Monday, June 3, 2002

School Email Projects

Barnaby J. Feder wrote last week in the New York Times about school email projects. In They Weren't Careful What They Hoped For (free registration required), he tells of overwhelming results to student email projects, with one returning over 80,000 responses in three weeks. He also notes the difficulty of turning the project off once its done.

Also from the New York Times, Jacques Steinberg writes of famous folks on the graduation speech circuit in Along With Best Wishes, 9/11 Is a Familiar Graduation Theme (free registration required).

Contrasts

Three recent columns caught my eye that together illustrate the inequities that exist in schools across America. Each column also tells its own interesting story about education.

Rhea R. Borja's High Tech Haven in Education Week tells of a high tech high school done right. While many schools or systems appear to plunge into the current computers for everyone fad, New Technology High School in Napa, California, sounds as if the necessary planning was well done.

There are glass-enclosed classrooms, clusters of interactive computer workstations, and high-tech wiring twisting like veins through the rooms. No books are stacked in the library, or research center. Instead, students log on to an "e-library...New Tech here in Napa integrates technology into virtually every administrative and academic function. Teachers post curricula, assignments, and student grades online; students create Web- based academic projects and communicate through e-mail and message boards; and parents can tap in to the school's password-protected Web site to check their children's work.

A section of the Washington Post's Coast to Coast summary, Lawmakers Seek to Ease Students' Heavy Load, tells of concerns of California lawmakers about students carrying heavy backpacks. With the demise of student lockers for security reasons, students carry around their books and supplies in backpacks. "Proposed solutions include installing clear plastic lockers and requiring teachers to give electronic homework on CD-ROM," and "a weight limit for textbooks."

Sweating Out More Than A Pop Quiz tells of teachers and students fighting the spring heat in classrooms in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland.

What Happens When a Charter School Closes Midyear?

Joetta L. Sack tells of a midyear charter school closing and the ramifications for its former students in Shut Charters Leave Families Revising Plan. Ms. Sack first tells of the displacement of students caused by the March 27 closing of the Georgetown Charter School in Georgetown, Delaware, and also looks at charter closings in general across the nation.

Apple offers Mac OS X Maintenance Program

A posting last Friday on MacMinute.com revealed the Apple will be offering a paid OS X update program. The program will guarantee updates for three years for $207 ($147 for education) with a minimum purchase of "10 seats" (licenses).

Apple Archive

Adam Robert Guha added another interesting column to his Apple Archive series last Friday with Using Computers Effectively in the Classroom. This one isn't a nuts 'n bolts kind of how to, but just a general listing of some things Adam sees as effective uses of technology in the classroom.

More on Internet Plagiarism

Low End Mac's Jeff Adkins takes up where Adam Robert Guha left off (See: The Internet, Research, and Plagiarism) with his thoughts on plagiarism in Plagiarism vs. Research. In warming up to his subject, Jeff states, "I think that assignments which simply say, "go do research and write a report," are a primary source of the problem of plagiarism in schools." He goes one to give some excellent tips for teachers in how to make assignments that help kids avoid plagiarizing content.

Devotion For June 2-8, 2002

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Unexpected Service. 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, June 4, 2002

Office v. X SR1 Available

Microsoft has released Microsoft Office v. X for Mac, Service Release 1. The Microsoft web site says the update "provides Office v. X customers with the latest fixes as well as several new features." Bill Fox & Company over at MacsOnly gave the update a pretty thorough one-day shakedown yesterday and found it to be pretty good.

Pertinent Columns

Colleen Pohlig reports a trend in Washington State in her Seattle Times column, Many special-ed teachers plan to quit, that mirrors the current trend across the nation.

The Los Angeles Times reports that California schools are benefiting from my former dot com employees moving to teaching in Dot-Coms' Bust Is a Boon to (free registration required).

I found Amy Hetaner's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column, "Physics first" backers would change the order of educational universe, particularly interesting, as one of our children took physics this year as a high school freshman.

New Items on SchwabLearning.org

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

• Resources for College for Students with LD or ADHD
• Self-Esteem: The Cause and Effect of Success for the Child with Learning Differences

As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 6-9-02). Past newsletters are now archived in the new SchwabLearning.org Email Newsletter Archive.

Wednesday, June 5, 2002

Fortune Magazine Dyslexia Issue

I stumbled upon the May 13, 2002, issue of Fortune magazine while just bumming around the pharmacy at the clinic. The cover of the issue carries a photo of the then 13 year-old Charles Schwab and the title, "The Dyslexic CEO." As most regular readers know, I've carried links to the SchwabLearning.org site for a year or so and have found it to be a truly philanthropic effort (no sales, no gimmicks, just good solid information for parents of disabled students).

The issue has a wonderful story, Overcoming Dyslexia by Betsy Morris, about dyslexia and those who have overcome it. From the Fortune press release:

What do Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, John Chambers and David Boies all have in common? Aside from having made a mark in the business world, they are, in one of the stranger bits of business news, all dyslexic. FORTUNE senior writer Betsy Morris examines dyslexia in the corporate world and shows how business leaders afflicted with the disorder have overcome it, each finding his own approach to success.

There are some classic lines in the column. I won't give them all away, but this one by Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Records, is just too good to leave out: "At some point, I think I decided that being dyslexic was better than being stupid." Morris also tells the story of Bill Samuels, Jr., president of Maker's Mark, which is surprisingly similar to Charles Schwab's experience: "Samuels says he was sitting in a school office, listening to a description of his son's problems, when it dawned on him: 'Oh, shit. That's me.'"

While you may still find the issue on the newsstand, it's also available online with all of the great links that were included with the original print issue. I plan to use the information from Dyslexic Achievers, a listing of dyslexics gone right, for a poster in my classroom.

First Person Report on Napa

I received a great email from Jeff Adkins yesterday. Jeff writes the Low End Mac Lab Report and many Lite Side columns and teaches in California. Jeff had seen the posting Monday about New Technology High School in Napa, California. He's been there and offered his own first person assessment:

I've visited the New Technology High School in Napa. It's really beautiful as the article says. The school's servers are kept in this glassed off room and man they are gorgeous. They have color-coded all the ethernet cable and each piece is custom-cut to fit in the space. It's braided together like a giant work of art. No hanging loops. The cables run out on tracks near the ceiling and descend to wherever they are needed. Also neat. But they only have a few hundred students, and cannot accept more or ever be overcrowded, because they only have so many slots and workstations, see? So the model, while nice to visit, strains the imagination when you try to scale it up to large schools. This place costs millions, and they have like 400 students. Our school is like 8 times larger. Where do we put all the gear? Where does the money come from. It's a beautiful test bed, but it's not scalable.

Jeff also had some comments on the Physics First posting from Tuesday. His school has gone that way and his advice may prove helpful for others considering such a move.

Also, (new topic) we do the physics first thing at our school, and we all support it. But we chose Hewitt's conceptual physical science for the book, and it's just too hard. We're looking at other versions right now. He just came out with a high-school version. I haven't seen it yet. I do know that our lower-level 9th graders are just mind-boggled right now. They don't have a clue how to succeed in such a class. So it's important to note you should be in close communication with your feeder schools if you're going to attempt this.

Jeff's advice on textbooks and communication with feeder schools is really important. Our youngest just finished taking physics as a freshman. While she did well in the class, it was a constant struggle for her.

Pertinent Columns

Jay Mathews has another good education column in the Washington Post, For Many, Special-Ed Requires Special Effort.

Mary Leonard also has a good read in Study makes case for Head Start on the Boston Globe site.

I also enjoyed reading Whatever happened to home economics? on the Christian Science Monitor site.

Mac Software Releases and Updates

The Mac OS X 10.1.5 updater is now available through the software update system preference panel. Apple has also released a public beta version of QuickTime 6 for download.

In a big day for web browsers iCab 2.8 and Mozilla 1.0 are available for download.

Friday, June 7, 2002

Pertinent Columns

A Los Angeles Times column by Claire Luna, Study Says School Violence Often Predictable, Preventable (free registration required), tells about cases where the Threat Assessment Guide (257K PDF document) released Wednesday jointly by the Department of Education and Secret Service might prevent future school violence. The full guide, Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates, is available for download as a PDF document (257K) or a MS Word document (4.5 MB). Other related documents are available on the Safe and Drug Free Schools - Publications page.

When I saw Karen Thomas's USA Today column, Students prove to be technology teachers in U.S., I quickly thought of Adam Robert Guha, who's been writing Mac tech columns for Low End Mac since he was 14 or 15!

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports Edison gets funds to open city schools. The Inquirer's Martha Woodall reports that "Merrill Lynch and Chelsey Capital had agreed to provide the financing through $40 million lines of credit that it can tap to cover start-up costs for new schools." Edison estimates the cost at around $30 million for the Philadelphia schools it will take over beginning next fall.

CNN Education (AP) had a good column early in the week that I missed. Chalkboards slowly erased from schools tells of the increased use of whiteboards instead of chalkboards in classrooms. It also adds some pros and cons about whiteboards.

Janice Greene of the San Francisco Chronicle has put together a collection of special ed students' comments on graduation exams in Special education students weigh in on graduation rules. Another Chronicle staff writer, Bob Egelko, writes today in School exam limits learning disabled: Using spell-check could affect exit-test score about potential problems for special learners with California's exit exam.

OS X 10.1.5 Download

Apple has posted the Mac OS X Update 10.1.5 as a downloadable item. Previously, it was only available through the software update panel.

Freeware Friday

Dr. Mac delivers another gem (I hope. This update goes up before OSXFAQ gets updated.) in his Freeware Friday series on OSXFAQ.com. Jeff Adkins also has some freebies to recommend in his latest Mac Lab Report, Five Free Online Tools.

On Becoming a Road Warrior

The computing end of being on the road has smoothed out after some initial bumps in getting online. The biggest problem I ran into was finding a laundromat! It turned out there was one in the basement of our hotel all along, so I'm looking forward to not stinking tomorrow.

I did invest in a Kensington optical USB mouse and a TEAC USB floppy drive. The mouse makes the iBook much easier to use. I guess I'm just not a trackpad man. The floppy will eventually rest on the G4 tower at home and possibly serve on my old G3 when running OS X on it.

Saturday, June 8, 2002

Macs in Higher Education

While doing my morning coffee and web surfing today, I noticed a posting on the Macintosh News Network that led to Florence Olsen's excellent article in The Chronicle for Higher Education, A Mac-Centric Campus Shifts to Windows. Ms. Olsen tells of the shift to PCs at Dartmouth College generated by incompatibility of university web-based databases with Macs and web browsers running on Macs. The article goes on to explore the whole issue of Apple's continued viability in the education market.

Software Update

I'm not quite sure where I'd work this application into my classroom, but it's one that seems to have some potential for classroom use elsewhere. Dejal Narrator 1.0b1 is "A Mac OS X application to read out stories in multiple voices."

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.