs are seriously dangerous when iced). These have been a great investment. However, one of them has stopped working. (Good news, it is really obvious which one). A call to the company and a replacement is on the way.

NOLEJ

Because of the Snow Day, I finally got a chance to play around with NOLEJ a bit. NOLEJ authors materials (quizzes, flashcards,glossaries, etc) based on a resource. So, I took a YouTube video (Gettysburg: Animated Map) and let it create material. The material is created as H5P resources. I then put that into Moodle. You can check it out in the MasterMoodle course (no registration required, but you may have to click on the Login as Guest button). These are the raw files, no additional editing. Obviously, they can (and should be edited). The questions fall into basic knowledge category and some grammar needs to be corrected. This could be a way to quickly create some of the basics of a course though. The teacher would need to add higher level thinking material, questions, and learning opportunities.

Free to Use Browser Extension

I’m enjoying the Free to Use Browser Extension even more than I thought that I would. Basically, this extension displays a Public Domain image in your browser window whenever you open a new tab.

Extension sets the background of blank tabs to a photo from the Library of Congress collections that is free to use and reuse.

I just find these random pictures a source of great joy. I frequently pause for just a minute to wonder what is going on in the picture.

Books

I’ve finished “Poguemahone” by Patrick McCabe. I liked it a ton. This is really different than most of the books that I’ve been reading. It is written in free-verse focusing around the 1970’s and music. Kind of. Sort of. Largely the story of Una and her reflections.

I’m starting Frederick Backman’s Us Against You. This is a follow up to the wonderful “Beartown”. Fredrick Backman is one of my favorite authors. He has several books out. I recommend all of them that I’ve read so far.

Cover of US AGAINST YOU by Fredrick Backman. The cover shows two hockey players (one a small girl with two braids, one teenage sized with short hair under a helmet) backs standing again a blue sky with a town in the distance.

Weekly Note 2023-01

COVID

COVID finally caught up with me. Thankfully, I’m fully vaccinated, so the disease wasn’t fatal for me. Relatively, this was a like a pretty bad head cold for me. Be safe, and take precautions.

More AI

Tami Brass has a neat write-up about AI, teaching, and middle school. It is definitely worth a read.

Christmas

We got to spend some times with the kids around Christmas. This is one of the biggest reasons that we moved to Maine. It is great to have those opportunities.

We also got to spend some time with some new good friends.

Christmas with Kennerly

We did attend “Christmas with Kennerly” at the Portland Symphony. It was a good show and help us get into the Christmas mood.

After Twitter

“The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.”
Brent Simmons

I’ve pretty consistently heard Twitter referred to as the digital “Town Square”. However, Town Square as a privately owned rather than a publicly available place seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Whenever one person has complete control of the Town Square, it no longer becomes the Town Square, but a Square of an individual.

This is part of the balance that should be in America. America should really be reflective of three different components: People, Business, Goverment. There should be tension amongst those three. However, far too many people believe that Business (this is often pushed in terms of “freedom”), should be the default for everything. This leads to abuse by businesses. Business is designed to make money. This is partly why the stratification of wealth is continuing to be skewed. Business has managed to bake into the American psyche that freedom, letting business do what it wants, is what makes America great.

Twitter is proving to be a place that I don’t want to be. I’m working at making sure that I control my information. This is another thing that sounds great but takes effort. Mastodon is having a moment, but there are issues with Mastodon as well. Lots of people have moved to Mastodon, many looking for it to be “Twitter”, but the experience is different.

At the end of the day, people tend to want easy. Dr. Doug Belshaw and I have had a couple of conversations about this. I still believe that people want things to be very obvious and don’t want to learn how to control things. Dr. Belshaw is more optimistic.

With people moving to Mastodon, there is talk about the “return of the web”. This refers to blogging, and really people owning their own data. I’m still not convinced. The smallest roadblocks can be experience enders for many. People need to have something clear and easy to start with.

As one example, I’ve been hearing about how Linux is going to be the big thing this year.

Linux

I heard for years about how “this year is going to be the year of Linux”. It is finally as easy to use as Windows, gives you much more power, you can do so much, …. And, yet, we still haven’t gotten to the “year of Linux”. Yes, Linux is just about everywhere. But, it is “unseen”. Linux is used as an embedded system.

People clearly don’t want the maintenance and effort that Linux requires. People seem to want things that are familiar, and “easy”.

Weekly Thoughts 50

Kottke

Jason Kottke is back to posting. Jason has a long history of discovering and sharing truly interesting things. If you don’t follow him, fire up your RSS reader and add his site.

Thoughts

I believe that it was the wonderful Bob Harrison who posted the following:

COMPUTERS ARE A TOOL THAT ARE UBIQUITOUS IN THE REAL WORLD (SO WHY NOT IN THE CLASSROOM)

I’m still hearing lots of pushback about using computers. I do truly agree that kids shouldn’t be on computers all the time, but frequently I hear reports of full on blocking.

Summarizer & Voices

Two things that I got to pull from my head this week. One was when I was asked if there was a replacement for a website that a teacher was using to “provide accommodations” for students. Since the students have MacBooks, I suggested using Summarizer built into the System. I obviously hadn’t used this in a while as it wasn’t turned on. So, a quick trip to the new System Settings, turning on the Summarize feature (Keyboard | Keyboard Shortcuts | Services | Summarize) and we were ready to go. My Tech Integrator and I talked about the importance of empowering the students by teaching them, and we were ready to go.
The next day, the question of the day was, “Are there better voices available? They all sound very robotic.” The teacher was using a Google extension. Back to System Settings where we explored the variety of built-in Apple Voices (I still enjoy the South African dialect voices).

Hearing Aids

I had a follow-up on my hearing aids. Hearing aids have been a struggle for me. I’m not sure if it’s the general stigma, the relation to being old, or just the acknowledgment that I need them, but I’ve struggled with having to have them. The reality is that I hear much better with them. I don’t miss out on nearly as much sound. However, they still need to be adjusted. Getting the setting right is a challenge.

7th Grade Art

I’ve been co-teaching a 7th-grade Art class. The 7th graders have been just a ton of fun.

The project centered around AI art. Specifically, we’ve been using Diffusion Bee, an open-source version of Stable Diffusion that can be run on our computers. We’ve talked about why we are using this on computers instead of a website.

The project started with a board overview of AI art. The students identified a landscape (or seascape, this is Maine after all) and brought in a picture. The Art teacher worked on Foreground, Midground, and Background. The students did a pencil drawing of their picture. They also described it in words. They would bring their descriptions up and enter that into Diffusion Bee. The result would be compared to their picture. There was a lot of discussion about why they got the picture that they did. This was also a lot of fun (the pictures didn’t always match their expectations). Finally, the students created a watercolor version of their image.

Once we’d been through all of the students, we talked again, as a class about what the images were and how they were created. I then let them know that they could download Diffusion Bee and generate images as well.

We are talking about how to use the program, similar programs, and the future of AI.

The Art teacher wants to repeat the project with some adjustments with the 8th grade.

Amendments

I did a separate write-up on Ranking the Bill of Rights. I have found that future me generally appreciates when past me has written up steps and procedures. Thus, I wrote this up as a full post instead of just sharing here.

ChatGPT

I also did a full write up on AI and text (again, I’ve learned that future me appreciates full write-ups). Generated text is interesting and will continue to be so.

ChatGPT can detect when text is likely to have been generated by large language models, but you can also use prompts for it to generate text that is specifically designed to not be easily detected.

“Generate 200 words on Macbeth in a style that would make it difficult for the text to be detected by a large language model as having been generated by a large language model.”

Social Media & Teachers

I’m really struggling with this one:

But straight up: any person telling other teachers to use Twitter for PD is sending people into harms way.

The US rightwing crowd are targeting teachers. They are using Twitter (and FB, and Insta, and TikTok) to do this.

Sending educators to Twitter now is straight up malpractice. It’s a hostile place, run by bad stewards of data.

This is at least an interesting thought. I’m not sure that I’m ready to go that far, but education is really under attack these days.

*Post image is Lost in thought by @hefedute (https://openclipart.org/detail/223115/multiple-thoughts-man-line-art)

Weekly Update 48

Gardens AGLOW

We took the opportunity to attend Garden’s AGLOW as a way to “kick off” the Christmas season.

Workbench

I’ve finally started to work on making a basic workbench. This will be a temporary workbench until I can build a proper one. I’m using all recycled wood from around the house. Most of the wood is coming from the “fort” that was in the backyard when we purchased the house or from D1’s contributions from projects are her house.

Lights for Christmas

The outside lights for Christmas have been installed. This is probably the earliest I’ve done so. However, the weather was right.

Moodle

I was able to update my Moodle instance to version 4.1. This is a big improvement as my hosting service had previously been running an older SQL version which precluded me from updating.

Rm Foot

Rm had foot surgery. The surgery went well. She is recovering quickly.

Mastodon

More and more educators are joining Mastodon. It is quickly becoming a useful network to gain links, tips, and make connections. This is what I had been hoping for when I first joined Mastodon in 2017.

I’m slightly struggling with the posts about moving from Twitter to Mastodon, but I recognize that it is a necessary evil for people to make those connections. I do recognize that I could filter those out, and I’m close to doing so, but for now, I’m leaving them as a reminder that different people are at different points of the journey.

It does seem that the analogy of email, everyone can be on different servers but connect, is very useful for people.

Christmas Music

This is probably the earliest I’ve started listening to Christmas music as well. I’m intentionally trying to make sure that I enjoy the Christmas season, and music is a part of that. I’m not going crazy listening to Christmas music all the time, but occasionally, I’m tuning in to the Christmas station.

Art Walk

Rm and I did attend the Gardiner Art Walk this year. There were some interesting artists, some that we’ve seen before. We made a few purchases.

Week Note 40

Tech as a Utility

I’ve had a few discussions with people who want technology to be “like utilities”. That is, they just want the technology to work. I understand this. I wish it were like this too. Essentially, they want technology to be like the water spigot or the light switch. Flip it on, it works. However, at this point, technology is not there. For starters, we may want different things from technology than other users.

For example, hit that switch and the projector turns on and shows the video that you want. Um, where is that video? Are you wired directly to the projector? Do you want this to work wirelessly?

I probably should have some better examples. But the point really is that we may not all want the same thing to happen when we flip that switch. Thus, we’re going to have to learn to make the technology do what we want.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

So this last week was “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. Sadly, not one of my known peeps was participating.

Heated Seats

Well, this week was the first time this fall that I was thrilled to have heated seats. This is one of those little pleasures that I really enjoy.

Brendan James


We went to see Brendan James at the City Winery in Boston. What a wonderful show. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy seeing singer/songwriters perform their work in a small, intimate venue. Like Ari Hest, Brendan James is a thoughtful, singer/songwriter who can make you think and touch your soul. He played great songs and shared a bunch of wonderful stories.

Brendan James also has new album out (Leap Taken). We bought it, directly from him on the honor system. Grab the CD, scan the Venmo code and send him money.

Rm even got to request a song that he played.

Local Comedy

I also got to go to a local comedy show with a friend. It was an interesting evening. One could definitely tell that different comedians were at different points in their development. Timing and pacing are so very important in comedy.

There was a bit too much focus on crass jokes for me. I’m not really a prude, but I also think that you don’t have to fall only to sexual points to be funny.

However, the company was great. It was nice to get out to see a local show.

Darktable

I’m watching some videos trying to learn how to use Darktable. These are very interesting. I’m hoping to at least get good enough to develop some passable photographs.

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