...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Site Note We've just switched servers to a server with better throughput and a larger disk allocation. We are experiencing some problems with email accounts. And...of course, after installing the new hard drive on my G3 and getting everything working well, the whole thing went down. I'm now writing on a Power Mac 7200/90 instead of looking at a white screen on the G3. While retro and nostalgia are supposed to be generally cool, I'm not having much fun on this antique while troubleshooting this problem with the G3. Macintosh Pricing Update I spent a few minutes updating the Special Report for Educators: Macintosh Pricing to reflect product and price changes announced in conjunction with the Tokyo MacWorld Expo. I can't say that I think much of Apple's $100 across-the-board price increase on flat-panel iMacs. While I'm sure there is some validity in Apple's claim that materials prices have gone up, I think the price increase has a lot more to do with Apple's repeated inability to intelligently plan production for new products. The decision to raise prices is incredibly shortsighted for a company that desperately needs to increase marketshare to remain a viable alternative to Windows. Apple is sure to maintain it's nearly 30% profit margin, it's reported $4 billion in cash reserves, and it's cushy bonuses for executives for now, but raising prices on a hot product is simply a shabby move by a company known for its corporate greed and arrogance. Shame on them! Special Ed Hearings Begin A Cox News posting in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that hearings began last Thursday in Congress on reshaping special education. Andrew Mollison writes in Congress rethinks special education that "Clashing recommendations from the six witnesses made it clear that reaching a consensus won't be easy." Senator Edward Kennedy expressed hopes that Congress "can strengthen IDEA in the areas of accountability, enforcement, quality and coordinated program supports, and meet the federal commitment to fully fund IDEA, there is virtually no limit to the advances special education students can achieve over the next quarter-century." Others expressed concerns about "disciplinary procedures for students with disabilities, better support and less paperwork for special educators, and an end to feuding between health, welfare and education agencies that each try to get the others to pick up the tab for the extra cost of educating the disabled." A story in the Sunday Boston Globe illustrates some of the problems facing parents, school districts, and federal and state governments in dealing with special education. Parents eye suit over special education by Globe staff writer Alice Dembner tells of a 15 year old student with "learning disabilities, mood disorders, and violent tantrums." The student was ready for release from a hospital "locked psychiatric unit," but neither her home school, nor any other suitable school in Massachusetts was willing to admit her. The parents finally found a residential school in Texas with the home Burlington school district picking up the annual $150,000 tab after arbitration. Last October, the Washington Post's Michael A. Fletcher hinted that the Bush administration's "President 's Commission on Excellence in Special Education" may really be a smoke screen to perform a hatchet job on special education in Bush Administration Gears Up To Revamp Special Education. Fletcher pointed out that unnamed administration sources indicated "that the landmark legislation has spun out of control since it was enacted more than a quarter-century ago.," and "Bush administration officials have stressed that special education students too frequently achieve poorly in school despite the vast amounts of money spent to educate them." Fletcher also noted that Lynda Van Kuren of the Council for Exceptional Children felt that while special education has problems, many of them could be solved if the federal government fully funded its share of the program's costs. "The one area that gives us concern is that this commission may thwart efforts to gain full funding for special education. We simply can't wait any longer." Ms. Van Kuren's fears proved justified as the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives again blocked full funding of special education in the recent education reform bill. In the coming debate in Congress and the report from the President's commission, it will be interesting to see just what "No Child Left Behind" means if that child is disabled. Based on past performance of this administration, it could prove pretty scary for those with a stake in special education. Chemistry Links Scienceman.com, always a good read, has a long listing of chemistry links today. Included are Molecules of the Month, How Fireworks Work, Chemical Bonding Analogies, and more. Older PCs More Valuable Than New Ones? A Computerworld article by Patrick Thibodeau, Copyright protection bill creates furor in high-tech industry, notes that legislation introduced this week that would "mandate a technical standard for protecting copyrighted content" could produce a new market for older PCs while crashing new PC sales. Thibodeau writes that according to some analysts, "In a new world where PCs would be loaded with anticopying technology, older PCs would become more valuable then newer machines." Bibliographer 1.1 for Mac OS X
Tristan's site also contains the following message:
Congratulations, Tristan! SAT Changes Elizabeth Bell reports in College Board acts to change SAT I test that "In response to a University of California proposal to drop the SAT I test, the College Board has taken measures to change the exam." PBS Special PBS will be running the special, Misunderstood Minds, on Wednesday evening this week. The documentary deals with learning differences and learning disabilities and the PBS web site provides some good further reading on the subject. The Washington Post's Judith S. Gillies has a good preview of the program in "Misunderstood Minds"; Unlocking Some Mental Mysteries. The SchwabLearning.org also has added a page about the special. Desktop G3 or Power Mac 9600 While I've been frittering away my time writing Individualized Educational Plans the past week, I've had some emails pile up without getting around to answering them. Terry Graham from Vancouver, B.C., finds himself in the pleasant position of choosing between two excellent "vintage" computers. Terry and I have traded emails occasionally about vintage Macs. I've sent Terry my views, but you might have an idea or two I've missed. Send them directly to Terry.
Quiz Making Software Paolo Mugnaini wrote last week asking if I could post a link to his WebQuiz 2002 software. WebQuiz is a $50 shareware for Windows that allows one to "create interactive HTML quizzes and tests to be published on CD-ROMs or on the Internet." It supports multiple choice, multiple answer, true-false, and fill-in-the-blank questions. Here's Paolo's email:
I had trouble accessing Paolo's site with Internet Explorer 5.1 for Mac, but got there just fine with Netscape. Unfortunately, the download page pulldown menus don't work well. You can still download by just ignoring all but the red tagged fields.
Annual Case Reviews Having conducted 23 annual case reviews last week, I'm looking forward to a little break. We're on spring vacation this week, so I should be able to resume the regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule for updates to Educators' News. I still have more ACRs to complete in the weeks to come, but they'll be a bit more spread out. I hope to have time to get ahead on writing IEPs this week, do a complete teardown and cleaning of my venerable beige G3 minitower, and possibly even pop in a few upgrades along the way. (Sounds like a column in the making, doesn't it?) I think Annie has a few jobs in the job jar for me as well (See Beware: MacIdiot at Work).
Order the Cake: Find the Candles Educators' News is almost a year old. We're now into our 50th week of publication. The MATH DITTOS 2 series is approaching the seven year mark. The contract with our web host and the mathdittos2.com domain name registry will soon be due for renewal. I'll be doing a bit of evaluation over the next few weeks before committing to another year of Educators' News and continuing development of the MATH DITTOS 2 series. I've committed to teaching at least one more year, instead of taking early retirement this year, as it now appears we've been able to work out some of the critical issues that seemed destined to propel me out of education earlier this year. One observation I've already made is that Educators' News seems at its best when readers actively contribute to these pages. I appreciate your news tips, comments, and the education and Macintosh tales sent in. I hope you'll keep sharing your gems with me.
If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please . |
Tristan Harris has released 
One positive outcome of the ACR process was the addition of a new Epson C80 printer. My Epson 850 from my classroom was needed there, so I took the 850 from home into the office for the actual conferences, leaving me without a good printer at home. Well, that's the story I used, anyway. When I told Annie, she gave me one of those looks that said, "I'm not buying it for a minute, but I won't stop you, either." So far, the C80 has performed well. I've got it hooked up to a Compaq Deskpro running Windows 2000 Professional (NT 5). (Remember, I was doing Individualized Educational Plans in a Windows-only, Access-driven program. Microsoft Office for Macintosh won't be a complete product to me until it includes Access.) While I don't know if it reaches its rated 20 pages-per-minute, it clearly is much faster than my old Epson 850s. I'm not sure about ink consumption as yet. I haven't run any of the four cartridges out as yet. (BTW: EdNews affiliate advertiser |
I really hadn't planned to do an update today, but had a few items come in that I didn't want to let sit until Wednesday. One was a brief email from Joe Taylor from northern Ohio telling me he was out on a snow day today! Joe just received his new flat-panel iMac last week (at the $100 lower price), so I think I know how he'll spend his day off. We're just having flurries here outside Graysville, Indiana (Where?). My wife, Annie, just called from Terre Haute to say it's considerably more than flurries there. A Different Kind of Weekly School Newsletter A Baltimore Sun column by Tanika White, At 13, he's at helm of school newscast, tells of Glenwood Middle School eighth-grader Joey Spurrier's weekly online parent newsletter. Joey gleans the most important or interesting items each week from the Glenwood Cobra Connections newsletter and then uses a video camera and an iMac to produce his multimedia newsletter. It features "real video, with sound, viewable in a little box on a home or work computer screen - a mininewscast with middle-schoolers in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Sometimes, Joey includes clips from the latest choral, band or drama performances." PhotoPage in Action Jim Crittenden wrote today singing the praises of John A. Vink's Mac freeware, Photopage. It's the kind of application that can make computer assisted learning really valuable.
Maple River Education Coalition PAC Frequent contributor Ken Kashmarek of Eldridge, Iowa, sent along links to MrEdCo (No, not the TV talking horse, Mr. Ed, but the Maple River Education Coalition PAC) and Marc Tucker's "Dear Hillary" Letter. Ken keeps an eye out for encroaching government control and also serves as an excellent foil for my "bleeding-heart liberal" tendencies. After looking at the letter a bit, I found I really disagreed with the spin Mr. Tucker puts on most of it, but present the links here in the interest of editorial balance, something often highly lacking here on Educators' News. BTW: After inserting the Mr. Ed quip, I did a quick search and came up with some great Mr. Ed links:
Can you tell that I'm on vacation? Searching for Cubase v1.8.3 Rick Baldwin from Stockton, California, finds himself in that lousy situation of owning a piece of software, not having a backup installer, and having the original installer disk go bad. He's looking for a specific version of Cubase. If you can help, contact Rick directly.
I found it really cool that Rick still uses a Mac IIci on a regular basis. 32MB 64-pin SIMMS in a IIfx??? Richard Burns wrote with a question about some 32MB 64-pin RAM SIMMs he'd acquired. He wondered if I knew if one could use the RAM chips in a Mac IIfx (other than the LaserWriter IINTx, the only application I know of for 64-pin SIMMs). Here's Rick's email:
I suggested Rick try the Vintage Mac and Classic Mac mailing lists. If you know something about the chips, please send your response or suggestions directly to Rick. SchwabLearning.org Updates New items this week on the SchwabLearning.org site include:
The third edition of the SchwabLearning.org Assistive Technology (AT) Guide is now complete. It can be downloaded (740K) as a PDF document, ordered by mail, or accessed directly from the SchwabLearning.org Assistive Technology page. Rest of the Mac Web Survey Dan Knight begins his Rest of the Mac Web Survey today on Low End Mac. He just finished up his third Best of the Mac Web Survey which ranks the top 50 Macintosh sites on the web. I'd recommend that you go to his site and "vote early and vote often" for Educators' News, except that this isn't a Chicago election, Dan has built in some controls that allow folks to vote just once, and we're not on the survey, as Educators' News is really a cross-platform education site (albeit constructed on and with a heavy emphasis on Macs:-). Devotion For March 24-30, 2002 I began a new weekly posting last week featuring my youngest son's weekly devotional. Zach (Wood) was away for the weekend on a job interview, so this week's inspirational message came out a day or two late. It's entitled 3 Words to Never Forget. I hope it adds a bit of brightness to your week.
Edison to get the Nod? According to a Susan Snyder Philadelphia Inquirer column, Lead school role expected for Edison, Edison Schools Inc. "is expected to be named lead management consultant to the Philadelphia School District under a plan being developed by the School Reform Commission." Despite bitter opposition to Edison, the commission appears ready to bow to Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker's desire that Edison have a major role in the Philadelphia school reform. The New York Times Jacques Steinberg also has a related column today, Edison Gets a Share of Philadelphia Contracts (free registration required). National Assessment of Educational Progress Richard Rothstein takes the government's National Assessment of Educational Progress to task in this week's Lessons column, National Test Is Out of Tune With Times (free registration required). Rothstein asserts that the test, called the Nation's Report Card, has not changed to accurately measure student progress. Misunderstood Minds on PBS Tonight The PBS documentary, Misunderstood Minds, airs this evening on most PBS stations. The documentary deals with "the impact of learning differences in individual children, their families, and society as a whole." (PBS Station Finder) Which Platform for DVD Burning? James Coates, computer columnist for the Chicago Tribune, leaves little doubt about his choice for burning DVDs in his most recent question and answer column (free registration required). Coates, who has often been vilified by the Mac press, states, "Anybody who absolutely needs to get into burning home DVDs should move over to Macintosh...Apple's system is so much better for DVDs than anything in the PC world that it's better for a Windows devotee to accept the challenges of learning the Macintosh operating system than to pop for an expensive PC setup with burners." Squeeze every Beatle song ever made onto a single CD-R Speaking of burning disks, Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day for yesterday on OSXFAQ.com was about how to burn CDs in the MP 3 format using iTunes 2. I've always enjoyed Bob Levitus's easy to follow tips and columns. Attorney Finds Teaching a Tough Job In a USA Today column, Teachers face tougher task than public understands, attorney Joseph Reynolds tells of his brief tenure as a high school history teacher. Reynolds notes a number of public misconceptions about teaching being an easy job. An editorial note at the conclusion of the column states: "After a half year of 14-hour days as a teacher, Joseph Reynolds returned to the law firm of Nixon Peabody LLP."
Software for the Younger Set
Robin Landsbert Updates Three Mac Freewares Robin Landsbert has posted updates to all of his Macintosh freeware offerings. Finderella is an OS X compatible, "Macintosh Finder replacement for children whose parents do not want them to mess up their hard disks." Flash Cards is Robin's Mac reading tutor. Now in beta version 1.0b6, Flash Cards opens text files to be presented as flash cards which are then spoken back to the student. Mirror Paint, featured here last week, is a kaleidoscope-type draw program for kids (of all sizes and ages:-). All of Robin's offerings are freewares and relatively small downloads. The links above are to the various download pages, as Robin compiles his offerings in 68K, Power PC, and Carbon versions.
Jeff Adkins completes a two-part series in today's Mac Lab Report, More on AppleWorks. Part 1, Improving AppleWorks, ran last Thursday and concerned Jeff's suggestions for improving AppleWorks. This week's column talks about the AppleWorks file translators and lists the update urls for AppleWorks 6. AppleWorks remains one of the best software deals around for educators. The educational version, available through the Apple Store for Education, runs just $39 postpaid, and includes both Macintosh and Windows versions on the hybrid CD. Apple's AppleWorks Educators' Resources page is a good starting point for finding useful templates and tips for using AppleWorks. I maintain several columns on the subject as well that may have some tips and templates you can use:
If wading through a column is too much work for a Thursday:-), you can also just click over to my Freebies page which has links to all of my downloadable AppleWorks templates. Novell CTO Testifies in the Microsoft Antitrust Trial...Remedy Phase??...Whatever... Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau reports that Novell Chief Technology Officer Carl Ledbetter got his licks in on Microsoft yesterday in Novell CTO says Microsoft harmed rival systems. Testifying "on behalf of the states opposing the Bush administration's settlement," Ledbetter "accused Microsoft Corporation...of degrading the performance of rival server operating systems and withholding key technical information that his company needs for its servers to achieve full interoperability in corporate enterprises." ST380021A Heaven The part number above corresponds to a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80 gig 7200 RPM hard drive. Mine arrived yesterday (well, really today, since I'm really writing this last night...confused...me, too). Anyway, I'm in computer nerd heaven with over twice the storage space my Barracuda 28 gig and Fireball 6 gig drives supplied. I picked up my drive from Fry's Outpost.com for $129.95. I'm not sure that's the lowest price around, but it's got to be close. Tomorrow (today), I'll format and partition the drive and begin installing clean copies of OS 9.2.2 and X 10.1.2. I spent the required time this (last) evening downloading the installation guide and product manual from Seagate. I've also perused Seagate's Configuration and Specifications pages. Compared to the old Seagate server drives with a zillion jumpers to set, this one should be easy. I've visited Dr. Mac's To partition or not to partition, that is the question tip page. I think I'm all nerded up and ready to go.
Columns Peter Simon reports in the Buffalo News Income, race affect test scores. Teach, the Einstein Academy Charter School, has avoided some of its financial woes with an agreement with the Pennsylvania Education Department that releases $3.4 million in state funds to the troubled cyber school. Einstein was in the news earlier this month when its ISP readied to terminate its internet service due to non-payment. An October Philadelphia Inquirer column, Education 2.0: Point, click, learn, tells more about Einstein's cyber school approach. Virus Definition Updates If you haven't done so as yet, it's time again to download those monthly virus definition updates. General links to the major antivirus providers are:
Changeover We're in the midst of a changeover to a new server which requires changing the DNS registry. There may be some bumps along the way, but everything should be smoothed out by the first of next week. Have a great weekend!!
Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News. |
| Previous Week |
|
|
|
|
|
|