Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Electronic School's cover story for this quarter, How Young is Too Young? contains an discussion of the possible harmful effects of general computer use by youngsters. Besides the usual concerns about ergonomics, the column also explores the issues of isolation, imagination and creativity, and the need for manipulation for development of fine motor control beyond the use of a mouse and keyboard. While Kathleen Vail's excellent column focuses primarily on kindergarten children, the issues discussed can be effectively applied to older students as well.

In another column, Electronic School considers the question of ownership of teacher created materials. While such materials have been historically considered the property of the creator, this practice certainly doesn't follow the customary work-for-hire concept in the business realm (real world?). I had to consider these issues a number of years ago when I began writing the MATH DITTOS 2 series. The obvious answer at that time for me was to make sure that all creation was done off-school with non-school materials -- and, to put the school administration on notice of my ownership claims.

MacCentral's Dennis Sellers reports, "Apple's Colleges of Education Institute has a full enrollment this year. However, you can sign up for the waiting list in case there are any cancellations." As reported here previously, the June 21-25 free summer workshop "is to help instructors in departments of education integrate technology in their own instruction and show their prospective teachers how to do the same."

Another MacCentral posting today, Apple aids initiative to improve teacher quality, states "Apple certainly seems determined to regain lost ground in the education market." While the column lauds Apple's efforts, the one thing missing is any mention of Apple addressing the price point issue that continues to sap its education marketshare.

On the Macintouch Reader Reports: iBook 2001, Tom Koons wrote that he had purchased an early iBook 2001 and later one with the combo drive. He suggests that Apple may have made some improvements in the trackpad. "It has a more textured feel but not lumpy. It also seems to be more precise in mouse movement."

The New York Times Sunday Edition carried an interesting discussion of testing and tracking of students. Schools' Difficult Search for 'Just Right' Standards, by Kate Zernike, explores the question of just how high of standards to set in testing.

The June 20 issue of Education Week has a good column by Lisa Fine, Pressing Need Seen To Catch Autism Earlier. Summarizing a report from National Academy Press, Fines quotes:

Twenty years ago, between two and five cases of autistic disorders were reported per 10,000 people nationwide. Now the disorders have been identified as affecting as many as one in 500 people...it is unclear whether the increase is due to a true jump in cases or to a rise in awareness and identification of the disorder.

 

Education at school and home is the primary form of treatment for autistic disorders...but services offered for students with some form of autism vary greatly from state to state and district to district. Schools should provide at least 25 hours a week of services year round for children diagnosed with a disorder on the autistic spectrum, the NRC panelists argue.

MacUser UK (free registration required) reports today that Sun Microsystems is no longer working on the Star Office for Mac port.

Patrick Luby, who had previously been in charge of the team building StarOffice for Mac OS X, confirmed in an interview on the OpenOffice.org Web site that he, along with his team, had been reassigned to the Solaris and Windows ports of StarOffice.

They're at it again in Ohio over school funding. The Toledo Blade reports that attorneys for the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding have urged the Ohio Supreme Court "to consider stopping the recently passed $45 billion state budget from taking effect July 1, or cut off state aid to schools entirely, until the General Assembly complies with past court orders." According to the Blade, the Coalition represents 515 school districts in Ohio that have opposed "the state's school-funding system in court since 1991. Public schools in Ohio are funded by a mix of state funds and local property taxes - a system that the 4-3 court majority twice since 1997 has said causes inequities between property-wealthy and poor districts."

The Ohio situation seems to boil down to the schools wanting, and probably needing, more funds that the state General Assembly has allocated. Ohio, like many other states, is projecting a decrease in state tax revenues. The Coalition is apparently advocating a general income tax increase.

What makes the Ohio case pertinent to many of us outside of Ohio is that Ohio's funding system is similar to that of many other states. In other words, situations such as Ohio's could land in your or my backyard one day.

I went to a school surplus auction a couple of weeks ago looking for a Mac IIci. I came home with six computers and a 50-pound box of miscellaneous items but no IIci! Since I had nothing better to write about this week for View from the Classroom, A Surplus Auction appears today as the best I've got for now.

While checking out a shareware translator, I ran across a URL to a free online translator on Alta Vista. I only testing one phrase (almost my total foreign language repertoire), but it came out okay.

Joel Davies spoke out yesterday on Applelust about a CNet column and his experiences with Dell products. While I disagree with Joel and many others' assessment of the CNet column, I'm posting a link as I think Joel may present a valid description of dealing with Dell tech support for education. When Steve Jobs says Apple is going to retake the education market, the Mac web cheers. When Dell representatives are quoted as saying they're going to stay number one in education, the Mac web almost universally cries "foul." Shame on us if we can't be more objective than that.

Finally, I'm in love! No, I'm not looking for version 3.0 of wife.exe, but I found a column on The New York Times site that most teachers will find a pleasant respite from the daily bashing we get in the news.

Thursday, June 21, 2001

Chancery Software, maker of student management software, yesterday announced development of a Mac OS X compatible version of Mac School, the school level component of their student management solutions. I think this is the first major Mac support announcement from any administrative and/or school management software firm since Apple announced the purchase of PowerSchool, a competing school management product. While now in direct competition with Apple for school data management software, Chancery's Lee Wilson tactfully remarked that they preferred to view the situation as "coopitition."

While exploring the Chancery site yesterday, I noticed a case study page for one of their large customers, the Henrico County Public Schools. Although now well known for their purchase of 23,000 new iBooks, a Chancery representative noted Henrico County explored the PowerSchool option, but chose to stay with the Chancery software package they had been using.

While the Mac School OS X compatible updates won't be available until sometime "during the 2001-2002 school year" and no downloadable demo of the current version is posted to the Chancery site, I did find downloadable demos of Chancery's eGrades for Macintosh (2.5 MB) and Windows (1.3 MB). When I opened up the sample class in the Mac version of eGrades, the look and feel reminded me a lot of a ClarisWorks/AppleWorks spreadsheet -- in other words, comfortable and familiar. It appeared to be a very usable product.

I was thrilled to see any kind of educationally related software update appear this week, as Educators' News received a very nice plug in Joe "Scienceman" Martha's MacHome Classroom Weekly Newsletter, saying the site was "updated daily with all sorts of juicy tidbits relevant to a Mac-filled classroom." We've been a little weak this week (sorry) on juicy educational software!

Yesterday's Seattle Times carried a timely column yesterday by Linda Shaw, Wanted: Special-education teachers. The column tells of one special education class taught for the entire school year by substitute teachers and explores the national shortage of teachers in some critical areas.

With all due respect to the wonderful As the Apple Turns site, I'm beginning to feel this site has become As the Ohio Supreme Court Turns after reading of Wednesday's oral presentations before that body (the court, not ATAT). While no decision has been rendered, it appears from the judges' questioning of the state's attorneys that the court may once again rule against the state's school funding system. One justice is quoted by The Plain Dealer as saying, "It's designed to produce 'average' schools, not 'adequate' ones." The Columbus Dispatch pointed out:

In an earlier decision, the court warned state officials against basing allocations for school funding on residual budgeting: using money available after other programs are funded instead of giving schools what is needed to provide a "thorough and efficient'' education, as required by the Ohio Constitution.

The Cincinnati Post reminded readers, "School decision may mean tax hike." Most sources noted that the justices appeared evenly split, 3-3, on the issue, with a remaining justice not appearing to tip his hand. These are, however, the same justices who have previously ruled twice, 4-3, against the state's previous funding attempts.

Micromat's TechTool 1.2.1 morphed yesterday into TechTool Lite 3.0.1. (What happened to 3.0?) Don't try to fit the new version on a floppy disk, however, as it has swelled on my hard drive from 804K to 2.5 MB. The extra heft is due to a flurry of new features, including the ability to test PRAM, change file type and creator codes, the ability to list, save, and print information about the files on the drive, a floppy drive test and cleaning tool, and system file, finder, and other tests. Of course, it still does a good job of zapping the PRAM and rebuilding the desktop of a Mac. And...it's still freeeeeeee!

A Tale Of Two Teachers on ctnow.com is one of those wonderful success stories that never seem to find their way into the news. How nice that this one did!

CNN Education has a piece about Web report cards keep parents keyed in (Hey! I like these guys. The leave dangling prepositions, too!). Products mentioned for such web posted report cards include PowerSchool (Apple Computer), K12Planet (Chancery Software), ParentCONNECTxp (Windows only), and LetterGrade.

The Mac OS X 10.0.4 updater is available via the software control panel of OS X or by direct download. I saw the news of its release first on Bill Fox's MacsOnly site, and downloaded the update overnight. It installed with no glitches. I was pleased to see that I can finally cut and paste between OS X and Classic applications in OS X after the update. Wait! I just found that URLs from Internet Explorer 5.1 don't copy to the clipboard and then paste into Claris Home Page under the new update. (Yes, I'm actually composing this part of today's posting in OS X!)

Speaking of OS X, not all of the comments by some of the original Mac team at the MacHack conference keynote were kind. David Read, reporting for MacCentral, has a nice review of the comments about OS X, working with Steve Jobs, and the creation of the Macintosh at the MacHack keynote by Daniel Kottke, Bill Atkinson, Donn Denman, Andy Hertzfeld, Jef Raskin, Caroline Rose and Randy Wigginton. Read quotes Jef Raskin as saying:

"The internal improvements of Mac OS X are long overdue, but the UI, well, yuk," said Raskin. "Apple has ignored for years all that has been learned about developing UIs. It's unprofessional, incompetent, and it's hurting users."

Raskin's comment makes me feel a whole lot better, as I have had real difficulty getting to like OS X. Beyond the clipboard issue, absence of serial port printing, lack of support for CD burning on many third party external burners, nagging permissions problems, and overall sluggish performance, I simply have not come to appreciate the new Aqua GUI. For me, it has not been a work enhancer.

Others, such as Paul Wiffen writing for Sound on Sound in Apple Notes are even less charitable to the new OS and to the termination of adding new features to the Classic OS. His comments were prompted by the removal of features from the audio side of mLAN from OS 9 that he saw working at the WorldWide Developers Conference. Wiffen states:

But, one morning, Apple's answer to Marlon Brando (one of Apple employees' favourite terms for their leader is apparently 'The Jobfather') appeared and decreed "No new features in OS9."

While Wiffen's piece is obviously a rant, it is pretty informative and entertaining.

The PowerBook Source has some helpful suggestion about storing and recharging quantities of the iBook 2001 in Storing Laptops in Schools: Not Many Comprehensive Options Yet. Author Frank Klassner notes:

If one wants to argue that traditional hallway student lockers are fine as long as we pretend that recharge support is optional, consider that (1) most schools do not have 20 power receptacles placed around each classroom within 3 feet of any student desk, and (2) Murphy's Law implies that on any given day at least 50% of a class will discover their laptops' batteries need to be recharged RIGHT NOW or all their work will be lost.

Applelinks John Farr notes that Asante will announce a $10,000 educational grant at NECC.The National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) begins with pre-conference meetings this weekend. For Macintosh users, the big news will come Monday with Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs keynote speech for the event. Sadly, since we couldn't take the entire staff of Educators' News to the conference, we all decided to stay home.

Ending the week on a positive note, I found that NetFinder X (v 2.3) worked flawlessly in uploading today's update, archive, and related items. I was especially pleased to see that drag and drop uploading worked as well in OS X as it does under System 9.1.