Dragon Dictate and Grade Data Entry...

Years ago, I helped a woman with MS figure out and customize Dragon Dictate so that she could control her computer by voice alone.  Her voice was erratic to be sure, and Dragon Dictate was amazing for its ability to learn her voice, and reliably understand it.  I know that there is a Dragon Dictate app for the iPad, but it also comes built in with Windows, and can be started from control panel (as "Start Speech Recognition").

I helped grade 100s of 8th grade science and math tests this week, and entered the grades in the spreadsheet, which is truly a tedious business.  I wonder if it would be less tedious if you could just position the cursor at the start of 2 column table and speak the grades: "Ella tab numeral 3 tab Joe tab numeral 3.5 tab Armando numeral 2.75" etc.  Then you could take the resulting table, sort it by name  and paste it into whatever spreadsheet you use to keep your grades.  I tried this with Word with no trouble.

The beauty of dictating is that you can train the computer to recognize your voice very reliably  saying the names of your students.  I imagine the difficulty is if your class roster doesn't exactly line up - say you have a new student, or another who is absent.  I need to think on this a while longer.

Limited by its public nature?...

Each week as I think about the time in my placement, there are always a bunch of incidents/conversations/ideas which I need to think through, and would welcome the perspective of the rest of the cohort.  But, because I worry that somehow, someday, a teacher from my school will randomly come across this blog, I don't write about it.  Does anyone else worry about this?

Certainly this limits what I blog about to safer topics - and that also generally keeps it away from the topics that I am working and worrying about at any given time.

If, by Rudyard Kipling...

I was listening to the radio on my way home from Everett (one benefit of a long commute - I listen again to the radio and know some current events!) and the "Writer's Almanac" came on, with this poem recited.  It was a favorite of mine when I was kid, and still is (though I wish the last line were different).  At any rate, at least 5 of the lines recalled things from the school day.

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Got a kick out of this, posted in my 8th grade cooperating teacher's math class:

My kindle...

I have had a Kindle for about 2 years now, and I love it.  I love that I can get any book any time (and for free if it's in the library collection). I love that it's portable. I love that I can adjust the font size. I love that (with a cover with a light) I can read no matter how much light there is.

Since I have had it, I read more, and I read a wider spectrum of material, but I also read more shallowly.  I never flip back to clarify a section that didn't really make sense.  When there's a character who has been introduced before, but I can't recall the details, I never go back.  When I get bored, I don't skip ahead, or flip to reassure myself that it will get better:  I just stop reading.  For me, reading on the kindle is only ever in page order.  While I know I can search and set bookmarks and highlights, I never want to leave the reading in order to do those things.  In print books, I flip back and ahead all the time, without finding an interruption.  I have spent enough hours with my kindle so that my patterns are set. Not to say that I couldn't change them if I really wanted, but if I haven't had the drive to use the extra tools yet, I doubt that I will in the future.

So I still want to read books that I think I will love in print.  I buy print versions of the books for class so that I can flip through them.  (I tried to write my paper on "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" from an ebook, and I wanted to pull my hair out.)

Based my experience,  I would think ebooks are a great way to make sure every student always has something to read at hand which they enjoy.  But I think that they should also sometimes use print books for the richer experience of being able to easily flip forwards and backwards.  It will be interesting to see how the use of ebooks progresses as ereaders become more and more common.

What's in a name?...

I learned last week that Hispanic last names often have 2 names.  I had never really thought much about 2 name last names, but last week I started my stint in middle school, where the kids rotate through subjects, so I tried to begin to learn the names of the 150 kids who come to my cooperating teacher for science.  She gave me a copy of the class roster for each class, organized by assigned seat.  But, the class roster only had room for 20 letters for “last name, first”, and for those kids with 2 last names, the first name was cut off.  I spoke to all the kids whose first name  was missing (which was itself an easy way to start a conversation) and most all of them had Hispanic names.  (As an aside, what's up with having the class roster system cut off names ever?)

So, I came home and researched the practice of 2 last names.  A Hispanic child is given the first last name of his father followed by the first of his mother.  Usually when a woman gets married, she keeps her first last name (the one from her father) and replaces the second with her husband’s first last name (explained in detail here ).  

And then I was looking over the student directory of my daughter’s school, where there are 2 students with the last name Suresh.  Both have their father’s first name listed as Suresh, but none of the  parents’ last name is that.  My internet research only turns up Suresh as a Hindu name, but not the naming convention.  It’s a puzzle to figure out when naming conventions have been mangled by American forms and data entry, and when not.  I wish I knew...

Does anyone out there in cohort 18 know any other naming conventions, and the rules for appropriately using first and last names?