Last week of term 3

It is the last week of term 3 at school. We are now working on the final paper roll that I will have to fill out as a form teacher. Four years ago I said goodbye to the daily paper roll I had to take for each class I has at school, we moved to an electronic absence program. It is rather sad that I will miss the folder and the black pen I have to use to put a strike beside a students name if they were present and an "a" if they were absent for the half day.

Also as part of the school yearly strategic plan, we as staff have to fill in three things that I would not like to see change in the school, and three things that I would like to see changed. I wonder if we can put more than 3 for that second part. I wonder if I can put in the words "ban trademe and nzdating for staff."

Other things that are happening is more school house events with a school quiz, this is one thing I am starting to get more into as my time continues at the school. I see how important the school house events are for pastoral care. The year 13 versus staff events are also needed as its gets students seeing that teachers are human, especially if they manage to injure themselves putting there body on the line. Much to the amusement of the staff that don't compete. I have a couple of ACC claims for these.

Also busy working on the schools sports awards evening, waiting on the house captains to get me the captains videos, it adds something interesting to the event having pre-recorded interviews and summaries. Maybe look at getting in keynote this year rather than using powerpoint. Means I can use the remote control that came with my mac :) sorry I just love my toys. Might even take along my mountain bike :)

problems with year 11 accounts
Today we also had a problem, approx 250 year 11 accounts had there password changed without anyones knowledge, well someone does know what happened but they are not owning up. This affects all of us in the computing department, as we have 187 students, most of whom could not login today and resetting 30 accounts in your class takes a bit of time. We were not informed that this had happened until we rang the IT helpdesk. Come on, get your act together.

In the holidays I have a conference in wellington to attend and then might fly down to the south island for a bit of a holiday then return to attend the ict conference ulearn being held in auckland sky city conference centre.

I am starting to play around with video on demand myself. I know that there is clickview, but this only available to teachers at the moment. So I can sitting here converting a number of videos I have downloaded from video.google.com to .flv

It take around 3-4 hours to convert a 1 hour .mov. I wish it was a little bit quicker.

but I now need some space to record some of the code that I use. I hope that blogger doesn't convert the information to HTML.
Since I cannot past the code in here, I will include the link
http://www.sothinkmedia.com/guide/put-flash-video-on-web-site.php

This will make a huge change to some of my course especially if my students miss a class.

We also have a change to our school timetable this week. We are going to be running 5 period days for two days. This is going to be how we will go next year. Makes a huge change to my teaching load. I have 4 senior classes running at 5 periods a week and two junior class two periods a week totaling 24 periods a week. 24 x 50 minutes is 20 hours.

Next year I have 3 senior classes at 4 periods, 1 year te at 2 periods a week and 1 year 9 class at 3 periods a week. 17 hours work. Now you may be asking what is up with this, I am getting two release periods for some of the work that I do withing the school, only taken 4 years of arguments.