Monday, May 11, 2009

OpenOffice 3.1

OpenOffice, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office used by many schools, was updated to version 3.1 last week. It's available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Note that the Mac version is only for Intel-based Macs, but no longer requires the X11 environment. For PowerPC Mac users (G5, G4, and earlier chips), NeoOffice 3.0 may be a better option.

Since I lack an Intel-based Mac, I downloaded and installed the Windows version of OpenOffice 3.1 on my weary HP Pavilion without difficulty. I used the Writer component to compose and save new documents in the .doc format and reopened them successfully in Word on both a PC and a Mac. I also imported a large PowerPoint presentation with the Presentation component fairly quickly and without error.

Since I already have Office 2004 (Mac) and Office 2003 (Windows), I generally use the Microsoft products instead of OpenOffice or NeoOffice (which I also have installed). When I finally move to a modern computer, I'd guess that I will go to the open source products to save a few bucks. They appear to be ready for prime time.

Environmental Video

Leslie Kaufman has a good article in the New York Times, A Cautionary Video About America’s Stuff, about teachers using Annie Leonard's 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, The Story of Stuff. She writes that "the video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors." She notes that "it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution." She also notes that at least one school system has banned the video because it "was presented, without an alternative point of view," and "violated its standards on bias."

I had trouble getting the video to play in its entirety. The home site version ran for just a few minutes, and the YouTube version (embedded at right) played just fine for about fourteen minutes (of the twenty-one minute video) before I had to reload the page to get it to finish.

MSDWT Manu Update

When I was playing around last evening with OpenOffice on my Windows machine, I wrote a sample page using an old slant print handwriting font I wrote and used with my students for handwriting instruction. MSDWT Manuscript was never intended for anything more than putting a few letters and words on three-lined paper for kids to trace and copy, but the screen font of it really looked horrible! Since I've refined the font a bit over the years on the Mac side, I decided to look at the version I was using and see if an update was indicated. I found I'd made a lot of little changes to the font that weren't included in the last release (over ten years ago). It was, so I've added the newer version to the MSDWT Manuscript page on mathdittos2.com. I wrote about how I used this font in my classroom in at least a couple of columns, Teacher Tools 1: AppleWorks and Teacher Tools 4: A Roll-Your-Own Spelling Program.

As you can see, this isn't the font you'd want to use when submitting a resume or your doctoral thesis, but it nicely served its purpose in my classroom. On my last job, I would occasionally use the font in blue to print notes on our notepad with the program's letterhead to hide my poor penmanship and give the illusion of a handwritten note!

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Interesting Autism Study

The AP's Lindsey Tanner reports in Some kids with autism can recover, study suggests "that at least 10% of children with autism overcome the disorder by age 9 - most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy." Tanner writes that University of Connecticut researcher Deborah Fein stated that recovery is "not a realistic expectation for the majority of kids," but parents should know it can happen." Fein is still seeking children in her ongoing research to help bolster evidence on what traits formerly autistic kids may have in common.

Space Shuttle Atlantis On Its Way

The space shuttle Atlantis launched yesterday afternoon on the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Its 11-day mission will include five spacewalks "to refurbish Hubble with state-of-the-art science instruments designed to improve the telescope's discovery capabilities by up to 70 times while extending its lifetime through at least 2014."

• Science@NASA: Space Shuttle Atlantis Launches on Final Mission to Hubble
• NASA Press Release: NASA's Shuttle Atlantis Launches on a Final Mission to Hubble
• Space Shuttle home page
• HST Servicing Mission 4
  

Graduation Gifts 2009 from Amazon

Friday, May 15, 2009

Essential Educational BS Tool

A brief posting on Eduwonk led me to the Educational Jargon Generator this morning. With a tongue-in-cheek billing as an "academic tool...designed to assist in the writing of reports, grant applications, and other documents related to public schools," the javascript with just a click of the mouse concocts educationese such as, "recontextualize competency-based processes," "strategize hands-on paradigms," and "leverage innovative initiatives."

The Educational Jargon Generator reminded me of an language activity we once did with our students in the early '70's. It came from the name of a psychedelic rock/pop rock band, the Strawberry Alarm Clock (remember Incense And Peppermints?). Students constructed long lists of articles/possessives, adjectives, and nouns on long strips of paper, placed the strips side-by-side, and slid one or more of the strips up and down. Reading across yielded some interesting potential rock group names for the time.

Yep, it's gotta be a slow week for educational news, or maybe I'm just reliving the '70's and am a bit high! I guess I could have linked to a pretty cool NASA Image of the Day of the space shuttle Atlantis transiting the sun or Jay Mathews's latest column, Grading Ideas for Fixing Schools, but I'm a bit bummed out about Educators' News these days and am just going to let it go at that.

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose.

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around.

Have a great weekend!

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