Describe your computer teacher + class

[iMacZealot]

Our school used to be a big Apple school. We had tons of Power Mac 5260/100's. Unfortunately, these stupid Toshiba laptops replaced them rather quickly. The PowerMacs are in the dumpster right now. Two years ago, the school wanted to replace the Toshibas, and I tried to convince the computer teacher to buy eMacs, which would have been much cheaper than Dell. However, they went with Dell. What's ironic is that he left and is now teaching a class in Boulder on a Mac, and absolutely loves them now.

I can't figure out whether the new teacher is a mac or PC guy. He thinks I'm an idiot because I can't remember to use Windows anymore, like when I get really mad when I'll press alt-c instead of control-c and not know what's going on.

The class itself is really stupid. We'll do a PowerPoint, spreadsheet, or graphic organiser in Inspiration once every two weeks or so, and the rest of the time is free time. We were doing a spreadsheet where we had to find the price of items and convert them to other currencies, and he did use a Mac Pro, which makes me think he may be a mac guy. He randomly filled in prices, and put down something like $9 for a Mac Pro, and I said, "That's a great deal!" and he laughed.

However, yesterday, we were making a PowerPoint on instructions on how to do something, so I did a Final Cut video, and I wanted to put in some of my work. I aksed him if he had QuickTime on the computers, and another kid asked what QuickTime is, and the teacher snootily replied halfway laughing, "QuickTime is Apple's version of Media Player!" Snooty bastard. I didn't say anything to that, though. Tomorrow, I'm going to flat out ask him if he's a mac or PC guy, and I'm also going to put an Apple sticker on the inside of my folder.

What kind of computer class are you taking, and what's the teacher like? Mac or PC?

 

[Sideonecincy]

All of my classes are on pc, there are no macs on campus, only the ones that people bring in. 3/4 of the students act like macs dont exist and if they are mentioned then they just spit off some stupid comment.

 

[SkyBell]

What is my class like? Put bluntly, a bunch of retards who know nothing about Macs or PC's.

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! They'll yell out "My computer's broken!" I'll walk over there (I'm the self appointed IT guy ) and turn on the monitor.

My district used to be Macs too. Then they went to Compaq. My teacher? Is PC. She started working here a year ago (about 4 years after they tossed the Macs) And knows nothing but Windows.

It sucks,all we do is PowerPoints, and Word stuff, basically everything Microsoft, When there are just as good FREE 3rd party programs out there NOT made by the Evil Empire.

I hate computer class

 

[iMacZealot]

What is my class like? Put bluntly, a bunch of retards who know nothing about Macs or PC's.

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! They'll yell out "My computer's broken!" I'll walk over there (I'm the self appointed IT guy ) and turn on the monitor.

My district used to be Macs too. Then they went to Compaq. My teacher? Is PC. She started working here a year ago (about 4 years after they tossed the Macs) And knows nothing but Windows.

It sucks,all we do is PowerPoints, and Word stuff, basically everything Microsoft, When there are just as good FREE 3rd party programs out there NOT made by the Evil Empire.

I hate computer class

Funny you should mention that. It's the first period of the day, and everybody walks in, and all the monitors are unplugged, and the teacher isn't there. So everybody screams my name, and I have to screw in all the chords.

Same curriculum over here. When I tried to convince them to get the eMacs, I suggested that they could also teach how to use iLife or even apps like Photoshop and Final Cut. So much for that.

 

[joepunk]

a long time ago...

in high school we used Typewriters.

All freshpersons were required to take this class. Don't really remember what it was for anymore. The first half of the semester was on how to type buisness type stuff/letters. Then we moved onto PC's where a few of us in back started to use the paint program after we finished the lesson of the day.

 

[iMacZealot]

We hardly do any typing exercises, either, which I think is more important than Inspiration.

 

[noaccess]

Second year CompSci (that's 10th grade here)...
Teacher's never touched a mac (neither has anyone else in my entire school), teaches programming on 4 yo HPs in Pascal (they had to use that programming language, didn't they?), plus the occasional Word/Powerpoint lesson and assignment.

Oh, and when asked about computer manufacturers during the first CompSci lesson she (the teacher) pronounced Apple as Ay'pul.
Well, that's it. I'm in a class of computer geeks for computer geeks, people can handle their Windoze... So could I, but luckily I saw The Light™ and then I didn't have to.

Funny you should mention that. It's the first period of the day, and everybody walks in, and all the monitors are unplugged, and the teacher isn't there. So everybody screams my name, and I have to screw in all the chords.

Just... damn
I mean, (ignorant) people all over the world have their false beliefs about mac users, we've heard 'em, and they're in your class, asking for help (on PCs!) from a mac user. Hmmm... do I see anything wrong here?

 

[iMacZealot]

Just... damn
I mean, (ignorant) people all over the world have their false beliefs about mac users, we've heard 'em, and they're in your class, asking for help (on PCs!) from a mac user. Hmmm... do I see any inconsistencies here?

Yeah, well, before I switched to a mac, the only tech company I followed was Palm, and I never knew Windows as well as I know Mac OS 9 and 10. I knew it pretty well, though, and so I'd get a lot of questions from teachers, and their problems were solved by simply dragging a window so he/she could see the entire thing on the screen. People think this is amazing, so I was deemed the computer wizard. Although, newer teachers don't really ask me for help anymore because they know I'm a mac guy (on the first day, one teacher was talking about what would happen if your printer wouldn't work, and to bring it on a disk, and she could try getting one of those Power Mac 5260's running ). The kids, though, still treat me like the same computer wizard, but I've also gained the reputation of "the mac guy," so if a sub ever pulls out her iBook, all 99 eyes in the room are on me, and they all have to mention to me that it's a Mac.

I only know of one, maybe two other people that use a mac. One teacher is stil using her 5260 with OS 8 because she hasn't changed her class a single bit (not exaggerating) since she got it, and all her important papers are on it.

 

[3nm]

the comp classes i've had were pretty alright... i've had the most fun when i was setting up a fake biz site sold "happy pills."

i found most of the teachers were pretty chill as well. my buds and i often just screwed around during class and did nothing... but i'm really glad that i learned typing. it proved to be useful in college and in the real world.

i guess one of the teachers took his job a little bit too seriously... he committed suicide after i graduated HS.

 

[noaccess]

I knew it pretty well, though, and so I'd get a lot of questions from teachers, and their problems were solved by simply dragging a window so he/she could see the entire thing on the screen. People think this is amazing, so I was deemed the computer wizard.

OK, I have to admit this, but... that's... OK, you got me.

If that happened to me I'd put an ad in the newspaper asking 50$/hour for IT stuff. There was a thread back in the day: are more mac users smarter than average... vs. peecee users? I think the answer is on the yes side.

Although, newer teachers don't really ask me for help anymore because they know I'm a mac guy (on the first day, one teacher was talking about what would happen if your printer wouldn't work, and to bring it on a disk, and she could try getting one of those Power Mac 5260's running ). The kids, though, still treat me like the same computer wizard, but I've also gained the reputation of "the mac guy," so if a sub ever pulls out her iBook, all 99 eyes in the room are on me, and they all have to mention to me that it's a Mac.

Hope you get at least some credit for all you do for them... classmates and teachers.

I only know of one, maybe two other people that use a mac. One teacher is stil using her 5260 with OS 8 because she hasn't changed her class a single bit (not exaggerating) since she got it, and all her important papers are on it.

Whoa... Mtv should change their show to Pimp my Skool.
At least that I'd watch... especially if it were my school in the first episode.

 

[iMacZealot]

OK, I have to admit this, but... that's... OK, you got me.

If that happened to me I'd put an ad in the newspaper asking 50$/hour for IT stuff. There was a thread back in the day: are more mac users smarter than average... vs. peecee users? I think the answer is on the yes side.


Hope you get at least some credit for all you do for them... classmates and teachers.


Whoa... Mtv should change their show to Pimp my Skool.
At least that I'd watch... especially if it were my school in the first episode.

She is by far the worst teacher I've ever had...she hasn't changed her class in about 18 years (not exagerrating), she is on such a high pedestal that she treats 99% of her class terribly and 1% like saints, she is a non-catholic at a catholic school but pretends to be catholic and gives lectures about how we aren't good catholics, and I honestly question if she's an accredited teacher. Our school doesn't check for that stuff, and she's been there so long that I don't think she's kept it up. I honestly question if I've learned a single thing from her class in the two years I've had her.

 

[noaccess]

Can you talk to your parents about her? Or someone who'll have good credibility if/when you decide to file a complaint against her. It's not only teachers who have the rights to question a student's ethics.

If she's not effective at what she's doing, then I'm sorry, she shouldn't be doing a job that requires skills (social or otherwise) she doesn't have. I'm sure there are laws that regulate that sort of thing.

I don't think I'd have an easy time silently putting up with that sort of thing either.

Oh, and congrats on your 1000th post, only noticed it now

 

[Mammoth]

Hmm.. 8th grade computers class

Over the summer the school replaced their Dells with Mac Minis. Great, I think, we'll be able to do all sorts of fun things. Boy was I wrong. Our actual teacher is a Drama/ELA teacher and I can't put into words what's wrong with her. A prime example would be that the mouse wouldn't click (the button was greyed out) and she could see the cursor moving, but still decided to check to see if it was plugged in. Her aside, the teacher actually teaching us is an old man that's worked all over, including NASA. I am puzzled as to why he left to teach us. He seems to get fed up easily and laughs at his jokes regardless of how stupid they are, even if he knows it. Because he's so smart, he decides to start teaching us without telling us how to actually use the Macs, because I think I was the only one who had one. So in the end, the teacher in charge of our marks doesn't really interact with us much besides making sure we're on task.

Our first unit/subject was animation. The teacher, being the genius he is, has us use Macromedia Fireworks to make each individual slide and import it into iMovie. The whole time we had Flash installed. Having 512MB of RAM didn't help. By the end of the year, 4 months later, we made 30 second movies, composed mainly of iMovie titles. What worried me was that we were supposed to learn basic Java during the end of the year.

Here we are, 4 months after the new year and we've learned basic HTML, something a good few of us did last year. We've done 3 or so units/subjects with a little over 2 months to go into Java and other stuff. I seriously doubt the old man will teach us what Java is.

This year computers was a load of sh*t. I haven't learned anything at all and I think a week in my grade was in the negatives because I didn't hand in a poster about advertising that had nothing to do with computers. (They were setting up the Macs for a while so we sat around in the drama room doing a drama project [Drama was mandatory in 7th grade and we did that project] that went onto our report card) Apparently we're getting a new teacher next year, which should be good because we've hit rock bottom so we can only get better. But I could be wrong because the cafeteria staff was just replaced, and I thought they were expensive when the new staff charges $6.00 for a hamburger.

End.

She is by far the worst teacher I've ever had...she hasn't changed her class in about 18 years (not exagerrating), she is on such a high pedestal that she treats 99% of her class terribly and 1% like saints, she is a non-catholic at a catholic school but pretends to be catholic and gives lectures about how we aren't good catholics, and I honestly question if she's an accredited teacher. Our school doesn't check for that stuff, and she's been there so long that I don't think she's kept it up. I honestly question if I've learned a single thing from her class in the two years I've had her.

If you're in the US, Canada, or somewhere RateMyTeachers is active, go ahead and destroy her reputation, if she has one.

 

[iMacZealot]

Can you talk to your parents about her? Or someone who'll have good credibility if/when you decide to file a complaint against her. It's not only teachers who have the rights to question a student's ethics.

If she's not effective at what she's doing, then I'm sorry, she shouldn't be doing a job that requires skills (social or otherwise) she doesn't have. I'm sure there are laws that regulate that sort of thing.

Well, I'm the youngest of five, and compared to the rest of the family, she's my best friend. She told my brother that he wouldn't amount to anything and would become a druggie, and she'd do anything to antagonize my oldest sister. Hell, she even married the gym teacher who threw a hammer at a kid and pushed my sister to the floor (got him fired for that).

As long as I just don't play her game when she wants me to, and if I just roll my eyes and do the same assignments I did last year, it's okay. I'll call her out on something unjust, like intentionally locking kids out of the classroom just to stare and laugh at them while delaying the class, but I honestly don't care anymore because this is the last month I'll ever see her again.

We've challenged her, but our school's had a revolving door of 7 clown-class principals in 7 years, from the principal who would call a snow day on an 85 degree day in May, to the current one who makes a gooey speech at every opportunity she can get, and there's no stopping this devil of a person. She knows, though, that I won't take her crap, so she does less of it around me.

 

[iBookG4user]

I go to a private school that uses 700MHz Celeron processors with 256MB of RAM and 6GB hard drives. let's just say that they are not good for the photoshop class I am in where we make the yearbook. I on the other hand get to use my nice MacBook Pro for the photoshop class that I am in and transfer the files to and from the server via my 2GB flash drive . In the photoshop class that I am in there are several facts:

1) I am the only person in the class who knows how to use photoshop.

2) The teacher does not know how to use computers in general it seems as they know absolutely nothing about photoshop.

3) The teacher preaches that we should be using a web program called webease over photoshop that let's you do almost nothing besides crop a picture and move a picture around the page .

4) The teacher says that I do not make good use of time when 100% of my class time is spent on doing the yearbook and helping people learn photoshop (I basically have to teach them myself) .

5) The teacher says I love my PCs (She has also said that she has never used a Mac) whenever I say that the school should use Macs because they are MUCH better for what the PCs are being used for. (mainly photoshop)

6) The class is my absolute least favourite class right now.

7) I have taken the class before in my freshman year with the old teacher and the class was awesome.

Side note: Out of the 10 Laptops brought to school 8 of them are Macs and 2 are PCs. Maybe the school should note that the majority of laptops brought to school are Macs.

 

[noaccess]

Well, I'm the youngest of five, and compared to the rest of the family, she's my best friend. She told my brother that he wouldn't amount to anything and would become a druggie, and she'd do anything to antagonize my oldest sister. Hell, she even married the gym teacher who threw a hammer at a kid and pushed my sister to the floor (got him fired for that).

As long as I just don't play her game when she wants me to, and if I just roll my eyes and do the same assignments I did last year, it's okay. I'll call her out on something unjust, like intentionally locking kids out of the classroom just to stare and laugh at them while delaying the class, but I honestly don't care anymore because this is the last month I'll ever see her again.

We've challenged her, but our school's had a revolving door of 7 clown-class principals in 7 years, from the principal who would call a snow day on an 85 degree day in May, to the current one who makes a gooey speech at every opportunity she can get, and there's no stopping this devil of a person. She knows, though, that I won't take her crap, so she does less of it around me.

Wow... if I got everything right, then it's too much stress for someone in your position to just take. Hang in there... and if I got the last-month thing right and you're graduating, then congratulations... you're one step closer to being independent, if that sounds good to you.

 

[iMacZealot]

Wow... if I got everything right, then it's too much stress for someone in your position to just take. Hang in there... and if I got the last-month thing right and you're graduating, then congratulations... you're one step closer to being independent, if that sounds good to you.

Yeah...that's all I'm looking forward to...our family's been at that school way too long.

 

[Jasonbot]

My computer class involves Java and computer theory. We learn Theory via some self-study Powerpoint course and Java is "taught" By some useless woman who last did coding when COBOLD was around. She honestly has no idea what is going on and will often "forget" to teach us whole sections of Java, there is another teacher of Java at school who does infact teach his students everything allowing his class the advantage when it comes to programming!

We use only PC's in class which honestly really sucks a lot! And just another note about Java: We've been doing it for a year and a bit now and haven't even started doing object-orientated coding The most advanced thing done is probably the nested for loop with arrays!

 

[Done-on-a-Mac]

I remember when i took my Computer class in HS. Had to have been in 98. We had NO Macs what so ever. I really doubt anyone knew what a Mac was.

The class has Windows 95 on P1 processors I believe. The computer also had the 5 inch floppy drives & a dot matrix printer. They sucked. The teacher basically knew nothing of computers. Though she acted like she was a goddess & went on power trips when ever she could. She would give a diagram of a computers innards & say what each hardware part was. The parts were already 5+ years old so everything listed was out of date. We never learned the OS/word processing/spreadsheet/digital art/coding. She finally just installed the original Quake & told us to play on LAN. So I learned nothing. I grew up on DOS & Windows 3.1. So I knew some stuff already but what was being taught was archaic.

What is odd is I remember her email address. It was her name but reversed. Ms Crisp = crispms. or crisPMS as a few students would say.

Also, the class had my friends who were also geeks so we all knew everthing being taught. We just hated being retaught & tested on out of date knowledge. I guess that may be why she gave us Quake to play with.

 

[Chrismcfall]

In my IT class at school, we use PC's. We dont have a permanent teacher, usually. We go on the internet for an hour, with a random word/PPT document opened just in case. That's it.

But next year should be better, because I'm taking something called DiDa, which is basically double ICt, but you do things like flash/fireworks.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

My computer class involves Java and computer theory. We learn Theory via some self-study Powerpoint course and Java is "taught" By some useless woman who last did coding when COBOLD was around. She honestly has no idea what is going on and will often "forget" to teach us whole sections of Java, there is another teacher of Java at school who does infact teach his students everything allowing his class the advantage when it comes to programming!

We use only PC's in class which honestly really sucks a lot! And just another note about Java: We've been doing it for a year and a bit now and haven't even started doing object-orientated coding The most advanced thing done is probably the nested for loop with arrays!

The language is COBOL(COmmon Business Oriented Language). Its still used in a lot of places on mainframes and kicks ass for generating reports. Its kinda like FORTRAN for slow people.

As for doing no OOP in java, thats a little silly, but I have heard it said that "Real programmers can write FORTRAN in any language."

 

[Sdashiki]

I remember 1st grade (1986), and there was a workbook the teacher was showing us.

It was of a QWERTY keyboard of generic proportions, with only the alphabet letters on it.

She asked "where is the spacebar", "where is the enter key", "delete" etc.

Out of the 20 kids or so, I was the only one who had EVER seen a computer keyboard, because I had a //e at home. Thanks dad. Made no sense no one had even used a typewriter either, but whatever.

By 5th grade every classroom had LC3s.

By 8th grade, the entire school district was wired together and we had an actual LC5xx series computer room.

 

[MacAnkka]

Well, I just got out of the Gymnasium (I think that's the right word.. it's the Finnish equiv. of High School). Most of the computers were at least decent. something like 2ghz processors and 512mb-1gb memory. Win XP.
LCD-screens on every one of them. No Macs, though. They really are quite unknown around here, only the people with some connections to printing/photoshopping jobs and nerds know about them. That does mean that there is almost no negativity against them, though.

During the first two years I was there, our IT teacher was a pretty lazy one. He didn't actually teach anything. He always explained that the we had to study independently. Basicaly, that meant that everyone played Quake 3/WC3/DotA, listened to music or just surfed the net. On some occasions, the teacher would show some "funny" videos he had downloaded from the net ages ago, read his own poems, show an Opera-DVD or talk about rocks (he was also a geologist). Basically anything, but teach something relevant. I guess he had to pretend he was doing at least something. Of course, no-one really cared. The computer classes were just an easy way to get some courses, in most people's eyes. Most of the people didn't even know what the topic of the course was supposed to be. Sometimes, people came to a computer class, expecting to learn something, but they got used to the workings of the class quite fast .

On the third, last, year I was there, the teacher was changed. The new one was a lot stricter, but actually quite good. Ofcourse some of the people who had gotten used to the old one were pretty surprised when they had to actually do something. He taught the basics of C++ on one course, and quite decently too.

 

[iMacZealot]

So, today, I asked people whether they use a Mac or a PC...one person said that they use a Mac, one said that they didn't use either...their computer was made by Microsoft ...and the rest used PCs. My teacher turns out to use a Mac albeit his inability to properly spell "I-Pod NaNo". I didn't ask him any other questions, though, because he didn't seem to be in a good mood. He still thinks I'm an idiot because I can't use XP right, but I think he'll be impressed to find that I've been using Final Cut Express since I was 12. That's what my presentation is on (how to make a film in FCE), but the girls were too busy complaining they didn't have time to finish it and were singing Celine Dion (wonder why they didn't have time), and the other guys were too busy looking at porn and openly swearing in front of the teacher.

 

[zflauaus]

Well, I had Formatting first semester which is basically learning how to format business letters and what not. Basically, I forgot all of that now. It was actually a very boring class because I got the assignments done in like the first 10 minutes and had the rest of the time to browse the web, and go here of course.

Now I have Computer Concepts which is basically learning about Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, HTML, and QBasic. We are basically skipping Access (yay!!!) and HTML (boo!!!) and going to QBasic sometime in the next couple of weeks. It is still a very boring class and it has brought all of those applications to an all time low. And I learned that Office 2004 is extremely different than Office 2002. And I still do the Apple shortcuts instead of Windows shortcuts.

My school is exclusively PC, Dells to be exact. They all have CRT monitors which hurt my eyes, but all the teachers have LCDs. Kind of mad about that one. I don't think anyone has touched a Mac in their life, and my computer teacher doesn't even own a computer at all!!! He just comes and uses the school's computer whenever he wants to.

And I'm doing this so I can move onto Web Design and IMD (Interactive Media Development), because my school's site need a major overhaul. I'm mean, just look at it!!