Archive for April 4, 2008

Richard | April 30, 2008
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Technology is not a pencil

I am hoping to blog a lot while at ACPE the next two days. I thought I would start with an idea that has been nagging at me for a few weeks. I often hear school leaders explain that technology is like “a pencil.” I think they mean that technology should be incredibly simple and easily accomplish the job it is designed for. Pencils intimidate few. We don’t think too often about the pencil itself. Is it sharp? Eraser intact? Okay, let’s write.

Reducing technology to a pencil overlooks the manner in which it connects people to content and each other. The resultant learning environment is the focus, and it’s not a pencil. It is a complex, interwoven fabric through which students and teachers move to find, analyze, create, and share. The pencil (or whiteboard) metaphor discourages people from exploring the unique types of learning environments that one may create with technology.

Yes, we deserve technology systems that are easy to use, but we also deserve richness and power from these educational tools.

Category: Social studies |
Richard | April 21, 2008
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The difficult demise of wireless access points

Linksys

I have learned that wireless access points don’t die — they degrade. Both at school and at home, WAPs become flaky in their old age, so that the wireless network exhibits problems easy to attribute to other issues such as channel conflict. I just upgraded our wireless access point at home after weeks of “a wireless error occurred” messages from our Macs. Thankfully, the new one has made our access point happier again, even though the marketing “RangePlus” gimmick still does not allow wireless to reach all the way to the bedroom (must be a PC thing). Our new AP: Linksys WRT100. The old, which served us well for years: Netgear WGT624. I also went a step further with wireless security this time, using WPA instead of WEP, locking down admin access to wired computers only, and only allowing known MACs online. I wonder whether manufacturers are actually pushing people away from WEP, since I couldn’t quite get how to correctly configure encrypted WEP keys. If we ever have a 802.11n device in the house, this device is apparently compatible.

Category: Hardware | Tags: ,
Richard | April 17, 2008
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Easy PayPal mini-store on your site

Check out PayPal Storefront, a little Flash widget that you configure on PayPal’s site and then embed on your web site. It’s very elegant and quick. I am using it to sell a benefit recording of the Maru-a-Pula Marimba Band. The widget even allows any user to copy the widget code for their own site, making possible the viral distribution of a mini-store!

Category: Software/web | Tags: ,
Richard | April 11, 2008
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School families Google map

This week, I learned the next step: embedding a Google map with our data on our own (password protected) site. Twice in the past two years, I have created maps of students and employees in schools using BatchGeocode and Google Earth.

Given the flexibility of Google Earth, online resources cover a wide variety of ways to use the Google Maps API. Drupal’s GMap module is best suited for user submission of locations as separate nodes or a RSS feed. BatchGeocode provides locations in a single KML file, which I learned is XML for maps. The Google Maps API can index a KML file directly, but I didn’t want to submit our KML file to Google to index, and my tests of the strategy didn’t work anyway. GMapEZ is a special set of scripts using the Maps API but requires you to format your placemarks as conventional HTML links. Ultimately, this article at XML.com provided the most successful strategy for me: embedding points directly into the page and then adding listeners to create the popup information boxes. Embedding all the points keeps the data within our password-protected space, too.

You can accomplish this basically in a one-liner per placemark:

var marker220 = new GMarker(new GLatLng(45.51584,-122.702752)); map.addOverlay(marker220); GEvent.addListener(marker220, "mouseover", function() {marker220.openInfoWindow("Richard Kassissieh");})

A student included me in this project to create a carpool site for the Catlin Gabel community. Families find each other using the map and then post offers and requests for rides.

map

Category: Software/web | Tags: ,
Richard | April 10, 2008
One comment

Authority and experimentation

Paul, nice job introducing the trip planning project using Google Earth. I especially liked how you explained how teacher authority (or “genius,” as you put it) is actually the face of experience. Students think you magically know all the answers, but this is actually because you’ve done the project many times before. Then you explained that moving the project into Google Earth means that you will encounter problems for the first time and not be as able to answer the students’ questions correctly the first time. I couldn’t read the students’ reactions to this … perhaps they were mildly stunned. I hope that the more adventuresome among them will view this as an opportunity to lead the exploration and define the project for future classes! Onward and upward. Good luck with it.

Category: Social studies | Tags:
Richard | April 9, 2008
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Building Online Communities

The PNAIS technology directors listserv has experienced a rebirth this year. As we seek to understand the factors that build successful online learning communities, it’s worth asking why the group took off again this year. No doubt, school technology professionals have a need to get in touch with each other. Most work amongst only a small group of peers in their own institutions — the ability to ask questions of a large number of like-positioned peers has great value. Last year’s TechShare conference may have also had something to do with it. At the conference, 30 regional tech staff got together for the second annual conference, continuing to build face-to-face rapport that bleeds into successful online interactions. In the lead-up to the conference and immediately afterward, conversation on the listserv picked up pace. Don at PNAIS (the list sponsor and host) periodically injects some momentum into the group with well-placed, useful announcements of opportunities or projects in process. Finally, critical mass: when only a few people posted to the list, many stopped paying attention. Now, the more that some people participate, the more that others do as well.

If “technology directors” follows in the footsteps of BAISNet, the next step will involve someone proposing an impromptu, face-to-face meetup when the level of discussion on a particular topic reaches a fever pitch. Then we will be able to mark a new milestone for this online community. Will MACEP get there first?

Category: Social studies | Tags: , , ,
Richard | April 4, 2008
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Oregon Episcopal School

Brad from Oregon Episcopal School kindly invited us to visit, and next week we will be pleased to return the favor. I was reminded how powerful it is to visit other schools in town. Thanks to Brad, Brad, Jeff, and Deri for welcoming us.

We walked through the middle school, encountering small groups of students working togethet with laptops in the hall outside their classes. One group was writing, another developing spoken recordings in GarageBand. In the upper school, both computer labs we saw were fully occupied with busy students, and posters demonstrated exemplary work in 3D modeling — especially landscapes and buildings. The upper school office was very quiet — just adopt a 1:1 program to make that place take off!

Some specific items I learned.

- OES has run deployment through Altiris for five years, as have we. It’s time to put our heads together to share tips.

- They are handling middle school Apple laptops using Workgroup Manager, which we are going to undertake this summer.

- Brad is writing a document retention policy, which we would like to undertake this year.

- OES is experimenting with TiVo, as we have this year.

- OES is looking at XO and eeePC as possible low-cost mobile lab solutions.

- OES is thinking of moving some students’ school accounts to GMail to take advantage of email, file storage, and collaborative document authorship.

- They are evaluating Higher Ground laptop bags for their MacBooks.

- They use current year operating funds to purchase computers for the following year, permitting maximum flexibility when timing purchases.

I am sure there was tons more. We look forward to welcoming the crew to Catlin Gabel next week.

Category: Tech Direction |