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Mark your calendar for Thursday, May 2, 2002, from noon to 2 P.M. (EDT) for the fifth annual Cyber Space Day webcast. This year the event, broadcast live from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, is titled Cyber Space Day 2002 . . . Adventure to Mars! The program allows students "to interact live with a wide range of Mars experts, scientists and astronauts." If your web connection isn't up to snuff, the program is also available via satellite. Be sure to check out:
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Senate Hearings on Special Education Cox New Service's Andrew Mollison tells of a parent's testimony before a Senate committee considering "whether to toughen and simplify federal rules for school discipline of children with disabilities" in Senate eyes discipline changes for disabled students. Study on Special Ed Teachers Bugging Out The Indianapolis Star reports Study sheds light on teacher exits. Kim Hooper tells there is "a critical shortage in such key areas as math, science and special education" in Indiana and surrounding states, according to a recent study. "That's because licensed teachers in those vital subject areas are more likely to leave the teaching profession within the first five years of their careers." Chattanooga Elementary Teachers Get Home-Buying Assistance A Yahoo News/AP posting relates that up to 60 Chattanooga elementary teachers at 9 targeted schools may receive a 10% home purchase assistance package as a recruitment incentive. In Tennessee Teachers Get Help Buying Homes, AP's Bill Poovey tells of a program that began with donated private funding that will provide "a loan of up to $10,000 that would be forgiven and special reduced interest rates that would reduce mortgage payments &emdash; must agree to remain employed in the school at least five years." Public Still Sees School Funding as a Top Priority Education Week has released a poll showing the Public Sees Schools As a Priority. Education Week's Linda Jacobson writes:
Proposed Federal Student Loan Changes The Bush Administration has sent a proposal to Congress that would change the consolidation of college student loans from subsidized fixed rates to variable rates. The measure is expected to save around $1.3 billion, but would make consolidation of student loans a much less attractive option for students with several loans to repay.
A Nice Story The Washington Post's Ian Shapira has a nice story about high school math teacher Tyrone Baltimore, Teacher of the Year award for Fauquier County in Teacher Remains a Kid at Heart. Microsoft Antitrust Case Patrick Thibeau and Carol Sliwa have a good summary and commentary on Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates's testimony last week, where Gates threatened to pull the Windows operating system from the market if the stiffer penalties sought by the nine remaining states to settle are imposed. The remedy phase of the trial continues this week with Microsoft set to call at least four additional Microsoft executives as witnesses for the defense.
Virus A new variant of an old virus/worm is making waves around the web. CNET's Robert Lemos describes what's going on in New "Klez" still clobbering PC users. Devotion For April 28-May 4, 2002 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is A Diluted Heart. I hope it adds a bit of brightness to your week. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Satisfying Moment in Tech Support While my official duties at work include tech support only for our special education IEP program, I still am occasionally asked to help with other calamities. Such a moment occurred last week when I received a frantic call at home Thursday evening from a fellow staff member. She was helping out with the yearbook and had all of her files stored on a single Zip disk. The Zip was displaying just one small file, but still said 90 of the 100 MB available had been used. All of her named files for the yearbook were either gone or invisible. She had been desperately trying to remember the names of the files and was searching the disk for them. Fortunately, the staff member was savvy enough not to overwrite anything on the disk, but had already tried an older version of Norton Utilities without success. I suggested she stop trying and bring me the disk the next day. She appeared in my classroom around 9 o'clock the next morning and I let my excellent teaching assistant take over spelling test chores as I tried to recover the disk. Since none of the files were displayed, I wasn't sure if just copying the disk would preserve the missing files, so I used Disk Copy to make a read/write disk image of the Zip. The missing files represented hundreds of hours of work, so I was especially careful to do nothing that might harm the original disk. To make such a disk copy, one just opens Disk Copy and selects "Create image from disk..." from the "Image" menu. Select the disk to be imaged, but be sure to change the format from "Read-Only Compressed" to "Read/Write" before saving. (See illustrations below)
After ejecting the Zip and mounting its disk copy, I simply used Alsoft's Disk Warrior to rebuild the disks file directory. As I've written before in a column, "A good utilities program can make you look like a real Mac guru!" All of the missing files were restored on the disk image. We saved the image to the Mac server and then successfully repeated the process on the Zip disk. Later in the day the staff member related that she was using the files but was also carefully backing up all the files. Had it been me, I would also have thrown away the offending zip disk or at least reformatted it, but...it wasn't my disk or project. Had the above situation not occurred, I might have made a major mistake in a software order I'm preparing at school. Our superintendent had stopped by my classroom Thursday to tell me what my initial software budget would be for our current special ed technology grant. My thinking was running first to keyboarding and reading programs, but I'd forgotten that first on the list needs to be one or more good Macintosh disk utilities. While disk utilities on the Windows side can be an iffy proposition, a good Mac disk utility usually can make a sick computer well without too much effort. With twenty-four new iBooks sitting boxed in the technology office awaiting their custom cart, and at least six G4 towers on the way (one destined for my classroom:-), I'd be a bit silly if I didn't order at least one good disk utility to make our computing a bit easier. We'll be booting into the Classic Mac OS 9.2.2 initially, but may soon move to OS X as our experience with the new operating system grows. Norton SystemWorks 2 for Mac is an obvious good choice for a utilities program, but MicroMat's Drive 10 (along with TechTool Pro 3 for Classic), and Alsoft's Disk Warrior are also good programs. I may just order them all.
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Cyber Space Day 2002
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Apple Introduces New Education Model: The eMac
The base eMac model is only available to education institutions--both K-12 and higher education, while the two other models are available to K-12 and higher education individuals as well.
Apple also speed bumped the PowerBook (TiBook) lineup to 667 and 800 MHz models (from 550 and 667 MHz previously) and introduced a new DVI to ADC adapter so that PowerBooks can use flat-panel displays. The new TiBooks run around $200 more than the previous models as Apple continues to push prices upward on all models with flat-panel displays. Special Report for Educators: Macintosh Pricing The Educators' News Special Report for Educators: Macintosh Pricing has again been updated to reflect the product changes and introductions by Apple yesterday. Kennedy Speaks Out on Proposed Federal Student Loan Changes The Boston Globe's Mary Leonard reports that Senator Edward Kennedy "vowed yesterday to block what he called a 'misguided proposal' by the Bush administration to end fixed interest rates on federal-student loans" in Kennedy rips Bush plan to let college loan rates float. We'd linked here yesterday to a New York Times article that gave specifics on the Bush plan to go to variable interest rates on college loan consolidations, rather than the current fixed, subsidized rates. The net effect to students would be to make repayment considerably more difficult, while saving the government an estimated $1.3 billion to be shifted to other Bush budget priorities. According to Ms. Leonard, Kennedy didn't mince words on the issue, blasting President Bush:
Philadelphia School Privatization News In the hail of negative press concerning the privatization of some Philadelphia public schools, Ronald Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times presents a more positive view of one school reformer in Privatizing Schools: The Philadelphia Experiment. Brownstein looks at the issue from the viewpoint of Philadelphia builder and now, school reformer, Kenny Gamble. Brownstein is realistic as well, noting, "When Gamble's group takes control of its neighborhood schools, it may find that it too is unable to fully reverse the grinding effects of poverty or overcome the years lost for children whose parents never read them a bedtime story." Despite receiving the nod to take over 20 of Philadelphia's schools, Edison Schools, Inc. stock was downgraded to a "buy" from a "strong buy" by Merrill Lynch and fell from from $8 to $7.25 per share. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in Edison stock drops again after being downgraded that "Analysts had been expecting the company to receive 45" schools to run. New Items on SchwabLearning.org New items on the Schwablearning.org site this week include:
As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 5-5-02). An AppleScript for Automounting a Server at Startup I'd written several folks about our new iBooks at school, asking for any insights they'd had in setting up and using the laptops. Jim Crittenden of the Kayenta Middle School and the Kayenta Middle School iBook Project fame, wrote back with several helpful points and also included an AppleScript he's using to ease automounting a server for use with an older version of Accelerated Reader.
Thanks, Jim! New G4 Towers Arrive
While all of the new G4's were able to connect to the internet through the proxy server under OS 9, none could connect under OS X 10.1.3 (shipped version, we'll upgrade tomorrow). Our technology coordinator thinks the password being sent to the server is somehow corrupted. I'd had a similar experience beginning a couple of weeks ago under OS 9 that I'd attributed to an update of Internet Explorer and switching some computers around to cover for my great motherboard meltdown here at home. I resolved the issue then by going back to the MacHack IE 5.5b1 build of Internet Explorer. The techie wrote the following late this afternoon:
Well, no, I don't have any OS X guru contacts, but I do have
It's been a long time since Apple Computer produced a model exclusively for the education market. The last such model was the incredible G3 All-in-one, code named Artemis. I wrote the following about that model in a 1998 column:
The Artemis had to go because it competed, probably too well, with the then new iMac, and it had the dreaded floppy drive that Uncle Steve cast out from the Garden of Cupertino. While neither the iMac, nor the desktop offerings of the time really filled the niche of the Artemis, Apple was in the process of cutting back to their "core markets." Unfortunately, they forgot that education was one of those core markets. More properly, Apple took the education market for granted and the PC makers simply stole most of it away. Not until the introduction of the iBook did Apple again produce a model that clearly had the education market in mind. Unfortunately, Apple was ahead of its time in seeing widespread school use of laptops and the PC vendors continued to cut Apple's throat in the education market with faster, cheaper, more feature-laden PC desktops. Apple's initial pricing of the iBook and later the 2001 iBook revision also fed the fires of cheaper PC purchases. When I published the column, Never mind. Apple Education probably is dead., hundreds of Apple zealots wrote nasty flames telling me that Apple was poised to vanquish PCs from the education market with the "aggressively priced" 2001 iBook. Unfortunately for them and Apple and those of us who'd love to continue using Macs in our classrooms, I was right and Apple's premium pricing of the model (Yep, it was introduced at about $200 too high.) couldn't stem the PC tide.
Tom McKenna wrote this evening and said, "I am betting you can control your urge to say, 'What took so long?' " Tom's right on that one, but what I can't control is the urge to say, "Won't Apple ever learn?" 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:
Testing Guide from NEA The National Education Association has released a guide for parents about standardized testing. The Parent's Guide to Testing and Accountability is available online and as a downloadable PDF (84K) document. A Sad Story Jay Mathews's latest Class Struggle column for the Washington Post tells the horror story of one substitute teacher. Jay also generalizes the teacher's experience described in Teacher's Bad Day Paints a Bigger Picture to some of the larger problems affecting public education in general.
Freeware Update Bush Administration Backs Off on College Loan Changes A Boston Globe/Reuters posting, White House yields to Democratic pressure on student loans, reports that the Bush Administration has decided not to pursue changes to the college loan program after strong opposition was expressed by both Democrats and Republicans. School Lunch The Bush Administration is "implementing new rules to give schools more information about the safety of factories that provide student meals," according to the Chicago Tribune report, GAO finds barriers to school food safety. Day Off We have one of those built-in make-up days in our school calendar tomorrow and get the day off from school since we had no cancellations this year. My "honey" is home from a week on the road, and I'm taking our "baby," a fifteen year old with a drivers ed permit, to breakfast tomorrow morning while she's still a little girl:-)! So...I think I'm gonna just start the weekend early. Have a great weekend and see you Monday!
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Apple Computer yesterday introduced a 17" CRT all-in-one G4 computer specifically for the education market. The new model is dubbed the 
I returned to my classroom from a case conference today to find a new 800 MHz G4 tower sitting boxed by my desk! "Today" began with a family emergency at 3 A.M., so I couldn't enjoy the event as much as it deserved. I'd also just finished one of those heart-wrenching conferences where no one at the table has "the answer" for a troubled child. Ours is certainly an imperfect art. Setting up the new box at the end of the day was an incredibly wonderful distraction. While I've messed with G4's at the Apple Store, I didn't realize 1), how heavy they are, and 2), how really cool they look.
Odd thoughts while shaving between paragraphs:
It's nice to see that Apple has again produced a Mac exclusively aimed at the education market. It's not so nice to see the education price tag on the model: $999. Let's see, a 700 MHz processor with 128 MB RAM, a 40 gig hard drive, standard CD-ROM, a 17" CRT display and no modem priced at a thousand dollars. What will a grand buy in the PC market--education price? Once again Apple's new introduction is around $100-200 too high to effectively compete with the PC flood.
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©2002 Steven L. Wood