Monday, December 30, 2002

Just a quick update before the new year. I'm writing this one on Sunday evening while my old Mac IIfx upstairs is functioning as a file server transferring files to a student take-home 7200. On another computer desk downstairs, an iBook is burning a copy of our 7200 master file (a ghost). And I'm running up and downstairs watching both while I put together this update.

Wasn't it just a year ago that the Apple treated us to the ultimate hype machine in preparation for the announcement of the flat panel iMacs at MacWorld? (See images at right.) I'm not sure which is worse, the ultimate over-hype or no leaks at all, as we have this year.

Mark Marcantonio sent along this link from the Friday Denver Post, School's grade doesn't compute. It tells about a school that offers some courses online, but got penalized by state testing when the online students didn't take the state competency test. It's sorta an example of "No good deed goes unpunished."

An Associated Press column this weekend, To Balance Books, Oregon Districts Try Fewer School Days, suggests a possibility of school districts in Oregon cutting the length of the school year back as far as 165 days to save money on salaries. The column doesn't mention any districts that have actually tried it yet, but suggests some may be considering it. Sounds like a super contract battle in the making!

A Boston Globe column tells of a report that discusses "'Bounty'' funding systems that pay per student placed in special education." In Report targets special needs, Shari Rudavsky says a report by the conservative Manhattan Institute says such bounty systems "bear much of the responsibility for the rise in enrollment."

If you've ever had to sit in a PTO fund-raiser dunking booth, collect candy, wrapping paper, frozen food, and/or bake sale money, Mary McNamara's Play money may give you a whole new view of school fund raising. McNamara tells of upscale preschool fund-raisers that include wine tasting parties, sales of designer clothes and handbags, rock concerts, and film screenings. She notes "a dinner dance at the L.A. Athletic Club and a silent auction complete with four-color catalog are a far cry from hauling cookie dough door to door."

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

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Teacher in Space News

A recent NASA press release, NASA'S Year of Challenges, Changes and Accomplishments, notes the assignment this year of Educator Astronaut Barbara Morgan to the Shuttle STS-118 mission next November. The section of the NASA press release reads:

INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION

Barbara Morgan was named NASA's first Educator Astronaut and assigned as a crewmember on Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-118), a November 2003 mission. Her assignment fulfills the commitment to send an educator into space to help inspire a new generation of explorers. Educator Astronauts will be fully trained Shuttle crewmembers. They will perform mission tasks, such as coordinating resupply operations and spacewalks, as well as interacting with students from space to encourage interest in science, mathematics and the space program.

Barbara also now has her own Bio page at NASA.

Mr. Chips or Microchips? BBC Program Discusses the Failures and Successes of Computers in Education

Ken Kashmarek wrote with the url for the text of a BBC broadcast, Mr. Chips or Microchips? The program isn't terribly flattering of technology in education, but it's probably pretty accurate. We've all seen many cases where money spent on technology could have better benefited our students if spent somewhere else. The program participants offer many valid criticisms of and suggestions for technology in education.

The roundtable discussion includes Sherry Turkle (Director of the program on technology and self, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Josh Angrist (Economics professor at MIT), Roger Watson (Publishing consultant), Yasmin Valli (Senior lecturer, Leeds Metropolitan University), Mike Moore (Head of computing at the Community School in Salford President of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers), and David Reynolds (Professor of education, University of Exeter and member of the board of BECTA) who may have summed up much of the problem:

I think we have dropped the material onto schools, we haven't provided adequate training for teachers in how to use it, we've assumed it's a good thing that doesn't need justification. And like many other innovations, the danger is that all innovation and change requires a coalition of people in schools to support them. It requires teachers to be on board and enthusiastic and the classic innovation failure here is that we haven't done enough to get the uptake which would show the stuff can work to actually get what we need.

You can read the full text of the program or listen to it in Real Audio format. (Note: Be patient, as there's about 60 seconds of unrelated content at the beginning of the Real Audio version, but it sounded just like radio even on my 28.8 dial-up modem connection.) For those of us heavily committed to the use of computers in the classroom, this program is excellent!

Resistance to No Child Left Behind

David L. Greene has an interesting column in the Baltimore Sun about resistance to No Child Left Behind in Nebraska. In Bush education policy gets states' rights jolt, Greene quotes Nebraska's education commissioner, Doug Christensen, as saying, "I am surprised, confused and very frustrated with Bush," Greene also related he thinks the president is more interested in scoring political points than in helping schools.

G3 AIO Site Archives Available

Carl Hess wrote wondering if there was a new url for Tom McKenna's teachers' (and others') favorite G3 All-in-one Stop Shop. While the original site is a thing of the past, it's preserved through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Carl wrote, "Darn, I miss that site." So do I, but as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Tom and family are doing well. He's posted a great page of pictures of his family. The direct link to the archived site is: G3 All-in-one Stop Shop. Thanks to the folks at the Internet Archive for preserving many pages from many sites that have passed on. (They even have one of my old editorials that was published in the October, 1997 issue of CEC Today, Should CEC Advocate for Better Working Conditions for Teachers?

FAPE

I had this update done and posted when I ran into Aaron Faust's Hartford Courant column, Special Education Often Divides Parents, Schools. It's a hard-hitting column about special education with emphasis on parents' point of view. Faust writes, "School districts would rather keep costs down, they say, than provide the extra help - mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - that their children need to be successful in school." The column gives both sides of the never-ending FAPE controversy. What constitutes a "free, appropriate, public education" is often a point of conflict between schools and parents. Free Appropriate Public Education is a "trick" special education term established through a court case that specifies basically that we don't owe our kids a "Cadillac education," but probably need to provide at least a "Chevy" that runs.

Devotion for December 29, 2002-January 4, 2003

Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Start 2003 As A Daily New Creation. It's a day late in being posted here, as Zach was on his way "home" to Minnesota after visiting here in central Indiana at Christmastime. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. Please note that Zach has moved to his own domain, ZWdevotions.com, and links in the Educators' News archive to the previous devotions site may soon become broken.

Wednesday, January 1, 2003

Good Apple Review/Preview Column

David Zeiler's The Mac Experience from the Baltimore Sun is becoming one of my favorite weekly Mac columns. Dave reviews Apple Computer's past year and takes a short peek into the future in What's up Apple's sleeve for '03?

Hey! I Actually Finished a Column!

In the past I regularly cranked out a column or two a week. In six months with the old MacTimes News Network, I cranked out 24 columns for them in 24 weeks along with ten independent columns in the same period. The next year I began the View from the Classroom series for Low End Mac and produced 30 columns in ten months along with another seven independent columns. Going totally independent the next year, column productions dropped to eighteen, followed by just ten columns last year.

At any rate, I'm starting out the new year right. Here, on January 1, is the first View from the Classroom for 2003, Co:Writer 4000. Co:Writer is one very cool helper application that provides spelling and grammar assistance to struggling writers. We now use it extensively in my classroom with fantastic results.

One Cool Utility

As I was finishing to column review Co:Writer 4000, I'd had an iBook running to redo a few screenshots I thought I could improve. I was transferring the photo files from the iBook to my G3 minitower on a zip disk. Without thinking much about it, I finished up with the iBook and decided to pull out the Toshiba laptop and redo one last screenshot on it. I hooked up the USB zip drive, ejected the zip disk from my G3 Mac, and popped it into the USB Zip drive now attached to the PC laptop.

For just a second I thought I'd really messed up, but then realized in one of those "Ain't technology great" moments that I did indeed have MacDrive 5 installed on the Toshiba laptop. Without any fuss, the laptop read the Mac formatted zip disk and saved the screenshot, processed a bit with Adobe Photo Elements, right to the Mac disk.

If you're like me and find yourself having to swap media frequently between PCs and Macs, MacDrive is one way to make the task easy. It reads, writes to, and can even format disks for Macintosh from a PC. I do have a bit of a vested interest, though, as I've been a beta tester for the folks at Media4 Productions for years. But even so, MacDrive is one cool utility!

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Pertinent Columns

The CNN/AP posting, Mississippi puts computer in every classroom, relates that Mississippi has completed its effort to place an internet wired computer in every public school classroom in that state.

Sandra Matthews tells about students at Fenton Avenue Charter School using iMovie to enhance their learning in Students Bring Lessons to Life With iMovies.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Martha Woodall tells in Computer-savvy school is motivating its students about about High Tech High Charter School's "unusual mix of technology, critical thinking, project-based learning, and small classes seems to be working."

'Bushisms' make university's banned list is an interesting read of phrases banned this year by Lake Superior State University PR department.

And, my own Co:Writer 4000 is a review of one very nifty piece of assistive technology for struggling student writers.

Friday, January 3, 2003

Free Lunches to be Bush Admin Target for Cuts?

Sacramento Bee staff writer Diana Griego Erwin takes a good shot at the Bush Administration in Hardened scofflaws of public school free-lunch programs, beware! Erwin begins:

While chowing down on pretzels in front of the televised Rose Bowl game on Wednesday, President Bush announced that sleazy corporate officials hiding bloated stock-market earnings in offshore bank accounts are no longer eligible for the government's "free lunch" programs.

 

No, wait. That's not right.

You can guess where she goes from there. Erwin goes on to decry Bush Administration plan to "to discontinue free lunches to schoolchildren whose parents fail to prove they need them." Erwin continues:

Using The Backpack Express, a proven vehicle for losing paperwork forever, young children will be asked to ferry home federal forms, retrieve the appropriate financial information from their parents and return it all to school.

More Concerns About No Child Left Behind

Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post writes about the No Child Left Behind law's requirements in States Worry New Law Sets Schools Up to Fail. Fletcher says state education officials around the nation "say federal regulations outlining how to assess the quality of schools are dangerously arbitrary and inflexible and will result in schools being treated as failures -- even if they are improving by most measures."

Teachers Footing the Bill

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Susan Snyder writes about teachers providing extras and basics out of their pocket in Philadelphia in For basics and more, teachers footing the bill.

K-12 or P-16?

The Indianapolis Star's Kim L. Hooper writes that Indiana is one more state considering going from a K-12 state educational plan to a preschool through college plan. In Preschool-through-college public schooling plan eyed, Hooper writes that while the Indiana State Roundtable is considering such a plan, finding funding it may be difficult. Indiana is a state known for consistently underfunding educational mandates. Hooper also notes, "Currently, 24 states have P-16 policies in place, according to the Education Commission of the States, based in Denver."

PowerSchool

Last week, Nick dePlume, publisher of Think Secret, broke the news of major layoffs and reorganization at Apple's PowerSchool subsidiary. Nick has also published an in-depth report of what went wrong in the PowerSchool buyout. Special Analysis: Business "How-not-tos" at PowerSchool is an interesting and revealing read.

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