Nifty! Know a girl aged 8–11?
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Education
Via the inestimable
“Kids learning to storyboard, brainstorm, critique, design, pitch ideas, psuedocode, actually code, and make toys do things.”
Tags: computers, Education, girls, learning, programming
Relearning How to Play the Piano
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Family, Music
I can’t remember whether or not I burbled about this already, but if this is a repeat you can get extra hugs the next time I see you or something. We have a working, marvelous, beautiful piano! It’s the freecycled Korg 88-key digital that I mentioned way back in November, all clean and functional thanks to my sweet Sam. It sounds so good! It even feels right, unlike any electronic keyboard I’ve ever tried to play. I learned to play on an acoustic piano, and the feel is just different. This piano has nicely weighted keys to help oldsters like me, and they’re even touch-sensitive, like a “real” (acoustic) piano. And it has two pedals! (There’s a picture of a similar model down there under the “read more” link.)
It won’t go out of tune. We can record anything that’s played on it. There are not one, but two headjack ports, so that, say, a teacher and student could hear the student’s attempts without bothering anyone else in the household.
Yes, I like!
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Tags: Books, keyboards, learning, Music, Piano
School update
Posted by Cyn | Filed under College
School is going along fine. In fact, another semester is almost done for me, and Katie’s almost at the end of her semester, too. She’s kicking ass and taking names. Now that she’s settled academically, she’s stretching out into some extracurricular stuff and making more friends. We’ve managed to connect with a Girl Scout troop, (finally!) despite silly paperwork slip-ups.
I think I need to rearrange my classes for the next part of the semester (I’m already registered), but this unit’s classes are going very well, and I’ve actually learned useful (in one class) and interesting (in the other class) stuff.
I had told the school when they initially did my transcript evaluation that I didn’t have as many upper-level credits as they said I had, but they insisted that I’d done my major work and wouldn’t really listen. Weirdnesses kept coming up, and I kept pushing about things like the Hope Scholarship not coming up in my financial aid package. Someone finally said, “Oh — you aren’t eligible because you already have a bachelor’s degree.”
What? Um, no. You see, I’m in the Bachelor’s Degree Completion Program because I don’t have a bachelor’s degree yet. Capiche?
Well, it seems that when Mercer University sent over my transcripts, they couldn’t manage to just pull the transcripts for Cynthia Roberson (my name when I attended that school) with my Social Security Number and my Mercer Student ID. No, they also sent over Cynthia Armistead’s transcript — someone whose name was Cynthia Armistead when she attended Mercer and got a bachelor’s degree, someone with a different SSN and MSI and middle initial. And instead of noticing these discrepancies, my school blithely entered this transcript in and gave me credit for her work!
So there’s been a whole big deal about getting all of my transcripts again, and re-evaluating them anew, and changing my planned classes to reflect the results. I’m getting two sorts of attitude from the bureaucrats I have to deal with in straightening out this nonsense: people who obviously think I should have shut up and taken the credits, and people who think I was trying to pull a fast one (hence the business about them getting all my transcripts again, directly from my old schools) and re-evaluating them).
Fortunately, the classes I’ve taken so far are classes I needed to take. Yay. The classes that start in a couple of weeks are in question, so I need to talk to my so-called “advisor” about them. The “advisor” is the person who deals with everybody who is in the bachelor’s degree completion program. She doesn’t do individual advising, really. She doesn’t give a flyin’ flip about me or my plans, abilities, background, etc. She meets with students once, when they enter the program. That’s it. That’s the plan. She doesn’t want to see us again. She’s not happy that she’s had to talk to me more than once.
I was just way spoiled by my marvelous advisor at Southern Poly, Dr. Mark Stevens. Nobody else can live up to that standard. But this woman shouldn’t have the same title. She’s a paperwork-stamper.
I’m actually enjoying the database portion of my current business/computer course so much that I’m looking at which technical concentration in the bachelor’s degree completion major would give me the most opportunity to go deeper into the topic.
Oh — with the other person’s bachelor’s degree transcript, I had something like 91 transfer credits. That’s the maximum you’re allowed to transfer into the school. Without her transcript, just using my credits, I’m coming in with 79 credits. The science class I’m taking now should have been my last “core” class, but this school counts “Science, Technology and Society as a 400 level class. The STS class I took at Southern Poly was a 200 level class. So one more core class, some business and management stuff required for my major, and then the technical concentration courses. Three full semesters, at least, maybe four, since there may be prerequisites required for some of the technical concentration classes that I don’t have yet.
That’s not too bad — just another year of school, really. Wow. I can see the end.
Tags: bureaucracy, College, Cynthia Armistead, Cynthia Roberson, high school, Katie, learning, Mark Stevens, Mercer University, school