Monthly Archives: March 2005

Another potential Smartboard replacement

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I guess you could say I’m a SMART Board skeptic. Generally speaking I think most interactive whiteboards (to use the non-trademarked term) are too small, too expensive, and not portable enough. I’ve found over the last year or so that most teachers’ needs are met with an inexpensive RF presentation remote like this Keyspan unit.

Interwrite SchoolPad 300

If the simple remote won’t do, you may want to consider the Interwrite SchoolPad. It uses Bluetooth to connect to a computer wirelessly and allows the user to annotate on top of Web pages, PowerPoint presentations, or anything else that is displayed on the computer screen. You can even have up to seven of the SchoolPads connected simultaneously to one computer. I love the portability and the price; it’s significantly cheaper than a full size interactive whiteboard.

We’re in testing mode with the SchoolPad now. I’ve got some science teachers who have previous experience with interactive whiteboards trying it out to see how it compares. If they like it I’m pretty sure that there are a bunch of other departments who will be interested.

Social engineering still works

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Bruce Schneier blogged today about a recent CNN story describing how Treasury Department inspectors posing as computer technicians were able to convince 35 out of 100 IRS employees to divulge their network login and password. This is yet another data point that points to employees as the primary weak link in most company or school security systems.

Even though divulging passwords in expressly prohibited by IRS rules, some of the employees who gave up the goods did so because they wanted to be as helpful as possible to the IT staff. If you are currently considering the purchase of some new high-tech security system, put down the checkbook until you’ve done some serious training with your employees.

Ticketing systems for tech support (and more)

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Over the past year our district’s tech support department has come to rely on our ticketing system more and more. We use Request Tracker, a free and open source, Web-based tech support product that has Web and email interfaces. What began as an experiment has become an integral part of our district’s technology infrastructure.

Each of our schools has its own email address for tech support requests. Teachers and other staff simply send an email message to that address describing the problem and a ticket is automatically created in the RT database. The building tech support person then gets an email notification for each new ticket and the teacher gets an email “receipt” so they know that the information was received. The teachers like it because they know that their requests haven’t been lost. The techs love it because it helps them avoid the dreaded “hallway ambush” where a teacher corners them about a tech problem and expects them to remember every detail until they get back to their desk to write it down.

We’ve found lots of other uses for Request Tracker too. The Buildings and Grounds Department is starting to use it for their requests and we hope to eliminate the “fill out in quadruplicate” work order forms entirely. Now we’re building a system to process technology purchases so the tech support staff in the buildings aren’t surprised when new equipment arrives. It will also help us ensure that the technology is appropriate for the curriculum and compatible with our computers and network.

Top notch tech support is absolutely crucial if teachers are going be confident enough in their technology systems to be innovative with their curriculum. I saw an example of this recently when we were having some stability issues with our student file server. It only took one bad experience for many teachers to put their technology plans on hold. Unfortunately, it takes much longer to build confidence than it does to ruin it.

There are dozens of ticketing systems to choose from (many of them free), but the important point is that any organization that relies on technology needs a system like RT. I guarantee it will improve the tech support in your school or district and encourage teachers to use technology more frequently.

Inspired by March Madness

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Raise your hand if you know what a tar heel is? Did you know that a Jayhawk was a abolitionist guerilla from Missouri or Kansas around the time of the Civil War? I was watching an NCAA tournament basketball game today and realized that researching some of the historically significant team nicknames would make a fun social studies activity. Oklahoma Sooners, Tennessee Volunteers, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Kansas Jayhawks are just a few of the ones I thought of. So what other major college teams have nicknames that aren’t just large cats, birds of prey, or some other garden variety mascot?

Some more on my list would include:

  • Iowa Hawkeyes
  • Ohio Buckeyes
  • Indiana Hoosiers
  • Purdue Boilermakes

Here’s a list of the Top 25 College Nicknames. Go UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs!

RSS readers for Windows

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I sat down to start planning my itinerary for this year’s NECC conference and noticed that there’s an RSS feed featured prominently on the conference homepage. Their “What is RSS?” page has a link to an article from PC World entitled “News on Demand” that provides a handy introduction to RSS for PC users and a handy comparison of 18 RSS aggregators. As a Mac user I don’t pay much attention to the market for PC-based RSS readers, but now I’ve got a place to send PC users when they ask me for a recommendation.

Podcast roundup

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I’ve linked to portions of podcasts before, but I’m going to recommend that everyone listen to these presentations in their entirety.

Dan Gillmor spoke at last year’s Accelerating Change conference and described some of the changes that the democratization of media has brought to our culture. The podcast of his session, We, the Media, is a great primer on the topic from someone who knows what he’s talking about.

In the category of copyright and intellectual property Lawrence Lessig’s The Comedy of the Commons and Cory Doctorow’s talk at the Web 2.0 conference are great starting points to understand how copyright and intellectual property law have been twisted in recent years to the detriment of the public good. (Did I give away my bias? Oops.)

These are huge issues that affect every one of us.

High school advice from Paul Graham

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I was reminded today of Paul Graham’s essay for high school students entitled What You’ll Wish You’d Known. It’s a wonderfully irreverent essay from a brilliant computer scientist. (Graham is famous for his writing on the Lisp programming language and, more recently, his work on spam filtering.)

Graham’s essay cleverly counters the obsession on college admission that has trapped so many high school students.

Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you’re designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there’s a whole industry devoted to subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry executive feels. And you don’t even get paid a lot.

More interesting for me (and more on-topic for this blog) are his thoughts about finding challenges and ambition.

The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn’t. Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will come out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough. There has to be suspense.

And then…

Most people like to be good at what they do. In the so-called real world this need is a powerful force. But high school students rarely benefit from it, because they’re given a fake thing to do. When I was in high school, I let myself believe that my job was to be a high school student. And so I let my need to be good at what I did be satisfied by merely doing well in school.

It saddens me to see so many bright students succeed not by finding hard problems to work on, but by gaming the system. Students are conditioned to do the least work possible because there’s almost no incentive to do otherwise. The kind of educational transformations that Will has been blogging about lately will only come about when students are empowered to break out of the hamster wheel. All this technology will be seriously disruptive to the educational establishment. I can’t wait.

I’m an ADE

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I got the word on Wednesday that I’ve been selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator for 2005. I’ll be heading out to Apple HQ in Cupertino in July for a week of professional development and will probably have opportunities to represent Apple at a few conferences here and there. I feel very fortunate to be selected because I know there are so many educators doing fantastic work with technology. With any luck, being an ADE will give me a chance to spread the word about blogs, wikis, open source, and all the other interesting technology I’m fortunate enough to get paid to work with every day.