WIN 7 – AFTER A WEEK

I have been using Windows 7 for over a week now and am totally impressed.  I can’t believe the difference between it and VISTA.  I had been relatively happy with VISTA, but Win7 totally blows it away!

The biggest difference is the stability, it doesn’t slow down and go into circle mode very often, it seemed as though VISTA was in circle mode all the time.  The other thing is when I am scrolling down a document or my Google Read it doesn’t hitch up, it just scrolls smoothly.

Another thing that is surprising is that I have gone back to using IE8 as my primary browser, it just works now that I have Win7.  IE8 is working so much better than Firefox (which I have never really liked that much) right now, it hasn’t crashed, renders everything the way it is supposed to and quickly.  The biggest reason I don’t go completely back to IE is the ability of having Twitter in a sidebar that I can in Firefox, if Microsoft or there is an add-on that works well, I have a feeling I might be spending even more time in IE.  I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected benefit of switching to IE, because I had been a very disappointed in IE8 prior to this – I guess the OS is making a difference. 

Installation while time consuming was easy on both my wife’s and my computers (I picked up the family pack license) One was a complete reinstall and the other was just an update, both went flawlessly.  This is the kind of thing that I want from an operating system, easy installation and intuitive to use AND best of all on the update, I didn’t loose any software or anything.

I had been thinking about going to a Mac as my next computer when I update next summer, but after using a Mac for the past month in school and comparing it to how Win7 works, I won’t be moving to Mac…I plan to stay with the PC.  It simply does what I want and works better for me than a Mac.  I guess the Mac vs PC commercials is becoming more about preferences than actual differences…?  To me and my Windows background everything you do on a Mac is backwards.

So Microsoft did a very good job on Win7, it had come to the point where they needed to do it right this time and in my opinion they did.  If they hadn’t Mac or Linux would have been more of an option than in the past for many people including myself. 

Now if they just would not force you to use some of their programs, if you didn’t want to it would be nice (I am not crazy about Media Center and haven’t ever used it), I might use Media Player because it works (I use many of the Windows Live applications), but I just don’t like being forced to have things on my computer because they are part of the operating system, that I have to buy and I don’t have the option to not have it.  Others might look at it as freebie software, I look at as being forced to have something on my computer that I may or may not want to use.

Good job Microsoft, I think you hit a home run with Win7

Disclosure Statement:  I have not received any sort of compensation as part of writing this review, it is simply my thoughts on something that I have started using.

IT HAS BEEN A MONTH - WOW

Sorry I haven’t been writing more blog posts lately, but life really, really just got in the way.

I have finished my first month back at teaching!  It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination.  The other teachers and student had developed their routines  and were almost five weeks into the school year when I showed up.  The students were getting used to the way everyone else had been teaching them and I didn’t really have a clue about who they were and their capabilities.  This made for a very tough first couple of weeks.

In the past I have always been able to get ready for the school year and have the special education files up to snuff.  But even though I had a couple of weeks before I started, I also had to finish up my previous job and that took a lot of time away from preparing to teach.  Also I finished my previous job on a Friday and started teaching the following Monday – did not make it any easier on myself.

The first couple of weeks I didn’t really have a good plan and was simply in classroom survival mode. I had read the 8th Grade Curriculum, but the reality of putting it into effect vs just reading of it can be a bit of a difference. So totally understanding what I would be teaching and how was a bit of a disconnect at first, but I think I am starting to get back into the swing of things again, I found some of my old lessons and believe that I can adapt them to meet my new student’s needs. 

Then you have the behaviors that students have compounded by having 6-10 ADHD kids in the same room and then adding in - changing the daily schedule because of two weeks of standardized testing the day after I arrived.  It made for an interesting transition (ah the proper use of one our vocabulary words this week) to say the least.

Since all the students in my classes are special education students, this change in schedule, plus having a new teacher really escalated some of the classroom behaviors.  I am lucky, I have a couple of teachers that I knew before and leaned on them for good advice and the Vice Principal has been really supportive in helping out with a couple of situations that I needed some help with. 

I am just now getting a real opportunity to get into the Special Education files and figure out what my students need, before when I first read the files, they really didn’t mean a whole lot, but now that I have done some work with the students it gives me a much better idea why the IEPs were written the way they were.  I fell that now I can actually start to teach them what they need vs what I thought they needed.

I have two pieces of advice: 

1.  Unless you really, really want to get back into teaching don’t start after the year has started, there are just too many obstacles to overcome…not insurmountable - but frustrating especially if you are a bit of a perfectionist.

2.  Don’t try to do everything in the first month or faster…it simply can’t be done without impacting your personal life badly.

I do want to say thank you to everyone in my building who helped me out and made it so I survived my first month without too many issues or simply feeling like I was banging my head against a brick wall.  I had a few frustrating times, but not too many and usually the next was a much better day.  I just have to remember to take it a day at a time and not try to do everything all at once.

Last week someone asked me if I did the right thing?   I thought for a moment and without any hesitation – Said. “I am where I am supposed to be.”

 

As my cat “Nimbus” would say, “Just take it easy, things will work out one way or the other”.