Archive for July 30-August 3, 2001

Monday, July 30, 2001

Francine Kiefer of The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the Bush Administration's plans to micromanage reading instruction in White House plan to teach children to read (How's that for a provocative and subjective news lead?). Referring to administration plans, Kiefer states:

It wants to promote only programs that are "proven" to be effective with scientific results. While lauding the new emphasis on accountability, critics worry about a lack of funding, a lack of teachers - and what the definition of "proven" might turn out to be.

While Ms. Kiefer's article deals mainly with preschool and Head Start initiatives, Mike Bowler, writing for The Baltimore Sun, addresses problems beyond the lower grades in A 'scary' problem: reading beyond 9. While Bowler describes reading comprehension problems of students, one of the interesting side issues Bowler explores is that of the dwindling number of textbook publishers from which schools have to choose.

Pamela Martineau gives a pretty accurate look into a Severely Emotionally Handicapped classroom in Testing times: Emotionally disturbed kids pose challenge for schools in yesterday's Sacramento Bee.

Staying with special education, a St. Paul Pioneer Press column, Autism: Is Intensive Treatment the Best Approach, makes one thankful your own kids aren't afflicted with such a disability.

Panda Systems has "carbonized" their excellent freeware, PandoCalendar, to version 5.7 for Mac OS X and Classic 9.1 (831K). Version 5.6 of PandoCalendar also remains available for Power Macs (653K) and 68K (634K) machines using OS 7.5-9.0.4.

The folks at MacFixIt have updated Mac OS X 10.0: A MacFixIt Perspective -- A Second Look. While written from a clearly pro-Mac perspective, this column is a pretty objective look at the usability of OS X now and in the future. If you're one of the many sitting on the fence as to whether to upgrade to OS X or not, this piece will add some perspective for your decision making. It definitely doesn't read like any high-pressure sales pitch.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Goldie Blumenstyk describes a number of factors involved in higher education computer purchases in Despite Raves for iBook, Tide Still Turns Against Apple. While the column title might sound like an anti-Apple perspective, the piece actually presents a pretty well balanced discussion of what is going on in university computer purchases.

When I saw the link Interior Secretary Advocates Outstanding Indian Education last week, I held off on publishing it until I touched base with someone who knows the turf. Jim Crittenden teaches at the Kayenta Middle School and has done more with less than anyone else I know. When Jim responded to my inquiry, he gave me a few quotes that apply to far more than technology on the reservation. Jim wrote, "It is wrapped up in the commonly-used phrase, 'Many promises made, few of them kept.'" Jim has watched promised grant money for technology steadily shrink, along with control of the funds slipping to those favoring PC purchases. Jim wrote, "I'm relinquishing my personal, unpaid tech support time to the fictitious tech support people who have been promised to our schools. I gotta get busy with American History, Math and Science, and- oh yes- Cross Country." I had to make a similar decision last year at my school when the PC crowd, who were supposed to be servicing our Macs, appeared to take over all purchasing decisions. Jim's keeping his chin up with pragmatic lines like, "Hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what you can get." Before you get the wrong idea, Jim also added, "Bottom line: Life on the rez is too wonderful to sweat the little stuff like politics."

I'm doing this Monday posting late Sunday evening, as I will be writing and delivering a statement on why I prefer Macs at school at the request of one of our administrators. I'm not sure if this is just another round of paper pushing by administrators who've abdicated technology purchasing decisions to our evil NT techie or a real opportunity to get some new Macintosh hardware into our classrooms. Stay tuned!

Faculties Take On Commercialization of College Sports (free registration required) tells of the faculty senates at 8 of the 10 universities in the Pac-10 passing resolutions this spring condemning the "arms race" of spending for coaches' salaries and stadiums.

This last piece has absolutely nothing to do with computing and can only remotely be related to education. It's just a nice story about someone doing some great things for kids. A gift of summer: Richmond children see another world on camping trips is a good read.

Scott Schuyler wrote today about an interesting site he found that led him to an interesting piece of software:

Hot Potatoes is available for download for both Macintosh and Windows. Thanks, Scott!

CNET notes IBM raises stakes for wireless notebooks with their ThinkPad T23. While obviously "playing catch-up with Apple," IBM's new offering "packs new security features that are also integrated into the hardware."

Michael R. Zimmerman has an interesting column on eWeek about the Business Software Alliance's Truce Campaign (mentioned here in the July 3 and July 10 postings). He says, "...the BSA's campaign is primarily a marketing effort essentially designed to scare people into buying more software."

Paul Shields explains Total Cost of Ownership this week on The Business Mac. It's a good read and helpful if you are in a purchasing decision-making situation. Also available on the web is the report IDC did for Apple on TOC (206K PDF document). On the same subject, I also found John Droz, Jr.'s web site helpful in writing my statement for one of our school's administrators about why I preferred using a Macintosh computer with students and in my classroom.

According to ComputerWorld, the internet could grind to a halt around 8 P.M. ((EST) this evening due to a variant of the Code Red Internet worm. Related links include Microsoft and Symantec. According to the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center: "The CodeRed Worm affects Microsoft Index Server 2.0 and the Windows 2000 Indexing service on computers running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 that run IIS 4.0 and 5.0 Web servers."

Barring a total meltdown of the internet overnight, the first View from the Classroom column for the 2001-2002 school year will appear online tomorrow.

Ah, the Code Red Internet worm witching hour of 8 P.M. (EST - 7/31/2001) has come and gone, but we're all still here. Of course, Educators' News and the MATH DITTOS 2 site are served up from a UNIX server. ComputerWorld reports:

As advertised here yesterday, the first View from the Classroom column for the 2001-2002 school year is up and ready to irritate both technology coordinators and school administrators alike. Why I Prefer Macs in the Classroom is the result of a letter I was asked to write for my building administrator. The letter came out so well that I scrubbed the column planned for today, added a long intro with background information, and published the letter instead of the originally planned column.

While I'm not going to start competing with Version Tracker, a valuable, but not necessarily educationally related, update appeared on the web yesterday. Conflict Catcher 8.0.9 (2.1 MB) is now available for download. Some comments on the Version Tracker page noted problems involving having to reenter the serial number on each startup. I was not able to reproduce these results.

In a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution retired educator Jerry Schwartz compares the Teach For Georgia program to a Mission Impossible scenario. "They have a degree, four weeks of training, and now they're ready to be thrown into the fire," says Schwartz. This is a short, but especially good read.

The San Jose Mercury News has a related story about professionals going into teaching. In Fellows turn high-tech slump into classroom opportunities, Kate Folmar tells of several former high-tech workers who have joined the San Jose Teaching Fellows. Each has "made two-year commitments to teach in whatever San Jose Unified School District campus needs them."

MathSoft announced yesterday that it will host The Physics Classroom. MathSoft will provide necessary server bandwidth for the site previously hosted on the Glenbrook South High School (Glenview, IL) server. Because of the popularity of the site, the school's server was overloaded and creator Tom Henderson was faced with dismantling the site or finding an alternate home.

Richard Rothstein suggests that "improving nutrition might bring a bigger test-score gain" than some of the current provisions of the education reform act in When There's Simply Not Enough Food for Thought (free registration required) in today's New York Times.

USA Today reports that President Bush has asked members of the National Urban League "to set aside conflicts with him and join forces to help students in failing schools." Urban League president, Hugh Price, is quoted as saying, ''The president's heart is there, the agenda is there, and we really think anything and everything that he can do to rev up our community and rev up America to raise the proficiency of children will be very welcome."

While Joe Martha's Scienceman.com site is still on vacation for the summer, Joe continues to crank out the MacHome Classroom Weekly Newsletter. I won't steal Joe's thunder by publishing his links, but this week's edition includes links to lots of sites with information on volcanoes. Joe also answers a number of reader questions about hardware and software. While the site is on vacation from updates, you can still sign up there for Joe's excellent newsletter.

The September issue of MacAddict came in yesterday's mail. In his editor's note, David Reynolds says he's moving on after five years with MacAddict to Apple Computer. David's work has always be informative and especially enjoyable.

Jeff Adkins gives "a brief introduction to Equation Editor" in his Mac Lab Report on Low End Mac. Jeff points out that "Equation Editor is actually a third party program licensed by both Apple and Microsoft for use in their word processing programs." Jeff gives the skinny on how to use this tool to ease entering equations, fractions, etc. into word processing documents. Another Mac Lab Report you might want to bookmark or save as a PDF is Jeff's A Windows User's Guide to the Mac OS.

Ken Kashmarek sent along a link for story he first heard about on SlashDot. Apparently in response to the hacking of a school web site in his state, Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey introduced the School Website Protection Act of 2001. A Wired News story notes that some "educators, programmers and civil libertarians say...the bill is worded so vaguely it would turn commonplace activities into federal crimes to be investigated by the U.S. Secret Service." The SlashDot posting says, "Unfortunately, the legislation makes common acts like sending e-mail to a teacher an offense that can be investigated by the Secret Service and punishable by 10 years incarceration." While the particular hacking that prompted this measure was fairly nasty (school web site hacked with a Columbine-like threat), it would appear that the measure is flawed and probably should be amended, allowed to die in committee, or withdrawn by the Senator.

ComputerWorld's latest update on the Code Red worm says the worm is definitely spreading and causing some slowdown of the internet. The column quotes a report from Michael Erbschloe, vice president of research at Computer Economics, an independent research organization in Carlsbad, California, as saying, "This is going to beat Melissa and the Explorer.zip. However, it's doubtful that it will be as bad as the I Love You virus."

Another ComputerWorld column, Appeals court rejects Microsoft rehearing bid, says the case could be back in a randomly selected district court by August 10 (earliest). Occasionally, companies under court scrutiny become pretty dandy corporate citizens. This hasn't happened yet with Microsoft, but...

Joe Taylor sent me an email with a link to a Wall Street Journal editorial that makes some nasty allegations about the National Education Association. Teacher's Pets by William McGurn alleges the NEA traded contributions in 1996 for positions on Democratic campaign committees while "listing zero dollars for political expenditures on its tax forms." This one sounds really bad, but I suspect it has something to do with PACs (political action committees) and good old soft money contributions. I 'd also guess Mr. McGurn didn't vote for many NEA endorsed candidates as well.

A U.S. Department of Education report released Wednesday says approximately 850,000 K-12 students were homeschooled in the United States in 1999. Based on telephone surveys, the report notes that while the majority were totally homeschooled about 18% were involved in some public school classes as well. A report summary is available from the Department of Education as well as the full report (158K PDF document). An AP summary also appears in today's New York Times (free registration required).