Some days in the realm of tech work, you actually do have a day when you feel further ahead than the previous day. (Alas, that is a rarity.) Today, for me, was one of those days. I actually fixed (I think) 4 computers in the course of two hours and a bit. Plus some other little jobs – including sending grades for the interim. It looks like a batch of 4 year old computers is having failing harddrives, so it’s up to Scandisk to sort them out. We’ll see how long the fix lasts, but they’re looking more promising than I feared. (We don’t have a lot of replacement drives – and none of those are new.)

Sending grades is always fun (not!) We’re using Jackson GradeQuick to do the High School (which for us includes junior high) grades and then send them electronically. It’s not a bad program, but there’s a lot for the teachers to do to make sure the grades are sent right. We’ve yet to have a “perfect” grade sending time yet – and we’ve been using the program for a year now. I’m wondering if the Progress Book program that the A sites are pushing will be easier on staff. I hope so!

So tomorrow, when the preview pages are printed, we’ll find out what sorts of errors we’ve got. And if any teachers didn’t get their grades in by the time I sent them onto our A site. (I did have one teacher rush in right as I was leaving and said she still had one class to go – but I’d already sent them. Indeed I’d sent them 45 minutes later than the cut off time. Ah well.) The joys of school techs!

As for the science part of my work, things be good. The physics students are working on their catapults for the Catapult Contest on Wednesday. I’m seeing more design variety than I’d seen in ages – that’s great! I revamped the way I did it this year – had them write the research paper up first before I’d even given them the specs on what to build. I think that encouraged more kids to actually research catapults *before* they built them. Should be fun on Wednesday!