Yesterday was my first day back at Robinson since Winter Break. My schedule changed significantly in terms of office hours and discussion sessions, but fortunately I can still maintain my weekly Wednesday hours at Robinson from 12:30-3:40/50. Yesterday I first checked in with Mrs. Hill (Anita) who told me I should ask Principal Spiller about any current tech problems. She told me that there were a few issues so I looked at the printer in the Parent's Room which was displaying a paper jam message. I removed the paper jam but the message persisted and I fiddled around with it but the message still wouldn't correct itself although the printer itself was displaying the normal functioning green light. So I restarted the computer...and success! It started printing again. (Seriously simple solution, but I felt really happy). Then I talked to Ms. Davis who asked me to check the headphones in the computer lab. A few students were in there trying to use NWEA but it was being glitchy so they left. I went around and restarted a few computers that looked like they were being problematic and then restarted the NWEA program. I couldn't figure out how to exit the program when the X in the corner wasn't present, and I tried the Esc key but it didn't work so I Alt+Ctrl+Deleted my way out because it triggered some security thing and automatically exited. I think the headphones for most of the computers worked fine because a class later came in and used the computers for testing. However, there was one computer that wouldn't emit audio properly so I thought I'd look at it. After changing a few settings, I restarted the computer and the volume icon showed up in the task bar. The settings looked normal and by the look of things, sound should have been playing, but when you plug in headphones, nothing is transmitted. I couldn't fix it in the end. Then I went to the other Mrs. Hill's room because her printer was refusing to print and I looked at the settings and other things, but the printer looked normal and functional; it just wouldn't print. I did manage to print a test page (from the HP printer software) so data could be sent properly. I also tried to print from a command prompt box because I saw instructions for that in some help box (it didn't work, but that was probably because I didn't know what I was doing and might have inputted the command incorrectly by putting a space in between something that I wasn't supposed to put a space in). Then I just restarted the computer. And the printer worked again. Then I went back to Anita's classroom to look through this Digital Photography book for her because she wanted to start a project for her class involving technology. It was specifically oriented toward grades K-8 and one of the projects aligned nicely with the math the kids were learning. It was creating a video that showed methods of solving addition and subtraction problems, but if obtaining a video camera is too difficult, it could also be modified to use pictures that display the different steps/strategies of solving math problems. Then the pictures could be incorporated into some sort of presentation that the kids could demonstrate, which fosters a better understanding of methods of solving addition/subtraction problems and things of the like.
Yesterday was fun and productive in my opinion, but I wish I could have known what was wrong with the sound on that one computer in the lab. 