Monday, June 23, 2008

Job Interview

I have a job interview at Pennsylvania School for the Deaf on July 14. I'm not extremely nervous about it despite the 1 1/2 hour interview-probably because I don't see how they can pay enough.

I am stressed over the idea of changing jobs. I have a secure job-and I am applying for a classroom teaching position (it may be only 1/2 day but that is fine-can keep the middle school that I have now.) I really do want to change to technology. But with all my home life problems I'm not sure what I should do.

There is also the possibility that there would be an opening or two down in Washington, DC which is where I really want to work. But I don't see how I could take a job there even though I would love to. Houses aren't selling and my house needs a lot of stuff done before I could put it up for sale. Whatever happens I need to quit my job by the end of July to give them time to replace me.

So probably even though I'm going to the interview I won't be making career changes-tons will be happening in my personal life though.

Now the more I start thinking about everything the more stress I begin to feel. I really hate this. Last year I kept putting of decisions about my mother because of possible job changes. Now I have to do something about her this year, and also get before and after care for my son. I really am confused about what I should be doing. Stay or change. If I'm supposed to stay why in the world were jobs even brought to my attention. Last year was..... I can't even describe it. I felt like I was being jerked around on a chain for nothing. Now it's starting all over again and it seems like summer is almost over considering how much I need to get done.

Well I'll keep you posted as to what is happening.

Poster Session

I finished the poster session at the International Symposium-Technology and Deaf Educaiton. I gave out 60 brochures about Kool Kids Sign

Just the first day I have seen some awesome presentations. Two were most striking. One was by Rosemary and Julie (from my internship) Last summer Rosemary discovered Voice Thread It allows teachers/students to post an initial picture/video and then have others comment on it-in sign language, voice or writing. Fantastic potential for usage.

The other was a presentation from Australia. Kids with hearing loss are spread all over a country with many scarcely populated areas. They are spread so far apart that providing educational services is difficult even for hearing kids (School of the Air works for many of them) They have developed a new kind of program-videoconferencing for educaiton. They interact over the videoconference with the child-including infants. Parents are right there and they teach the parents how to teach the children. It was very impressive.

There are several I want to see tomorrow-unfortunately two of them are at the same time-but at least the presentation is being videotaped so that they will all be online eventually-although they don't always show the right part of the presentation-frequently not the screen where a lot of the stuff is demonstrated.

Definitely this week was worth it.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

One Week Left

Only one week left before I go to National Technical Institute for the Deaf to present at a poster session. I am not ready. I have done no videotaping for the story yet. Hopefully I can get together with Gay this week and get a few days done so I can show what it will be like.

I also still need to work on the worksheets for the story. I may ask a friend to help with that. She was my aide the year I had a middle school classroom and was great at writing story comprehension questions. The story has a lot of irregular past tense verbs. The deaf student I work with doesn't seem to know any irregular past tense verbs when we do reading. I think I will be doing some pages for that.

At this point in time I am in the process of redesigning the front page of the main website Kool Kids Sign I had hoped to finish all of the redesigning but I have been so busy that I have made almost no headway.

On the really negative side of life, I am the victim of identity theft. Someone managed to get information about my mac card and withdrew $1500 from my account. I wasted lots of hours between the bank and the police and filing fraud alerts with credit agencies etc. I also had to contact all of my autopay bills to stop the withdrawals. It is not fun and is very tedious.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

It's Done and I Did It

I finished The Missing Jewels game. I may go back and redo some of the video but it's ready for my poster session this month. It's at:
http://www.games.koolkidssign.com/Princessgame/

The Missing Jewels story is online without video. I'll make a couple pages of video before the conference to show what it will be like but I won't get it finished before the conference. The story is at:
http://www.stories.koolkidssign.com

I need to pull all the sections of the website together under the front page so that they can be found. I also need to do something for the games and storybook intro pages-right now they are just white. I'm thinking about maybe making an ILY hand background paper. And I may put some sign language animations from Vcom 3D. I love their program and it has dropped down to less than $500 but I don't like their characters. I love the Daz characters but it takes forever to pose them.

Ok that's the "It's Done" part, now for the "I Did It" part. I sent my resume into the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Don't know if anything will come of it. And of course the biggest issue is pay and benefits. Because it's in Philadelphia I would have to pay the city wage tax. The driving time would be a little longer than I travel now according to Mapquest and depending on which route I take could have toll charges (the shortest time route.) I know they don't pay as much as other places so even if I were offered the job I may not be able to afford it. I also have no experience as an Instructional Technology Specialist. And of course it would mean leaving a nice secure job and I do love the first part of my day. I just don't like being an itinerant teacher.