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| While I generally won't use this site as a forum for Mac vs. PC wars, John Droz, Jr. wrote this weekend with a request for information on Computer Curriculum Corporation's Success Maker software. If you've not heard of John here or elsewhere, he is a computer consultant who maintains the excellent resource site, Should Our Schools (or Anybody Else) Have Macs or PCs? I had to plead ignorance about the software package, but found John's request one of special merit. He's trying to find how to make the Success Maker software work on the Mac platform to defeat his local school system's plan to replace their Macs with PCs. As a parent, educator, and taxpayer, I am often appalled to read where hundreds of thousands of dollars of useable equipment is thrown out in such changeovers. I'm also not unfamiliar with these wars, as the school where I teach faces a similar situation. The Macs there were first not adequately cleaned, maintained, serviced, or upgraded, and then were described as deficient and targeted for replacement. Many thousands of dollars of useable equipment have been described as worthless (due to the neglect noted above) and moved to storage, rather than being placed in classrooms where they would be used. Since I'm rambling, I'll add that one of our teachers, who normally prefers to work on a PC, realized the inherent educational possibilities of the older Macs and the wealth of site license software our school already owns. She obtained permission to search the storage rubble, enlisted the assistance of her husband, and rescued four Power Mac 6100/60's for use in her classroom. That kind of effort (She's not the school's techie.) should be rewarded. For my part, I broke my practice of not servicing computers outside my classroom and brought in some 4 meg SIMMs, liberated from routers of a local corporation, and did RAM upgrades on all of her 6100's. Returning to John's request, he asks that readers who may have had some experience with the Success Maker software package email him directly. Please note that John plans to use the information to post a summary of what can be done to make the software work on the Mac platform. If you do contact John with information and don't mind, you might carbon copy me as well, as I'd like to learn a bit more on the situation.
Joe Taylor sent along a note this weekend saying that he has installed the Mac System 9.2.1 upgrade on several of his machines without incident. I'm still waiting to do upgrades on my machines until I see a bit more feedback similar to Joe's. While there currently appears to be a lull in the news on the federal side of the testing issue, Minnesota has for the first time identified schools in difficulty and sent investigators to find out why. Studies tell how schools faltered, by John Welsh and Paul Tosto of the St. Paul Pioneer Planet, tells how the Minnesota report went beyond demographics to identify specific issues that could be corrected to improve test scores. The Contra Costa Times yesterday carried two good columns about private special education facilities in California. We're the intensive care of education, by Lisa Shafer, tells of "a publicly funded private school" that specializes in dealing with children with emotional disorders. Funds, special ed students flowing to private sector is a more general piece about private schools that deal with special students at public expense. For any of you who regularly deal with students with emotional disorders, both columns may prove to be an interesting read. Since I've been back at school full-time for a couple of weeks now, my time for searching out useful internet links has been somewhat limited. It hasn't helped much that my school system is playing Russian roulette with potential negligence and denial of services lawsuits by delaying hiring special education assistants until after Labor Day. At any rate, that's my excuse of the day for having spaced on a couple of pretty good links through CNN Education. Students, parents split on Web's value is a good discussion on just what the column title says. Success in School hinges on parents tells of the "Success in School Equals Success in Life" campaign. Sponsored by the People for the American Way Foundation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Eastman Kodak Company and The Advertising Council, the campaign focuses on fostering and strengthening parent-school ties of minority groups. Eastman Kodak Company Chairman Daniel Carp is quoted as saying, "Public education, I believe, is the most important institution. If we leave behind a segment of our community, all we are doing is putting ourselves at a disadvantage." The SchwabLearning.org this week offers their usual array of excellent articles:
Roger Clary has updated QuizMaker Pro for Macintosh (1.1 MB) to version 4.1 and released a Windows (1.1 MB) version as well (version 1.0). Roger has also ported his excellent Math Stars program to the Windows platform.
Massive ASP deal called 'unprecedented': Every Arizona student to get Microsoft Office ComputerWorld reports that the state of Arizona and Cox Business Services have cut a deal to provide a host of Microsoft products to all students in Arizona schools through an application service provider approach. "Philip Geiger, executive director of the board, said the contract with Cox will provide school administrators and students with access to more than 7,000 software titles at a cost of $8.16 per student per year."
My thanks go out to Low End Mac publisher Dan Knight. Dan added Educators' News today to his list of "Favorite Sites." Speaking of Low End, educator Jeff Adkins is at it again this week in his Lite Side humor column with Dead People Don't Use Windows. If Jeff's column doesn't quench your thirst for Windows humor, you might try this Tom Toles cartoon. If you're more into Apple bashing, try this link.
The New York Times Richard Rothstein finds SAT Scores Aren't Up. Not Bad, Not Bad at All (free registration required). Rothstein notes from The College Board's SAT annual report released yesterday, that while many more students of varying abilities are now taking the tests, scores have remained stable compared to scores of 25 years ago. Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows 98 and above. A ComputerWorld column states that Microsoft originally did not plan to release a freestanding version of IE 6 until its new operating system, Windows XP, was released on October 25. According to ComputerWorld, the new version "includes support for Platform for Privacy Preferences, a user privacy standard currently under development by the the World Wide Web Consortium (see story)... a revamped user interface and a "media bar" where users can store links to audio and video content." It would appear that Microsoft is trying to beat any sanctions from the antitrust suit, while simultaneously leaning more towards proprietary features that exclude competitors (which was one of the things that got them in trouble with the feds before). Low End Mac's Online Tech Journal yesterday featured AppleShare on Linux, by L. Victor Marks. Marks discusses the advantages of running Linux on an older PC over Apple's File Sharing as a fileserver for Macs and other platforms. A quick "how to" is also included.
Slow news day! Mary Westbrook sent in the following question:
It's that time again, already. Symantec has posted their antivirus updates (Mac, Win) for September. Christine Frey, writing for the Los Angeles Times, has an interesting column on "tech-assisted academic dishonesty," Chips and Cheating. Frey writes:
The Christian Science Monitor today has a related column in Beating Web cheaters at their own game by Christina McCarroll. The column tells how St. Andrew's Episcopal School (Potomac, MD) used Turnitin.com to scan term papers for plagiarism. Desiree Cooper, in yesterday's The Detroit Free Press, offered these words of affirmation for education in Education will triumph, despite flaws:
Ms. Cooper's column is a mix of her personal trials in obtaining quality educating her children and a bit of a preview of the coming PBS series, School: The Story of American Public Education (Monday-Tuesday, September 3-4, 2001, 9:00 p.m. EST). Microsoft's antitrust woes don't end at the borders of the United States. ComputerWorld yesterday reported that the European Union had merged two separate investigations into alleged anticompetitive actions into one and expanded its scope by "probing allegations that the software giant is illegally tying its Media Player in with Windows." The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, stated Microsoft's business practices "may harm innovation and restrict choice for consumers." Low End Mac's Jeff Adkins has begun a multipart review of "planetarium software...with emphasis on its use in schools" in his Mac Lab Report. This week Jeff reviews Starry Night. While poking around the Low End site yesterday, I saw a link that I'd missed earlier this week to Steve Gilliard's excellent editorial, The Failure of Tech Journalism. This editorial should be required reading for all tech columnists and webmasters!
The entire Educators' News staff :-) will be taking Monday off in celebration of Labor Day. Get Ready for a Rant (Click here to skip the rant and go directly to the news content.) What on earth would get me up early on a Saturday morning of a holiday weekend to do an Educators' News posting? Why, none other that than our favorite, current Secretary of Education. Rod Paige appears to have thrown down the gauntlet against public education again with comments made in Kansas City, Missouri, on his current "cross-country 'Back to School, Moving Forward' tour" (photo link). Deann Smith, of The Kansas City Star, reports that Paige "said Thursday that Kansas City would have a failing school district until the community mobilized to reform it." In an interview with the Kansas City Star, Paige stated, "Good communities have good schools. Most communities get the schools they deserve. You don't have to tolerate failure." Does this mean Paige considers Kansas City to be a "bad community" since it has, in Paige's estimation, failing schools? In light of Paige's comments last February on behalf of the Bush administration, it appears they plan to limit or dismantle public education in America in favor of private education by hooting it down with negativism. Paige stated then, "...the idea of a public school monopoly is dead. It needs to be relegated to the Smithsonian because we are going to be in competition with other people." The comments were quoted in a Wired News column that also said:
While many Americans who are affluent enough, or, in many cases, have made significant personal sacrifices to afford private schools, might benefit from such a plan, taking such a direction another step gets really scary. What about those whose children attend "failing schools" and cannot or will not pay the difference between the voucher value and private school tuition? Do we really want to return to the days of segregation and dual school systems, a class system of private schools for the affluent and public schools for the disadvantaged? Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, stated:
I'm not as forgiving as Mr. Johnson. Mr. Bush and Mr. Paige are supposed to know what they are doing and the ramifications of it. I think they serve something other than the American people by their words and actions. I really would have skipped the rant had I not received a couple of requests for help. I've sent my suggestions, but as I told the guys requesting info, "My readers are my very best resource on troubleshooting." The first one is a rather urgent request from Richard Derr about his son's Power Mac 7500. I've done my share of long distance tech support for our kids and others, so I feel for him. If you have any ideas, please email them to Rich directly.
The second request for help comes from Sam Kremer, who is trying to install a Yamaha external CDR102 burner internally. Again, send your help to Sam directly.
Again, I've already emailed the guys my suggestions. If you have ideas, please contact them directly, but I sure wouldn't mind if you carbon copied me your suggestions as well. Compaq has unveiled an ugly duckling PC whose low cost makes it look a whole lot better. CNET reports that the Compaq Evo D300v is aimed at competing with low-cost business PCs from Dell.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs appeared at an Henrico County school system convocation yesterday. Speaking of Henrico County's lease of 23,000 iBooks, Jobs told the assembled staff and students, "I want every other district in this country to copy it." (Richmond Times-Dispatch) A week ago, my school's Apple Education rep left a voice mail for me, asking how the "We prefer Macs" campaign at my school was going. You can read a bit about it in last month's View from the Classroom, Why I Prefer Macs in the Classroom. I answered our rep with an email describing a real opportunity that had presented itself just that week. Our elementary principal had avoided all use of computers until about a year ago, when he purchased a PC for his son's use at home. The boss also started receiving regular computer lessons at that time from one of our ace fourth grade teachers, a Macintosh power user. During the week of the Apple Rep's call, I learned our principal had asked the school's technology coordinator, otherwise known in my columns as the "Evil NT techie," for a laptop. The opportunity lies in the fact that all of the wireless PC laptops purchased have already been assigned to students and/or staff. The techie has no laptop for the boss, and the boss won't put in a purchase order for one because he doubts we have the cash for it. I informed the Apple rep of the opportunity, suggesting she get an iBook or even a TiBook into the boss's hands as soon as possible. Hey, if Steve Jobs can show up at Henrico County, and if Apple can reportedly give Tom Clancy three or four iMacs, why can't Apple Education grease the wheels at my school by giving or loaning my boss an iBook or TiBook? Back to the real world, Steve. She sent the techie a price list. No wonder Dell is beating the pants off of Apple in the education market. If you have some suggestions, news ideas, etc., please . |
While poking around the 
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