Monday, March 10, 2003

It was sunny and 68^o here in southwest central Indiana on Saturday. By Sunday morning we had 22^o and snow flurries. The old saying fits many regions well, but especially here now, "If you don't like the weather here in Indiana, just wait a minute and it will change." Spring surely must be just around the corner.

When Charter Schools Go Wrong

Michael Winerip has written a sad, but interesting column for the New York Times, When It Goes Wrong at a Charter School. Winerip focuses on some Arizona charter schools, "America's most charter-school-friendly state," and relates a number of horror stories of parents disappointed by what they found when they enrolled their kids in charter schools in that state.

How to Handle the Subject of War

In another New York Times column, Sam Dillon looks at how schools are attempting to teach current events about the potential war with Iraq in Schools Seek Balance as Students Join War Debate.

The Boston Globe's Laura Pappano tells of teachers' approaches to discussing possible military action in Iraq in Potential war poses test for teachers. She quotes Ayer High School social studies teacher John Radcliffe as saying, "The greatest compliment I get is when students ask me whether I'm liberal or conservative. They don't know." Pappano notes, "It is tricky for teachers to navigate personal views on sensitive subjects from race relations to abortion, cloning to capital punishment."

Inclusion or Separate Classroom or School

The Washington Post's Ylan Q. Mui has a good column on the difficult subject of "least restrictive environment," School's Mission Now in Question. He tells of the Cedar Lane School in Howard County, Maryland, and it's uphill battle for a new facility in a time when inclusion reigns. We linked here several weeks ago to a similar column out of Colorado, Meeting special needs -- An emotional school-choice battle: Segregated or mainstream.

Emergency Planning Site

A Washington Post column last week by John Mintz, Schools to Get Anti-Terror Web Site, reported the Department of Education has set up a new web site for school Emergency Planning. (Note: Link in Post column doesn't work.)

A Good Deal on Power Macs

Annie and I continue to try to provide a free take-home computer to each of my full-time language arts students. This year I felt thrilled to move up to supplying the kids with Power Mac 7200s. Having exhausted my supply of 7200s (six have been placed so far this year, with one currently at school for student training and the last one at home undergoing final setup there), I returned to eBay, only to find that those folks selling 7200s had gotten singularly greedy. While initial bids varied from $5-50, most vendors of the model were tacking on shipping charges of $30 or more! It appeared that staying with that particular model would push our costs for just the CPU of each take-home unit to over $60.

I began to look at other models of Macs, both "below" and "above" the 7200. I was surprised to find a eBay seller moving out a pallet of 7300/200s, 7300/180s, and 7600/132s with very reasonable shipping. The units run $15 each with $15-18 for shipping, getting the price down to $30 per unit. All of these units come without a hard drive, but I found from my initial purchase of five units that the seller is playing fair with the internals of the machines. The units are filthy inside and out, which is normal for such purchases, but carefully packaged, and with varying amounts of RAM. VRAM chips were still in place, as were cache cards, cables, CD-ROM and floppy drives.

If you're in the market for an older Mac such as the ones above, the eBay seller is lemonheader (Jason Knott). You'll need to sort through his usual five pages of offerings to find the Power Macs. He also has quite an assortment of Mac PCI cards and PC equipment for sale. The current sale for 7300s expires today (Monday), but will probably be reposted.

Now, I'm shopping for 1-2 gig hard drives and PC-to-Mac monitor adapters:-).

Computers in the Classroom

I've finally finished the first installment of what I hope will be a three or four-part View from the Classroom series, Computers in the Classroom: Fourth Year Classroom Tour. This installment deals with where we've been with technology in my classroom and what hardware tools we now have at hand.

Update on Antioch Single vs. Dual Platform Decision

Jeff Adkins has posted an update on the decision-making process of his school system in evaluating whether to go to a single computer platform. In Defending the Mac in Three Minutes or Less, Jeff tells how he attempted to make his case before his school board. Actually, Jeff's sub-headline, "Notes on Working with the School Board," is more descriptive of the column. This column may prove useful to anyone else faced with a similar situation.

Devotion for February March 9-15, 2003

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is The Silencer of Hatred. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Just a quick update with a few postings.

Unique school prepares its final lessons is a really interesting piece about someone who began their own school and did it their way...and maybe the "right" way.

Sylvan selling tutoring business...well, the title pretty well says it all.

Hop, skip... and software? is an interesting piece about whether computers have a place in the classroom.