The Astronomy Picture of the Day for Saturday was an amazing photo of the ultraviolet light emissions of the sun "by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit." The GIF at right really doesn't do it justice (but does add some desperately needed color and content to this page:-). The full Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (index) has tons of other fabulous astronomy photos.

The release of Apple Computer's 10.1 update to its Mac OS X operating system Saturday produced the expected crowds at Apple Stores and authorized resellers. Those wishing to obtain the "free" update without charge lined up well before store opening hours in some locations. Many authorized retailers did not have any copies to distribute. Others appeared to have an ample supply. Stan Flack's MacMinute has a pretty good report on the update distribution and availability. The MacInTouch OS X 10.1 Special Report promises to be a good source for user feedback on the update.

As to the usability of the new updated system, Henry Norr has a good review in his San Francisco Chronicle column, The Next X. Henry has lots of nice things to say about OS X and the improvements of the 10.1 update, but also says:

I'm also convinced it will take more time and hard work on the part of Apple and Mac application developers before most users, whether at home or in business, will want to make OS X their main computing environment.

Business Week Technology & You columnist Stephen H. Wildstrom is a bit more gentle in his flash review of OS X, OS X Gets Its Finishing Touches. He states, "OS X Version 10.1 is everything the operating system should have been in the first place." I'll be interested to see Charles Haddad's evaluation of the update in his Byte of the Apple column that appears on Business Week Online on Wednesdays.

If you haven't yet invested in OS X but are planning to do so, the complete package runs $69 at the Apple Store for Education (as opposed to the $129 retail price tag). If you already own OS X, you may obtain the update free at some Apple resellers (unfortunately not at my local Terre Haute Circuit City) or order it from Apple for $19.95 postage and handling. The paid version does include the Developer Tools CD that the free update does not. Of course, if you have the bandwidth and patience, there are other alternatives (see right).

The $799 iMac is rumored to be returning to the Macintosh lineup today. The version to be offered is said to be a 500MHz, 64MB RAM, 20-gig hard drive, standard CD-ROM, and a 56K modem. Whether or not there will be an educational discount for the model remains to be seen. Previously, Apple did not discount the entry-level $799 iMac for educators. Of course, if you have just $799 to spend for a computer system, there is serious competition to the entry-level iMac. Sam's Club offers the HP Pavilion BT928 with 15" monitor for $799.98. It includes a Celeron 1.1 GHz processor, 128MB SDRAM, a 40-gig hard drive, a CD-RW drive, and a 56K modem. Of course, it runs Windows XP instead of the Mac OS, but...

Okay, where's all the education news?

I'm sorta wondering about that one myself. The weekend usually produces a number of thought provoking editorials concerning education and occasionally a new application release or update. Unfortunately, this weekend it's been death valley for ednews.

I'm also keeping an eye on the web stats and email responses. Both indicate that Educators' News is or is quickly becoming less than relevant to educators' needs. I'm open to suggestions, but I'm not willing to spend the time daily to publish something that has become an irrelevancy.

Tuesday, October 2, 2001

The National Conference of State Legislatures has sent a letter to the members of the House-Senate Conference Committee on the education reform bill, calling the measure "seriously and perhaps irreparably flawed." The Cox News Service reports the country's largest organization of state lawmakers' letter "lists nine objections, the most serious of which is, 'The testing requirement at the heart of [Bush's plan] is an egregious example of top-down, one-size-fits-all federal reform.'"

The Arizona Republic suggests, "Arizona parents want smaller classes in their kids' schools, but they're in for a case of sticker-shock if policymakers get serious about trimming class sizes." Although "a national poll last month by the Teachers' Insurance Plan found class-size reduction the top priority among parents," the Republic quotes a study that said cutting class size in grades K-3 to 17 students would cost $442 million for the first year. Arizona is already looking at a $550 million budget deficit. (Can anyone say, "tax hike?")

The American Academy of Pediatrics has released new recommendations for treating school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). From the AAP press release, the following recommendations are included in the new guideline:

• Primary care clinicians should establish a treatment program that recognizes ADHD as a chronic condition. This implies the need for education about the condition, and a sustained monitoring system to track the effects of treatment and developmental changes in behavior.
• The treating clinician, parents, and child, in collaboration with school personnel, should specify appropriate goals to guide management. Goals should relate to the specific problems of the individual child, e.g., school performance, difficulty finishing tasks, problems with interactions with schoolmates.
• If appropriate, the clinician should recommend behavior therapy and/or stimulant medication to improve specific symptoms in children with ADHD. The guideline provides a review of the scientific evidence for recommending medication and behavior therapy.
• When the treatment for a child with ADHD has not met its goals, clinicians should re-evaluate the original diagnosis, all appropriate treatments, adherence to the treatment plan, and coexisting conditions, including learning disabilities and mental health conditions.
• The clinician should provide a periodic and systematic follow-up for the child with ADHD. Monitoring should be directed to the child's individual goals, and any adverse effects of treatment, with information gathered from parents, teachers and the child. The guidelines recommend areas for future research in treatment options, long-term outcomes and other areas in the management of children with ADHD.

As one might expect, the folks in Henrico County, Virginia are experiencing a few problems with their giant wireless school network and 23,000 new iBooks. While the Richmond Times-Dispatch column title sounds a bit serious, the text describes what appear to be pretty normal growing pains. See: Some doubt fruitful Henrico program: Students, teachers biting into some bugs.

About ten years ago, I was teaching four shows daily of sixth grade social studies and science. We were in the final year of our social studies textbook adoption and I decided to let the kids highlight in their textbooks. At first, some kids highlighted everything. With a little practice in class, the kids became skilled at finding and highlighting key items. Test scores improved and the kids loved highlighting as a study method. They quickly realized the effort in locating important information translated well into improved retention of the material.

This week, one of the new items on The SchwabLearning.org is the column Assistive Technology - Low Tech Writing Tools. The first item discussed in the column is highlighters. Also mentioned is highlighting tape that can be removed from the text. The column also talks about pencil grips and other low tech items that can make a difference for both special learners and regular ed students.

Other highlights from The SchwabLearning.org this week include:

• Susan Hall: Finding a Reading Tutor
• Questions to Ask Tutors
• Making The Most Of Your Parent-Teacher Conference
• Coming to Terms with Your Child's LD
• School-Based Parent Support Groups

The $799 entry-level iMac is now posted on the Apple Store. At this writing, the Apple Store for Education (Individuals) did not show the model, while the K-12 Educational Institutions page showed the model with no discount ($799).

David Coursey has lots of nice things to say about the Mac OS X 10.1 update in Yo, Windows users! Please take a look at Mac OS X.1. Coursey says, "OS X is the nicest operating system I've ever seen. It works like an OS should work."

The Teacher Laptop Foundation's registration page is now open. The Foundation is trying to provide new laptop computers to as many registered educators as possible.

It sometimes seems that really neat things only happen to folks in far off places. (Henrico County and Quaker Valley quickly come to mind). But every so often something really nice happens to someone who you know who really deserves it.

I've been writing back and forth to Jim Crittenden for several years, comparing notes on the labs we maintained. When I wrote about putting together a Mac lab of weary 5200s and 6100s for my elementary (since "Duroned"), Jim was doing the same at the Kayenta Middle School with far older machinery. Well, sometimes there is a sense of justice in the world. I received the following wonderful email from Jim yesterday:

Hi Steve,

 

After tracing back an Airport Base Station problem to an old 10BT 8-port hub, and after sending back two out of 16 iBooks that were defective out of the boxes, our wireless classroom computer lab is working flawlessly. In fact, it's- dare I say it - close to being wonderful. Let's just say it rocks big time. The hub problem was located after several frustrating hours of configuring the network. It seems that the ABS does not like old, cheapo hubs. After replacing it with a Linksys 5-port 10/100 BT mini hub, bingo- there was the good old AppleTalk network in the Chooser. And, when we launched Netscape all at once on 14 iBooks, up popped Google- a sight for sore eyes by this time.

 

In the past few weeks, I have used the portable lab with my students on five occasions, and am finding it to be very robust, using Classic OS 9.2. I'm waiting for something to happen, but so far, it just keeps on ticking! It is very cool to be able to compute in your own classroom, and still have 95% of the space you had without the iBooks. The project ideas are endless.

 

Ok. Getting replacements for the two defective iBooks was a little stressful, requiring several hours on the phone with Apple. But now it's all working fine, and Apple gets an 87.5% grade for quality. That translates into defective 2875 iBooks for Henrico County's 23,000 iBooks. At some point, Apple should consider a full-time onsite techie, with direct lines to Apple support people, for these kind of big orders. On a slightly smaller note, our school got some equalization funds this year, and bought about 100 Macs for each of four schools. Five G4s had defective video cards, out of the boxes, and two 15" flat panel monitors were lemons out of their boxes. This meant more hours of phone time, more trips to the warehouse to make returns and pickups, and further delays in getting the machines into service. Of course, we still have about 25 iMacs still sitting in the boxes, because nobody has the time to set them up, but that's not Apple's fault!

 

Anyway, I am typing this out on my new G4 733mz 40gig HD 768 megs RAM. The flat panel monitor is cool, literally, and a pretty good screen. All this tech work, it's worth the wait, if you can dredge up the patience of Job. Call it a lesson in self-restraint, humility and technological cleverness. Only about 85 more iMacs to go.....ooops- gotta get back to my 7th grade US History class! Thanks for these great pages.

 

Best Wishes,
Jim Crittenden

 

New webpage address (again)
http://www.kayenta.k12.az.us/KMS/index.htm

One of the reviews of Mac OS X that I've eagerly awaited is available today on Business Week Online. Charles Haddad give OS X a pretty unqualified thumbs up in his Byte of the Apple column today. Haddad writes:

At long last, I can recommend it to all Mac users -- the writers, artists, small-businesspeople, animators, students, and teachers who use Macs for everything from gaming to Web browsing.

Haddad also thinks OS X will ignite a round of hardware upgrades and sales of new Macs to run the new operating system effectively. He also notes that Apple is into this system for the long haul:

No more endless delays, promises unfulfilled, and strategic U-turns. Users can bank on OS X powering the Mac far into the future.

From Scienceman.com:

It's always a fun activity to dissect owl pellets - if you've never done it before, you really should give it a try. You can learn a lot about owls and what they eat.

Yeah, we teachers are real party animals -- dissecting owl pellets. But...I found myself really enjoying the pictures and links. I also started wondering how I could use the info in the classroom (since I no longer teach science). Free sites like Joe Martha's can add a lot to classroom lessons. I not only find his site a great source of information, but a great jumping-off point to the other sites to which he links.

I still find myself following sales of G3 All-in-ones on eBay. While one usually appears now and then, this week there are suddenly four posted for sale!

• http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1279145257
• http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1279948171
• http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1280768522
• http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1280114452

I'd have to describe myself as a "bottom feeder" when it comes to eBay sales. Even so, I often find that searches such as the one that produced the links above often end up costing me more than I'd planned. My all time favorite eBay search is still for "lot." Most recently, the lot search has led to three great Power Mac 7200s (two of which are already in my classroom) and a herd of 30 mice. The mice have come in very handy as replacements for my computer take-home project for my students. Almost all of the problems the kids experience with their Macs at home are related to mice (and mice abuse).

Thursday, October 4, 2001

Joe Taylor sent along the following promising report on the 10.1 update to Mac OS X:

I finally got a hold of the update to install on my iBook, and I'm here to say (initial impressions) it's finally a usable OS. Speed and usability are on par with 9.2. If you haven't messed with it in awhile, I would encourage you to give it a try. This is with a 366/128 set up.

This report is just what I've wanted to hear. Now if I can just find an Apple authorized reseller in this area to nail a truly free copy of the update, I'll have it made!

Richard Rothstein presents one of the best commentaries I've seen on the current education reform movement and measures in Decrees on Fixing Schools May Fail the Reality Test (free registration required). Rothstein looks critically at the results of placing some low scoring Chicago public schools on "probation" and later being "reconstituted." He effectively points out the similarities between the Chicago situation and the current Congressional effort to enact an education reform bill. Rothstein concludes, "Education bills have languished in conference because writing a real bill is tougher than enacting clichés like those originally passed by the House and Senate."

StimpSoft has updated their freeware periodic table application, Smell-O-Mints. Version 1.3 (Carbon [1 MB], Classic [1012K]) fixes some "Mac OS X menu issues. Element icons are now of a higher contrast to help identify which element is highlighted. Sounds [have been] added." Smell-O-Mints works on Power Macs with system 8.6 through Mac OS X.

Son of Weather Grok has also received an update for Mac OS X (10.1) that fixes "issues with Mac OS X 10.1" and adds "other minor tweaks for [the] PPC version." While Son of Weather Grok only functions on Power Macs, (Carbon (1.2 MB), Classic (1012K), version 3.6.9 of Weather Grok, which still functions on 68K Macs, is also available. Both use your internet connection to pull down the current weather statistics from the NOAA station(s) of your choice.

Microsoft has announced limited time availability of specially priced student and teacher versions of Office XP. Priced at $149, the educational version will include Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

President Bush has issued an executive order creating the "President 's Commission on Excellence in Special Education" to study special education issues. A Yahoo report on the press release notes that "many Republicans say the huge increases proposed by the Senate would slow reform..." The current Senate proposal for special education would provide $21 billion by 2007 and $8.3 billion next year. Yahoo notes:

IDEA, enacted in 1975, called for Washington to provide 40 percent of funding for disabled youngsters' education. This year the federal government provided about 15 percent...States and school districts share a much larger burden."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Gary Rummler looks at two Wisconsin school districts with large numbers of 20 and 30-year veteran teachers in Older teachers foster culture of school stability.

Friday, October 5, 2001

I'm getting a head start on the weekend. Have a good one.