gatorcast from paul smith

Today I discovered something wonderful!   Tests..

We are using a new system at school that allows me to build exams, tests and quizzes.

I can have the exam reveal the answers immediately or make them wait until the all submitted.    I can time it, and when complete,  show the class by question the % or number that they got correct.  Real-time.   It was fun after the test today showing them the results and correct answers.

The test today had 11 questions that I thought were easy, but for most it was hard.  Only 1 student out of 34 got 100.   The average was below 60.

It was very interesting listening to them go through trying to solve the questions.  All of this was open book too.

In addition to getting them to review and truly have to think, this  exercise will also help in the future when I ask them to pay attention and get their assignments done.   Technology, I love it.

I agreed to teach again this Fall at St. Francis Catholic HS.   This time I will be teaching Computer Applications.  It’s funny because I started thinking about what computer applications am I going to show them?   Basically everything we do now is a CA. Right?  Our phones, our webs, even our MP3 players are little apps.  Anyway, my mission is not so far off the planet, but simply teaching 10th graders how to use MS Office.  Which was at a time, the only CA’s people used.  Right now I can use Word, Google Docs, Open Office and now I can even use Microsoft Live (MS version of Google docs).    The resources available to me are Office 2003 and textbooks for Office XP.  Go figure…. Anyway it does not matter because I think it’s more important to understand the concepts and not be so focused on the platform.  In a perfect world I should be able to show them a variety of ways to accomplish tasks using different applications.  Well school starts Thursday for me and I can not wait.

I just watched Discovery fly over Gainesville.  It was very cool! It is a beautiful morning.  

I had the laptop on Nasa.tv in the backyard and watched it cross the US.  Discovery crossed east of gainesville about 9 min’s ago and was going 3,600 miles per hour.  I saw Discovery in the East, just under the Sun, about 1 min after hearing the sonic boom. 

I think this is the last scheduled Space Shuttle Mission.

Here is a screen shot from nasa.tv

Easter Lilly

I’ve had this craftsman gas blower for a long time.  I think more than 14 years…  Last year I took it apart to fix the choke.  I basically broke the plastic lever off.  So I cut a hole in the case and now ‘manually’ set the choke.  At the time it was a big  job and I thought I disassembled most of it.  Not.

Well, the pull cord broke and I let it sit for a few months and last Sunday I decided to ‘fix’ it to save money.  And since it has been a reliable machine I thought it was the right thing to do.    You would not believe what I had to do to replace the $3.56 pull cord. Yep, take it completely apart.

Here it is at the point where I could actually insert the new cord.  Notice the number of parts!! ;->

Ok, here it is back together 3 hours later.  And it works better than ever.

I want one! lol

~Paul