Monday, December 2, 2002

ADHD Medication News

The Arizona Daily Star carried two good columns yesterday about students and medication. The first, Ritalin passes safety test by Carla McClain, tells of the results of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. McClain writes, "In short, that word is: The drugs work; they're safe over the long term; and it is in fact cruel not to use them on children who really need them." A second McClain column, Hard work and no meds make teen a star, tells of a parent who went the "no-meds" route successfully with her daughter. (Also see Brain Shrinkage in ADHD Not Caused by Medications and Abstract of Developmental Trajectories of Brain Volume Abnormalities in Children and Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.)

Like many of you readers, I have a personal stake in the effectiveness of ADD and ADHD medications, as about half of my students take or have taken such medications. One of the bright spots on the horizon is that several new, non-amphetamine type drugs for the treatment of ADD and ADHD have been or are close to approval by the FDA. Eli Lilly received FDA approval last week to begin marketing Strattera, according to the CNN/AP posting, Attention disorder drug approved. Available in January, Strattera is supposed to be the first non-stimulant medication for the treatment of ADHD.

Monday Space Fix

Yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day featured the Pleiades star cluster photo at right. The Anglo-Australian Observatory site also has a cool "mouse-over" page of the photo that shows star names. (Photo credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory/Royal Observatory Edinburgh.)

Early Teacher Training

Los Angeles Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki tells about the Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy in Would-Be Teachers Go to the Head of the Class. It's a new program by the Los Angeles Unified School District in early teacher preparation. Eighty high school students began the new program this year with expectations of the school's population growing to 400 in future years.

Smelly Science

Smell something really nasty in a locker? You might at the Framingham Community Charter School, where sixth-grade students are investigating food decay and produce quality. Laura Pappano tells all in Framingham pupils run a "rot race" in the Boston Globe.

Listen to Teachers? What a Novel Idea!

A collection of letters to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle put me onto a good Chronicle editorial I'd missed last week, Frustration in the Classroom: Listening to the teacher. Both the letters and the editorial well describe the pressures teachers face today.

Firms Foresee Big Bucks from No Child Left Behind

Associated Press writer David B. Caruso writes that "Companies that provide tutoring and preparation for standardized tests are scrambling to cash in on what could be a multibillion-dollar bonanza created by President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act," in Tutoring Firms See Potential Windfall. Companies such as the Princeton Review and Sylvan Learning Systems see the potential for rapid expansion due to the law. Others, such as Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, see a major downside: "These private companies are really like vultures, descending on what they see as a feast. We're worried that we are going to be hearing stories about schools not being able to buy library books because they are spending money on test prep."

Other Pertinent Columns

Chicago Tribune reporter Meg McSherry Breslin writes of increased emphasis on gifted students in Chicago area schools in More thought to gifted pupils.

Lynette Clemetson tells in the New York Times of student interest in current events in Debate on War With Iraq Is Entering the Classroom.

Deborah Alberto tells in Mom, Daughter Make HIV Education "Good Medicine" of a family's challenges of an HIV positive child in public schools. This one's a very good read.

Sign of Spring?

My copy of the Stokes Seeds 2003 Growers Guide arrived Saturday. I was happy to see that Stokes again this year carries seed for the Sensitive Plant (mimosa pudica). While not the most gorgeous of plants, the "touch plant" makes for a great classroom plant project. Kids (of all ages) love to watch the leaves of the sensitivity plant fold up from a touch. The seed is cheap and the plants are easy to grow in a classroom environment. And yes, that's an inverted Frisbee serving as a plant tray!

While on the subject of classroom plant projects, let me also recommend the Gloxinia (sinningia speciosa) as a possible plant project. The dwarf varieties take seven months to bloom from seed, but the results are spectacular. I like Park Seed's Double Brocade Mix and Stokes Empress Mixed.

Stokes also has a good Teachers & Kids page full of growing ideas and a catalog page of pot plants.

The photo at left is a group we grew in the classroom years ago when I was a science teacher. (Ugh! The date on the photo CD is 1996!) We used Q-tips to hand pollinate the flowers (often making bee buzzing sounds as we did) and were able to save viable seed. By the way, while it probably won't score many points with your "significant other," keeping seeds in the freezer prolongs the shelf life of many types of seed almost indefinitely. (Don't try it with onion seeds, however.) While the freezer door still has a lot of seeds on it, I still had a great time Sunday afternoon browsing and shopping the Stokes site, getting ready for next summer's garden. I also picked up a few packets of seed for use in my classroom.

Note:

Coming off the Thanksgiving holiday, I expected to find few relevant columns for today's posting. At first, my expectation was confirmed as I made my usual cross-country web rounds of the New York Times, CNN Education, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. I was pleased to find that one of my favorite old links for Yahoo Education was once again functional and filled with great links, after being totally ruined for months by subscription articles and neglect. Welcome back, Yahoo!

Devotion for December 1-7, 2002

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is God Will Multiply What You Offer. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals.

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Wednesday, December 4, 2002

Beta Testers Needed for Physics Programs

Shawn Leclaire, founder of Living Graphs (formerly Eureka Software Inc.), sent along the following email requesting help in finding teacher beta testers.

I have recently released two new educational physics programs for Windows. Both are public beta versions. As such we are looking for teachers and students to test drive these programs before final release. Free trial versions are available for download on our web site: http://www.LivingGraphs.com/. I am also looking for educational software reviewers.

 

The programs are:

 

Making Waves: A Wave Interference Construction Set (1 MB)

Looking Glass: A Geometric Optics Construction Set (853K)

SchwabLearning Online

The SchwabLearning.org site has undergone a facelift and reorganization with "a warm, friendly look and feel with technology that delivers the information you need in an easier, faster way." No new articles are presented this week, but two timely columns from last year are featured:

• Holidays! Helping Kids with AD/HD Behave
• Great Gifts for Kids with Learning Differences

More Information on Strattera

Another good column about the new Eli Lilly ADD and ADHD drug, Strattera, comes from the Washington Post's Shankar Vedantam. In FDA Approves ADHD Drug Offering Fewer Side Effects, Vedantam notes that while Strattera gets good marks for lack of side effects, "No comprehensive studies have compared the effectiveness of the new medicine against the older drugs." Vedantam also writes that since Strattera "is not...a Schedule II drug...the FDA does not fear it will be abused."

Other Pertinent Columns

Sara Rimer tells of a Philadelphia teacher's frustration with a required grading system in Failing and Frustrated, School Tries Even F's.

The Boston Globe's Anand Vaishnav reports that that "Nearly half of the noneducators lured three years ago with $20,000 bonuses to teach in Massachusetts public schools have abandoned the classroom" in Bonus Teachers Opting Out.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Walter F. Naedele writes of a school that will use geothermal heating and cooling in Using the Earth to heat a school.

Matthew Brown of the New Orleans Times-Picayune writes about the effects of federal regulations for instructional assistants in Classroom Dilemma. In part, he says that new federal rules give many teaching aides the tough choice of going back to school, passing an assessment test, or quitting.

Diana Jean Schemo writes in the New York Times about impoverished schools' challenge in dealing with No Child Left Behind in Poor Rural Schools Try to Meet New Federal Rules.

Timeout Takes a Beating, or, An Exercise in One-Sided Journalism

Seth Stern, staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, has written a disturbing article about the misuse of timeout rooms in Timeout rooms under scrutiny. Stern uses an example of a timeout gone very bad and a number of quotes from higher education sources to pan timeout in general. While the column is an example of one-sided journalism, it's probably a good one for educators to be aware of, just to know what folks are reading about us! It's not pretty.

Thursday, December 5, 2002

I really hadn't planned to do a Thursday posting, but the combination of a number of Macintosh related columns and a two-hour snow delay this morning changed all of that.

Will Apple be expelled from school?

Dave Zeiler, who writes the weekly The Mac Experience column for the Baltimore Sun, takes a good look at Apple's prospects in the education market in Will Apple be expelled from school? Dave writes:

As it is now, anyone can buy an eMac for $1,050 from the Apple Store; schools pay $950. When PC makers like Dell offer better discounts on still-cheaper PCs, it's no wonder schools are moving to Windows...While the picture looks bleak, the battle for the education market isn't completely lost. Educators seem to like Apple's products, and frequently prefer Macs, but can't justify their cost to district bean counters.

He concludes:

If Apple can get closer to PC vendors on price, it can market the Mac's advantages, such as the ease of setting up wireless networks, as worth a little extra money. But until it starts offering better deals to schools, many minds -- and pocketbooks -- will remain closed.

Can Apple Regain the Education Market?

Two highly respected Mac webmasters and columnists have also entered the fray over Apple Computer's fortunes in the education market. Gene Steinberg comments in Can Apple Regain the Education Market? on his MacNightOwl site. Gene states:

So what's the long term prognosis? Clearly Apple doesn't like to lose, but it's going to be hard to regain lost ground in an era when school systems that have already gone to the Dark Side simply don't have the budgets to consider a return to the Mac...On the long haul, Apple has is work cut out for it. It calls for a toe-to-toe battle for every sale against the purveyors of cheap PC boxes.

Dan Knight, publisher of Low-End Mac, shares his views in The Truth About Macs vs. PCs in Our Schools. Dan writes:

In the end, until those who make and implement technology decisions see a real reason to consider anything but Windows, Apple has lost the battle...Frankly, this is Apple's war, and they seem very selective about which battles they will fight...Apple, this is your war. Plan it, fund it, fight it, and win it. Commit to offering the best education solution for the dollar."

I posted my thoughts on the subject last October in the columns Straight Talk About the Education Market and More Straight Talk About the Education Market. I'm glad to see that other online writers are sounding the alarm about Apple Education's near death spiral. However, my read of the situation hasn't appreciably changed since I wrote in the first "Straight Talk" column:

It really doesn't matter...As caustic as my comments...may be, I still prefer working on a Mac. I'd like to be able to work on a new Mac in three, five, or eight years from now. The way Apple is conducting itself and its educational market sales, I'm not sure that will be possible. Apple may be a ghost by then...The sad fact of the matter is that Apple lost the critical mass necessary to stay viable in the education market a number of years ago.

Apple made what appeared to be an impressive move in November by pricing the new entry-level iBook at $999 retail ($949 education price). Unfortunately, that's probably where the "ice" iBook should have been priced at its introduction a year to save Apple Education. A year and a half ago, such a price would have been hailed in the press as a bold move by Apple and a laying down of the gauntlet to its competitors. Now, it's just another price change by a company whose diminishing educational sales figures suggest it may be on the way out of that market.

Beyond the release of Apple's new Curriculum Labs and their desperation move of giving away Jaguar to teachers, Apple has done little to improve its stake in the education market. While the original form factor iMac still remains as Apple's lowest priced offering at $799 retail ($699 to schools and $749 to education employees), it competes with far faster and more feature laded PCs. If you're an educator who prefers using Macs, but don't teach in what Jeff Adkins has so aptly described as one of the "glitz" schools, the outlook isn't very promising.

Customizing a Power Mac 5200

Scienceman Joe Martha has posted an excellent page on getting around inside the Power Mac/LC 5200 model. Long recognized as a road Apple by design, Joe added a Power Mac 6500 motherboard to the all-in-one. He shares his adventures (and misadventures) in Fixing the fan in a Power Mac 5200 (6500 motherboard upgrade). 

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