b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Largest Technolgy Boondoggle in Public Education History
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Tuesday, March 8, 2005
An Austin Geek's Guide to Getting Over Yourself at SxSW
I leave Friday for a fun-filled weekend at SxSW. I grew up in Texas and love Austin, but this will be my first time at the conference, so I was glad to find (via BoingBoing) Austin geekster David Nunez' guide to getting over at the show. David doesn't pull any punches and has some great tips. If you're going it's worth reading the whole thing:The unofficial geek guide to getting over yourself at SxSW Interactive 2005
Here's how you can tell if you have not had the full SxSWi experience:
You find yourself back in your hotel room for the rest of the night right after the last panel of the day. You haven't shaken hands with people who look and act nothing like you You haven't had dinner with complete strangers. You've stuck only to your clique of people that you see daily back at your hometown. You haven't attended the EFF / EFF-Austin / Creative Commons Party on Monday night (free drinks! free food! live music! delicious food! (I should know, I'm responsible for getting it)) You left Austin without fifty business cards of new contacts you expect to email at somepoint soon. You left Austin without the intention of calling 3 new contacts to meet up within 2 weeks of getting home You haven't crashed every clique you see You aren't smiling and smiling BIG You are talking more than listening, You haven't had a conversation or at least said "hi" to me, David Nunez. You don't have an orange, happy face sticker on your badge.
David has a great section on 'disconnecting' - you know, stopping all that IM'ing, e-mailing, and generally annoying keyboarding all the time - and talking with 'right here, right now' people. That's really why I'm going - to meet new people, stretch out a bit, get a little outside my comfort zone. So if you plan to go let me know and we'll connect. Should be a blast.
Here's a helpful list of restaurants around Austin. I have some dietary restrictions so the site is geared toward that, but it looks like a really good listing of local restaurants with reviews by people who have been there.
Terry Frazier at 7:39 PM
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Before - After Whiteboard Image
Here's that whiteboard image processed on auto with Polyvision's trial package. Not bad.
Whiteboard Photo Capture Software
Say that last photo looked pretty bad, huh? Have a look at Polyvision's Whiteboard Photo software. The before/after photos are slick. It's a little pricey at $249, but can be used to correct all sorts of images that suffer from perspective distortion, glare, etc. I hear college kids are using it to clean up scans of their text books without having to cutoff the spines.
Terry Frazier at 2:27 PM
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I'm Tracked Back, Jack
This weblog now supports Trackback. I think that's a big deal. Now I can send more pings out across the ether and join, well, other people that use Trackback.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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