Monday, March 24, 2003

Airport Card Fix for iBooks

Jim Crittenden sent along a possible fix for weak or non-operative Airport cards in Macintosh iBooks. I'd mentioned in the column, Computers in the Classroom: Fourth Year Classroom Tour, that once we got all of our iBooks currently out for service back that we'd have to send in another batch for faulty Airport cards.

Last year, I called Apple about a bad airport card, and they suggested that I switch it out with one from another (any other) machine. I did, and both card started working again! It's a fix that reminds me of the 'old' days of pre-ppc workarounds. Anyway, I've had to do this a couple more times, and it has worked every time. It's worth a try.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to try this one, but as Jim says, "It's worth a try." Thanks, Jim!

Rewriting IDEA Legislation

Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post reports on a House Republican proposal to reform special education in House GOP Seeks to Revise Law Governing Special Education. Fletcher writes that the House Republican's proposal includes "encouraging earlier intervention, reducing the law's cumbersome paperwork requirements and allowing parents whose children attend under-performing schools to use public money to buy private services." House Republicans conveniently leave out any mention of full funding of special education, but Fletcher writes, "Members of Congress complain, however, that the biggest problem with the law is that the federal government has never adequately funded it."

NCLB Strikes Again

Two recent postings by Chicago Sun-Times education reporter Rosalind Rossi pretty well tell the story of what No Child Left Behind has wrought. On March 11, Rossi reported "Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan Monday ordered $30 million in cutbacks next school year," in Schools plan $30 million in cuts. Last week, she wrote in Chicago students to get private tutors that "17,000 students in the worst-performing Chicago public schools will be offered up to $23.8 million in private after-school tutoring by such well-known vendors as Sylvan Learning Systems and Kumon...required under the new federal No Child Left Behind law.

New York Times education writer Michael Winerip tells of the "handful of men and women of the Department of Education dispatched by the Bush administration to wander the country, defending the new No Child Left Behind Act," in A Pervasive Dismay on a Bush School Law. Winerip writes, "As I travel the country, I find nearly universal contempt for this noble-sounding law signed last year by President Bush."

Here in Indiana, the "Indiana Board of Education members reluctantly agreed Thursday to amend the state's school accountability rules to concur with the nation's No Child Left Behind law." The Indianapolis Star's Barb Berggoetz writes in State OKs federal education reforms that "Board members voiced concern that a majority of the state's schools would be labeled as failing under strict accountability measures of the federal law." The changes were made because the Board feared losing federal funding.

More Education Funding Cuts

School closings, four day weeks, layoffs, and lowered thermostats are some of the makings of Winnie Hu's New York Times column, In a Budget Fury, School Officials Seek New Ways to Save. Hu tells of tactics considered by school systems to survive the largest cutback in state school funding in New York's history.

While New York is cutting $1.3 billion in education spending, the Los Angeles Times' Evan Halper writes of a California $2.3 education spending cut in Davis Cuts, Shifts Funds.

North Carolina Report Finds Unhappy Teachers

The Raleigh (NC) News and Observer's Todd Silberman tells of a state sponsored survey of teachers in North Carolina in Teachers unhappy, survey finds. The survey designed to gather data to help in retaining teachers revealed deep dissatisfaction among a majority of North Carolina's teachers.

Parents' Guide to War Anxiety

The New York Times' Susan Gilbert provides A Parents' Guide to War Anxiety.

Positive Schools Program

The Boston Globe's Jill S. Gross writes about the the Positive Schools program in Good deportment becomes both a lesson and a game. Gross describes Positive Schools as "a program that help[s] schools use research-based methods to stem antisocial behavior before it occurs." The program sponsored by the May Institute is now in use by sixteen schools nationwide and appears to apply some solid, tested behavior modification principles to schoolwide discipline.

Another PowerSchool Shakeup

Nick dePlume reports on Think Secret that PowerSchool "laid off the support staff at its Layton, Utah office" last week, and they "would be replaced by new employees at PowerSchool, Folsom, Calif. office." If you're a PowerSchool user who needs knowledgeable, experienced tech support, this isn't good news!

Apple Roundtable Discussions

Apple Computer will host the "first in a series of roundtable discussions on innovative Apple technology solutions to help raise student achievement" on Thursday, April 3, 2003. The discussion centers about Apple's Curriculum Mobile Labs and will be presented at two different time periods Thursday. The conference will be available via webcast and as a telephone audio conference.

We've been testing Riverdeep's Destination Reading software provided with the Early Literacy Curriculum Mobile Lab for several months and have had a good response to the software from our younger learners. (My classroom is a K-6 LD resource room -- sorta a one room school for the disabled.)

I did have to chuckle when I read Apple's "How to participate" section on the roundtable discussions. It reads, "The best way to participate in our online roundtable discussions is via the webcast, in the comfort of your office, at your convenience." Right...in the comfort of my office.

Devotion for February March 23-29, 2003

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Too Many Internal Problems. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

Site News

This week I hope to put up three good updates and possibly another column. Last week's hiatus of publication was due to my writing over 25 Individualized Educational Plans and conducting twenty-three annual case review conferences. We're on spring break this week, so I can attend to the site a bit, but the following week I'll still face fourteen more ACRs, along with three placement conferences.

Send feedback to

New from SchwabLearning.org

This week the SchwabLearning.org's featured new article is from Dr. Shashank V. Joshi, What Parents Need to Know About Their Adolescents with ADHD. Also highlighted and/or updated this week are Successful People with LD and ADHD and Marriage under Pressure (from parenting a special education child).

Test Scores Improve in Big Cities

Greg Winter has an interesting column today in the New York Times, City Districts Show Gains in Series of School Tests. Winter tells of a report that shows some big city school districts are seeing significant improvement in student test scores, probably due to better class size.

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews talks about smaller high schools in this week's Class Struggles column, Smaller High Schools Proving to be Educationally More Effective.

Performance Driving

While it's really a stretch to call it an education column, John O'Dell's column, Mazda offers challenge that will enhance skills and deliver thrills, caught my eye today. He writes of a performance driving school to be held by Mazda at Hollywood Park in Inglewood on April 4 and 5, and at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County on April 12 and 13.

For the $39 fee, attendees will get a 20-minute "chalk talk" lesson on the basics of proper driving and car handling; behind-the-wheel instruction from professional drivers in braking and turning techniques; slalom driving and figuring out "racing lines" -- the best paths to maneuver smoothly through a curvy course.

 

And after the clinics, each student gets two chances to complete a timed run through an autocross course that emphasizes car control and handling over speed.

Wonder if they're coming to Indiana soon?

It's sunny and warm again today, and I'm on spring break, so this will be a short posting. I actually did most of the post on an old Compaq Deskpro (400 MHz) Annie rescued and I rebuilt as our primary home PC! Talk about "Low End!" It functions well for us, though. It connects well to an ISP that my Mac for some reason can't access. And, since I share my main ISP account (from my Mac) with my Dad who usually does his online stuff in the morning, I had to jump to the Compaq to put this together.

Hope it's sunny and warm in your region (or at least, in your heart).

Friday, March 28, 2003

Henry Norr Suspended from the San Francisco Chronicle

Henry Norr has been suspended by the San Francisco Chronicle for allegedly falsifying his timecard. The former MacWeek editor says he was actually suspended "for getting arrested last week in peaceful civil disobedience against the war" in a letter published by Jim Romenesko on Poynter Online. If Norr's allegations are true, it's a sad comment on the Chronicle's view of free speech.

Byliner carries a links page to 295 columns by Norr. As of Thursday evening (3/27/03), the Chronicle still carried a Norr archive page. Some of his articles from MacWeek are preserved on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. (If the previous link fails, go to the Internet Archive and search for www.macweek.com.)

I found the link to Norr's letter via Heng-Cheong Leong's excellent links page, My Apple Menu.

Another Teachers' Union Scandal

The Boston Globe's Anand Vaishnav reports in Union reveals major theft that "the Massachusetts Teachers Association's former finance director is under investigation after the theft of $802,000...in what association leaders described as a ''sophisticated embezzlement scheme.'"

Reverting to Mac OS X 10.2.3

If you're responsible for a cart of iBooks, or even just one, the Mac OS X 10.2.4 update may have given you a giant headache. All sorts of problems have cropped up with certain iBooks running the new version, including the date resetting to 1969 or 1970 at startup, lessened battery life, failure to start at all, and data corruption over a network. The problems and some possible workarounds are spelled out on a number of Mac sites, such as the Macintouch Reader Reports, Macintosh News Network, and MacFixIt...if you're a paid subscriber.

While I'm amused by Remy Davison's take on the issue over at Insanely Great Mac, "We're more inclined to think this isn't a bug - it's a feature," referring to going back to the late 60's, the 10.2.4 update has created havoc on our iBooks in terms of battery life, date resets, and all sorts of problems that were previously nonexistent with saving Word files to the server. The bug appears to affect certain vintage iBooks, and ours seem to be a mixed lot. Our 600 MHz iBook with the CD burner is unaffected by the date/time reset bug, but many of our 500 MHz iBooks have experienced problems under the update.

One workaround, since Apple hasn't yet published a fix for the problems, is to go back and do a clean install Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) and update back to 10.2.3. This also would require reinstalling some software titles, which sounded like an even bigger headache to me.

But...I got lucky. Last Friday, two iBooks came back from being serviced at Apple. Both had gone in (and came back) with Mac OS X 10.2.3 installed, although they were still set to boot into OS 9. I was able to transfer files that had been updated from a machine running 10.2.4 using Carbon Copy Cloner, but still left the 10.2.3 install intact. I did replace the Classic system folder, and it had to update itself on startup, but this seems to have fixed the date and time reset problem on the machines I have at home to work on over spring vacation.

While I keep a clean copy of our iBook ghost on an external Firewire drive, I'm currently transferring files by connecting two iBooks with a Firewire cable. The iBook with the files to be transferred is booted and the second iBook (to be re-ghosted) is started while holding down the "T" key. That mounts its drive on the other iBook. Then I use the Disk Utility program to erase the drive of the machine to receive the file transfers and transfer the files using Carbon Copy Cloner.

Some of our other problems included have Don Johnston, Inc.'s Co:Writer 4000 behaving poorly, Word not saving files to the server correctly, and the first kernel panics the kids have experienced using the iBooks under OS X. Sadly, we'd seen some improvements in connecting to our wireless network under 10.2.4, but we'll have to forgo those improvements in favor of system stability and our critical writing applications functioning properly (as they do under 10.2.3's classic box).

I still have to test the rest of the iBooks at school to determine which ones will have to be re-ghosted.

Okay, What's "Ghosting?"

As I proofed this posting, I realized I was guilty of a bit of geekspeak. Ghosting is the process of creating a master file called a ghost that includes everything you want to transfer to a hard drive of a machine you're setting up. I really think the term "ghost" comes from the Windows side. Symantec sells a product called Norton Ghost 2003 for transferring an entire package of operating system and applications to a hard drive.

Mac users have been able to easily transfer a "ghost" file to a new machine under OS 9 and earlier by simply using some kind of a boot (er...startup) disk other than the receiving machine's hard drive and copying the necessary files, including a system, from a CD, external drive, or whatever to the new machine. Occasionally, the system folder would need to be "blessed" after copying by dragging the system and finder files to the desktop and then dragging them back onto the system folder. When blessed, a custom icon appears on the system folder.

Under Mac OS X, all of this cool stuff for Mac users went out the window. Fortunately, Mike Bombich wrote and maintains Carbon Copy Cloner, which can transfer OS X files and the operating system from one drive to another. Carbon Copy Cloner is donationware, but Mike carries the following statement on his web site: "Please note that if you using CCC for an educational institution, you should NOT donate to Bombich Software. My heart is in Education and all software that I write shall always be free to Education."

Thanks, Mike!