Archive for April, 2005

Apr200527

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MOS Certification for BSSD Students…. Bad idea…

I am once again sitting in the Hageland “terminal” in Nome. This time, I am on my way to Unalakleet. I have been asked to assist with writing some technology curriculum. The district wants to get our students IC3 and MOS certified. I am not sure what IC3 certification is I guess it has something to do with basic computer skills. MOS certification is knowing all about the Microsoft Office Suite (word, excel, and PowerPoint). I guess the plan is to come up with a class that is aligned with our district standards, which will also meet the needs of these two certifications. The students would do a bulk of the learning in their own schools from their own teachers. When they feel they are ready to be certified, they will go into Nome to NACTEC, which is our districts regional technical school, and do a quick refresher of all the skills and take the appropriate tests.

Apr200524

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BSSD NYO

I am sitting in the Hageland terminal in Nome. I am on my way home from the Bering Strait School District Native Youth Olympics Championships, which was held in Shaktoolik this year. PK and I were sent there to help facilitate a few local students in broadcasting the events. We just got some new video mixing equipment for the district that we used for the event. It was really nice. We were able to have up to 4 video inputs. Each input has its own tiny TV monitor, so you can see which camera you want to have being broadcasted out. You can then transition between them, have picture in picture, and even do live chroma keying (delete the background like with a green screen). We also had four 20 meter firewire cables and special repeaters that allowed us to hook them end to end. We hooked one into a GL2 and mounted it on the wall of the gym, for a high angle view. We used two others, one into a GL2, and the other into a smaller canon dv camera like a zr85 that were mobile and could be moved around the gym to get the desired camera angle. The person running the switcher was able to switch between any of the feeds at any time to show the audience the different events. We did a few live interviews of the athletes and a coach. If we would have had some more equipment we could have been set up a little better and done more of them. It was a lot of fun though.

Apr200515

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Shishmaref Carnival = No Kids in Brevig

I just wanted to drop a little note about this week. We have had an amazingly low attendance lately. Shishmaref is holding it’s annual “carnival”, which draws a lot of our community up for the festivities. So our school has been pretty empty. Yesterday we had the annual Brevig Teller Olympics. Each year the two schools get together and compete in four categories, volleyball, dodge ball, cross country skiing, and Eskimo baseball. The schools take turns hosting the competition. Last year Brevig hosted it, so this year, we piled all of our kids piled into sleds, and snowmachined the seven miles over to Teller. The ride over there went smoothly. The kids seemed to have a good time while we were there, and Teller ended up with the victory. Around 4:00 we headed back to Brevig. You can see some pictures of the kids in the sled on the left side of the screen. If they aren’t there, you can check out my flicker.

Apr200506

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New Position with BSSD

Has it been a long time or what? I am back in Alaska after a quick spring break down in Minnesota. It was a lot of fun, nice to get out to some restaurants and not think about school for a while. Since my last post, I have accepted another job with BSSD. Next year I will be the Distance Learning Facilitator for the District. It sounds like I will be in charge of over 900 videoconferences, as well as helping students broadcast events like the district wrestling tournament, the Native Youth Olympics, and the Iditarod. I’m pretty excited. I’ll be working with John, Randy, and Leona, which will be a blast. Two days before Katie was supposed to leave, we went out for a snowmachine ride with C.O. and AnnMaire. We hadn’t gone very far when we came across a Fox. We wanted a closer look, so we started chasing it up the side of a hill. About half way up, the engine made a clunking sound, and then died. We were hoping that it was possibly the key that held the timing in place had sheared off. We weren’t so lucky. We drug the machine into C.O.’s shop, and tore it apart. After further inspection we found that the skirt on the piston was broken off and the cylinder had a crack in it. We looked around town and found out that Walter Seetot had a similar engine in a “shed”. I bought it from him for 150 dollars. We pulled the pistons off of there and picked the best of the two. He only had one of the cylinders ready for me the other was frozen in a cooler of snow and ice. So we were getting ready to put it all back together and found out that we needed the other cylinder. Apparently on a Ski-doo the cylinders are not interchangeable from left to right, I hear they are on Polaris machines. So I had to go back over to Walters house and chop at the one in the ice for about an hour. It finally came loose after Walter knocked off a few off the aluminum fins. Let me take you back to yesterday… We are doing standardized testing right now in our school. The 3-9 “grade” kids are taking the SBA, and the 10-12 “grade” kids are taking the HSGQE (High School Graduation and Qualifying Exam). I am proctoring the HSGQE. Well, we started around 10:30 A.M. yesterday, and that last student finally finished at 5:45 P.M. We did take a 20 minute lunch break, and a break every hour. So when I finally got out of there last night, I had to run over to Walters house and get the cylinder free, then over to C.O.’s shop. We got it all cleaned up and fought with little things along the way, but eventually got it back together. The motor started up just fine. The only problem now is the throttle is sticking. So I have to get a new one sent in from Nome.Today now, is the second day for the HSGQE. The students will be tested on their writing skills. We are scheduled to begin at 10:30 A.M. Well, we had a few students who didn’t show up on time. By 11:00 we had all but two. One said he was too tired, and couldn’t get out of bed, the other was “sick” and wouldn’t be making it in. So we wait, and wait, and wait. The federal government requires that 95% of the students need to take the HSGQE for the school to make AYP (adequate yearly progress). Since we only have 7 students testing for the writing portion of the exam, that means we need to have all 7 here. If one doesn’t show up, then that automatically drops us down below the required 95%. Well we waited until 1:00 and started the test. We were able to get the one student out of bed. The “sick” one still hasn’t come in. So our school will be dropping down to level 4 for next year. Its pretty frustrating that our school gets punished for lazy apathetic students, who could care less if they don’t get an education. So who knows how long I’ll be here this evening. We were testing for 7 hours yesterday. My birthday is coming up this month, and Erin was nice enough to get me a digital camera for the occasion. I’m pretty excited. Its a 5 mega pixel, which will be nice. If you get a picture you like with that, you can get 20″ X 30″ prints made. Its the same camera my mom has the Canon Powershot S500. I was trying to decide between that and getting a web page (buy a domain name, and pay for hosting service), but I still haven’t made that plunge yet. It costs about 15-20 dollars a year for the domain name, and then about 8 dollars a month for the hosting service. I would like to buy the domain name for 10 years, that’s the longest your can purchase it for, and then the hosting would be all I would have to worry about paying for after that. Well, that’s all for now. I’ll try to post more frequently again.