For better or worse, the wife and I have no problem buying the kids sugary cereal. What I found interesting the other morning was that the children had learned to pick out the marshmallows from Lucky Charms and the Crunchberries from Cap’n Cruch. At no point have the kids seen me do this (because I don’t) and they have never been told to do this, so I was fascinated as to where the kids learned this behavior.

It makes me think there must be some sort of human imperative towards picking out the shiny things in life. I suppose this isn’t a world changing realization. Girls pick the prettiest boys, boys pick the biggest TV, and kids pick out the most colorful part of the cereal.

I’m not sure if there is a bigger picture to this or not. I hope that we raise the boys to look past flash and glitter and appreciate the simple things in life too. We have been implementing more non-screen time lately to try to encourages their imagination and it is fun to watch. IKup is finally starting to cross play with different toys (Lightning McQueen with Buzz Lightyear) so that is exciting.

So, as I started this post I thought I was going to have a much more profound ending but, alas, it doesn’t. It turns out, it was just a fun observation about my children.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 8, 2013 at 7:13 PM from.
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I, and my wife, have found ourselves suffering from a new disease I am going to call Netflixitosis.

Definition

This is a condition that arises from being conditioned by your DVR to sense when it is time to fast forward so that you do not hear even one bit of a commercial break.

Symptoms

While the condition can actually be beneficial while watching shows on a DVR (unless your son panics if you skip the AT&T “do two things at once commercial”), it can be detrimental when watching Netflix or a similar TV streaming service. The condition has been known to cause reaches for a remote that can either cause undue strain on the body or result in the pushing or an unknown button which may cause an unnecessary delay while re-buffering.

Treatment

No treatment is known for the illness at this time. Just choosing one source of entertainment could help, but is not a realistic option. Remembering that this is the definition of a “first world problem” also helps bear through the discomfort.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 4, 2013 at 9:02 PM from.
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When I heard that a man, Felix Baumgartner, was going to jump from space I was intrigued at how I can use this in class. It is one of the unique teachable moments that comes each year that as a teacher you need to capitalize on. It is one reason I am grateful to work in a district that doesn’t have a lock step teaching mentality, so I can diverge when needed.

In any event, I searched most of Sunday night for someone that had posted data of the fall and was unsuccessful, so I created some myself. I started with this video:

And watched him fall. I noted that after about 20 seconds of falling the speeds were displayed on screen. The speeds updated at .5 HZ (2/second) and I plotted the data. The data is as complete as the video allowed and I hope Red Bull posts the rest of the data, including altitude, later. I typed into a program called Graph (which is a free ware program I highly recommend and can be downloaded here.) I also put it into an Excel file to share with others which you can find at the end of the post.

In addition, one of my colleagues found on-line someone who had recorded all of the ascent data and we also put that into Excel and made a graph of the ascent.

You can see that the velocity graph curves, which awesome because we so rarely have a chance to graph a real work changing acceleration, or the jerk. So, we then created a very simple worksheet to use in class today along with the video to spark a discussion. If I wanted to spend more time on this activity I could have had the kids collect the data, but that wasn’t something I wanted to invest time in today.

Here is a copy of the worksheet if you wish to use it.

Red Bull Space Jump Analysis Sheet

Jump Worksheet (PDF)

Jump Worksheet (ODT)

Here also is a copy of the raw data if you want to work with it.

Excel File - Red Bull Stratos Data

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on October 15, 2012 at 11:44 AM from.
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Our oven recently broke and we needed to call a repair man. Since I no longer keep a Yellow Pages in the house, I consulted Google. The most reliable result (the only one with a free positive review (which was from Yelp)) was Bryan’s Appliance repair. His phone number is 847-543-1000 and he gave us tremendous service. He is a just a guy with his own business who repairs appliances. Here is my review.

We called Bryan on Thursday for our broken oven and he came over on Friday afternoon. He arrived when he said he would and diagnosed the problem quickly and accurately. He was willing to talk to me during the process about what he was doing and a lot of other good talk about appliance repair in general.

When we found the problem, he was willing to try and repair the issue with a quick solder rather than order an expensive part. He thoroughly explained the fix and told me that if it ended up not working he wouldn’t charge me labor on installing a new part. The whole experience was very thorough and very professional. I don’t know how much other people’s rates are, but his rates seemed reasonable.

I would definitely recommend Bryan to anyone else with an appliance repair need. I love that he is a one man operation and that he answers his own phone.

Thanks, Bryan!

Link to Yelp Review.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on July 27, 2011 at 1:26 AM from.
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The last 80 hours without free-flowing electricity have been trying but all in all not too bad. I have had mixed feelings about ComEd’s response. It is easy to just get angry and start blaming them for all the mess, but almost 1 million locations lost power, which I believe was a record, so maybe we should evaluate that a little further.

For me, I find some positives about ComEd’s response. First, I was impressed with the ability of ComEd to recruit so many out-of-state workers. There were crews from something like 8 states including Alabama and Maryland (I believe) and some fine folks from JT Electric in Edwardsville, IL. Working in my neighbor’s yard. I’m assuming ComEd is picking up all the costs for this, but getting 900 crews in the field within 24 hours was impressive and confidence creating. Now, if this turns into justification for a rate hike, that will turn into a negative.

The biggest positive on ComEd’s behalf was the use of its Twitter feed. In the jobs I have had, especially in education, there always seem to be some management that never makes an effort to be seen or known. These managers or administrators are the ones it is easy to bad mouth and trash behind their backs. The same thing can happen during a power outage. People are frustrated, scared, confused and looking for someone to blame. It is easy to go off of ComEd and I started to. I posted a slightly negative tweet about ComEd’s estimated repair times and, lo and behold, someone from ComEd replied!

While the information wasn’t phenomenal, I was so impressed that someone replied and I felt reassured that those of that were power less weren’t actually powerless. This person (or more likely a team of people) kept responding to tweets all throughout the outage. They responded to happy and angry tweet and with a kind and reassuring voice. And, let me tell you, some of the tweeters were a bit hot under the collar. @panicM00N was a prime example:

But, ComEd was calm in their response.

Lastly, the nice ComEd people also were willing to take suggestions like this one from my wife:

[adsense]

As for the negatives, I don’t really fault them for the outage. Maybe it is their fault with due to dyeing  infrastructure, but that isn’t really about the response to the storm. My biggest criticism is with their estimated repair time system and the texts I received. While I appreciate that they want to trying to keep us informed as best they can, the times were very poor.

The power went out at about 8 AM Monday morning and my initial estimated repair time was 6 PM on Tuesday. Because of this time, we decided not to buy a generator and not to make certain choices about our situation. After Tuesday night came and went the time kept moving later and until I received a text from ComEd telling me my power was restored and it was wrong. After I called to inform them of this my estimated restore time got pushed to 6 PM Saturday! This really made us rethink our plans, but then the power was restored by 8 PM on Thursday.

Ultimately, I am not sure what advice I would give the good people who bring me power. Don’t give updates unless they are accurate? Predict the longest possible time right away and then make it sooner? Or keep doing what they’re doing? In some respects, a wrong prediction is just as bad (maybe worse) than no prediction, but I did appreciate their attempts to harness the power of texting and the internet.

Ultimately, I would give ComEd a B on their response to the storm. People who were without power longer than I might have more harsh words, but I felt that throughout the entire escapade ComEd was working as hard as they could to get the outage fixed and I felt that they were always looking out for me throughout the process. Maybe their grade for preventive maintenance should be lower, but that would be a different discussion.

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I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from a colleague with the PDF of a book entitled Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach. I read through it an it was completely spot on in regards to trying to get the kid to sleep. According to the Wik, the PDF was part of an unintentional viral marketing campaign that pushed the book to #1 on Amazon’s best-seller pre-order list and pushed the release date up by about 4 months. I would post the PDF, but I don’t want to deprive this guy of his money. (There is a video of some guy reading the book on YouTube, but it is not the same.) Here are preview pictures from Amazon:

on

The book is written like a traditional children’s book except with a little profanity sprinkled in. If you can’t read the picture above here is the sample from Go the F to Sleep:

Some people have been critical of the book as if they think it is a book that parents would read to their kids. Those parents would scare me. This is not a book for kids, but rather it is for parents.

On top of the awesomeness of this book, the only thing that could make it better would be an audio version. Even if I tried to think about someone better to narrate this book I don’t think I could have picked anyone besides Samuel L. Jackson. (Not Star Wars Samuel Jackson, but Die Hard and Pulp Fiction Jackson.) When you hear it he just delivers the lines with some passion and heart it is compelling. And right now the download is free from audible!

It reminds me of a TED talk I watched a little while ago about Parenting Taboos. There are a lot of thoughts most parents have at some point that are not “correct” for us to say. Anyone who has a child between 1 and a half and 3 knows about the trials of getting their kid to sleep and the barrage of requests they make to stay up a little bit later. This book takes that shared frustration and handle it in a light-hearted and poignant way. Just make sure you don’t leave it on the kid’s bookshelf.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on June 15, 2011 at 12:57 AM from.
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As I sit here with less than 12 hours until the fourth member of our little family is born, I have a chance to reflect on the last three years and what lies ahead. Child birth is a weird feeling. Unlike other decision and changes in your life, you can’t change your mind at the last minute. No matter what happens, as time marches inexorably forward, there will be a new life entering the world shortly after 10 AM June 13th. I’ve been trying to sift through my emotions but am still not sure what to make of it all.

There is a part of me (and at times I feel guilty for this emotion) that is sad to see this chapter of lives end. Having little IKup has been so much fun and I enjoy the time the three of us have had together. I found myself just squeezing him tight trying to hold on to this feeling before everything changes. I don’t even know that it is the birth of the new child that is making me feel this way, but rather how independent he is becoming. As much as we have tried taught him to be independent, and as much as he should be independent, it is still hard to realize he needs you a little less everyday. Now, he wakes up from his nap says, “Dad, I’m need to go poopy. I’m going to sit on the potty and go poopy.” Then he does it.

Ultimately I am excited to see what kind of person he becomes, but it is a little sad at times to not be the one that has to put him on the potty and those sorts of things.

As for child number two, I am very anxious to see if he turns out to be as stellar as Isaac did. Gina and I just tried to do our best with IKup using logic and common sense and he turned out pretty spectacular. The more I think about it, I don’t really think that a second kid is going to just be twice as much work. It is not just like we are now going to raising a second kid, we have to also manage the relationship between the two children. That is my biggest concern. In teaching, I have seen many families of siblings. Some turn out to be the same as each other (either both awesome or both not so awesome) or they turn out to be opposites of each other. I don’t know that there is really a trick to making to happen, you just have to go with your gut.

Ultimately I am hoping that having two little guys running around is going to be more than twice as much fun. I am very excited for IKup to have someone to play with (in several months that is) all the time. It will be different because child number two will have to share a lot of experience that IKup go to himself, but as they share them together, hopefully they will have even more fun.

So, I’m not sure if I making sense or not, but I can hopefully sleep now having gotten those thoughts out of my head and into the cloud. We soon will be a square family.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on June 13, 2011 at 1:16 AM from.
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After taking a few weeks off, it is time for the finale. I still feel that James Durbin should have been in the finale, but these two are great. What is really great about Scotty and Lauren specifically is how much they have grown and changed over the season. It may be a product of their age or because they had Jimmy Iovine as a consistent mentor (which I think was a great move by Idol), but they have progressed more during the season than any other contestants I can think of. I never would have imagined Scotty with the confidence to pull off Gone during these or season or Lauren having the confidence to control the stage as well as she does.

My initial thought coming in to the night is that Lauren should win because she is a better singer than Scotty. Now, it is difficult to compare an male vs. a female singer, but I will would rank Lauren above Scotty. That is a not a knock on Scotty, but rather praise of Lauren.

Scotty McCreery — Gone
Phenomenal! The first week he sang this song I think it solidified his role as a serious contender. Up until then he was a kid who could sing George Strait type songs really well. But, singing Montgomery Gentry’s Gone showed a whole new side to his talent. His encore of the performance was just as good if not better.

Lauren Alaina — Flat on the Floor
Great job! She was moving and jamming on the stage and belting out the vocals. The confidence in her growing throughout the season really comes out in this performance. It was a great performance, I would rank Scotty’s higher, but, again, not as a knock on Lauren but as a compliment to Scotty.

Scotty McCreery — Check Yes or No
Great song choice and great performance by Scotty. It reminds of the Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not he sang earlier. He really is a great story teller as Jennifer Lopez says.

Lauren Alaina — Maybe It Was Memphis
This song highlights what I was trying to say earlier. When a female vocalist nails a song it is almost always going to better than a male. Lauren sings the snot out of this song and shows how talented she is. I don’t know if Ryan was over blowing the vocal cord problem, but it is hard to tell. If she is performing with only one vocal cord here, then I can’t wait until she has two.

Scotty McCreery — Love You This Big
Scotty looked very classy and made the least number of annoying facial expressions to date. This song was good for him and it will do well. He is going to a young entering a large field of talented male country artists and so he needs to stick to younger themed songs like this if he is going to be successful. I just don’t think he is quite strong enough to beat Lauren.

Lauren Alaina — Like My Mother Does
This song reminds me of something Taylor Swift would sing which is always a good thing in my book. Lauren nails this song and, if this were a strictly talent competition, nailed the title. The confidence to stare your mother in the eye and sing those wonderful things, wow, that takes poise. (Not to mention making it up and down those stairs.) While I don’t think Lauren is done improving, she is pretty far along and she will be a major contender as she matures as grows.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on May 24, 2011 at 9:30 PM from.
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James Durbin — Good performance. I found the song a little boring, not necessarily the performance, but the song wasn’t for me. The problem for James is that he has to try to top himself each week which is a big feat. This was not his best performance, but it was still high-caliber.

Jacob Lust — Bad choice to try to sing a duet by himself. I could feel the emotion and it was a decent performance, but it was fell short of the level it needs to be at. He was screaming at some points which made him a little off pitch and it just didn’t work out well.

Lauren Alaina — This girl might have this thing figured out now. She took on the tall task of singing a song by someone who is as talented and well known and Carrie Underwood and was pretty close to meeting the task. She was loose on stage, had personality and wailed on that song. She really has grown tremendously over the course of the show and I’m going to be interested to see how this all plays out.

Scotty McCreery –Wow, what a performance. Scotty unequivocally knocked this song out of the park. He stepped out of his comfort zone, worked the stage, nailed the vocals and it was just tremendous. I was ready to declare a James & Lauren finale, but now I don’t know.

Haley Reinhart — Hailey sang this well. I didn’t care for the song but she sang it decently. It got a little boring and repetitive towards the end. She can sing well, but when she has to compete against Lauren I think she will always come up short.

Rank of the 1st Performances

1) Scotty
2) Lauren
3) James
4) Jacob
5) Haley

James Durbin — This was a better performance by James. The emotion and soulfulness of the performance really makes this. He was a little off pitch in the low range in the slow part, but he brought this home. The little pause at the end was awesome and gave me chills. What a performer!

I agree with Randy, it is his competition to lose.

Jacob Lusk — Again, this was an okay performance. Jacob is just being out shadowed by James and Scotty. He has a big range, but he over performs and he is clearly a diva. he emotion and connection with the audience was really nice at the end and he makes a good effort, but I don’t think it is good enough to beat the other three. As a diva, I always feel like he is a little aloof and disconnected from the populous.

Lauren Alaina — Irregardless of her amazing singing, I have to really give Lauren credit for taking on two huge songs tonight. She doesn’t seem to be in time with the music here, or something seems wrong. I am nearly as impressed with this performance as the first. It really almost seems self-indulgent. There were none of the big notes I expected and it didn’t really add anything to the song. I was hoping for a lot more from that song. You can tell the judges feel the same, but are just scared to blast her.

Scotty McCreery — Another great performance by Scotty. What a great night for him!

Haley Reinhart — What a great performance by Haley. This song was written for her as Jimmy said. Such great emotion and story telling while highlighting her vocals. This performance should push her over Jacob for another week.

Part 2
1) Haley
2) James
3) Scotty
4) Jacob
5) Lauren

In the end, either James or Haley should be eliminated

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on May 4, 2011 at 10:22 PM from.
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Today someone on the physics modeling list serv asked for an app for a tablet with the following abilities:

• Allow me to create a seating chart showing student names and photos.
• For each student, I could click the photo and get a drop-down menu with user-created options (mine would be “on task,” “off task,” and “Notes”–the notes button would open an editing box where I could type notes).
• Each time a mark/comment was made, the date and time of the comment would be recorded in the database.
• I could then generate reports periodically with a summary of how many times each student received each mark.
• It would be nice if I could export points earned into a text file for importing into my grading program.

Two other important requirements that I realized after starting my research were that I wanted to be able to import my class lists from a csv file and I needed to be able to separate the classes by period as opposed to one long list.

I had wanted a similar application for my iPad, but I hadn’t really put any effort into finding one. So, I set out to evaluate the different classroom management type apps for the iPad.

As I started investigating I found that there were couple of themes categories that the apps fit into:

• Random Picker/Seating Chart Apps — There are several apps that are designed to just pick students at random from your class list.
• Just Attendance Apps — Several of these apps are just for attendance taking and possible seating charts.
• Behavior Tracking — Not necessarily designed for grades but usually for attendance and also student behavior and consequences.
• Full Grade Book/Management Apps — These apps includes the features of the others and then also function as grade books. They vary by the grade level they seemed designed for.

Random Picker/Seating Chart Apps

Pupil Picker was the first random picker app that I came across. It has a very simple interface and serves one purpose, to randomly pick students to answer questions in class. Pupil Picker wins some points because it offers a free version to test. In using that free version one drawback I found was that you could not import a class list from a csv file or from a spreadsheet. The author says that you can bring the students in if they are in a group in your contacts, but I don’t have any groups in my contacts and for some reason I can’t currently open my contacts, so I can’t test that. Another nice feature is that it allows you to mark whether the student answered the question correctly or not. This could work for the purpose of monitor productivity in a lab, but you can only pull the student up at random, you can’t pick a student from the list which would make monitor productivity difficult at times. Ultimately, this app does what it says and it seems to do it well.

Attendance Apps

Attendance is an app that is simply designed for taking attendance. The app costs $5, which seems excessive for just taking attendance when there are some cheaper alternatives, so I didn’t test it. The description says that you can important class lists and export the attendance data back out to a spreadsheet via iTunes or Dropbox. The program supports pictures and allows you to select random students to answer questions. You can see a video of the app here.

Smart Seat is an app that takes attendance, but its true calling is as your a seating chart making app. I have long wanted a program that would make a random seating chart for any OS and this app does this simply. I like to change seats every unit, so the geek in me wishes that it had the ability to save the old seating charts for comparison and I would be ecstatic if it kept track of who a student sat next to before and tried to randomize with that as a constraint, but that is probably a bit much. The official website says that you can import students names from a csv file but the app doesn’t support pictures. The app allows you keep different charts for each section or your course and to select a random student to call on. If you are just looking for attendance and random student selection, this app looks cleaner and is cheaper than Attendance.

Behavior Tracking Apps

I tried to evaluate Teacher’s Toolkit by downloading the free lite version, but it crashed repeatedly on me.

Full Grade Book/Management Apps

TeacherPal at this point is the app that comes closest to the requirements stated above (plus it is free). With TeacherPal you can import your class list using a simple comma separated value (csv) file or add them manually. You can also add a picture to each student from your saved picture folder. Once you have set up your class, you can easily make a searing chart for your students by clicking on their face until it wiggles (like moving an app on your home screen) and putting it in place. You can add a picture of each student (as shown below) and you can then click on the student’s face in the seating chart to mark them absent. Additionally, TeacherPal has a simple and simple to use gradebook for recording scores. The gradebook can be export to a csv and into a spreadsheet for merging into other desktop electronic gradebooks.

Teacher’s Attaché – This seems like a nice app that takes attendance and does something with grades. The app is more geared towards a college classroom, in that it lacks a seating chart, so I didn’t invest the $5 to evaluate it. However, from the reviews, it would seem that this is a pretty nice app for college professors.

Teacher Tool One — Sounds like a great app, but it seems almost too powerful and with too many features. In work with the free version, I had a hard time completing simple tasks and determining how to assign grades and work with students. It seems to be written for a German school system and that it would integrate with some other kind of SMS. For a price tag of $30 for the full version, it seems like overkill for what I am looking for.

Teacher Assistant Lite — This application seems more designed for elementary education or special education teachers. The students can not be arranged by group or period. The application seems best suited to tracking behaviors as opposed to tracking grades or students participation in a class on a single day.

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