Monday, May 6, 2002

Union Problems in New York and California

Abby Goodnough describes the continuing negotiation problems in New York City in Extra State Aid Fails to Speed Teachers' Deal (free registration required). Mayor Michael Bloomberg still has as yet to gain control of the New York City schools, as he's refused to pledge to not cut funding this year. The New York schools continue to face problems in finding qualified teaching applicants to fill their classrooms.

Charges of influence peddling are being tossed about after the California Teachers Association rebuffed Governor Gray Davis's request for a $1 million campaign contribution. Governor Davis subsequently refused to support two bills backed by the CTA. Teachers' feud with governor deepens describes the west coast action.

Tuesday Night Massacre in LA

Doug Smith reports in Saturday's Los Angeles Times about budget cutbacks in the Los Angeles schools. In As California Budget Goes, So Go School Districts, Smith relates that may teachers see the cuts as "a tragic replay of a budget meltdown that scalded the schools 10 years ago." He continues, "having fought for a decade to restore their pay and then add a few percentage points, the teachers view increased class sizes and reduced health benefits as merely a more devious way of saving money."

CNN's James Hattori Interviews Apple CEO Steve Jobs

CNN's James Hattori interviewed Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, last week about Apple's new eMac. In Apple eMac: That's 'E' for education, Jobs gets to tell Hattori and the world about Apple's commitment to education. I still think the new offering is priced about $200 too high to have much of an impact on those already headed towards purchasing PCs. But then, I thought the iBook 2001 was priced about $200 too high a year ago, and I just recommended and specced 24 of those iBooks for purchase by our school system last month. (Hmmm, come to think of it, we paid about $200 less for each than the price last year:-).

Freeware Friday (on Monday)

Since I took Friday off, I didn't get to link to Bob Levitis's Dr. Mac's Prescription "Browsers are free and so are you" on Friday. For his regular OS X Freeware Friday feature (if I could work in another /f/ sound, it might be pretty good alliteration.), Bob picks two free browsers for special mention. Bob likes Opera under OS X, despite the fact that "It's still a little flakey, and crashes a little too often." Bob admits his second choice may be a surprise to us, as it was to him. He likes the Chimera, "a variant of Fizzilla that consists of a UNIX back end coupled with a Cocoa front end."

Report on Youth, Pornography, and the Internet

The New York Times John Schwartz has excellent coverage of the recently released National Research Council report, "Youth, Pornography, and the Internet." In No Easy Fixes Are Seen to Curb Sex-Site Access (free registration required), Schwartz relates the report's authors conclude:

Though some might wish otherwise, no single approach -- technical, legal, economic or educational -- will be sufficient. Rather, an effective framework for protecting our children from inappropriate materials and experiences on the Internet will require a balanced composite of all of these elements.

The report also notes an outcome that many of us who use the internet in the classroom already bemoan. "Filters intended to block pornographic sites can be highly effective in reducing the exposure of minors to inappropriate content if the inability to access large amounts of appropriate material is acceptable." [Note: My emphasis]

More on Edison Schools

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews ran an excellent column last week that gives a pretty objective look at Edison Schools, Inc. in Putting For-Profit Company to the Test. One of the interesting tidbits from the column is, "It now has 75,000 students...making it the equivalent of the 45th largest school district in the country." Edison has been prominent in the news lately due to its role in the state takeover of the Philadelphia public schools. It now has a contract to run 20 schools there.

Space Day Follow-up

Since we lack cable TV in our classroom and our internet access to activities such as the Smithsonian's Cyber Space Day webcast are blocked for reasons mentioned in the above posting, I substituted some print and computer materials gathered from one of the many NASA sites for my sixth grade reading group that meets at the end of each day. We read a web posting from April 30 that I'd printed up, Hubble's New Camera Delivers Breathtaking Views of the Universe. The article presents four amazing new "'suitable-for-framing' Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) science-demonstration pictures." The group of sixth graders had also expressed interest previously in the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. A little digging the evening before had taken me to NASA's Shuttle Gallery of photos, part of the larger Human Spaceflight Gallery. There, I easily found a couple of incredibly detailed photos of the Hubble and the Space Station that held the group's interest well past their "assigned class period."

Accessing the photo galleries on a home dial-up connection is a bit slow, but NASA has done all they can with the presentation of the material to make it as easily accessible as possible for those of us with slow connections. Gallery photos are indexed and presented in groups of eight large thumbnails per web page. Selecting a specific photo link sends one to a page with a slightly larger photo, but not one that overwhelms the connection, and a good photo caption. From there, you have a choice of going to or downloading a larger high or low-resolution version of the image. That's where the fun began for my class!

I'd downloaded several of the high resolution images at home the previous evening and had them on the hard drive of our fantastic new G4 Power Mac Quicksilver tower. I first brought up the photo from the above right page at around 15% of actual size. It's a great shot of the International Space Station as the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS 110) pulled away from the station some 247 miles above the North Atlantic. The photo at left is a 5% cropped rendering of the original photo which measures 42.1 x 28.7 inches (3032x2064 pixels) in actual size! At right is just a section of the actual size photo which reveals exquisite detail of the International Space Station. (I've converted the NASA JPEG to an optimized GIF for speedier download on this page with consequent loss of image quality.)

My hard-to-motivate group of sixth grade guys (the lone female in the reading group was absent) spent several minutes oohing and ahhing the photos before moving on to hunting other cool photos on the NASA sites. With just two full weeks of instruction left in the school year for this group (They go camping for the last week of the school year.), I may just dump the reader for the rest of the year and give the group a solid dose of space science from NASA!

What About That G4?

Ah, yes, the new G4 Quicksilver is a beauty. I took my Ethernet patch cable to school Wednesday and transferred most of my documents from the old Power Mac 7500/G3 in just a few minutes. The direct connection was the easy way for me, as using the server would have required one more port than my poor old Ethernet hub has available (a new switch has been promised by the "Evil NT Techie"). I'm still casting about as how to organize the hard drive on the new Mac, as I anticipate using OS X almost exclusively at some point next year. For now, we boot into OS 9.2.2 since we haven't solved our OS X proxy server problems, and I'm still printing to a serial port printer. We have some Griffin g4port adapters ordered to take care of serial port printing from the new G4's under OS 9, but X will require a true USB printer like my Epson C80 at home.

I kept the G4 almost continuously available to our eager crew of kindergarten through sixth grade learners, using SpellTutor practice spelling tests as the initial application all could use without asking. I've kept the PM 7500/G3 pretty much for my exclusive use this year, with many exceptions, as I'm almost constantly printing up spelling and math materials from it, and we now have enough "good" computers to handle the kids requirements. The kids seemed a bit surprised that they could use the new computer without special permission! I plan to get a bit more protective of the new box once the cart of new iBooks appears in my classroom for student use. In the past, it's been necessary to keep a student log or two open, but "windowshaded up," for regular behavioral reports. I guess the kids are bit better off this year, as that measure hasn't been necessary nearly as often.

Interestingly, the new G4 loaded up at 1024x768 resolution in both OS 9 and X and I just left it that way. I don't seem at all bothered by the smaller print and am finding that the icons and such on my G3 minitower at home under OS 9 look rather large at its usual 832x624 screen resolution.

OS X Support for Ricoh MP-6200S CD-RW 

I had a blank CDR disk on my desk when I booted into Mac OS X today. On a whim, since I'd heard the OS X 10.1.4 update added support for a bunch of CD burners, I popped the blank CD into my ancient (in computer years) Ricoh MP-6200S CD-RW. To my surprise, a dialog box popped up inquiring politely as to how I wished the blank CD formatted. Being a normally obliging chap (most of the time), I let the Mac format the disk and proceeded to throw a few files onto it. Still doubting, I pulled down from the "File" menu to "Burn CD." It did:-). I really never expected Apple to support CD burners that go all the way back to the Ricoh with its maximum 2X burn rate, but they did. As Morgan Freeman's character said in the classic movie Teachers, "Nice touch." Now, if Apple could just get around to supporting the video on my old beige G3 under OS X...

Devotion For May 5-11, 2002

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is SURRENDER: More Than A Definition. I hope it adds a bit of brightness to your week. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please .

Tuesday, May 7, 2002

New Items on SchwabLearning.org

New items on the Schwablearning.org site this week include:

• My mom's a walking miracle
• Survival Tips for Parents

As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 5-12-02).

Serial Port Printing with a G4

When we ordered 6 new G4 Mac Quicksilver towers this spring at school, we knew we'd have to do something to use our current serial port printers. We hadn't realized that the towers don't have a microphone port. It turns out that Griffin Technology had the answer to both issues. Griffin makes a product called the g4port adapter. It adds a retrofit serial port adapter that fits in the modem slot (or in the PCI opening if your G4 has an internal modem) and plugs into the motherboard. The installation directions omit that you must pull both the Quicksilver's chip fan and the AGP slot graphics card, but other than that, it's a pretty easy install. Once you install the included extensions, you can print to the serial port under OS 9 with your G4 tower.

The problem of the missing microphone port was solved for me since we'd ordered IBM's ViaVoice. I just used the ViaVoice USB microphone. Griffin Tech again has an answer for those without the ViaVoice mike in the iMic, which connects audio peripherals through the USB port. With it, you can use a variety of audio input and output devices.

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

Chicago Teachers Union to be Expert Partner for Two Schools Next Fall

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Chicago Board of Education officials on Monday approved "letting the Chicago Teachers Union serve as expert partner to at least two failing schools this fall--and more the following year." Sun-Times education reporter Rosalind Rossi reports that both the board and the union will take over two low-performing schools each in special programs to improve instruction. In Who can fix schools first? Rossi suggests a "Chicago school-fix faceoff" that according to DePaul University's Barbara Radner, expert partner to some two-dozen struggling Chicago public schools, "What's really nice is the kids win both ways."

"No Child Left Behind" Point-Counterpoint

In a speech at Vandenberg Elementary School in Southfield, Michigan, President Bush again reiterated his belief that holding schools accountable will improve education. Los Angeles Times staff writer James Gerstenzang quotes Bush as saying in Bush Defends His Call for Standardized School Tests, "I will spend as much time as necessary to herald success in our public schools. We've got to get public schools right." Gerstenzang also notes "Senator Edward M. Kennedy, chairman of the Senate education committee, said Bush has 'put forward the worst education budget in a decade.'"

In a Yahoo News posting, DNC speaks on Bush broken promises to Blacks, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe released the following comments on the Bush education program as part of a larger video blast at the President's policies:

The President promised to "leave no child behind", an obvious appeal to parents frustrated by the problems with many public schools. He likes to emphasize the bipartisan "No Child Left Behind" education reform bill as proof of his commitment. Yet, Bush's own budget creates an "unfunded mandate" by actually cutting $90 million from the very legislation he championed. In fact, he actually proposes the smallest education increase in seven years at 2.8%. In addition, the President's budget also cuts targeted funding for rural education and drop out assistance. Other programs barely survive the budget chopping block -- resources for teacher training, educational technology, after-school programs, and safe and drug-free schools are frozen; while for the second year in a row he allocates no money for school modernization. All of these initiatives are critical to enhancing minority student performance, which was supposed to be a cornerstone of Bush's compassionate conservative agenda.

 

The improvement of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Historically Black Graduate Institutions (HBGI) now is becoming more difficult, as the Bush budget offers an increase of 3.5%, the smallest amount in five years. As for making higher education more affordable, the maximum Pell Grant award is capped at $4,000, a full $1,100 less than the President's campaign guaranteed to college students. In addition, $1.3 billion was almost yanked from a federal student loan program that generates lower interest rates, but the Bush administration was pressured into understanding that balancing the budget at the expense of college students was unwise.

 

And what and where exactly are the Bush solutions for early childhood learning, a big African American priority? Without providing the resources, the President will not become a "reformer with results" and many African American children and college students will suffer the consequences.

Long Wait for Private School Placement

Buffalo News staff reporter Peter Simon presents a disturbing story in No place to turn for troubled students of behaviorally and emotionally handicapped students waiting six months to a year before receiving placement in private school settings.

As we see more and more severely emotionally handicapped students coming to school, it seems provisions for these students' education are becoming more and more difficult to secure, whether in a public or private setting. For those of us involved in special education, this problem seems to be one that government and school officials want to just wish away. There doesn't seem to be much public sentiment for addressing such problems, but parents also react adversely to the outbursts that come when such students are inappropriately places in settings lacking the required levels of support. This one is a time bomb that is sure to go off if not addressed soon.

One BIG Happy Family

Computerworld reports in HP officially launches newly merged company:

The company also launched a fully integrated Web site featuring more than 3 million pages, detailed product maps and more than 10,000 products from both HP and Compaq Computer Corp. In launching the new company, HP Chairwoman Carly Fiorina and CEO Michael Capellas said that much of the integration planning had already been completed and has been put in motion.

Microsoft Antitrust Case Development

The CNET/Reuters posting Judge wants demo of "modular" Windows relates that "U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she would allow nine states seeking stiff sanctions against the company to have a computer expert demonstrate a version of Windows he has developed that can be customized. Kollar-Kotelly scheduled the presentation for May 15."

Chimera Report

I noted on Monday Bob Levitis's endorsement of the Chimera version of the Navigator web browser. While still in beta, I have to echo Bob's endorsement. I've been playing with Chimera for several days and found it pretty good. Just a few moments ago, a web page started to load a popup advertisement page. Chimera jumped in to tell me it could block any such attempts! This browser is still clearly a beta with some features still missing and its own share of quirks, but it clearly could become a major player in the web browser market. It's that good already.

Ad Warning!

Several years ago I had this wonderful idea for a Christmas gift for my wife, Annie. She's a WAN Specialist for a major Midwest banking concern. She also had suffered a back injury in an auto accident at that time. I decided the most loving, wonderful gift I could give her would be a sturdy, portable, two-wheel cart to make her professional life, which includes hoisting and hauling computers and monitors from place to place, less strenuous.

Ah, yes. Some of you just spewed your Cheetos and Pepsi across your brand new flat-panel screen in hilarity at my foolishness. I have become the butt of a standing family joke, "If it has wheels and isn't a Corvette, it isn't romantic." So take my advice on the ad below from a quality vendor. If you're shopping for your wife this for this Mother's Day, forget the "PDAs, Business Cases and More," and go for the flowers or something with wheels and 60 months of payments.

From 1-800-Flowers.com
Fields of Europe	Summer Inspiration	French Countryside	Assorted Roses

Friday, May 10, 2002

What About Online Classes?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Scott Stephens has an interesting column about Education Week's Technology Counts 2002 report released yesterday. In Online learning may not click for everyone, Stephens notes that while online learning has the "potential to offer students unparalleled flexibility," there is the flip side "that online learning is frequently thrown off course by technical interruptions, and that the isolation of the process leaves students disconnected from their cyber 'classmates.'"

Technology Counts 2002

• Executive Summary: E-Defining Education
• The Issues: E-Learning Goes to School
• State Data Tables: Tracking Tech Trends
• State Profiles (This one is neat to check how your state is doing and how it compares to other states.

Assistive Technology

Katie Dean has a great column today on Wired News about how assistive technology helped an autistic third-grader. In A Wearable Aid for Special Kids, Dean tells how the then first-year teacher Lisa Zverloff got Xybernaut to loan her a $9,000 wearable computer for one of her students. Zverloff later received a state grant for wearables, and Dean relates that Zverloff feels "the durable, touch-screen portable computers have made her students more independent and confident. Some kids use it all day; others use it for specific activities. Several students are able to fully participate in mainstream classrooms while using the devices."

Smaller Schools

Tom Vander Ark has an interesting column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Make them small: Bigger is not better when it comes to schools. I can remember when school consolidation was being forced upon the state's smallest systems here in Indiana a few years ago. It appears the pendulum has now swung back to folks advocating smaller is better.

Edison Schools

The Philadelphia Inquirer column, Edison's stock dive raises concerns, notes that since "Edison Schools Inc. won a significantly smaller role running Philadelphia schools than it was seeking," there are "fears that Edison may have trouble obtaining the financing it needs to fund operations beyond June 30." The Inquirer's interest, of course is Edison's role in running 20 schools in Philadelphia next year.

A World of Difference

Richard Rothstein's most recent Lessons column, Two Cities, Two Elections and Two Different Worlds, looks at the vast differences in two widely separated high schools. Rothstein writes that while students in a Tulsa high school "main concerns were potholes and a lower-income area that they wanted beautified," students from a Newark high school were concerned with "gang violence, police corruption and the presence of drug dealers on the street."

In his May 1 column, States Teeter When Balancing Standards With Tests, Rothstein addresses the issue of "teaching the tests," and concludes, "until states create tests that truly test the standards, teachers who complain about having to teach to the test should be given a fuller hearing."

New Apple Archive

Adam Robert Guha takes a look beyond all the usual Mac vs. PC arguments in his latest Apple Archive column, The Sad State of Macs and PCs in Schools. Adam notes that public perception of the Mac, whether accurate or not, plays a big roles in students' computer choice. Adam concludes, "Computer skills are essential. They are not recommended; they are not suggested; they should be mandatory, and students should be proficient in both Windows and the Mac OS."

Good Links

Jim Crittenden wrote with a link to Sam Smith's Back to School. You'll need to scroll down to "One of the things you learn as a president of a parent's association is..." to get to the part Jim sent me about school finance. I'll give away the punchline here, though, "The rather terrifying thought occurred to me that we might be embarking on a multimillion dollar project that the kids would do for a few thousand. Tough. They'll just have to suffer."

Jim also sent along an update link to what his classes are doing currently at the Kayenta Middle School. Peace in Small Ways is a page of links to essays by his students on the subject.

Toshiba or iBook

I wrote a friend this week that I was in a quandary as to what to do maintaining the web site in June when I become a "road warrior" for a couple of weeks. My school system has been very good to provide me with a new Toshiba Satellite 1.1 GHz laptop to do my Individualized Educational Plans. The laptop is virtually mine as long as I am an employee, and I've gotten quite familiar with it over the last few weeks (and like it).

On the other hand, I am a Mac person through and through. I may also have access to a new iBook that I could take on the road to update Educators' News. The Toshiba has it all over the 500 MHz iBook in speed, but at times I still feel like I have band-aides on all my fingers when working in Windows. It just doesn't feel right. But the Toshiba is fast!

With either laptop, I'll still be working in Claris Home Page 3.0 and I have Adobe Photoshop Elements for both as well. When I work the web site occasionally on the Windows side, I miss the incredible Mac standard shareware, GraphicConverter, more than any other Mac-only application.

As a bit of a test, I did today's final update on the Toshiba. It really wasn't that much harder to do, but it certainly wasn't as easy as on a Mac. Switching files between the Mac and PC reminded me that Mac OS X doesn't read FAT 32 disks, which made my having MacDrive 5 on the Toshiba critical. It's too bad Apple has chosen to simply give away one of the major advantages of a Mac over a PC--the ability to read and format both types of disks. So...I'll keep playing around a bit with it. Let me know what you think.

Oh, yeah. Joe Taylor wrote back after I told him I was wondering which laptop to take on the road, "Not thinking of fleeing to the Dark Side, are you?" The answer is, "Not a chance!" I actually had the pleasure of hearing my onetime PC foil, our school's "Evil NT Techie," say today that he was having to take a lot of things he'd said about Apple back after using OS X. He really likes it.

As to the regular construction of this site in the near future, I'm looking forward to this summer. We're supposed to be able to bring home our new school computers "to get to know them." I think I'll be able to set aside my 300 MHz G3 in favor of an 800 MHz G4 tower for the summer without shedding a single tear.

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