Slice of Life-- Complete Disarray!

It wouldn't have taken much to throw me off this year, but three weeks of unrelenting dental pain certainly did not do anything to make me more organized. Combine this with the rapidly approaching end of the year, and I'm just throwing in ALL the towels as far as blogging goes.

I've got posts done for at least the next month, but the playing in the sandbox is not going well. This is because I need to inventory the 11,000 textbooks in my school as well as the 12,000 library books, so my mornings consist of quality time spent with my trusty bar code scanner instead of reading other peoples' reviews, which I love to do.

State testing is next week; I don't really mind testing, since I think it has always been with us. The levels of anxiety and paranoia are ridiculous, and this is still just the Ohio Achievement Assessments. Next year, I think we're going to PARCC Assessments, and I think they are all supposed to be online. Not to be negative, but I see a few problems. Not enough computers, computers crashing-- I think there's a lot to be said for a nice paper and pencil test at this point in time. Basically, I think that Common Core is just another way to express what we've already been teaching; I've seen so many education initiatives come and go that it's hard to get too worked up about the NEXT new thing. There's always a new thing. It never lasts.



Another new thing I've been working on is MackinVia. My nice rep, Lewis, gave us 67 e book and audio book titles, so I spent some time today signing up my student helpers as guinea pigs. It's way more complicated that it seemed at first, but we're working on it. I think that if my district ends up with e books, they will be purchased for the district and not individual buildings. I can't talk students into checking out digital books from the truly awesome Ohio E Book Project, so I don't think there's a huge need right now. Eventually, sure. Mackin's set up is worth investigating, and they've got some decent titles.




Of course, students can't have any digital devices on them next week, lest they go off during testing, causing alarms, attack dogs, and Homeland security personnel to all be released. We then have to put the student in a plastic bag to mail in to the Ohio Department of Education, detonate the digital device in the parking lot, and forward the resignations of every certified teacher in the building to the state senate.

Or something like that. I'll have to check the Power Point again. I do know that everything has to be done in number two pencil. No mechanical pencils allowed!