My Programming History
The Cost
You may be wondering why I got into programming to begin with. After all, it is costing me money and time and I haven't as of yet made any money off of it. It costs me money because I have bought all of my own software and the computer to support it as well as spending loads of money on books to educate myself, domain names, and a website host. I spend money on CD's, memory sticks, computer support, CD labels, travel to out of state schools that are testing my software, art classes, computer classes, the list goes on. I have reduced my teaching load to one class per semester and sometimes taking semesters off so that I have more time to work on programs. I could be teaching 12 credits or even full time as I have passed up opportunities for full time positions when they have come along. So why am I doing all of this? The only sane answer I can think of is I just feel driven to do it. It is hard to explain, the excitement I feel when I get an idea for a program, the frustration I go through when working on the program, and the euphoria when it all comes together. When I was a little kid, I started collecting and solving puzzles. Programming is not much different really. I get an idea and it is like a puzzle to be solved. The puzzle is how to make the idea work. To top it all off, when a student tells me that one of my programs has helped them understand a concept that they were struggeling with, well that gives me a sense of satisfaction beyond belief.
Getting Started
When Lansing Community College first gave faculty members web page space, I was one of the first to apply for a site on their server. My son, who was in eighth grade at the time helped me make my first web page. I studied the code and soon I was making web pages of my own. I was tired of carrying loads of extra handouts to class to give to students who missed class, so I started putting all of my own handouts and the department handouts on a website. Then when my students missed class it became their responsibility to go to the website and printoff any handouts that were given that day. I got in the habit of putting up a brief update that told what we covered and what handouts were given with links to the handouts. Pretty soon, I had a deal worked out with the department and they paid me to do this work. Not long after someone in the division noticed what our department had done and they sent a letter out basically giving our chair a pat on the back for saving the school money by having students print up their own handouts.
Not long after that, LCC started offering online courses. I became interested as soon as I was aware of the offerings. I asked what I needed to do, in order to be able to teach online and the chairman of my department told me to take some FrontPage classes that were being offered by the CTE. Soon afterwards, the person in our department that taught the only online class left the school with very little notice and I inherited his class. It didn't take long before I started dreaming of making the class more interactive by adding small programs that help reinforce concepts. I got a new class to teach online and the first thing I did was spend about three days searching the internet for programs to enhance the course. I found a few, some of which I still use today, but I had ideas for more. It took me a while to get started, but I started programming first in PHP, and later in Flash. I had to get a different website to host my PHP programs, because it is a server side program that the LCC website would not support. That website eventually became lsquaredmath.us and lsquaredmath.com.
Currently
Now, I am working on taking my programs to the next level by making them SCORM compliant. My programs are not as good as I want them to be yet. I have lots of ideas to improve them, but my focus now is getting them compliant and then I will go back to work on the improvements and the new ideas. It is a never ending process and if I had known what all I was getting myself into when I started, I probably never would have gotten started. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss for I wouldn't trade what I am doing now for anything, except possibly some more knowledge so I could be further along with what I am doing.