b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Saturday, March 5, 2005
Largest Technolgy Boondoggle in Public Education History
Suburban Atlanta school district Cobb County Public Schools is gearing up to spend $70 million with Apple Computer to equip all middle and high school students and teachers with laptops.
The Cobb County Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb. 9th, heard details of an enterprising plan to prepare students to succeed in the 21st Centurys global information-based society, creating the largest one-to-one computer learning initiative in the United States. Superintendent Joseph Redden will begin contract negotiations with Apple to work out details of the Power To Learn program, which calls for the company to provide approximately 63,000 iBook G4 laptops for students and teachers in grades 6-12, plus a comprehensive package of training, technical support and server upgrades. The school board will consider the first phase of the plan in March.
Oh. My. God. What a boondoggle. This is tangible, measurable, palpable proof that people in Cobb County have more money than brains. Within less than two school years the majority of those laptops will be broken and useless. The ones given to teachers will be largely unused, except for simple gradebook programs. And the students still wont know how to do basic life functions such as balance a checkbook. This is the sort of bureaucratic, politically-correct, insanity that drives me nuts. At least its not a federal program that we all have to pay for (though Im sure at least some of the funds will come from Federal coffers eventually.)
Why, you may ask, does a techno-advocate like me go pale over such a grand infusion of technology? Because its being done by idiots who have no clue whats really wrong with their school system.
"The Power To Learn program represents a tremendous step forward for education in Cobb County," said Superintendent Redden. "Our school board members have demonstrated that their vision of educational excellence goes beyond doing things the way theyve always been done. Real leadership is about using the best technology available to help students learn in new and better ways."
No, that is not what leadership is about. I have two aunts who are public school teachers in southern California. Several years ago their district squandered $5-$6 million giving every teacher in the district a Dell laptop. Everyone thought this was grand. What a great idea. Wahoo! Were a technically advanced school system. Unfortunately, they didnt bother to provide the sort of intense training required to turn a bunch of middle-aged school teachers into effective technology users, much less technologically adept teachers. As a result, the school district has several thousand very expensive Dell-brand doorstops. And nothing, absolutely nothing, got better.
Cobb County is even worse. Theyre giving the laptops to kids, fer petes sake. Just how long do they think one of those beautiful G4s is gonna last in the hands of some 14-year-old? G4s are not GameBoys. They dont take to being dropped, banged, thumped, slammed, used as book props or whatever. This is so incredibly stupid I can barely imagine it. The same school officials that ban cell phones, pagers, GameBoys, etc (all of which, BTW, are computers) now wants to give the students laptops but has no idea what those laptops are really for.
Kids dont need technology training. They have computer labs in my daughters school. You know what theyre teaching her to do? PowerPoint presentations! Teaching middle schoolers applications like M$Word and powerpoint and passing it off as 21st century education ought to be punishable by a prison sentence. If youre going to teach them anything, make it Quicken. The rest theyll learn on their own given a little time to play around.
Enough whining. If the school district has $70 million to squander, heres what they ought to do:
- Give $1 million to Anne Davis, probably the single smartest lady in greater Atlanta public education, and let her develop a technology curriculum that focuses on things that actually matter. Let Anne recruit a core of hand-picked champions from across the district to be trained in the value of technology, the reasons, the benefits, the core of things like P2P, blogs, IM, RSS, search, fact-checking, triangulation, VoIP, Skype, connectivity, etc. Make sure these people get it and, more importantly, have a burning desire to communicate it to the students.
- Set aside $10 million for intensive, 6-month training courses for the rest of the districts teachers. A one-day class here and there isnt going to cut it, but thats all the morons in school administration think is necessary. Theyre wrong. Dead wrong. You have to give these teachers time to absorb this stuff, wrangle with it, come up with their own questions, and then come back to get another dose of training. Then repeat. And make sure the courses are taught by peer-champions from step 1. No pointy-headed consultants.
- Set aside $1 million to create a permanent support structure. Not some anal-retentive help desk run by a bunch of geeks that work for a consulting company, but a teacher community maybe a blogging/meetup-style community that spans the district, has funds for regular meetings, can offer classes for special training or do whatever the teachers and champions think should be done.
- We have $58 million left, what do we do with it? Oh, set aside $500,000 to buy laptop computers for the teachers, but make getting a laptop contingent on joining the community and completing the 6-month training course. If they dont complete the course no laptop.
- Spend $6 million to buff up the existing computer labs, maybe add some to schools that dont have one or dont have enough.
We still have $51.5 million. What are we going to do with
all that money? What about adding more Algebra or Science teachers, putting art
and music back into the curriculum, creating better after-school tutoring
programs, or any of the thousands of things the typical public school needs? Anything except squander it on a boondoggle so some bureacrat can massage his ego.
Terry Frazier at 2:15 PM
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Thursday, February 10, 2005
What's the Joke...
About a car that crashes as often as Windoze? We may be getting there, literally.
NEW STUDY WARNS OF CAR VIRUSES
A report by IBM Security Intelligence Services predicts that viruses spreading to mobile phones, PDAs and wireless networks could infect the embedded computers that increasingly are used to run basic automobile functions. The average new car runs 20 computer processors and about 60 megabytes of software code, raising more opportunities for malfunctions. In addition to the threat facing vehicles, the report noted the fastest growing threat last year was phishing -- a method of deceiving computer users into revealing personal information -- and predicted that activity would grow more serious in 2005. (Reuters/CNet.com 8 Feb 2005) [more...]
Terry Frazier at 10:20 AM
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Thursday, January 27, 2005
Adobe Acrobat 7
I've just installed version 7 of Adobe Acrobat, the best-selling tool for creating Adobe's proprietary PDF (portable document format) files. PDFs have some nifty uses but most of its functions don't interest me. There are also some things I really don't like -- such as putting PDFs on the web when an HTML file will do the job just as well and with a lot less hassle. I hate clicking an unmarked URL that suddenly clogs up my browser with Acrobat (excuse me, Adobe) Reader and starts hogging memory and cpu cycles. But I digress.
With Version 7 Adobe has, at long last, made a much-needed feature available to anyone with the free Adobe Reader -- commenting. This is a big deal. Sending MSWord files to clients is a terrifying experience and yet, if you're going to have clients or colleagues review a document in progress you have had little choice.
It is inconceivable to me that Microsoft thinks it's a good idea to have a word processing program with no definitive way to remove all hidden and meta data. But they've done (and continue to do) stupider things.
Having deleted or hidden data show up in a file at someone else's desktop can be embarrassing. If you work in highly political, confidential, or competitive situations the effects of such "accidents" can be devastating. Adobe has finally recognized this problem as a market opportunity. With Acrobat 7 they have made it possible to create a PDF file with commenting enabled so that anyone using Adobe Reader 7 can delete text, insert text, or simply add editorial comments. When finished the entire PDF can be sent back to the originator or, even better, the comments can be exported into a separate file. The originator can combine comment files from multiple reviewers and import them back into MSWord to form the basis of revisions. This is a substantial improvement over the old "track changes and pray" routine inherent in MSWord document reviews.
Getting this capability isn't cheap. You have to buy the $400 Professional version of Acrobat to get it. But at least it's a one-time expense. Anyone using Reader 7 can then become part of the editorial review cycle. If you're in the consulting business or have to worry about sanitizing docs before they go out for review this is definitely something you want to check out.
Terry Frazier at 2:40 PM
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