One of the reasons my previous attempt at blogging failed was that I was in the midst of another battle with our district IST department, and I spent too much time complaining about how they were interfering with my class, and how they…anyway, I’ll just make myself crabby again thinking about it. So I vowed I wasn’t going to talk about that sort of shtuff any more. It’s a lot more fun this way.
But this week they crossed the line. They killed the Raffle King. Yes, the King is dead (at least at school…at least for now).
First, a little background on how I discovered the crime.
Monday, we were going to consult him about who was most worthy of the Magic Clicker #20. Magic Clicker #20 came into being the first year I had the clickers. I had one clicker (#20) stop working, and the company sent me a replacement one. It was different. They sent me one of the newer models. More sleek. Rounded corners. White instead of blue. Obviously much cooler.
Magic White Clicker
So now there’s one clicker everyone wants. They all want to break theirs so they can get a replacement.
(These days, if you buy a set of clickers, they all look like the white one, so if I had a blue one, it’d probably be magic too. I like to joke that the reason #20 seems to pass through only a few hands is that once you get the Magic Clicker, you can work the cheat codes like they do in video games: “A – A – C – G – B – D – etc. and anything you click is right.” “Really?” “Study for the test, and find out.”)
I decided that the person who got the highest grade on the Friday test would get the Magic Clicker for the following week. In case of ties, the Raffle King would rule (duh). Last year there weren’t many ties. In fact in one class, one girl owned #20 for the whole year, minus the week she was absent. For some reason, this year we’ve had a lot more ties. I guess that’s good. It means more kids are getting good grades.
Anyway, I go to fire up the King to decide who has the clicker mojo for the week, and my browser displays…nothing. Just a little message down in the corner: Error on page.
You got that right. Error indeed.
I don’t know what they did; it’s probably another filter issue, even though I keep a local (on my flash drive) copy of the King just so the internet nanny doesn’t block him. It doesn’t matter; I’m three for three in my major battles with IST (two went to the superintendent), and the King will live again. In the meantime, I have a couple of old Gateway Destination PC’s with 29 inch monitors that are too old to connect to the network, and I’m going to set up one of them to do nothing but run the Raffle King. He should be out of their clutches there. That way, he can also loom over the class at all times, ready for a consultation.
The King's New Home
Today we had to go old school, and flip a coin like I used to, to see if they could use their cheat sheets. The one I pick to call heads/tails always gets coached frantically by the rest of the class.
“HEEEEEEAAAAAADS!”
“Tails never fails!”
“Yes it does.”
“HEADS HEADS HEADS! No, wait! Tails!!”
Sometimes there’s so much coaching the caller freezes up and lets the coin hit the floor, and we have to do it all again. It’s kind of fun, but not as much as all the voodoo dances they do for the King.
