Blog #4, CEDO510

This class has been extremely relevant to that which I do. I am currently an Architecture and Engineering instructor for Union Grove Union High School and therefore I deal with computers on a daily basis. In addition to dealing with computers, the computers that I deal with are extremely high-end computers so the cost of replacement would be astronomical if I were to have to replace these computers. Because of this fact, this class is instrumental in teaching me how to best protect these computers as well as to maximize that which I already have.

I have always been a curious mind and have explored the innerworkings of the computers I have owned, however, I have never really payed too much attention to what did what and how I could improve these systems. This class has forced me to take a look at what the parts were that I was looking at and how I could improve my components to get the most out of them. In addition, this class has also helped me get the most out of my usage of my computers by addressing the appropriate component accessories to best meet my computer usage needs.

I look forward to completing my perfect computer assingment as I am excited to utilize the information that we've learned and apply that in a fashion that I would do so in a real-world experience. I've never been someone who likes busy work and refuse to do such work if I see no point in it. The work we've done however, I can see the application for it. I can see myself not only saving myself money in the future should I need a new home PC, however, I can also see myself saving my school money by being more knowledgeable of what type of computer I need and how I can best assemble that computer at an affordable price.

CEdO510 WK 3. What would I lose?

If my computer crashed I would lose only a few documents of which I have recently completed and that is about it. I go to great lenghts to protect myself against this because when I was in college I did lose everything and had to learn the hard way the importance of backing things up. My college experience went something to the effect of I had nearly 4 and 1/2 years of documents saved to my computer when the Wisconsin DPI came down with the decision to institute PI-34. Under PI-34 we were asked to complete a portfolio and therefore had to come up with several of our old documents. I got about 1/3 of the way through all of my old documents when my computer crashed and all of my old documents were lost. I was so panicked and worried I thought I was going to die. Here I was stressing about this whole PI-34 crap and now all the sudden things are made even worse by the fact that I could no longer create a portfolio with the required documents. I vowed at that moment from then on I would do whatever it took to make sure that if I were to lose information again, it would not be much as I would always have a relatively new backup handy. In addition, I am paranoid because of this incident so I also keep this information in numerous locations. I have some information on Disks, I have some information on an external hard drive, I have some information on a thumb drive, and I have some information in online storage. The disks and hard drive I keep locked in a fireproof safe as to avoid losing them in a fire and the thumb drive that I once thought would replace these has been slowly fazed out since I broke my first one. The online storage has taken the place of much of that information, however, I'm still a little leary with putting all of my personal information on there so that remains locked in the safe on the external. Every couple of months I make it a point to burn new disc backups and resave to my harddrive so as to prevent the future loss of any information. Someday, maybe I will feel comfortable enough with the online storage to just place everything there and at that point I can stop this constant obsession with securing my data.

CEdO510 The Future of the OS

Well let me begin by saying that I am probably the last person that you'd want to ask this question to as I don't fully understand the operating systems as a whole. I like to think that I have a descent grasp on technology and for the most part the operations of the computer, however, for some reason, I have never been able to fully grasp the concept of the operating system and the differences between the various OS's. I have always used Microsoft Windows XP until recently when I switched over to Windows Vista. At first I thought I would hate it but as I've grown accustomed to it I actually prefer it over XP. I think this will be the general progression with whatever OS the future holds or for that matter the lack there of. I do see a minimalist movement beginning to gain steam, however, I think that with the way our culture is and the fact that people like their bells and whistles, I don't see this truly taking over the market. I do think that society may go in the direction of a more webbased system with less demand for an OS, however, I currently can't see people giving up the OS as a whole. Then again, 5 years ago I would have thought it ridiculous to believe that our students would be working on computers with virtually no CPU as our students do in our library by working on thin client systems. There are some unbelievably intelligent people out there who know way more about this than I do and I guess I will just have to trust that they know better than I do what I want and need and I will just have to go with the flow and learn the systems as I go and I'm sure I will like their system better just as it has always been in the past.

Computer history for Ryan Boylen

My first computer was an Acer computer that my family bought when I was a freshman in high school. The computer was slow and constantly was getting confused when you'd try to complete tasks. The computer wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, however, it did open up a whole new world of word processing to me. When I went to college, my parents bought me a Compaq Presario and that was a dramatic upgrade at the time. The Presario had it's own issues but for the most part it was a fairly fast computer for the day and allowed me to do much of my work at home vs. spending my nights in the computer lab. I bogged the computer down easily while in school with all the information I had saved to the computer, however, as time went on and the advancements fo computers became more and more prevelant, I was able to upgrade the computers memory capabilities and have since replaced the hard drive, added wireless internet to it, and made several other upgrades. This has allowed me to keep the computer relatively current to the point that I still use this computer today as my desktop computer. Since this computer I have moved on to bigger and better things and actually use workstation computers now to house my many graphically demanding programs but for the day to day operations, the old Compaq remains a decent computer despite a couple of real scares. In all, I'm not sure where my life would be without the advent of the personal PC, as my job relies on them, but one thing I do know is that they have made my life so much easier and more efficient and anything that can do that for me I love.

CEDO515 Week 6

Well, another class down and many more to go. I must say that I learned a lot from this class and found this class to be very beneficial. I enjoyed the work, all that is except for the book, though I might be slanted as I did not get my book until week 5. My only real negative of this class is the timing for me as we started our softball season last week and these first two weeks are always the busiest. Between the season, the end of the term, this class, and trying to find some time to still teach gets a little frustrating. I must say though that if I'm going to do it, at least I feel like I'm getting something out of it. I have implemented the spreadsheets into my daily life and they have helped me tremendously, now if I can just find the time to implement some of the other stuff. I look forward to the summer when I can refocus my attention on finding ways I can utilize the information we've learned and best implement it into my classroom. I took this particular major because I wanted to learn more about spreadsheets and I am delighted to say that I have not been dissapointed.

CEDO515 Week 5

This week we created technology learning plans and looked at software evaluation rubrics. I enjoyed the tlp profile tool as it confirmed a lot of my beliefs in both things that I did well as well as things that I don't do so well. I would have liked the profile tool to be a little bit more precise with its choices and selections, however, for the most part it seemed to be fairly accurate in identifying positives and negatives. In addition to the tlp profile tool, I also enjoyed looking at the software evaluation tools. I have always been someone who likes using technology to evaluate technology so this is right up my alley. I looked through several different evaluation tools and found several that I liked and will actually recommend one evaluation tool to our IT as a plausible tool for him to implement in his own future workings. All in all I enjoyed the reflection and the opportunity to grow as a teacher and hope look forward to the day when I will actually have some time to sit down and begin implementing my findings.

CED0515 Week 4

For this assignment we have been asked to review educational videos from the intime website and then review their usefullness for our classroom and how we might implement it into our classroom. For my part, I chose to review a video entitled Hyperlinking Partnership from the desk of David Pratt from Perry Community High School in Perry Iowa. The video pertains to a collaboration between the students and members of the community in the field of Computer Aided Drafting and Design.

This video relates directly to my field as I too am a Drafting and Design teacher. Over my years as an instructor, I have actively searched out ways to form a collaboration with our community in where we can identify to our students the "Real World" meaning of our instructions in their everyday lives. Mr. Pratt has developed a very good model of how to do this and therefore I can see myself stealing many of his ideas and instituting them into my own classroom. In this video Mr. Pratt has gathered numerous community members and brought them into the classroom to act as mentors for the students in helping them brainstorm and create a desgin using Kennex. I think my own personal lab is slightly more technologically relevant as well as my classroom set-up more conduscive to specialized instruction so with that in mind I would make minor adjustments to the curriculum to better utilize the collaboration of the community members. Mr. Pratt is instructing both Drafting students at the same time he is instructing Architecture students and therefore has members of the community from each of these fields where I would prefer to have just Architects or just Mechanical Engineers working with my individualized classes. In addition, Mr. Pratt uses Kennex to model the students designs where I would prefer to have the students make working models and prototypes of their mechanical designs and prototyped models of the homes they've designed. My advantage over Mr. Pratt is that my software allows my students to create drawings in a day vs. his software that takes weeks to do the same. This flexibility would not only allow my students to create more detailed drawings with the assistance of their mentor but it would also allow them to spend more time determining how to create a prototype. As long as I limited the materials and gave structure to what can be designed, I think one school day would be appropriate for completing this task.

I not only see this application as being very beneficial for my students in helping them learn, I also see this as being a way to present our program to the community and make a solid name for our program within the community. I have had the pleasure of meeting several of our Mechanical workers and they are extraordinarily pleased with where we have gone, however, I think that if they could work firsthand with our students, this may provided a pipeline for future employement.

All-in-all I found this site to be very usefull and very effecient. I will not only utilize this site for this particular lesson but will continue to search further for other lessons that I may be able to scavenge. Yeah, that's right, I'm a vulture and I'm proud of it.