I finally got my ass to make an office. We have so much room in this house. Deb has her own room for all her artwork. The kids have a separate room for playing and destroying, equipped with their own tv, computers and couches. Well, I finally decided to move from the couch and use one of the rooms for my office. With all the school work I have to do this year an office is what I need most. For the last 2 years my shit has been all over the house in little piles.
My goal for this year is to create enough online lessons for the students that I won’t have as much work next year. Grammar, video, online stories, flash… the works. Match them to the standards, many times using the auto-grade feature, and let them learn. Up til now I chose to work on this stuff amidst the chaos that is the living room on the first floor. I never really got anything done there.
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My work had a pile of old G3, 500mhz iMacs sitting in a corner. I asked if I could get a few. The answer was, “Take what you want.” There were 30 at least. Not to be greedy I took 4. That brings the total up to 8, not including the two decommisioned ones sitting in the storage closet. One bit the dust after a surge from a lightning bolt that fried its insides. The other, a clamshell iBook, bit the dust after Natalie, while learning to walk, seemed to knock it on the floor at least once a day. I just wish I still had the 3 I gave away before moving here. Those included the original Mac from 84, a 200mhz 6800 (I think that was its number) and another white G3 .
So what do I do with all these? Let me count the ways.
1. Mac Mini- For the tv downstairs. 1 terabyte of hd space for a million films for the kids. Front Row makes it easy to put anything on quickly.
2. Macbook- My baby. My primary computer. 4gigs RAM, 200 gig hd, Leopard, VMware
3. eMac- The work horse of the house. Another terabyte of storage, raid, for music and pictures. It is, as are all the Macs in the house, connected to the stereo via airport express. You can play tunes, on the stereo, throughout the house, from any Mac in the house.
4. Powerbook- Natalie and Amanda’s laptop. I have stuff like tuxpaint and other stuff for the kids to play with.
5. iMac #1- Office. Connected to the printer. All computers have access to the printer via bonjour. Running Tiger which still works with this HP all-in-one. Sadly Leopard offers only printing for this model.
6. iMac #2- Running Ubuntu. The kids can use this in their living room to play open source educational games, surf the net and beat on as much as they want. I may use this as a web server in the future, but have no need right now.
7. iMac #3- Running OS9. For the kids again. This computer is so fast with all the apps compatible with OS9. It’s amazing how much crap they put on the new computers these days.
8. iMac #4- Running Tiger. In the kitchen with full voice control on. Used for listening to podcast while cooking, finding recipes and just to show off.
The nice thing with the macs are, when they are on I can share and move files around easily. Pics go to one computer, while films to another. I like the new Back-To-My Mac feature. I can access any files and control the screen from work. It works flawlessly so far. I freaked the family out the other day by blasting music at home while I was at work.
I also have 2 PCs.
The one given to me from work is used primarily by Deb for whatever it is she does.
I also just bought a new ASUS Eee Pc, with a ssd hd and other good stuff. I use this when I need a pc (xp) to do something. It comes with bluetooth, ssd slot and everything else I need. Just no cd/dvd, but who needs one of those? It’s a neat little small thing.
Have I geeked anyone out yet?
I have been thinking about technology in the classroom a lot lately. What amazes me is how many teachers don’t use it. Even the new teachers I see are, in my opinion, completely clueless as to what to do with it.