SmartBoard

Have a Cigar (Also: Shmartness)

February 12, 2010
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Have a Cigar (Also: Shmartness)

Homie Base was just beginning, and kids were still straggling through the door and jabbering at each other and at me, and I felt a poke in my shoulder. Someone was penetrating the bubble. At first I ignored it. Maybe I was mistaken; surely they know better than that. But the poking continued. Finally I turned, and there was Mrs. G, she of the infamous line, “I’m sick and tired of smelling your nuts.” A fixture at our school, and in our district. No other teacher in the district (450+ teachers) has been here longer (45 years — my wife had her in jr. high). I like to joke that in 25 years, the only teachers who’ll still be here will be me and Mrs. G. She has her hands behind her back and she’s doing her thing of repeating a phrase out of the blue, as if you’re supposed to understand what she’s talking about. And because you don’t understand what non-sequiturs like, “Can you believe what that woman is doing to us?” mean, she repeats it to aid in your understanding. (This one was about our head of IST — I figured this one out right away. The

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Shmart?

February 4, 2010
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I have a SmartBoard in my room these days. When we were awash in grant money a few years ago, our site bought three. Two were mounted in classrooms, and we put the third one on wheels (just like the pic in the link) so it could be moved from room to room. The idea was that one would allow people to try out the idea and learn how to incorporate it into actual lessons. Then we might buy more. The reality was that when I got all the software dialed in and all the issues worked out so I could do tech support for the others (about a month), I passed it on to my then-BTSA mentee for his social studies classroom. I figured with all the maps and pics and suchlike, he might be able to use it more fully than I could in English. I mostly just doodled on it. He’s had it ever since. A week or two ago, he asked me if I wanted it back. He said he hadn’t been using it that much, and he was going in the computer lab for a while, and then…etc. He wasn’t going to use it for

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Twits

I just read a webnews headline that read: “Twitter is the New CNN.” Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? If Mr. Coward were to “tweet” his way through a typical day period (which is about as likely as, oh let’s see, Hell freezing over is too cliche, how about…Bill Gates going broke.) 8:21- the homies r screaming since vp said hand over your heart 4 the pledge – oh the pain! I left the door open: some poor late kid in the hall looks alarmed 8:22- I gotta put a switch on the speaker: more drivel from some underprepared kid talking 2 close 2 the mic…sounds like the bus station back in the day 8:26- blue slip. since it doesn’t say NOW, I set it next 2 the Popple…probly forget it later 8:30- finally!! “share” time is over and we can start – don’t remind me that I told Vero she could share first tomorrow about something she will have forgotten by then if we’re lucky 8:32- checking vocab hw, 1/4 not holding…”why is my grade so low?” it ain’t rocket science people 8:38- correcting warm up…let one of them try to write on the shmartboard …you [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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