Yay! I can has Internets! 🙂
Wooster has changed their IT policy and you can’t simply connect to a cat-5 jack in a dorm room and then access the Internet. You now need an account to do so. So our contact at the college has gotten dorm accounts (for this week) for me and two other teachers who have bought our laptops to the camp. This is good cuz I need to upload photos to the B-WISER images site for the girls to access tomorrow.
The camp has been going very well so far. We have 52 girls, which is up from last year’s all-time low. That’s excellent. The goal (with our current schedule of morning classes different from afternoon and teachers double-teaming) is 60 girls a camp, so we’re not far off the mark.
Sunday, I arrived right before noon. And I wasn’t the last teacher to show. Five of us then went to Applebees for lunch. I returned to the dorm to meet the camp coordinator who had 5 laptops for me to help pad out the 12 in the room I was assigned. I got the room set up as well as I could and returned to the dorms right before one of the really big rains hit. (Big ol’ hail fell – just a little smaller than moth-ball-size.)
We introduced ourselves to the girls, watched them perform their “getting to know each other skits” and then went to supper. After supper was the evening activity – originally planned to be the hot air balloon, but due to weather, being an engineering activity. The girls got an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper and a foot of cellophane tape (gah, Metric system anyone) and they had to build the tallest free-standing structure. They got a practice sheet & tape, then they created their final one. The tallest one was 1.13m tall. Wow!
Monday was sunny to start out. While Dee was working with the girls in physics, I met a couple of the tech department to get a hub for the room. When I met ’em, they asked why I didn’t use room 205 instead of 210. 205 apparently has 16 PCs (it’s a Mac campus, so Winders boxes are rare) and with the two laptops with decent wireless, I’d get 18 (the max number of girls at any point in time). All we needed in 205 was a projector and screen. Apparently that wasn’t difficult to requisition. So I put a sign on 210 saying we were in 205 and tested things in there. It all worked. Yay!
After lunch we had computer classes and the girls seemed excited about getting 1GB flash drives. One girl said “oooh, I’ve been wanting a flash drive!” Even if they don’t use ’em with the Portable Apps programs on ’em, they’ll have a nice little storage device. I did my internet safety presentation and two of the three classes had enough time to research a female scientist.
The evening activities for Monday were scavenger hunt, bowling, and crafts. I worked at the crafts station and made a little binder clip deer. Kind of cute, but I screwed up the ears. I went to bed exhausted.
Today went a bit smoother with technology – only had to leave physics once to upload some photos and check the weather. And then we were given our usernames & passwords to access the ‘net in the dorms. Yay. In the afternoon we used OpenOffice.org Calc Portable to calculate work and power expended going up stairs. And then when classes were done, it was teacher’s night off.
Six of us headed out to the Toyrifix toy store first. I got a couple of olde fashioned toys (one for me, one for dad) and Looney Labs’ Fluxx card game. Then we saw Get Smart and I really enjoyed it. Then supper was Red Lobster where I had Tuesday’s shrimp special. Mmmmm. We then had a short stop at Walmart so Carolyn and I could pick up The Spiderwick Chronicles. We also got 10,000 BC too (I got the one with the National Geographic extra DVD on saber tooth tigers).
I’m sleepy now – just a few more photos to upload and then I’ll head off to bed.
Now