Monday, October 14, 2002

PowerSchool, Laptops, etc.

The Philadelphia Intelligencer Record's John Anastasi writes that the Hatboro-Horsham School's startup experience with Apple's PowerSchool has not been without difficulties. In School software hits some snags, Anastasi tells of some of the problems a school and/or system may encounter using PowerSchool. Quotes from most district administrators in the column are generally positive about the software, but the lack of a Windows XP version of PowerSchool was certainly surprising.

I'm a bit amazed at the number of columns about school laptop programs that keep appearing. Right now, Heng-Cheong Leong at MyAppleMenu seems to be doing the best job of ferreting out all of the different iBook stories. Here's a quick sampling:

• Project changes face of learning at Nashville school
• Every Greenland Elementary Student To Get Laptop
• Windsor 7th-graders iBooking it: Revolution in the classroom
• School officials worry Apple pact could affect budget

Thin Ice

Jay Mathews is one of my favorite print and online educational columnists. His most recent Class Struggle column, Rooting Out Teachers' Bad Reputations, talks about his desire to do some pieces on those teachers (We all have had them or know them.) that can ruin a kid. It's a difficult topic that can easily get out of hand and turn into a witch hunt. However, Jay may just be up to the task. He's asking for readers' input.

Topical Teaching

Claire Luna tells how some California teachers are getting all the academic mileage they can from the Angels pennant run this year in Angels in the Classroom Are a Hit With Elementary School Pupils.

New from SchwabLearning.org

This SchwabLearning.org question and answer series with Dr. Kevin Feldman continues this week answering questions on "how to help older kids who struggle with reading."

• Question 5: Can adult literacy programs help struggling readers who are still in high school?

Also new this week is Planning For College: A Team Effort. As always, links to all of the new and updated SchwabLearning.org articles are available in the Schwab Learning Online Newsletter (link expires 10-20-02).

Harvard Minister Defends Dissent

The minister of Harvard's Memorial Church, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, "criticized President Bush for questioning the patriotism of his foreign policy critics" in a recent sermon. The Boston Globe's Patrick Healy tells about the minister's defense of dissent in Patriotism and the pulpit.

Kindergarten

Laura Pappano writes about the long-standing argument over half or full day kindergarten in Full day, half day: Parents divided.

Note:

I spent a good bit of the weekend playing around with the Mac OS X (10.2) Jaguar update. I chose to upgrade existing installations. My home G3 is running acceptably, but various apps are now crashing at a much greater rate. The installation on the relatively new G4 Quicksilver at school was a disaster. It will require a complete scrub of the hard drive and a clean installation of OS X. While I'd read that a clean install was probably the best option, an update that requires full version payment really should install without all the difficulty I've experienced.

Compared to a recent installation of WindowsXP Service Release 1, the Mac upgrade comes out a distant second best. So...I'll save my comments on Jaguar until later...until I find something about it I like or that works as I think it should. I'm not a very happy camper right now.

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

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Bending the Law

The New York Times Diana Jean Schemo looks at how some states and the federal government are twisting the intent of No Child Left Behind in Law Overhauling School Standards Seen as Skirted. She notes that some states are reevaluating their standards for students while the government is making curious distinctions such as "a certified teacher assigned a class outside his or her area of expertise would be considered unqualified, while a trainee enrolled in an alternative program would be 'highly qualified.'"

Ohio Passes on Creationism Requirement

An Ohio school board panel has left the decision about including "intelligent design" instruction up to local districts. In Ohio Panel Gives Evolution Nod, Associated Press writer Liz Sidoti reported the board "recommended that Ohio science classes emphasize both evolution and the debate over its validity."

Best of the Mac Web Survey

Dan Knight's Low End Mac is running its fourth Best of the Mac Web survey through October 22. While the survey has generated a good bit of controversy at times among Mac webmasters, it's always interesting to look at all the sites listed and how they rank in the survey. Of greater value to me, I often find a new site or two to visit.

And...please don't send Dan an email asking why he omitted Educators' News from the survey. While EdNews leans heavily to the Mac side, it's intended to be a site for educators with an emphasis on technology in the classroom, not for just one platform or another.

Truth be known, this blurb is being written on a Toshiba laptop while DiskWarrior attempts to unravel the havoc I created on my main Mac with the Jaguar and OS 10.2.1 updates. Joe Taylor had reminded me some time ago about the value of running DiskWarrior and Speed Disk (from Norton Utilities) after updating to Jaguar. I'd forgotten about it, and Joe sent me a reminder yesterday. I also cleaned up many of the problems I was experiencing with Office v.X by removing all traces of an ill-advised ViaVoice installation (under OS 9).

More Cool Stuff from NASA

The guys at Science@NASA have been particularly busy of late. Last Wednesday, I linked to their article, A Cold New World, about the newfound Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar. Since then, new postings for Meteor Storm Forecast and Urban Sprawl: the Big Picture have been posted. The page about the November Leonids meteor shower suggests some really exciting numbers of meteors may be seen this time around.

I often use pages such as these from Science@NASA as interest-building group reading lessons for my special ed kids. With assistance, they can read some of the articles, and on occasion, I do a quick rewrite to approximate a column to their reading level. Last week we all read about the new Kuiper Belt Object. It triggered a lot of good discussion and provided everyone a needed break from Project Read, Open Court, SRA, and Charles H. Merrill linguistic readers. (How many straight days can you stand "cat, fat, rat, sat, bat...?" :-)

The Astronomy Picture of the Day for Wednesday, Oklo: Ancient African Nuclear Reactors, is also an interesting read. The photo caption tells of natural nuclear reactors that were once active on earth! This one isn't a "new find," but it was totally new to me.

A Personal Note

Some of the readers of this page know from emails the forces that continue to nudge me toward retiring from teaching, at least in Indiana, at the end of this school year. But...there still are those incredible moments in education. Yesterday, I was privileged to work with a wonderful six-year-old girl as she made that giant leap of realization that the sound/letter combinations we've worked so hard on make meaningful words that form sentences. I often have kids "sit in" with a reading group just above or below theirs in level. As this red headed dynamo sat in with the next group up, I could see in her eyes that spark of understanding of where we were going. The "cat, fat, rat, sat, Nat..." stuff suddenly made sense to her as we read about Nat the cat sitting on Dad's map. What a wonderful experience for her...and me.

Thursday, October 17, 2002

"NWEA not for Macs"

Frequent reader and contributor Jim Crittenden, who teachers at the Kayenta Middle School (AZ), sent along an email yesterday with the subject line above. While Jim is a classroom teacher, he's also frequently called upon to share his expertise on technology projects at his school. For years, he amazed me with his lab of ancient Macs he called his Mac Museum.

Hi Steve,

 

The National Standardized Assessment Mania Juggernaut has hit Kayenta. Yesterday, after 6 school days away from my students to set up 80 computers (they say you're "the man") to administer the NWEA (that's Northwest Evaluation Association) reading/lang./math assessment, I was released to return to my room. Please inform people that the NWEA system of networked-based testing, which is very similar to the Accelerated Reader model, is bug-filled on the Mac platform. [my emphasis] Regular minor workarounds are the rule, ranging from cludgy logon/logoff protocols to complete network failures. NWEA works spectacularly on the PC. Mac support is poor. I will be in recovery for several days, after which time I will describe the nightmare - I mean experience - in clearer terms. All I could think of during this ordeal, which required us to yank all our iMacs out of every classroom to build three temporary testing labs, was how this entire assessment tyranny is happening to our school for political and money reasons. The disruption is unreal. I predict scores will fall this year.

 

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for that Dell NIC replacement so we can resume serving webpages. 5 months and counting.

 

Computer-assisted learning ever becoming ubiquitous in school?

Nah..... They make great testing tools, though.

 

I will recover from acute sarcasm/cynicism. Twenty-five kids will see to that.

 

Best Wishes, and thanks for keeping the page going.

 

Jim Crittenden

The Keyenta links above probably won't be good again until Jim gets his NIC card! "Assessment tyranny" sounds like a pretty good descriptor of what is going on in public education all around the country.

iMac Price Reduction

Apple has followed up their recent price reduction on the high end 15" flat panel iMac with a $100 reduction today on the entry-level 15" iMac. The $1099 education price is the same for both schools and education individuals. I've updated the Special Report for Educators -- Macintosh Pricing page to reflect these changes.

Devotion for October 13-19, 2002

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is What's Really Important? Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

Friday, October 18, 2002

Jaguar Free for K-12 Teachers

Apple Computer announced its "X for Teachers" program that gives a free copy of Mac® OS X version 10.2 'Jaguar' to every K-12 teacher in the U.S." An Apple press release gives details and links for the program and states: "There is absolutely no cost to teachers for shipping, handling or postage." Further information is available on Apple's X for Teachers page. The application process begins on the Terms and Conditions page.

While you might think I'd be thrilled at Apple's new giveaway, I really see it as a sign of desperation on the part of Apple Education and Apple Computer. Rather than fill this page with a rant, I put together the first View from the Classroom column for the 2002-2003 school year about it, Straight Talk About the Education Market.

MacHOME Classroom Newsletters at an End

Since I'm clearly on my soapbox with this posting, let me pass along a sad development I learned of last evening. Joe Scienceman Martha wrote to say that "the macHOME Classroom newsletters dried up -- that's because macHOME canceled it." It took me all of sixty seconds to find MacHome's VP and Editorial Director Cheryl England's email address posted on the MacHome site. (Good for them for clearly posting contact addresses.) I sent Cheryl a polite protest and suggested MacHome is missing an important segment of the Mac market -- teachers. If you haven't noticed over the years, Mac magazines simply ignore the education segment of the Mac market. That's bad for us in education and it sure seems to me to be bad business. But, like Dennis Miller, "I could be wrong."

Fortunately, Joe's excellent Scienceman.com site remains alive and well. Joe provides regular updates with excellent links along with a lot of original content on the site. It's too bad to see the newsletter become a thing of the past. Over the past year, I have consistently referred readers who asked about an Educators' News or View from the Classroom newsletter to Joe's newsletter. I simply can't add another activity like that to my workload. Anyway, thanks to Joe for the great newsletter over the years...and even thanks to MacHome for supporting it in the past.

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Straight Talk About the Education Market

I was genuinely surprised that rather than producing a warm, fuzzy feeling, Apple Computer's new "X for Teachers" offer to give a free copy of Mac® OS X (version 10.2.1 -- Jaguar) to every K-12 teacher in the U.S., brought to my mind all of the reasons why Apple had to take such a desperate step. While I've believed that Apple Education has been in desperate trouble for several years (see column listings below), I thought I was pretty much by myself in that estimation.

With the email response from teachers to the column I published yesterday, Straight Talk About the Education Market, I find that educators across the country who prefer to use Macs are concerned, dismayed, and downright disgusted with Apple Education and Apple Computer. Their reasons are many, varied, and unfortunately, valid. Of course, that's why we're seeing Apple's marketshare in the educational area shrivel at an incredible pace.

I'm not big on readers' letters columns, but I may have to do one next week...after I finish grades, case conference preparations, IEP goal reports for all 34 of my students, and general parent conferences! Along the line of the latter thoughts, updates to Educators' News may be irregular next week. The workload went way past backbreaking a long time ago:-).

Do Apply for your Free Copy of Mac OS X (10.2.1)

While I quickly finished and posted the Straight Talk column noted above, I also immediately filled out Apple's form to receive my free copy of OS X 10.2.1. I'd recommend that you do the same. My school's techie and I spent a bit of time yesterday discussing how best to get the word out to all of our teachers and to try to make sure that every one of them requested their free copy of the OS. (We have some machines that we really would like to "get legal!")

The announcement of "X for Teachers" can be found in an Apple press release. The program for U.S. educators is further described on Apple's X for Teachers page, or you can go directly to the Terms and Conditions page to find the "I agree" button that will put you into the actual application page.

A similar offer also is available for Canadian teachers.

While I generally don't use this page as an index to my various columns, I'm going to reproduce a list of columns in reverse chronological order that dealt in some way with Apple Education.

• Straight Talk About the Education Market (10/18/2002)
• Jaguar Pricing: Where Does It Leave Schools? (7/19/2002)
• iBooks for Backwash Elementary (5/23/2002)
• Why I Prefer Macs in the Classroom (8/1/2001)
• Two Weeks with an iBook (6/4/2001)
• Never mind. Apple Education probably is dead. (5/4/2001)
• Apple Education: "I'm Not Dead," (Yet) (4/30/2001)
• A "Now" Open Letter to Cheryl Vedoe (2/27/2001)
• Educational Sales & Profits Down? Why Not Just Raise Prices? (2/27/2001)
• A Final Blast for 2000 (12/31/2000)
• Has Apple Ceded the Education Market? (2/21/2000)
• Is Steve Fiddling While Apple's Ed Marketshare Burns? (11/1/99)
• Losing Educational Market Share: One Apple Rep at a Time (1/5/99)
• Will Artemis Return from the Grave: Educators Hope for All-in-One Re-release! (12/23/98)
• The Real Steve Delivers an Early Christmas Present (12/15/98)
• One Way Apple Loses Educational Market Share (12/14/98)
• Claris...Filemaker...Maybe Nothing (8/9/98)

Thanks!

My thanks go out to Joe "Scienceman" Martha, Joe Taylor, Jim Crittenden, Mark Marcantonio, Adam Robert Guha, and Jeff Adkins for their help, advice, and comments about Straight Talk About the Education Market. I shared the column with them before publication in an email with a subject line of "Am I nuts?" While we certainly don't agree on every point of the column, it was good to be able to receive some pre-release feedback from some very knowledgeable folks who share my extreme concern about Apple Education.

Apple Education Feedback

While I appreciate and try to answer all emails sent to me about the column, you might also want to visit the Apple Education K-12 Feedback page and share your views, compliments, and concerns directly with Apple. I'm not sure it will do much good, but who knows?

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.