Day 81- June 1, 2020

Day 81- June 1, 2020

We lost a cursor today.  I think that's what it's called at least.  It's the arrow that shows where you are on the computer, and moves when you move your finger on the touchpad of the Chromebook.  There's nothing like your child coming to you, when you are in the middle of trying to get your own work done and deal with the guy here to fix the sprinkler system (apparently, chipmunks and the roots of bushes had conspired to destroy said system) to explain that their Chromebook is now unusable because the cursor has gone missing.

Pretty sure that's a triangle

I paused my own work, and started fidgeting with the keyboard.  I did the tricks that our IT guy, Scott, has taught me over the last year (kids bring their broken Chromebooks to me in the library, and if I can, I fix them.  If I can't, I bring in the big guns- Scott).  When tapping on the touchpad, hitting tab and escape and a few other things didn't work, I sent off a quick email to Scott, asking him what the other trick was that involved resetting the Chromebook so that it would bring back the cursor.  He's a great friend at work, and thankfully, he got back to me quickly (as I was also in the midst of trying to sort through our budget for next year and quotes for online resources).  I reset everything, followed his instructions on what to do when I got the "Chrome OS is missing or damaged" message, and then- - - nothing.  Bupkiss.  The computer would not cooperate. Sighing, I sent E. off to try to find the backup one that we own, and set hers aside.  I didn't have time to go searching for the district email that has the link to the IT department to get this fixed.  I'd figure it out eventually, but not today.

And then we got into math.  During my lunch break, I helped E. log in to her Pearson account to take her Chapter 15 Math quiz.  They've been working on geometry- shapes like quadrilaterals and hexagons and cubes.  She knows her stuff, so when she finished and pressed "Submit" and earned a 76%, her face fell.  Knowing that when you take a test online, you sometimes get things wrong because you clicked an arrow or accidentally selected the wrong thing because of hitting a spacebar or something (and therefore changing the selection from what you wanted to the next answer), we looked at what she had gotten wrong.

The thing was, it wasn't wrong.  Actually, multiple somethings weren't wrong.  By the time we'd gone

The red thing IS a cube, right?!

through the answers and tallied up her responses, by my calculations, she'd earned a 92%.  Things like seeing a picture of a triangle, and selecting that the shape was a triangle (and getting it wrong- Pearson seems to think a triangle is a quadrilateral, which it is not), says that a square is not a rectangle (actually, a square is a special type of rectangle- with all equal sized sides), and does not recognize a cube when you select one when asked to choose the cube.  I fired off an email to her teacher, asking if my math skills had deteriorated this much, or if Pearson was (once again) being a horrible system for testing.

I was gratified to hear that nope, I hadn't suddenly forgotten basic shapes.  Instead, the teacher concurred that the test was incorrect, and she was also concerned, because how many other kids were getting marked incorrect when they were right, or getting things "right" that they then mislearn?  Makes me long, for not the first time, for when we could use paper and pencil for math.  But in this current climate, I completely understand having to use the computer.  I just wish we had a better system for it.

After computer woes and math extravaganzas, we headed over to Sammy's house to do some finishing touches.  We're getting closer to having this place ready, and today we got to put the cabinet doors back on the frames.  The paint job Jeff did is pretty impressive, and with the knobs on and the stainless fridge ready to go, you can begin to visualize what this place is going to look like when it's ready to hit the market.  I'm watching a lot of HGTV flip shows, and I'd say we seem to be doing better than most folks on them thus far (even though it's not our flip, the work we're doing is going to give it a makeover rivaling most of what I've seen).