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Shakeup at Apple Ed An eWeek posting by Matthew Rothenberg, Jobs Reshapes Apple Sales Force, reports that Apple "is combining its education sales and marketing teams into one education business" to be headed by John Couch. Former Vice President for Education Marketing and Solutions, Cheryl Vedoe, will now head up Apple's PowerSchool division. The Book Thing Annie handed me the Reader's Digest she'd been reading Saturday with a suggestion of an item for the web site. The piece was about Russell Wattenberg's The Book Thing project. It was a New York Times blurb describing the book giveaway in Baltimore, Maryland. Unfortunately, the "Everyday Heros" section of this month's Reader's Digest she was reading isn't available online. Being a good little almost news person, I decided to search for the source article by Francis X. Clines in the Times. While I easily found Where Even the Dime Novel Doesn't Cost a Cent from the April 1, 2002 edition, it will cost you $2.50 to read online. Fortunately, many other publications still carry their archives online for free. So click on over to The Baltimore City Paper, When It Comes to Books, Russell Wattenberg Gives It Away, or The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Doing that Book Thing they do, or even to The Book Thing site and read all about it. The Book Thing appears to be a really cool, philanthropic, educational project. Incidentally, while the Times and Reader's Digest want your money for the story, Emily Richards columns says, "Asked if he'd ever consider charging for his books--a dime, or even a penny--Wattenberg, as perhaps befits a guy who doesn't smoke menthols but keeps a pack of them in his pocket for bummers, is emphatic. 'Never," he says. "That would ruin everything.'" Four Day School Week Something you can read for free in the New York Times (for another two weeks) is Jodi Wilgoren's column, Cutting Class on Fridays to Cut School Budgets (free registration required). Ms. Wilgoren tells of the pros and cons of the four day school week adopted by "100 rural districts nationwide" as a cost cutting measure. Philadelphia School Reform Concerns An Associated Press posting carried on CNN Education says folks in Philadelphia are getting antsy about the school reform announced for next fall. Time running out for Philly school reform says, "With the summer at hand, the city has yet to sign contracts defining the role private companies will play in running the 200,000-student district, the nation's seventh largest." Software Robin Landsbert must have had a busy week last week, as he posted updates on Friday for both Finderella and Mirror Paint. Finderella is a "simple Macintosh Finder replacement for children," while Mirror Paint is painting program for young children that creates kaleidoscope effects. Both programs are currently in beta release and are available for Macintosh only in 68K, PPC, and Carbon versions. PolyRoot, a freeware companion app to the shareware RPN Calculator, has been updated to version 1.3. PolyRoot finds polynomial roots and is available in the full array of Mac versions. Andrew Merenbach has updated his $5 OS X shareware, ChemBuddy, to version1.0.3. ChemBuddy 1.0.3 adds a number of bug fixes to the chemical analysis program that performs many functions from various aspects of chemistry. While I began this update using Internet Explorer 5.1.4, it threw up the spinning multicolored OS X wheel and gave up the ghost. After a force quit, I launched Chimera 0.2.7 and finished nosing around for leads. I remembered that I'd missed downloading Chimera 0.2.8 and logged onto the Chimera Installation page. Boy, was I behind. As I write, I'm downloading Chimera 0.3 (6.5 MB). From the installation page:
Still in Cleveland
I also have trouble remembering to plug in the laptop. While writing this update, I unplugged the coffee maker to make a receptacle available for the laptop. Then I got sleepy and thirsty and made a pot of coffee. I looked up and suddenly realized that I was down to 43% battery life and would run out of juice before the site update, Chimera download, and, of course, the laundry were done. Devotion For June 9-15, 2002 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Getting Totally On Board. I hope it adds a bit of brightness to your week. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Send Feedback to |
Annie growled (which let me know she really was getting well) at me yesterday and said, "I bet you put my picture on the web." At that time, I could honestly answer, "No." But...time passes, and she really is feeling better after a rough go for awhile. Now, I just hope she doesn't ask about the picture again:-). But then, I'm writing this drivel while waiting for her (and my) clothes to get done in the hotel laundry room.
I'm still not terribly comfortable with writing on the road. While the kids in my class thought the iBook's keyboard was just fine, I still find it too small. I also have lots of problems with the insertion bar jumping all over the page when I rest my wrist on the laptop. The addition of a USB mouse makes working at the hotel on the web page much easier, but I still do some of the editing from Annie's hospital room. The USB floppy drive is incredibly slow, but sure makes loading pictures from "my" Sony Mavica easier.|
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 6-16-02). Past newsletters are now archived in the new SchwabLearning.org Email Newsletter Archive. Macintouch Reader Report The Macintouch site has opened up a page for reader reports on education. There's already a lively string of postings there on various issues facing educators using Macs. Threat to All Link Sites John H. Farr discusses the possible impact of "deep linking" being banned in The End of the Mac Web? If you're unfamiliar with this issue, a number of entities on the web are insisting that linking to anything on their site is an infringement of their copyright. Sites such as Educators' News would quickly cease to exist without the ability to link to other sites without written permission. SE/30 News Eric Conrad has published several very well illustrated pages on his experiences with an SE/30. See Macintosh SE/30: An Adventure Back in Time. While the SE/30 in itself may not quite fit an education site, I suspect there are still a number of that model of Mac still in use in classrooms around the world. Math Freeware
I just played with this new freeware for a few moments to get a screenshot of it, but this one looks like a "keeper." I'm sorta partial to Gary's work, because it's all "kid tested." When my students are assigned or choose to work on one of Gary's math programs, I often find a small knot of students working cooperatively on some of the harder items.
Gary has also changed the marketing a bit for his paid programs. While I was able to get my school to pop for the $100 PolyMath Love CD, which includes all of Gary's programs, he also offers smaller paid sets for download on his Order Page. SAT Tips Evan Kleiman offers tips and links in his Low End Mac posting, Preparing for the SAT Another Exodus of Special Educators Colleen Pohlig of the Seattle Times tells why Susan Bishop and other special education teachers are leaving special ed or the classroom entirely. In Issaquah teachers exiting special-education classes, Pohlig relates that Issaquah and other Washington state teachers are leaving special ed due to the high number of students, excessive paperwork and parent meetings that together are just too much. New York City Teachers Settle Contract The New York Times reports in Tentative Pact for City Teachers Increases Pay (free registration required), that New York City teachers have traded increased hours for a increased pay. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, now in control of New York schools, and the teachers' union jointly announced a pact "that calls for raises of 16 percent to 22 percent over 30 months, putting the city in a better competitive position to hire the 10,000 teachers the mayor says it needs by September." New York City Teachers Settle Contract The Department of Education yesterday released a report to Congress that recommends changing teacher certification to emphasize subject knowledge over standard teacher classes. The press release begins:
Hmm... NASA Photos of Western Forest Fires
I am amazed at the quantity and quality of images available on the various NASA sites. Earlier this week, I'd marveled at the solar prominence photos provided. The Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive regularly produces spectacular photos. While today's A Partial Eclipse Over the Golden Gate Bridge and yesterday's Inside the Eagle Nebula are copyrighted and can't be reproduced here without permission (or showing the whole web page under the guise of a news report), they're there and can be easily downloaded for private use as desktop pictures. Other photos below include the NGC 3621 galaxy and a couple of shots from the current STS-111 shuttle mission.
Microsoft Loses Dismissal Motion U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly yesterday "denied Microsoft Corporation's motion that she dismiss the antitrust case of nine states and the District of Columbia." Computerworld reports in Judge rejects Microsoft motion to dismiss antitrust case that Judge Kollar-Kotelly ruled "that the states have the right under federal antitrust law to pursue their own remedies." Kollar-Kotelly wrote that "Microsoft quotes selectively from a number of cases with the effect of mischaracterizing their holdings...The Court finds this tactic unpersuasive." Do School Systems Have a Moral Responsibility to Pay a Living Wage? Richard Rothstein's latest Lessons column, The Other Role for the Urban School (free registration required), explores the idea that "schools share responsibility for creating good jobs." Rothstein begins by looking at the pay disparity between Los Angeles district employed bus drivers (an average of $22.56 an hour plus benefits) and contracted Laidlaw Education Services drivers (average of $9.25 an hour). Rothstein writes: "The schools' essential function, of course, has been to educate. But for immigrant and minority workers, they have also been an important source of better jobs, a first step to the middle class." Need an Artemis (G3 All-in-one)? I received an email from Jerid Hill of The Design Shop. He has eight G3 All-in-ones he'd like to sell. Here's his offer:
You can reach Jarid by phone (330-345-5860) or by email. Retrospect The Washington Post article, Lessons Beyond the Lesson Plan, is a nice collection of end-of-the-year observations by teachers and students. What's Going On at CNN Education? One of my regular daily stops on the web used to be CNN Education. I still link to stories from that site, but more and more, I've noticed that CNN is posting fewer and fewer original education stories. This evening (update written Wednesday evening), I started to link to the CNN Education lead column, Mosquito bites, data bytes greet kid campers. I noticed that it was a posting from the Reuters News Service. Curious and a bit suspicious, I began to run through the columns in the order posted. The results confirmed my earlier suspicion:
That's the whole list that was available Wednesday (6/12/2002) evening. There was just one, original CNN Education posting. Most of us don't have access to the wire services such as Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. Reposting their columns is a service. But you can also read those AP and Reuters stories on any other publication that subscribes to the services and posts those columns (Do a Yahoo "Education" search, for example.). What has happened to CNN's commitment to education? Hey! Look at this One!
Going Home With a good report from her doctor today, Annie and I will be traveling back home to Central Indiana today. There probably will not be another update of this site until next Monday.
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As I wrote this update, I realized I'd missed a previous release from Gary's 
©2002 Steven L. Wood