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Memorial Day -- Monday, May 27, 2002 Edison's Founder With Edison Schools in the news almost daily, due recently to its role in the state takeover of Philadelphia's schools, the New York Times Diana B. Henriques has a pertinent column about Edison's founder, H. Christopher Whittle, in A Learning Curve for Whittle Venture (free registration required). Ms. Henriques writes more to the business end of Whittle's school venture, with some revealing comparisons to his previous Whittle Communications venture. Series on Charter Schools Education Week continues its series on charter schools with Businesses Flock To Charter Frontier by Mark Walsh. Software Update
Site News We're back...I think. The entire mathdittos2 domain slipped off the internet domain name registry over the weekend. Our host had omitted the renewal, as our deal wasn't exactly one of their standard packages. I didn't catch it until Saturday morning, so if you've sent emails to any mathdittos2 address, they bounced off and were not received! Fortunately, our level of service from the host has greatly improved and the situation was quickly rectified.
I spent a good deal of the weekend getting new systems onto my hard drives from my old G3 and just generally getting things set up. One very pleasant surprise was that Ambrosia Software and Apple have cut a deal to include a free copy of Snapz Pro with every "high end" Mac sold. I'm not sure my model is exactly high end, but was happy to see the excellent screen capture utility included on the Applications CD included with the G4. One not so pleasant surprise was that my classic system folders from my old G3 wouldn't boot the new computer. The OS X install, however, from the G3's disk booted the new tower just fine. I'm now recovering from all the broken links and aliases that result from moving drives around and renaming them. Having freed up my G3 minitower, I was able to take it "to the workshop" and complete the repairs necessitated by my toasting its motherboard earlier this year. When I first shopped for motherboards, I couldn't find one at a decent price, so I ended up buying another whole G3 minitower. A couple of weeks ago, I found a very good motherboard for a fairly reasonable amount, so I did the swaps Saturday and began setting up two G3s for my classroom for next fall.
Having felt a bit snakebit after losing the motherboard on my G3 last winter, I think I felt better about getting the two G3s up and running properly than I did about setting up the G4! I was also pleasantly surprised at how well the 266 MHz G3s ran OS X (10.1.4). On the Road I'll be on the road for the rest of the week, so I don't know what kind of updates I'll be able to get out. I decided to take the iBook on the trip instead of my Toshiba, as everything is just easier in the Mac OS. Also, I found I was without a good Windows XP compatible ftp client and was too cheap to pop for one just for the trip. Devotion For May 26-June 1, 2002 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Welcome Him Daily. I hope it adds a bit of brightness to your week. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Send Feedback to |
If you remember, one of the goodies recently appearing in my classroom was a new 800 MHz G4 tower. Since our superintendent really wants us to know our equipment, he suggested teachers take their new computers home for the summer to get acclimated to them. I was only too happy to oblige:-).
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Class Struggle Jay Mathews of the Washington Post writes about the inequities for special learners in passing high school "gateway" exams in Trying to Bridge the Exam-Diploma Divide. Jay's column comes on the heels of several others noting the problems learning disabled students face in testing. Ohio Under the Gun Scott Stephens of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has an interesting column that reaches far beyond his state in Ohio must try to close racial gap in schools. While the Ohio situation is not unique in the nation, Stephens notes, "Ohio is under the gun to close one of the biggest achievement gaps between black and white students in the nation." He notes that the combination of testing regulations and potential action by civil rights groups may bring the Ohio situation to head earlier than may happen in other states. 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 6-2-02). Past newsletters are now archived in the new SchwabLearning.org Email Newsletter Archive. Software Updates? Version Tracker says Computer Systems Odessa has updated their brainstorming and mapping software, ConceptDraw MindMap and MindMap Pro, to version 1.1. I was a little perplexed by this one, as my evaluation copy of MindMap Pro has been at version 1.1 for over a month now! Anyway, it's nice software...and I hope to get around to doing some kind of a review of it before version 2.0 comes out:-).
Chimera 0.2.8 is now available for download (7.8 MB). I picked up and wrote about this excellent OS X browser beta early in May from a Bob Levitis posting. I read an interesting column about Chimera on Monday in the Register, Apple "iBrowser" insurgency denied by AOL techs. While Andrew Orlowski dutifully reports the rumor denials about an iBrowser, you get the feeling he thinks (or hopes) it will happen. Not a Road Warrior Yet I'm not on the road just yet, but did do this update on the laptop as a test drive for the next week or so. I think I'd have to get a mouse if a laptop were my only choice. I actually carry a mouse in my computer bag for my Toshiba Satellite, but haven't as yet picked up an extra USB mouse for the iBook.  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:
Software Robin Landsbert has updated Finderella, his "simple Macintosh Finder replacement for children," to version 1.0b10. Finderella is available for Mac OS X, Classic PPC, and 68K Macs. Special Ed Horror Stories John Welsh has a disturbing story today in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In Mistreating misbehavers? Welsh tells of practices that would scare most special educators to death, including "children repeatedly handcuffed in front of classmates [by building security or police]," and the use of "time-out rooms for long periods." Cleveland
Once I got the iBook running the AOL for OS X beta and realized the free version of Snapz Pro required some special handling, things seem to have gotten better, although I'm still experiencing some random weird behaviors in the OS. Have a great weekend! Hey! Why not send your honey some flowers!
Thanks While I was a little flip in writing about the purpose of our trip, it was just my way of whistling in the dark. My wife, Anne, had major surgery today and came through quite well. It's the kind of thing that shakes one to their very soul and quickly puts them on their knees. To those of you who did know, thanks for your prayers. While there is a long recovery period ahead of us, thank the Lord there is a long recovery period ahead of us. I actually wrote and posted part of yesterday's update from a waiting room in the Cleveland Clinic. They have a number of data station desks in the surgery waiting area. Working on the page helped me pass the time and not worry so much.
While I won't win any photo awards for the shots I took, it was a lot of fun. The third photo from the left includes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which Annie and I visited last January. Other shots are of the ballpark and ships on the waterfront.
Once again, have a great weekend!
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Speaking of evaluation copies, I once had the temerity to say I didn't take freebies (See 
On the lighter side, I did get a few pictures of the waterfront in Cleveland when not occupied with more serious pursuits. Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy drive for my iBook, so it was necessary to transfer the photos from the Sony Mavica's floppy disk to a PC laptop and then to a zip and then to the iBook! While I'm sure iPhoto does a great job of importing pictures (I'll know if and when I get a USB digital camera.), I was impressed with how Windows XP handled the photos. It was an awful lot like my favorite Mac shareware, 
Before all the Mac nuts in the crowd grab a rope and start looking for a low limb, let me add that this week's Freeware Friday offering from 
©2002 Steven L. Wood