| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

iPhone 3.0

So it has arrived. The much anticipated and publicised latest version of the iPhone operating system has been released. After downloading it (fortunately before the apple servers cracked under the strain of everyone trying to update at the same time), I've had a bit of a play with it and have to say that it's made quite a difference to the speed. 

What is a Learning Platform?

I was sent a link to this clip from @carolrainbow. Thought I'd share it.

Watching this, I'm quite happy that (with the exception of the reporting to parents) we're there with our own solution! Everything mentioned is covered within the applications we've chosen :0)

Setting New Targets

It's now half term now, and I did set myself targets for recovery that were to be reached by the half term. The main target was to be returning to work after the break and, as I said in a previous post, I will be starting a phased return when the half term break is over.

I'm back!

The news is good. I've been to the cardiologist who ECG'd me, then ultrasounded my heart. Apparently the surgeons did a good job patching me up, and I'm making "good progress". Yesterday I went to see the occupational health department and they've given me the all clear to return to work.

Being positive now...

My walking is slowly increasing. I'd been walking the same distance around the block for the last few days feeling a bit stronger each time, and so today I altered my route to increase the distance covered. 

I am quite pleased after just working out a rough distance measure on google earth and discovering it was 1/2 mile. 

It doesn't sound much, but I'm pleased to manage that after 10 days.

My new targets are that I aim to reach a mile within a fortnight, and then be able to walk to the local marina before the end of this half term (covering a distance of 2 miles there and back).

Keeping entertained

As I can't do much at the moment I am looking for things to keep me occupied whilst sitting still. I've been sent the following links to some entertaining websites;

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix - make your own 16 track sequence

http://www.miniclip.com/games/doeo/en/ - can't describe this one!

I'm sure I'll find more things scattered across the interweb over the next few weeks as well to keep me from going stir crazy.

Small steps

I went for a walk today. My first walk since being discharged from the hospital. It might have only been for 350 paces (sad I know, but I counted them!), but it pushed me and my heart was telling me no more.

However, if I keep doing little things like this, and slowly build up day after day I hope to get back to "normal" (whatever that is) eventually. How long it takes to get there though is another matter.

It was a wonderful day

Tuesday was a great day. One of those days when you end up with a big smile on your face for no apparent reason. It was because I felt appeciated. It doesn't sound like much, but when you get told thank you for something, it has an impact.

I'd previously written a case study of the impact a piece of software was having in school for a software company, and that study was submitted (along with lots of other information) as evidence for an award.

Well last Friday the company won their award and today I received a quite marvellous gift, sent to school, from the company. It wasn't asked for, it wasn't even expected, but it was sent along with a message of thanks for helping them. 

So, as you can imagine I felt good. And that feeling improved this evening as I was following updates about a teachers conference held in London (through the power of twitter) and suddenly saw people tweeting about the work we were produding on the school website. It seemed that one of the speakers was showcasing our work.

Sometimes life can be great :))))))))))))))

There has to be an easier way

I've taken the decision to upgrade to one of the new laptops in school - but it has one major drawback. I've spent the last two evenings looking at the current content of my "old" laptop, installing the programs on it onto the "new" laptop, then removing them from the "old" machine.

It's a long, slow and annoyingly frustrating job, and I'm amazed that no one has developed a program, application or widget that can read the installed programs on one machine, pull up a tick list and let you decide what is going to be copied across to a new machine through a simpe USB to USB lead. It would be a great idea, and if I knew anything about programming I'd be working on it right now. Unfortunately I don't, and so I sit here waiting whilst my entire iTunes library is copied onto the C Drive of the new machine, and my iPod and iPhone have to then be associated with the new machine, re-synced and authorised for use.

Once done I think that is everything copied across. (Bound to have missed something though).

New tech has arrived

So the new laptops we ordered have arrived at school. The Head has allocated one for another teacher who has a laptop that is creaking as it's so old, but has said I should consider swapping my current Ergo laptop for one as it is more powerful - as he said 
"As ICT coordinator you should be up to date" 
Well, I'm not going to argue with that, but I have so many programs that I've downloaded or installed onto it that I am in two minds. Do I take a new machine and reinstall everything I've added, or keep my old machine with everything on it...

Decisions, decisions! Going to think about it in detail after parents evening is over on Monday.