Week of 5/19/06-5/12/06

Mon: out sick
Fri: Peer rewiew for Mr. Moloney
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Art 1 :
This week students worked on final culminatine pottery project which requires that they make three whimisically inspired objects that relate to one another; a matching 'set' of objects. These projects are turning out nice. Here is a website I showed them suggesting that if they couln't think of anything else they should make a teapot and matching tea cups.
TCM2:
This is the second to the last project. Unfortunately instruction has been interupted yet again due to technology equipment problems. Without warning the ability of my students and myself to wirelessly connect to the internet has been terminated. Apparently the technicians must change the configuration now, during the last days of instruction rather than wait until the summer. So that started last week and as the iBooks were about to be reconfigured it came up that the technicians would not only like to reconfigure but also reimage machines. So we got the machines back and have been asked to have students back up all files to insure that they get credit for all work. For now we have all moved to working on the DELL desktops which can be glitchy at times, not a big deal, just a few days classwork time lost.

Week of 5/8/06-5/12/06

This week the Art class began to paint, did the online color wheel worksheet , tints and shades painting, color wheel painting.
TCM2 class did an animated greeting card.
On Thursday, the wireles base station was removed from my classroom before being set up to access the replacement. This is not abig issue, but it hightlights the lack of communication between techniciazns and teaching staff, as well demonstrates the low priority given to providing continuous instruction through the use of technology tools. My supervisor insinuated that I was paranoid when I brought the matter to her attention, "no one is out to get you", strange? It was 4pm, she probably had a long day also saying that she had met with about 20 families of struggling students. She did show lots of support on Friday morning, unfortunately a teacher was struck by a hostile student. "If a student thinks that they can hit a teacher in this building then things are really going to change around here." " You have all been very nice trying to spare me the gory details but I assure you that safety is my number onr priority and things will be changing around here."