Cam’s Ramblings

The first semester of my final year at Deakin Uni has concluded. At approximately 11.23am today I walked out of the gym, having finished my last maths exam. That of course assumes I have passed it.

So now I’m faced with three weeks of time off. I’m taking a short trip to Hobart next week, then my plan is to spend two weeks working (saving money!) and continuing on my Portfolio. I have started to construct the shell of it, I just need to fill the gooey inside bits with all the goodness I can find. I realise I ended there with a pretty dodgy analogy.

Then in about three weeks, I recieve an SMS from Deakin, informing me of my results, and the end of of uni is then very close. Second semester is going to be great fun, I’m looking forward to putting more applications out there, going to schools for interviews and my last lot of rounds. But for now, it’s time to relax.

I went shopping on Wednesday with Laura and Tony. The three of us were all looking for one thing, a new laptop. Tony was after something simple to do invoicing for his work. I was looking for something a bit upmarket, something I could take to school on my next lot of rounds. Laura was looking for something to replace her current lappy, so something similar to what I have got.

We went to five differant places to see what they had. We started at Clive Peeters, where Tony found exactly what he wanted (along with a red toaster). We ventured on to Office Works where we waited for ages to get any help, which never came, so gave up. Into Harvey Norman where the sales guy was very keen for us to buy something. He gave Laura his card and made sure that when she came back, his name was credited with the sale. PowerHouse was fourth, which is where I found what I was after, and Laura also found something she liked the look of. We finally ventured into JB Hi Fi to see their range, but again the service was non existant.

So back to PowerHouse, where we tried to negotiate a deal on this very fine specimine of technology – Sony Vaio VGN-CR25G/R. Just so we’re all on the same page, I got the Blazing Red one, not the white one. It was the last one they had in stock, and red does happen to be my favorite color. It was also marked down significantly – around $800 off from the original price for what I purchased.

So in short, I got a new laptop. I’m very happy with it, people had been telling me that Windows Vista was worth avoiding, though I’m not having any significant issues with it. It took a while to sort through all the included software (seriously, how many differant DVD players do I need on one computer!?!?) and I’m just about set up.

So now to continue playing with Vaio.

There is not greater truth amongst students that exams suck. Of all my friends, none of them like the idea of exams for a few reasons. For starters, it forces us to do a set amount of work in a given period of time. I know no one who works in that manner. Secondly, we have to write. Pen and paper style, none of this keyboard stuff. Thirdly, the fact we have to actually memorise things doesn’t go down to well for us either.

O was reflecting on this the other day, and then about the teaching profession, and came to the conclusion that there is no better form of standardised assessment than an exam. It does everything a ’standard’ assignment cannot. It measures how much the student has learnt (as no reference to notes is usually permitted), assesses students under pressure (I have a friend who has to write 4 essays in 2 hours for her exam next week) and really shows off our individual style of work.

So although I don’t like sitting exams, I do see the benefits they bring. It’s just a shame that they are often worth such a large proportion of the mark. My mark for Cyrptography is 40% assignment work and 60% exam. I think this is also ridiculous. I would much rather play down the importance of the end of semester exams, and play up the assignments during semester. I’ll write more on this over the next week or so, as I have quite a few ideas on the topic.

Professional Development Week is over.

From the reports I’ve heard, the 200+ students who were involved have had a great week, with over 20 sessions running from the Burwood Campus, Firbank School and Kambrya College. A huge thanks to our hosts at the latter two, and for allowing our students into your schools.

Personally, I enjoyed the whole week. I attended three sessions, on Unit Planning within VELS, Report Writing and Interactive Whiteboards. I have taken so much away from these sessions, a lot of little tips and also some bigger picture stuff I am sure to put into practice soon.

On another note, I am applying for my first job next week. Berwick Secondary College will soon be receiving an application from me for one of three Maths Classroom Teacher positions they currently have advertised. I am going to finalise that application and have it submitted on Tuesday hopefully, which is very exciting.

Finally, I received my mark for my Professional Journey today. I got 84 (out of 100) for this second part of my Journey, giving me an overall unit mark of 87, which is my best result for any unit so far at Deakin.

So it’s been a great week for me on a professional front. Tomorrow I go to work, earn some money and then relax on Sunday. Things are looking up down here in sunny (although it’s night time and pretty dark) Cranbourne.

I am incredibly frustrated. I have just spent the past few hours trying to upload one video to YouTube, to embed into my Journey to totally and completely finish it off. The video I was making was a PowerPoint with narration, so I screencast the whole thing, recorded the narration and saved it as a .wmv file.

I had used this file format for other videos I had uploaded and embedded before (for example, in my Technology assignment). SO I thought I’d have very few problems getting this to work. I was wrong.

I uploaded to YouTube, to be told that the file couldn’t not convert and had the upload had failed. I had no more information, so I just assumed some technical glitch. I tried again…and again… and again. I think I tired a total of five times before giving up. So a friend of mine suggested I check out TeacherTube.

I signed up (which took a while) then  went to upload my video. It uploaded fine, which was a relief. THen came the embedding. I tried three differant codes I had been given, one general, one general with search box and one specifically for edublogs. None of them worked.

So I have done the simplest thing, and linked my Journey to the TeacherTube video. Not very technical, but it serves the purpose it was meant to. It might also offer a download for people who are unable to view the video. Something I can do tomorrow though!

I have just two more things to do for my next Professional Journey – upload my list of Class Values and then submit the assignment cover sheet to Uni.

The series of Values I am holding off on, simply because I want to review what I have written tomorrow after I have had some time off from thinking about it. I have spent most of this afternoon updating and uploading the assignment, so hopefully with a fresh mindset tomorrow afternoon I am in a better position to further develop those values.

The submission to Uni, well that’s just a mere formality. It will be the first time I submit anything to the new Faculty of (Arts and) Education office. I use the brackets on purpose – I don’t see why they had to merge the two faculties, considering we (i.e., the Education students) now have so incredibly few admin. staff who are knowledgeable of our courses. I heard that for the best part of this semester, there wasn’t actually a Course Advisor for us. All bar one lost their jobs in the merger, and the one who was retained was on leave.

So yes, I was against the merger from the beginning, and will continue to complain about it until I leave Uni. Thankfully, that is now less than 6 months away. Bring on November 7, when I board a plane to the Gold Coast for a week of celebrating with friends. And before you ask, we’re not going as ‘toolies’, as the official Schoolies period starts the day after we arrive back home.

So yeah, now I’m going to go relax and sit in the spa. I think I’ve deserved it.

Oh and before I forget, the link to the Journey… just click ‘Professional Journey’ up top and go to the link for May-June, or use the links to the right —>   Please leave all Journey comments on the Feedback page.

Head on over to my ‘Teaching with Tech.’ page and check out the link to my new and complete blog, called ‘New Technologies: Possibilities and Pitfalls, Teachers Making Choices’. It has been prepared for an assignment at Uni, but is a worthwhile read.
It was also my first go at embedding a YouTube video into a post. The videos arent anything special, more or less me sitting at my computer speaking into a microphone looking at the camera, but teh fact is I have played with and had success with something new.
So now I have just one assignment left for the semester, and that my my second Professional Journey. I plan to complete it on Saturday night and Sunday, to submit on Monday – then it’s just two exams to go.
I also got a book from the library (shock horror, not only did I walk in to but I also borrowed from, the library!) about 100 things to post about. So you may see some of those pop up soonish, as a means of filling in time while between semester.
Enjoy your weekends!

I have some fantastic news. Yesterday while at work, my older brother called around to do some work around the place for mum. And while he was here, he did things to the spa and it is now working… yay!

The last two places we’ve lived we’ve had a spa, and since we moved into our current place late last year we’ve had one sitting in the backyard. So we thought it was about time to do something with it. We pured a concrete slab, put the spa on it, and now just have to deck around it.

But for now, we have a wprking spa. While I will be taking full advantage of when I get home from teh theatre tonight. Yay (can you tell I’m excited!?!?)