Archive for October 16, 2005

Richard | October 27, 2005
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Internet Access in Botswana

I am flying to Boston this weekend to attend an American Friends of Maru a Pula meeting. Don’t expect much from this space until Monday.

Our primary agenda item is raising funds to provide scholarships to AIDS orphans in Botswana, but there will also be some discussion of the school’s technology needs. The technology landscape is considerably different in Botswana. High-speed internet access is nearly impossible to obtain, due to governmental regulation. Even telephone lines are difficult to obtain due to slow response time from the appropriate government ministry. (When I arrived for my two-year stay in 1994, I was told that I would not be staying long enough to order a phone. Of course, cell phones have changed that issue in more recent years.) The leading solution is satellite service, which would allow the school to provide itself internet access, but at great cost and slow speeds. Though the cost is difficult to swallow, slow internet access is the school’s greatest technology problem, especially for a school community that is so outward looking.

The cost of hardware replacement is still quite high in Botswana. Even though many clone manufacturers exist, the cost of importing components keeps overall system prices 50-100% higher than in the U.S. Interestingly, Apple maintains a solid presence in South Africa and Botswana, having made a strong bid to win customers back after pulling out of the country during the apartheid era. Maru a Pula needs to allocate funds to purchase new machines and service existing ones.

Once these conditions are met, it may be possible to move in a more progressive direction, such as installing one or two computer-enhanced classrooms. This would give Maru a Pula teachers the opportunity to use technology for more than just clerical and communication tasks. I am unsure how many MAP teachers are prepared to take this step, but perhaps I will find out this weekend.

Category: Social studies |
Richard | October 27, 2005
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Technology Issues for Administrators

I sat on a panel of three technology directors at a BATDC (Bay Area Teacher Development Collaborative) workshop today. The participants were all independent school administrators from around the Bay. The topic was relatively wide-open: opportunities and challenges in technology-based communication. Specific discussion ranged from online services to staff and parent use of email.

The group brought an expected sense of uncertainty to the meeting, as most had developed some fear of new online services used by students, such as mySpace and LiveJournal. Clearly, students are accustomed to trying new communication systems as they become available, but adults take longer to adjust.

I think we relieved many of those tensions through the course of the meeting. There is very little unique to the communication and behavior challenges that some are currently experiencing with new technologies. One of the few exceptions is the degree to which a person can print an offensive email, chat transcript, or blog page in order to present it as evidence of wrongdoing. Otherwise, all of the regular rules apply to electronic communications as do to other written or verbal forms: think before you write, hold people accountable for their actions, and expect that children will alternately succeed and fail as they explore their own identities and the world around them.

On November 8, I will co-present a related BATDC workshop on technology and ethics at The Bay School.

Category: Social studies |
Richard | October 25, 2005
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1:1 Student Laptop Initiative

We continue to make progress toward the possible implementation of a 1:1 student laptop program at UHS. Yesterday, I presented a comprehensive overview of the program to the full board of trustees for the first time. My main thrust was to provide as much context as possible so that everyone could understand how we got to this point. I explained that the genesis of the student laptop idea rested in the strategic planning process that the school undertook two years ago. The plan’s technology recommendations included a mandate to review annually the methods used to provide computers to students at UHS.

The purchase of a new building on Sacramento Street accelerated our consideration of change, so that our academic technology committee spent the fall semester of last year reviewing different ways to provide student computer access in our new campus configuration. Last spring, we presented the Faculty with two choices: an expanded desktop computer program that would place more computers in science labs and art classrooms to accommodate the increase in classrooms, and a student laptop program that would virtually eliminate computer labs and provide individual computers to students.

Trustees asked quality, critical questions about the presentation. How will the laptop program bring greater equity to student computer access? Are there less expensive ways to accomplish this? Are alternative devices besides laptop computers available for such a program? How enthusiastically do teachers support this initiative? What are some of the curricular ideas that they envision being able to implement with a laptop program? How will laptops help students do their work for school? Are teachers concerned about possible disruption to classes? Should the school introduce the program in August 2006, January 2007, or August 2007? What other schools have or are considering student laptop programs? What have we learned from our faculty laptop program? How would laptops change teacher practice in the classroom? How would our professional development program support teacher training for student laptop use?

One challenge during this process has been to maintain the focus of the trustees on the students. In my mind, this is primarily a student laptop initiative, and the students will be the primary beneficiaries of the laptop computers. I would predict a rapid increase in student communication and great increases in organization and efficiency of managing documents and other files.

Here are the next steps in the process of considering this proposal. The board chair has created a subcommittee of the finance committee to put together a detailed proposal considering multiple program options that would affect overall cost. The finance committee will review and consider this proposal and then forward it to the full board on November 28 for approval or denial. It is going to be an eventful month!

Category: Laptop programs |
Richard | October 25, 2005
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Forums Reborn

I quietly installed new forum software at the end of our academic first quarter on Friday. The main motivation was to upgrade to a different forum package that would use a more robust database backend. Our old forum, YaBB, used a flat file database, which became corrupted when a server log file filled up. The new forum, phpBB, uses mySQL, which should be more robust. Amusingly, those students who were attempting to “break the post limit” claimed victory with the recent forum crash.

I made my usual modifications to the new phpBB forum, such as hijacking the login/registration scheme to automatically tie in to the auth_user environment variable, and modifying the default skin to use UHS colors and logos. I took the additional steps of disabling post counts and re-ordering the forums to place the more serious ones at the top. It will be interesting to see how much of an effect (if any) structural changes have on the quality of discourse in the forums.

The largest effect by far has been starting over again. While I provided links back to the old forum (which is still running in read-only mode), most students have focused on the new posts (or lack of them). In comments to me, some have characterized this as the loss of all of the old conversations, whereas others have seized the opportunity to set new precedents for thoughtful discussion in the new forums. As has been the case over the past three years, time will tell whether thoughtful discussion will maintain a critical mass in the new forums.

Another surprising result has been the poster-lurker ratio. While only a few dozen students are active posters, fully 180 students visited the forums over the weekend. I tracked this by observing the number of new forum accounts created as students logged in for the first time. Apparently, three to four times as many students are reading the forums as are posting.

Thanks go to Tobias for responding to the call to create the new forums logo. I try to operate these forums with a light touch, and student leadership is the best way to determine their character.

Category: Software/web |
Richard | October 20, 2005
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Break Your Projector More Quickly

I just received this in an email from Toshiba.

Take Your Projector Home for the Weekend

Professionals who use digital projectors in commercial and educational environments are discovering their versatility and entertainment value outside the office or classroom.

Why? Projectors can be used in any situation where a big-screen TV can for less cost and a larger viewing area. And because of their easy portability and set-up, projectors can be used in environments that TVs can’t.

In the home, for instance, teenagers and the young-at-heart can enjoy computer games with devices such as Microsoft’s Xbox or the Sony PlayStation with a projector to give players a “larger-than-life” gaming experience. Families can use a projector to watch a movie display that is larger than any big-screen TV, simulating the movie theater experience (without the pricey popcorn).

That’s a great idea. Encourage school staff to take their $2,000 projectors home so that they can break more quickly and need to be replaced. (sarcasm intended)

Category: Hardware |
Richard | October 20, 2005
6 comments

Radius By IAS

We have successfully implemented Radius server authentication using Microsoft IAS for our wireless access points. For a small institution such as ours, inexpensive, centralized authentication is essential. Our access points cost about $200 each, and the IAS server is part of Windows 2000 server.

We purchased Netgear WG302 wireless access points over a year ago. These are medium-priced access points, somewhere between low-end residential models and expensive, corporate models. We were hoping to centralize administration either by FTP-ing a config file to each access point or installing a Radius server. Last year, both methods failed. The FTP server within the access point limited the number of MAC addresses you could upload to 10. The access point’s support for Radius was limited to WPA. That would require us to distribute a password to students, which we did not want to do.

We were upset that the access point did not live up to advance billing, since two of the centralized administration protocols did not work in a practical mannner. However, our network admin managed to develop a scheme that worked all last year despite its awkwardness: a macro that would successively visit the web administration page of each access point and add one address at a time. Unbelieveably, it worked, but it took a while to run and would not permit batch additions or subtractions — Clearly a short-term solution.

Fortunately for us, Netgear updated their access point firmware this year to allow Radius for MAC access control. Now, when you turn access control on, you have the option of using either a local MAC address database or a Radius server. Nonetheless, it still required our network admin three days of trial and error to get it to work, since documentation was both scarce and conflicting. A couple of key tips were that it only worked if the MAC address objects in Active Directory were all lower-case, the AD password was lower-case, and dial-in/remote access permission for the AD object was turned on.

Two great features of the new system are that one can quickly create or update a MAC address by manipulating AD objects, and one may monitor access point status in the event log.

Write me if you want more implementation details. I would not be surprised if the required tips vary from platform to platform.

[Update] Implementation details posted here.

Category: Hardware |
Richard | October 20, 2005
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The Top 10 Weblog Design Mistakes

With the rapid proliferation of blogs, it is high time to re-emphasize fundamental principles of good web design.

  • Readable text

  • Pertinent content
  • Effective navigation and search
  • Short and simple forms
  • No bugs, typos, or outdated content.

(source)

Apply these ideas to blogs and you get Jakob Nielsen: Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Category: Programming |
Richard | October 16, 2005
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Constructive Discussion Returns to the Forums

Hooray, the forums are back! Spurred by a controversy over student use of a “free speech” section of wall on campus, a number of students have succeeded in having a lengthy, mutually respectful conversation in our online forums. Okay, I exaggerate the dominance of silly chatter in our online conversation space, but it has been a pleasure to see the forums being used as they were originally intended. One takeaway lesson is how it only takes a few online leaders, those who have developed a reputation for “fair play” and thoughtful commentary on the forums, to set the tone for the rest of the participants. The same can be said for silly online chatter. When a few respected voices promote gratuitous online play, the rest happily participate. My goal is to maintain separate, safe spaces for students to engage in both kinds of online interaction.

Category: Software/web |
Richard | October 16, 2005
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Blackboard Buys WebCT

Blackboard has acquired WebCT (press release). I first read about this news on Stuart Yates, eduCause, and Assorted Stuff. This appears to be either a move by Blackboard to eliminate its primary competition by acquisition or an attempt to strengthen itself to take on open-source powerhouse Moodle.

Either way, it reminds me of why we dropped WebCT over three years ago. The school had invested a lot of money and professional development time on WebCT, then WebCT upped the minimum number of seats required to obtain a license to 1000. Because we are a school of only 400 students, that would have more than doubled our annual license fee. We decided instead to build our own web pages in Dreamweaver, which also required considerable skill acquistion. Now, Moodle has arrived, boasting a comparable features set to Blackboard or WebCT, and has required very little training in order for teachers to get course web sites up and running. I imagine that a larger, more powerful Blackboard will not be terribly responsive to the needs of small, independent schools while trying to protect its vulnerable higher education market.

Category: Software/web |
Richard | October 16, 2005
4 comments

MyTob Hits

School was hit by the MyTob worm this week. We plugged the hole with tighter restrictions on SMTP traffic within our network, but the successful infection underscores a larger problem with networks on the whole. Schools and other institutions typically protect their networks with firewall, antivirus software, and spam filters. This kind of worm defies all three of these in the typical network, because it only takes one infected laptop carried onto campus to bypass these server-based, externally-focused defenses. In a mobile world, we need to focus more attention on protective measures for internal traffic. Unfortunately, this creates more work to implement these measures and deal with restrictions on legitimate uses that will undoubtedly arise.

Category: Server |
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