Tuesday, July 17, 2001

The Plain Dealer in Retired and rehired, educators paid twice presents quite a different view of Ohio's new teacher retirement bill from the one painted last week by John Silber concerning Massachusetts' new teacher retirement bill. Both bills feature allowing retired teachers to return to work while still collecting retirement benefits.

While Rick Horowitz usually doesn't write computer columns, he cranked out a good one in Microsoft, being Microsoft: That's Quite a Bundle. Even if you're not a fan of Horowitz's syndicated column, you may get a kick out of the fan graphics and Rick's bio on his website.

The SchwabLearning.org offers several new columns of interest for parents and educators:

• Dr. Betty Osman Speaks with SchwabLearning.org about the Impact of LD on the Family
• Child Development: 6- to 8-Year-Olds
• Ages & Stages: 6-Year-Olds
• Coming to Terms with Your Child's LD
• LD and the Grieving Process
• Communicating Without Words

If you can't wait for Apple's Third Quarter Results Conference Call, IDEAadvisor presents some predictions on Apple's numbers to be released later today in Is Apple Feeling Squeezed?

Update: Apple Reports Third Quarter Profit of $61 Million

Coda Music Technology has announced Smart Music Studio 6.0 will be available this fall. The new software is designed to act as an "intelligent' accompanist, recording engineer, metronome and instrument tuner simultaneously." Demo versions for both Macintosh and Windows are available.

Some conservative writers are already sounding an alarm about the education reform bill now stalled in House-Senate conference committee. The Washington Times featured The children Congress left behind yesterday. The Los Angeles Times ran a commentary by Chester E. Finn Jr., former assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, Little Education Engine That Couldn't. Towards the end of Finn's commentary, he tread on an area where I have a bit of expertise:

It (the education bill) also includes lots of dubious ideas. For example, the Senate version would fully fund the current program of education for disabled youngsters, which heavily burdens state and local school budgets, but which sorely needs a total overhaul. Pouring in money will only ease the pressure to reform it.

Special Education today is obviously a mess. One of the many reasons for that are the many unfunded federal and state mandates. Maybe it's time to try "pouring in money."

Bill Fox of MacsOnly ran some interesting comparison tests recently and concluded, "Apple clearly has a way to go to get Mac OS X's speed up to that of the Windows XP first public beta...If Apple doesn't quickly bring Mac OS X up to the performance level of Windows XP, there is little chance of Mac OS X winning over many, if any, Windows users." Bill used a Compaq Presario 633 MHz (Celeron) and a Power Mac G4 533 DP for the tests.

For a summary of Apple's new offerings for the education market, see Special Report for Educators: MacWorld Expo New York.

A whole slew of columns have been posted concerning the Apple's third quarter results. For a listing of them, MacSurfer's News probably has the most complete listing. Titles and slants range from CBS.MarketWatch.com's Apple Computer profit falls 70% to Apple Is Back In The Black, Posts $61 Million Profit.

It appears that another round of columns is due on Apple's sales in education. IDC Report Shows Apple is the Leader in K-12 Education again refers first to installed base of computers, but does not refer to any current sales figures. The projections for sales for Apple Education do look good, however.

The Christian Science Monitor has posted a disturbing report in US schools slip back toward segregation. The article quotes Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University as saying, "Our research consistently shows that schools are becoming increasingly segregated and are offering students vastly unequal educational opportunities." An executive summary of the Civil Rights Project report is available. A related column appeared Monday in the Houston Chronicle, Teacher-student racial gap growing, union says.

For those of you who are familiar with special education, The Indianapolis Star's column, Few school programs seek to help dyslexic students, may help to raise your blood pressure to new heights. Columnist Kim L. Hooper inaccurately reports: "In Indiana, dyslexic students usually are classified as learning disabled -- a group that also includes mildly or severely mentally handicapped." Sorry, Kim, but learning disabilities and mental handicaps are separate disability distinctions not only in Indiana, but in the whole United States. Grouping of students with disabilities can include differing disabilities, such as learning disabled and mildly mentally handicapped students being taught in the same classroom.

Hooper also relates an example of a child, saying, "Her options at school to help overcome her learning disability are limited. That's because individual classroom instruction is rare for dyslexic students." Individual help truly is rare, but it exists. Small group instruction for those with reading disabilities is common, as it is mandated by both state and federal statute.

Are you looking for that killer field trip or outing for your students? The St. Petersburg Times may have your answer in Welcome to Fantasy classroom. Steve Huettel tells of "a 4-acre island made out of sand and rock dredged from the bottom of the bay will be turned into an outdoor classroom for teaching about wild Florida plants."

USA Today carries this timely report, School shooters usually warn of plans.

William F. Buckley, Jr. got in his licks on public education and teachers' unions yesterday in W.'S Strange Flirtation. While I disagree with many of Mr. Buckley's comments and observations, I present the link here for much needed balance, as I tend to be a "bleeding heart liberal" of old in most things pertaining to education.

Thursday, July 19, 2001

Apple Education updated its downloadable pricelists (PDF documents) for education last evening to reflect changes in offerings as announced in Steve Jobs MacWorld Expo keynote speech. The Educator's News Special Report for Educators: MacWorld Expo New York carries comparison charts of retail, K-12 educational institution, and K-12 education individual prices.

Low End Mac's Jeff Adkins relates an Apple Education (actually iService) horror story today in What Price Rankings? Jeff is Low End's school writer with his excellent Mac Lab Report series.

The New York Times today has an interesting column, Voice Recognition Software Helping Dyslexics. The column quotes Dr. Marshall H. Raskind, a learning disabilities researcher at the Frostig Center in Pasadena, as saying:

"Children who wrote using speech recognition technology for as little as 10 1/2 hours showed significant improvement in reading, decoding, spelling and comprehension. We were blown away by this. The results are preliminary. But it is very encouraging."

Dean Dauger has updated Atom in a Box to version 1.0.7. From Dean's excellent Read Me file that gave this old special ed teacher a hint of understand of the concept: "Atom in a Box is an application that aids in visualizing the Hydrogenic atomic orbitals, a prime and otherwise unwieldy example of quantum mechanics." Apple gave Dean's $20 shareware a nice write-up. Atom in a Box comes in carbon (404K) for OS 9.0.4 and OS X. A pre-carbon version (417K) is also available. Dean is also the creator of Solar System Sim.

In a column in today's The Hartford Courant, Rick Green tells of a workshop presented by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis, a husband and wife team of University of Connecticut professors. The workshop is designed to allow teachers to use their creativity "to make learning fun" inside highly scripted teaching plans that are now required by some school systems. Fifth-grade teacher and workshop participant Christina Jurgens says, "We aren't radicals, but we know the difference between teaching to learn and teaching kids to be tested."

Joseph Szadkowski reviews the Magic School Bus: Whales & Dolphins Activity Center and other children's titles in The Washington Times.

Yesterday, ComputerWorld carried the report Microsoft dropping Java code from Windows XP. The standard Windows XP install will omit Java as the result of a settlement between Sun and Microsoft. XP will still work with Java, however, and users may do a custom install or install the Sun version of the code.

As congressional negotiators began work on Thursday on a final compromise on President Bush's education reform plan, Dr. Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, issued a strong statement calling for full funding of special education under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Houston wrote, "Congress cannot add an additional layer of accountability on local schools while it shirks its responsibility to defray the cost of special education."

A new web site for "Mac professionals and power users" has been launched. Workingmac.com will host a variety of well known writers, including Stephen Beale, David K. Every, Wes George, David Leishman, and John C. Welch.

Gary Smith of PolyMath Love Software has cranked out yet another math freeware. Bag Riddles (154K) supplies hints, one at a time, in achieving a solution to either "simple" or tough math riddles. The riddle "I have 12 blocks hidden in a bag," appears as shown below. As with Gary's Pizza Party Puzzles (289K), this application appears destined for some collaborative learning in my classroom. Linear System Beams (293K) has also been updated to version 1.1 this week. All of the PolyMath Love Software freeware titles are available on Gary's Free Programs page.

While this is supposed to be a cross-platform, educationally related web site, I'm going to give a plug here for a couple of guys over at Low End Mac. (Hey! It's my website. I can do what I want, can't I?) Science teacher Jeff Adkins (guess that makes it educationally relevant) has a great column today, Very Random Thoughts, on his Lite Side series. Jeff lists all the things he'd like to see in future operating systems and computers. Included are:

• As part of the "get acquainted" sequence on first powerup, the computer asks you for your wife's birthday, your anniversary, you mother's birthday, and your boss's birthday. (Sounds like a real "butt-saver" to me, as in, "I'd forgotten our anniversary and my Mac saved my butt.")
• Color analysis software combined with your desktop videoconferencing camera can tell you if your colors match in the morning.
• A really, really big display at low resolution, say 800x600 using light bulbs for pixels.

That's just a sampling of Jeff's random ideas. You really ought to read this one.

Adam Robert Guha got to attend his first expo this year and recorded his impressions in My First Expo. Adam wrote to me last year when I was still writing View from the Classroom for Low End. His emails showed that he was obviously a talented writer, and I helped Adam get in touch with Low End's publisher, Dan Knight. The Apple Archive series that resulted now contains over 60 interesting columns! Adam is still a student (ahah, again, educationally relevant...sorta) with a bright future somewhere in the computing, publishing or whatever realm he chooses.