Chanatown

It's been a whirlwind these first 2 months as Technology Staff Developer at ETHS . Here are some of the projects that have been keeping me busy: Tablet PC Rollout / USB Wireless Installations: We've rolled out over 250 Tablet PC's to our staff with almost every department involved. This past summer, Humanities (English and History) along with Fine Arts teachers received the Lenovo X61 Tablets (I'm loving these especially when they come wtih XP and not Vista as their Toshiba M300 counterparts do). I've been training teachers on how to get started with the Tablet, basic inking in MS Word and PowerPoint, followed by how to use MS OneNote . I've also been installing Atlona wireless units to projectors so that teachers can connect to their projector wirelessly from their tablet. Microsoft SharePoint : Since our web developer left in mid-September, I quickly became the SharePoint guru, so I've been learning a lot by trial and error. I've ...

I've been putting in the hours and laying down the groundwork for the upcoming year as Technology Staff Developer at my school. In the past few weeks, I've been becoming intimately familiar with Microsoft Sharepoint and eSchoolPLUS. I taught myself Quia the other day and then gave a workshop to two colleagues who will use it later this year. I'm growing fonder of Sharepoint by the day, and I think that our teachers will find it very useful.

Go easy on me here, but I can't help but enjoy getting notifications on so many different things. I'm sure it will get annoying soon, but for now, I love getting Twitter updates, News alerts, Score updates, and more. I love how there are different sounds for each, and how they are all somehow pleasing to my ear. And I love that it just might make me more efficient in that I don't have to open all of these apps and instead rely on the notification for my content. Here's what I push and why I push it. I'll try to update this as more notifications come in. Sportacular - YES! My previous favorite sports/scores app gets push notifications, and they are much richer than those from SportsTap. Now, I can really find out when Gregg gives up another home run. SportsTap - to see whenever my Cubbies take the lead, or more likely, when they walk in another run (Marmol!!!) Prowl - to see Growls, but I don't like to keep my computer on all the time, so I use... ...

Yes, I have a Push addiction. But, that's for a later conversation. I just tested GPush for the iPhone, a much anticipated app that gives you push notifications when you receive a new Gmail. Funny thing is, I just couldn't wait anymore for this app, so I plunked down the $4.99 for Pushmail 2 days ago. Well, turns out I may get my money's worth after all. GPush does not send you any part of the email itself, just the sender and the subject line. This makes for a cleaner look than Pushmail, but I like the fact that I can decipher more of the message in Pushmail and this allows me to make a better decision as to whether I need to open my mail app or not. This is one of the main reasons why I want Push for my emails, so it is at this time a dealbreaker for GPush. Still, for $0.99 vs. $4.99, GPush is a good deal. It has a better icon than GPush and it offers a badge icon update. Plus, it seems more intuitive since it doesn't use the email forwarding go-around as do...

Well, on the day after hearing one of the greatest live duets ever (Billy/Elton), and fresh with "Movin' Out" still buzzing in my head, I decided to clean up my classroom a bit today. My wing's custodian was in the room already, and she asked if it was okay to start taking down the dozens of moles hanging from the ceiling tiles. 30 minutes later, West-321 was devoid of those creative stuffed animals. No more Mole-sen Twins, Guaca-Mole, Mole-na Lisa, and so many others. It was a sad day, as I filled more storage boxes and recycled a lot of old student work. On the bright side, this means that I'll be officially settling into my new digs in Information Services, and I learned that I'll be helping teachers out with Gradebook prior to the school year beginning. I am so excited, carefree, and eager to begin.

Well, LIT 2 is one of my favorite songs at the moment, and the video, well, you have to watch it. Pretty creative. My favorite part: the video screen.

We've had a mandoline ( Swissmar Borner V-Slicer Plus ) that we received from our wedding registry sitting on top of our fridge for over 6 months now. I've had a few opportunities to use it, but I can't say that I've been anxious to break it out of its packaging. See, we had a cheap $10 version of a mandoline and it was awful. I wanted something better, so I registered for the V-Slicer (reasonable at $40), but I still had that bad taste in my mouth from the $10 version. That all went away tonight. We have a thing for sweet potatoes in this household, and I've been wanting to make good sweet potato chips for awhile now. Our friend had a BBQ last weekend, and her baked sweet potatoes brought my obsession back to the forefront, so I was determined to try again tonight. Although I was good and ready to start slicing with my new best friend (a Wusthof 8" Chef), I opted to setup the V-Slicer, and honestly, I may never go back. Perfectly thin sliced chips, ev...