I am not a bot, I am a free fan

Many people know about the Sad Puppies issues.  If not look up and find your own opinion.  One thing suggested was people mail Tor books with pictures of books from said company.  Here are some of mine, along with Rufus the SafetyLabRat.

summertime!

School is over.

I have to work on lesson plans.  Our school is totally changing how we do things.

I am picking up my classroom.

There is no training this summer.

slasher

As I tell my students

If we are driving on some kind of a trip, and the bus breaks down.

We will not...
Stay at the creepy house.
Nobody's leaving the group.
I will never say, "I'll see what that noise is, you guys stay here."
Nobody's having sex or heavy petting.
Nobody's bathing, swimming or showering.
Nobody's reading aloud any mysterious books.  

From MathCurmudgeon,

He talks about teacher and students use of technology.  I have had colleagues who have no clue about technology.  I recently helped a colleague get her printer up,..."your printer is not installed."

"yes it is, it's right here."  *bang head*
"I mean your computer doesn't know the printer exists.  You have to install the printer on your computer."  I showed her basic installation and how to use the troubleshoot program.

I have known teachers who do not use the electronic grader, use a traditional gradebook and have the student put the grades in.  Did not use email, had a student do it.  In the real world if you do not use required tech, you would be fired.

I did a quick scan of teacher classes.  There is no computer use program.  My school is fairly tech savvy.  Many of my colleagues use web pages, google classroom.  We email regularly.  I told my husband that I am loosing my "leet" status simply because my colleagues are doing so much more.

Yes, I said it. The students are not "digital natives" endowed with magical tech-fu. They are mostly clueless about useful tech of all kinds. They're great at plugging in the computer and playing a video game, or installing Candy crush on their phones and mindlessly playing for hours, but that's not tech literate.  Sure, there are some who know more than I do, but not very many, and I'm not setting a particularly high bar.

 I will agree with that.  Our principal is a big "digital native" quoter.  I have come to the realization that they are simply used to some of the tools.  I watch them struggle to log in, if there is any variation they are stuck.  I cannot convince them that they do not have to put "http" in every time.  One student argued with the ipad that did not have her logged into her google account. 

like chicken

As is my habit, I showed my Environmental Science class Soylent Green.  It can open up discussion on class system, poverty, wealth, population.  Once a student challenged me on the blurb about how many people lived in New York and we did a geometric progression.

At the reveal scene, students flinched, as normal; cries of "That's so wrong."

I had to stop the film for it to settle in.  Once student, horrified of it. "What does it taste like?"  I died laughing.

(okay his real question was "didn't people notice that it tasted like meat?")

digital natives

Digital natives,....bang head on wall....digital natives....bang

"Ms W?  can I go to the other office...you know the other one,"  gestures in direction of admin office.  "So I can get my password."

"Mrs Book?"  I respond.  Our awesome media specialist/librarian who is the keeper of all the computer passwords.

"no, I need my locker password."

"what?  your combination?"

we cooked Coke

The AP Students distilled Cherry Coke.  For once I was able to tell the principal that there was a good smell coming from class, as the ester of the Cherry flavor drifted through the

The students and I did this the first time.  It has been a long time since I distilled anything.  There are many good lab instructions on how to do this.  We just appealed to internet age and said "make your set up look like this." 

This is after we finished and the thick syrup is in the distillation flask.  The extra beaker were catching the water from the condensor as it had a small leak.