Yesterday’s trip to Cody took a new direction. Previous lessons had been about breaking, fixing, and making all things technology. Yesterday’s lesson was about planning for the future.
Mike (Operations Manager) handles the hiring here at DE, so he thought it would be useful to give the students some insight on where to look for jobs and how to land one.
The hour started with some round table discussion. First, Mike asked who was looking for a job this summer. Everyone raised their hands. Then we discussed the process of deciding what type of jobs would be good fits. Mike asked questions about the team’s interests, skills, money requirements/goals, and transportation restrictions.
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Yesterday’s trip to Cody was exciting to say the least. To get some perspective on the lesson, let me first tell you a little about the teacher. (James, DE Programmer).
James taught programming at his own high school in Ypsilanti– when he was still in high school. He also wrote music for his high school and college marching bands. So… he’s basically a genius and built for this volunteer project.
When James started devising his lesson, he asked if he could go two weeks in a row because he had so much to share. Yesterday was part one of his two part lesson on computer programming and music.
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Technology Team meeting 3 took place yesterday. After unbridled participation at the first two official meetings, my expectation for attendance has gotten pretty high. However, yesterday we only had 9 team members. About half the students enrolled at Cody are involved in the ROTC program, and they had a mandatory inspection after school—hence the 50% attendance. Many of our regular contributors dipped in to tell us they’d be back next week though.
No matter the smaller group size, we pressed on with the meeting. We forced each student to eat 2 Jimmy John’s sandwiches so none would go to waste (actually, we dropped the leftovers off with a teacher who was hosting some freshman for another afterschool program).
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Not so much a title as what I just screamed. Here’s the story:
I wanted to indicate two separate quantities in the same cell, under the same heading of a table. The heading was “Workstations” on a price sheet. There were 9 total workstations— 3 of one type, 6 of another. I wanted to indicate this as 3/6. The cell below would correspond with $/$. Seems like a simple request, right?
As I’m sure many of you have experienced, Excel can be a real pain when it thinks it knows what you want to type. Excel said to me, “3/6— you must have meant March-6”.
I said nay. Simple fix, right? So I right clicked, clicked “format cell”, and selected “number”. Expecting my 3/6 to return to cell D4 where I left it, Excel surprised me again. This time, its machine brain assumed I wanted to type “40608.00”. Wrong again, Robot.
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Incredible vs. iPhone 4
Apple is reportedly changing the game again. But this time, some big names aren’t going to play with them anymore. Effective June 30th 2011, any iPhone or iPad app that sells anything, will be required to sell it within the framework of the application (no more linking to outside sites like Amazon.com). Why? Because Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales made within an iSO app.
What does this mean for the consumer? Some of the things you love doing on your iPhone or iPad may not be available after June 30th. Rhapsody has already said they could not operate under the new demands. Amazon will almost certainly have to pull the Kindle app as well (or raise the rates).
What does this mean big picture? When it’s all said and done, I think Apple will regret this move. Here’s why:
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Technology Team had another great meeting yesterday. In our second official meeting, we expanded on the last lesson about the inner workings of an XBOX and a PC.
This time, it was the kids turn to get up to their elbows in technology.
We brought the same PC from last week (in about 30 pieces tho). First, Sean (DE Consultant) went over each component as a refresher. Next, he let the students figure out where the parts went, showing them the finer details— like how to align the processer correctly so you don’t bend the pins.
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