Monday, September 19, 2005

The New York Times Leaves the Editorial Center Stage

At a time when the New York Times could have continued to make a positive impact on the American political scene, the newspaper today initiated their new New York Times Select "service." Under their new pay for content system, the first casualty of open news was the Times editorial pages.

The New York Times has long been known for taking tough stands when government figures get a bit above themselves. They've helped inform the American public though their many writers of views not consistent with the wishes of the party in power.

It's unfortunate that at a time when the Times could continue to make a positive impact on reining in the current administration through holding their failures up to the light of day, the Times has chosen instead to attempt to eek out a few more dollars by charging for their editorial content.

A New Addition

This is Katherine Anne Korak. She was born July 13, 2005 to our daughter, Jenny (pictured at right). My wife, Anne, and I have the privilege of helping Jenny raise Kat. While the "fussy period" reminds us that we're way too old to be doing the new parent thing again, we're thrilled with watching Kat grow day by day.

At a time when so many people are displaced and lives totally disrupted by the recent hurricane Katrina and so many others pray daily for the safety of their loved ones in Iraq, we feel truly blessed to be given the opportunity to help mold a new life. Even after all the years of parenting (6 kids) and teaching, it's a awesome responsibility.

Adding to the joy of the new arrival was news that Zach and Jill Wood are expecting next March! Zach still maintains his online devotion site at Zach Wood Devotions.

Bush Proposes Vouchers for Some Katrina Victims

The Washington Post's Nick Anderson reports in Bush Proposes Private School Relief Plan that President Bush has proposed "the largest federal school voucher program ever" of "nearly $500 million in federal funding to help displaced private school students from the Gulf Coast enroll in private schools elsewhere." Anderson notes, "The Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this week introduced a bipartisan education relief bill. The proposal from Sens. Mike Enzi and Edward M. Kennedy omitted school vouchers.

One New Orleans School Reopens in Baton Rouge

Los Angeles Times reporter Nicholas Riccardi tells of a hurricane ravaged school bouncing back in School Gets a New Start in Baton Rouge. Riccardi reports that almost 600 of the previous 1500 students will be on hand when Brother Martin High School resumes classes today in Baton Rouge. Classes will run from 3 to 10 P.M. in Catholic High School, a sister school also run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

Paige Joins Educational Consulting Firm

Associated Press writer Ben Feller reports that former Secretary of Education, "Rod Paige and his former top aides at the Education Department, have organized a consulting group to offer high-dollar advice on policies they helped create and later enforced, including the controversial No Child Left Behind Act." In Paige, top aides now education consultants, Feller tells that Paige has joined the Chartwell Education Group, which "has begun soliciting business...seeking clients ranging from state school chiefs to foreign leaders."

So this is solar minimum?

Dr. Tony Phillips asks in his most recent mini-lesson on Science@NASA, Solar Minimum Explodes, "So this is solar minimum?" Phillips notes that while the number of sunspots is diminishing as the solar minimum approaches, "we've experienced 4 severe geomagnetic storms and 14 more X-flares." Phillips quotes solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as saying, "The sunspots of 2005, while fewer, have done more than their share of exploding," making September 2005 the most active month on the sun since March 1991.

An old iMac Gets Some Use

I did a PRISM booth for Ball State education majors last week, but added a "new" wrinkle. While I took two laptops to the Secondary Teachers Information Fair, I only used one of them, instead letting an old slot-loading iMac run a kiosk-style PowerPoint presentation about the PRISM site. The iMac was also hardwired to Ball State's network for demonstrations of the site.

The iMac performed well, and students seemed more comfortable using it than my Compaq laptop. That may be due to he Ball State education department apparently being a Macintosh show. The Atrium, a dining and lounging area outside our meeting room, was populated with lots of iBooks and PowerBooks with only a rare PC laptop in sight.

While the iMac worked well in this particular instance, its future is clouded. This model, a 350 MHz with dual USB but no Firewire, sells today for around $60 (if you're a lucky seller) on eBay. Upgrades are problematic, as you can pick up a Firewire equipped motherboard for less than $50 used, but still have an underpowered machine. Dan Knight of Low-End Mac notes that some G4 motherboard upgrades (500 and 550 MHz) are available for around $200. That's a good bit of cash to put into an older machine when compared with a new Mac Mini selling at $499.

As this machine came back home when one of our daughters needed a PC for her college classes, I'll probably hang onto it. She may want it back for sentimental reasons at some point. It's sorta sad, however, when such a classy looking piece of hardware is obsolete well before its time. 

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Tuesday, September 20, 2005

High Stakes Testing

I ran out of room or energy or both yesterday before I got the following two columns posted. Both are from the Indianapolis Star. According to Daniels aims to push ISTEP into spring, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is staying with his plan to move Indiana's competency tests, known as ISTEP+, from the fall to the spring over the objections of Suellen Reed, Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Reed has said she feels fall is the best time to administer the competency tests so that remediation can take place during the same school year.

Cheating on ISTEP may end careers tells of new, big teeth added to Indiana testing policy that could result in the loss of ones teaching license and job if caught cheating on the ISTEP+.

Mac Mini Report

I probably should just do a column on it, but the Mac Mini I use at work has turned out to be quite a workhorse. It's taken a bit of doing to get the Mini operational in a semi-hostile Windows environment, but it now carries the bulk of my workload at PRISM.

I chose the 1.42 GHz model with an 80 gig hard drive and also upgraded the RAM to 1 GB. While that sounds like a lot of everything, the Mini is really doing jobs that should require a twin G5 tower. Like any power user, I sometimes feel the Mini is never fast enough, doesn't have enough storage, and doesn't have enough RAM to really satisfy me. But it suffers by comparison to my twin G5 at home and even somewhat to its OS challenged roommate, a 1.67 GHz Compaq. The Mini really is fast enough to do most of my work. The miniStack that sits below it gives me plenty of extra, portable storage.

Probably the biggest surprise with the Mini is that I apparently run out of memory and feel the machine slow as it drops into virtual memory. Of course, I run Office (Word and Excel), Mail, Photoshop, Firefox, Kerberos, MaxMenus, Snapz Pro X, and DragThing together constantly. I usually get into trouble when Firefox is carrying a bunch of tabbed windows and Word and Excel both have multiple documents open.

The miniStack has lost its format twice...once saved by DiskWarrior and once a total loss (almost all backed up). It also seems to add a bit of unwanted heat to the Mini that sits atop it. On the whole, however, I really like the miniStack, even though I still have to use a USB hub with all the things I have to plug in at work (direct printer, scanner, fax, APC power backup, keyboard cord from the moniswitch that allows sharing a monitor, keyboard and mouse with the laptop, and of course, the hub itself.

While I have finally gotten the Mini to clear the Exchange server at work, I still can't send email from Mail on the Mini. Open AFS is still a mystery to me with the Mini, so anything that has to go up to the server is first transferred to the PC laptop and up to the server.

So for a quick evaluation, the Mini has been a smashing success. It isn't nearly fast enough to satisfy me, but it's fast enough. The 80 gig hard drive has just 15 gig open, but the miniStack takes up from there. The maximum RAM isn't enough, but I've learned to live with it. So I'd have to give the Mini a definite thumbs up. It's not its fault my job should require a G5 tower.

PRISM Gets Some Press

Rose-Hulman's PRISM Web portal makes valuable online educational resources available appeared in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star last week. It's a nice write-up about the site I help promote around the state of Indiana.

 

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