the ADMIN pages

It's official: I am a second-semester senior. And just as the wonderful feeling of a looming graduation starts to kick in, a class like "Written Expression," my semester English elective, comes along to kick my ass.

The first semester of my senior year was a horrible joke, both literally and figuratively. This was the kind of joke that goes on and on, and you can tell right away that it isn't going to be funny, so you just want to tell the self-appointed comedian to shut up. That's how I felt.

The best period of my day was the one I didn't show up to most of the time (it being the first period of the day and all). Being a teacher's aide for Mr. Workman, a biology and chemistry teacher who I really got to know when he had me suspended in my sophomore year, was an awesome experience. He's an intelligent and funny guy, and from what I can tell, is a great teacher. Sitting in his office, along with a few other biology teachers, shooting the breeze, was the most engaging part of my first semester. It didn't matter what we were talking about, be it education, the newly-selected incoming principal, or technology. All that mattered was that I was doing something. Having to grade his quizzes and worksheets (the actual "work") was just an afterthought.

"Realms of Possibility," a semester-long English elective that focuses on science-fiction and fantasy literature, was a complete pushover. Case in point: Me, the textbook underachiever who does as little work as possible, got a 100% grade. Both quarters. I did not lose one point the entire semester. The teacher is a lifelong educator who has won a bunch of awards, so I'm not sure if he's actually just a bad teacher who gets all his students to like him (by making his class as easy as possible), thereby winning popularity contests, or if he actually did engage me, and I just haven't realized it. The jury's still out on this one.

AP Statistics: The easiest "math" class I've taken in high school. A friend of mine likes to say this class is an English class in a math wrapper, because of all the writing (he's a math nerd, and hated the class). Sure, I'm learning new things, but quite frankly, I'm not really enjoying the class. The knowledge I'm gaining just isn't interesting or relevant to me. That's just a personal thing, though--I like the way the class is structured, and the teacher is great. It's a full-year class, so I'll continue to trudge my way through it.

Archery/Fitness/Bowling: The state-mandated P.E. class. As always, what's to say? I've never found an engaging P.E. class. Although, this class was the first time I had a truly good teacher. A former department chair, he seems intelligent and competent enough to teach something other than P.E. He isn't the most popular teacher, because he runs his class relatively strict. That being said, I liked him. Not as, um, weird as most of my former P.E. teachers.

So, onto second semester, which started today (with a shortened schedule).

I've got "Stress Management" (yet another P.E. elective) during first period. As I said, I rarely showed up to school on-time when I was a teacher's aide, so this is going to be a wonderful wake-up call (literally). I've heard bad things about how strict the teacher is, but it's classroom-based (as opposed to dressing out for "physical activity") on two days a week. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Second period, I return to being an aide for the MIDI Music class. I took the class last year, and have helped develop a lot of the technology side of things for the teacher since then. Scheduling conflicts prevented me from having a formal aiding capacity last semester. There appears to be a shortage of computers... so I may be spending my time in a different room down the hall or something.

AP Statistics stays the same. The teacher gave us his "No Senioritis" speech today, although he conceded that after May 7th (the AP test), he won't care what we do. This is a common thread I see among teachers, though: they care almost too much. Sometimes, they fail to realize that there are students who legitimately, truly don't care about their class. Sure, to him, statistics is the most important thing in the world. But to me, it's just a filler class to fulfill the minimum number of courses mandated by the school.

And... my second-semester English elective: Written Expression, billed as a college-level writing class. From what I've heard and witnessed on my first day, the class is very demanding. Since this is the only real class I need to pass to graduate, I should probably be concerned. However, I've been told the teacher is very nice, and she does seem that way. And she did mention that she grades on the ability to write, not just for the mere presence of a grade (or something to that effect). Still, it's all rhetoric until I see it on my grade report.

If my gut reaction is correct, I won't as easily breeze through this semester, but at least now it's acceptable normal for me to have "senioritis." Even though I've had senioritis since about freshman year. I apologize to all my teachers in advance: I'm a textbook case of a student being apathetic about their education. What's the big secret? How do you fix that? Engage me.

Sorry for the delay on this post-- been swamped with last-minute Christmas Eve stuff.

The second day of the tournament was much more relaxed, as I suspected. We didn't need to convert any fields in the middle of the day, and I managed to keep the standings up-to-date the entire day.

Another new referee (read: not a ref in the regular MAX Indoor league) was assigned a few games today. As has happened a few times, my assignor asked me to evaluate the guy's reffing since my assignor wouldn't be at the facility until later in the day. Strike one: the ref shows up 10 minutes before game time. In general, referees are supposed to show up a half-hour before games if possible, and this guy was specifically told to show up early (I saw the e-mail) so that I could brief him on the tournament rules. Strike two: he doesn't have a whistle. That's right, no whistle. I have about 10 whistles in my bag, including one specifically for referees who I'm working with that don't have a whistle (which happens unfortunately frequently in my rec park district league). As I watched him work, he seemed to make decent calls and whatnot, but he appeared to be a center-circle ref. Meaning, he rarely ventured outside the center circle of the field. Most competition authorities ask referees to be "match fit" and be able to run within 7-20 yards of play. (He later told my assignor that he pulled a hamstring and couldn't run.)

We had one incident during the U14 Boys final. After the game, two players (separately) from the losing team called the referee an asshole. To his face, no less. This referee is a grade 5 state referee (higher than our assignor), and hence, doesn't take crap from anybody, let alone two punks like these kids. We got their information and are reporting them to the IYSA, with the recommendation that they be suspended from a few games in their regular outdoor league.

The fun stuff: my high-school division games. I was kind of disappointed, to be honest. I was expecting a bigger challenge. The games I did were easy. The teams weren't even unfairly matched, either. It was a piece of cake. I'm hesitant to accept this as the norm for high-school girls' soccer, though, because I've seen my own high school's team play, as well as line a U19 girls match that featured the two best teams in the state (ironically, my center for that match now works in the MAX Indoor league). Nevertheless, it was easy stuff. Nothing fascinating to report.

No games next week, but the league administrator is starting another indoor league right here in my hometown, so I'll be working that every Sunday come the middle of January.

A round-up of my "holiday sale" Official Sports referee gear order: short-sleeve gold, long-sleeve gold, short-sleeve black, long-sleeve black, long-sleeve green, three pairs of socks (including one with the new style), USSF shorts, write-on cards, whistle wristband, some UnderArmour, and USSF warm-ups. I'm most excited about the warm-ups, since the new jerseys are back-ordered until next year, before the spring season. And nothing distinguishes you as a (good) referee like a pair of warm-ups.

Today, I was reminded me why I love reffing at tournaments: the networking.

I love talking with fellow referees, especially those who are better than me. I'm a lowly grade 8 (the lower the better), which is the default grade that nearly everyone starts off at. I've been this way for longer than most referees who have ambitions to upgrade—my current assignor, a state (grade 6) referee, started the same year I did. My only problem is that I don't have the mandatory game requirements for upgrading to a grade 7, the next step up the referee ladder: 75 as a center referee, and 25 as an assistant referee (linesman), all of which must be fully documented with dates, locations, and teams. I worked only in my local, recreational park district league (and a few scattered tournaments) for my first 4 years as a referee. These games are not USSF-affiliated, meaning that they don't count for anything, namely, upgrade requirements. I only just started doing real games (club/traveling soccer) in the middle of the spring 2007 season.

The tournaments I've worked at in the past have always blown me away for the random conversations I have with other referees. They've got stories about tough games, dumb spectators, and moron assessors (the people who determine if you've got the skill to upgrade). I take it all in: synthesizing information has always been a strength of mine. Not only that, but I apply it in the games I referee. I also like to watch good referees as they work games. The little, intangible nuances I pick up on while watching games are often better than the best advice I'll get from other refs.

Continue reading ‘MAX Indoor Holiday Tournament, Day 1’ »

I feel very geeky.

I'm a fan of the TechLearning Blog. The writers are all mostly top-notch bloggers, and the conversations they generate in the comments section are just as good as the posts themselves. The problem with the TechLearning Blog (and the entire web site) is that it appears to be stuck in the past. The blog runs a version of the Movable Type blog software that was released in July of 2006. My personal problem with this is that there is no way for me to keep up with comments: no e-mail subscription to comments on a post, and certainly no comments RSS feed.

So I made a comments RSS feed for them. Like I said, I'm feeling very geeky right now.

You may use it, but of course, I reserve the right to take it down any time I please. A big disclaimer: my script is extremely mean to the TechLearning server (and my script itself is very slow), so when I start getting cease-and-desist notices, I'm happily complying.

I also threw the master feed into Yahoo Pipes, in case you're only interested in a particular post's comments.

techLEARNING Blog Comments: http://rss.walterk29.com/techlearning.com.php
Yahoo Pipes: http://pipes.yahoo.com/kevinwalter/techlearning

For the Yahoo Pipes page, you just need to input the URL of the post, and it will filter only the comments on that post.

A few other notes:

• Only comments on the most recent 15 posts are shown, because that's how many posts TechLearning puts in their main RSS feed. This also means that if a post isn't in the most recent 15, the Yahoo Pipes filter won't do you much good.
• Dates are formatted to whatever TechLearning uses on their site, which I'll guess is GMT.
• Comments in the RSS feed are ordered by post (most recent), and then by comment (most recent).

Enjoy the conversation. You're welcome.

This post has absolutely no educational value.

Things have been said about Students 2.0. Most are good, a few are bad, several are skeptical. No links needed (yet). You know who you are and where you stand.

On one hand, we have our supporters. Those who recognize that student voice is an important component in the educational process. Does anyone dispute that concept? (We'll worry about implementation later.)

Our detractors. After all, we are not the norm. It's not easy being the early adopters. Are we (and others like us) the only students who care enough about their education to write about it? Yeah, no arguments there.

The educational institution has been ingrained in my peers as evil. Homework, standardized tests, reading "boring" books, learning "useless" knowledge, and on top of that, teachers are of course out to get us. Trust me, they are all bad. Except the ones like Clay Burell. He's the guy who linked all of us student "edubloggers" together. He understands the importance of student voice, and takes action about it. That, in my mind, sets him much farther apart from any other teacher or administrator with a blog, because on top of being a full-time teacher and "de-facto tech coordinator" at his school, he organized a global, student-run blog in less than a month. Don't get the wrong idea, though. I disagree with Clay on a multitude of issues, only a few of which he is aware of.

I do digress. For 85% of students, school is evil. Before I'm accused of such, I'm not taking a pessimistic view here, unfortunately. The top 5% of students care about the education. The other 10% don't necessarily care, but they understand school's long-term value. Sort of.

That can change. I can't speak for the group, and I haven't even bothered to read our mission statement, but I know why I'm here. I want to change the students. The digital natives and the digital immigrants can continue to be at odds over one another's methods. But when teachers see the change in their own students, they'll figure it out.

Moving right along, we reach the skeptics. I love these people, because I am so much like them. Pragmatism and logic rule our world. They see a bunch of students writing a blog together. The first reaction: so what? Their second reaction: what a bunch of punks. Their third reaction is to bookmark our site and come back for more. These are the people we, as Students 2.0, desperately need to prove ourselves to. More than the gushing supporters, who gave us awards before we even launched. (But don't get me wrong, we're very grateful.) More than the detractors, who have already made up their mind: students are made to be taught, never the other way around. We need to show the skeptics what we're all about. It's time to deliver. These skeptics are the people I want us as a group to challenge head-on. We don't need to preach to the choir, or come up with abstract, impossible, or improbable ideas. We need to find a happy balance--separating the wheat from the chaff. Like it or not, we made a splash, and we're here. And now, the pressure is on.

Like I said, this post has absolutely no educational value. Take it with a grain of salt.

(Cross-posted at Students 2.0. Take your important thoughts over there.)

You may have heard about us. After all, we hit the front page of del.icio.us, in addition to the number-one spot on popular and popular/education. I am speaking, of course, about Students 2.0.

Perhaps you haven't heard of us. In that case, let the numbers speak for themselves: In our first 24 hours, we had 5012 unique hits and 32,289 total. Five thousand educators are now aware of our blog-- and we haven't even launched yet.

Students 2.0 is a new, global blog that is (as our splash page says) "administered, designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view." Including me. We have decided that is time that the students had a unified voice in the edublogosphere.

Students 2.0 is the brainchild of Clay Burell (we call him "The Godfather"), an English teacher at an international school in South Korea. Over the past month, he recruited us, connected us, and mentored us into a self-sustaining entity of students who are interested in education. His guidance and support has been incredible (and occasionally, slightly overbearing :-P) throughout this entire process. My impression of Clay is that he believes in our capabilities very strongly. He won't maintain any special privileges on the blog after we launch. He'll comment and discuss alongside everyone else.

We have big plans and high hopes for Students 2.0. I'm seriously, very excited about this project. Hope you enjoy it!

The latest news out of Mountain View is the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, or GHOP for short. (Am I the only one who thinks of IHOP whenever I hear GHOP?) This program is an extension of Google's regular Summer of Code, in which college students are given the opportunity to work on open-source software projects. This is an incredible method to gain exposure for open-source software, as well as give those computer science majors a nice resume bullet. There were over 130 projects this past summer, and participants worked hand-in-hand with the software developers to create code, documentation, and do quality-assurance, all while being recognized and compensated by Google.

The Google Highly Open Participation is just like Summer of Code, except it's open to high school students. There are only 10 projects participating in this inaugural year of the contest, which was kind of a letdown considering the high number of projects in the regular program. I was, however, very pleased to see big names like the Apache Software Foundation, Python, GNOME, and Drupal. Also on the docket: Moodle, a free, open-source learning management system (LMS). Being the edu-techie that I am, I'll be focusing my time on Moodle.

There are only 41 tasks for Moodle as of this writing, most of which are claimed, but the contest runs until the end of January, so I'm hoping the Moodle community at large submits some more. I chose for my first task (participants can only claim one task at a time) to create a screencast on exporting grades in Moodle. I had absolutely zero Moodle experience prior to this project, but I easily set up an installation on my web server, and got down to learning.

And, here it is: how to export grades in Moodle v1.9. Again, I'm completely new to Moodle, so let me know if I missed anything.

Video after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Google Pancakes’ »

I'm not a Mike Huckabee fan in particular, but this is the best campaign ad I've ever seen:

Black Friday 2007 was a success for me on all counts.

Before I recount my adventures, I'd like to present my Theory of Black Friday: The first person who's crazy enough to get in line is the person who decides when everyone else shows up. It may sound like common sense, but allow me to explain: I arrived at 11:30pm to Staples last year, and was fourth in line. (I had done a drive-by around 11, and it was empty.) Something I have noticed that is extremely common is the drive-by. This tactic entails a quick reconnaissance of the store(s) that the shopper is interested in. When I arrived at 10pm last night to Staples, I was the first to arrive. I got out, set up my chair, and cracked open a book. There were 4 more people within 15 minutes, and double that amount of drive-bys. See, if I hadn't gotten out and set up shop at 10pm, those drive-bys would not have turned into stops. I could have come at 11pm, and it would likely still have been empty. (Why did I come early? Meh, I was bored. Didn't want to take any chances. That sort of thing.) My plan for the coming years is to set up a highly organized network of consumers, with one scout parked outside of each store the collective group is interested in. We'll communicate with a central location (our headquarters, if you will) to report on the status of the lines outside stores.

I have more to say on my theory, but I'll move on for now.

As I said, I arrived at Staples (for the second year in a row) at 10pm. Supplies: camping chair, sleeping bag, blanket, 5 layers of clothing, 3 books, one fully-charged iPod, and some snacks. Oh hell yes, I was prepared. I am professional Black Friday shopper. My goals (when I arrived) this year at Staples were a 400 GB SATA internal hard drive ($60 after MIR) and a 4 GB USB flash drive ($18 after MIR). Mr. Number 2 arrived shortly afterwards. We quickly became acquainted. His wife was there, his son (twenty-something ROTC student) showed up around 2am--and brought a propane heater, and his daughter (17-year-old senior at IMSA) hung out for a while too. Mr. Two had one goal in mind: a Navigon 2100T Portable GPS, for $99, no rebate. He did his homework too-- he came to the store earlier in the week, printed data sheets on the model off the Internet, as well as a comparison chart to other GPS systems. Mr. Two really knew his purchase. He actually convinced me to buy one. Not just me, as a matter of fact-- at least 4 other people in line. I joked with him the whole night that he should be working as a salesman for this Navigon company.

I got to know several other people in line really well. Mr. Number 7, who wanted a laptop, but ended up buying a bunch of other, smaller items. Mrs. Number 4, who wanted the laptop. Mrs. Number 6, an odd, Indian woman who frequently left (leaving her daughter behind, with no chair or blankets), returning hours later. Her daughter would also stand in one of the close parking spots, physically blocking anyone else from taking her mother's parking spot. Mrs. Six actually didn't get the laptop she wanted-- her daughter was the only one in line when they handed out tickets, and they refused to give it to her because she was "underage" (when I heard this, I kinda slinked away... I'm only 17 myself).

We had fun, the first 10 or so of us. That's how it was last year, too. I'm not sure if that's how things work at the more competitive places like Best Buy or Circuit City (more on Circuit City in a sec), but the atmosphere outside Staples (at least in the front) is pretty laid-back.

My buddies were all at Circuit City for the second year in a row. They were Messrs. Number 10, arriving at 6pm. Back at Staples, Joe came by to visit me in his cousin's dump truck, and Ziggy drove by in his muddied-up, off-roading SUV on his way to work (at Radio Shack) just before 5am.

Spotted in line: Mrs. Number 3 from last year, Mrs. O'Brien- my P.E. teacher last year (I actually almost sold her a voucher for a TomTom GPS :-D), a Woodridge Storm soccer coach (one of the good ones), a guy who was at Circuit City last year, when my buddies were boxing, scalping, and brought recliners to the line, and the night manager from the McDonald's by my house.

As with last year, around 5:30am, they passed out vouchers for all the "doorbuster" items. This is where the fun started. There were about 10 items that were ticketed, meaning only those who had a voucher could get one (since they had such limited quantities). I got vouchers for every single item. The general manager (who we'll call Mr. Old Douchebag-- you'll see why in a moment) strolled through the line as his employees passed out the tickets for each individual item. He warned us at the front of the line (me in particular, I would assume, since I was grabbing a ticket for every item) that "we better not be selling these to the back of the line." I turned and smirked to Mr. Number 2 and his wife and son, who had already passed me their unwanted laptop vouchers to scalp.

After the employees went back inside, I opened up shop. People really wanted the $350 laptop, the Navigon GPS (which I was buying myself, so I couldn't sell my ticket), the TomTom GPS, and the 500 GB external hard drive. All of these were ticket items, and I sold them to the highest bidder. I walked away from those deals $275 richer, and I still had several tickets left for other, less popular items.

6:01am: the doors open. I grab my stuff, pay, put it in my car, and am back in the store 15 minutes later. I hang out near the voucher redemption counter, trying to pawn off the rest of my tickets to the people who are just showing up. This is where the trouble starts. This one old guy working there starts telling the other voucher sales associates, in hushed whispers, to "watch out for the guy in the blue jacket" [me]. I hear this, turn around, and calmly ask what the problem is. They flip out on me, telling me to stop loitering, and call over Mr. Old Douchebag. I figure it's a good time to make my exit. I stroll right by Mr. OD, walk out the door, as he's yelling for my unused vouchers to be given back to him. I had no use for them at this point, so I tossed them over my shoulder and kept walking. Done and done. I figure I won't be going back to that Staples for a while, and definitely not for Black Friday 2008.

I can't complain. I got what I wanted (and then some). I may have ruffled a few feathers scalping tickets, but it comes with the territory. I hope everyone else got what they wanted today, and if not, check online, a lot of stores are still selling the stuff online. See you next year...

My planning spreadsheet for Black Friday 2007, subject to constant revisions and changes: