mac vs pc

I find it a little more than ironic. I’ve never owned a Macintosh (more about that in a later issue), but when it came time to decide what platform to purchase for my previous school I went with Apple. Three years of constantly tweaking my PCs in my classroom while the ol’ PowerMac just cruised along helped me make that decision. Then when it came to networking those computers (which had swelled to 250) I spent an afternoon with one of TIG’s engineers to learn how to run an AppleShare network. After a brief ill-fated attempt at using MacManager, I went back to straight AppleShare and got the computers networked with over seven-hundred users. I’d been working with PCs for years but knew that it would have taken a lot more work to have done the same job with an NT server.

Working with Macs was by no means perfect and so I was looking forward to working at my new school which was a PC site. I was looking forward to having a larger software and hardware base to work with. Alas, then I discovered that my lab and much of my school site was populated with aging Gateway PCs with 166 MHz Pentium CPUs running Windows 95 and 32 MBs of RAM. Talk about taking a giant step backwards in computing. Add to that my district has seen fit to consider all things PC their domain and lock everything down with their Novell front end. Damn. I appreciate the support but find it maddening that they won’t give me access to my own network configuration and expect me to ask permission to install any software.

Who cares if Intel or AMD is able to produce 1.4 GHz chips while Motorola struggles to get past 900 MHz if my school site is frozen at 166 MHz and my district coordinator wonders outloud why anyone would want to upgrade from Windows 95. It’s a tool boys, not a religion! The irony is that having joined a site with the “mainstream” OS I find myself far more restricted than my brethren conducting business with that rogue Mac OS. I miss my extension errors and sad macs.

The first teacher I met was XXX XXXX at XXXXX (releases pending). She runs the elementary computer lab at this K-8 school. She shared with me the steps she goes through in setting up her lab and how she organizes here “beginning of the year” sessions. I got some tips on how to use nametags and ideas on how to organize the curriculum. When I asked her about the district’s IS structure and whether there was a forum set up for technology teachers and coordinators to work together and interact with the district, she didn’t think that there was one. Oh, and I found out that because her school site was a “Mac” site they get to/have to run their own server and are not under the district’s Novell umbrella. Ack. [see PCs vs. Macs]

I then visited with YYY YYYY at YYYYYYY Middle School. He was recommended by my principal and worked with my principal when my principal began the computer lab at this middle school. Obviously (or not so obviously) computer labs at middle schools are run very differently than computer labs at elementary school, generally because of the whole “switching classes” thing and the lack of a mandate that the lab service every student. He shared a bit about how the lab was put together and gave me the proposal that my principal had had a hand in writing when the technology curriculum was originally being put together. I got the impression that it was a “do it yourself” kind of existence. He said that back then the district didn’t even have an IS department that addressed technology in the classroom. Per my question he didn’t know of any support organization in the district but offered that the most important thing for me to do was to develop relationships with the technicians who work for IS. Oh yeah, this was another “Mac” site running without the need to ask permission to install their software. JBB

She shared with me which typing program she was using with the younger students and how she uses various applications to address different standards areas (for example, she uses kidpix’s stamp function to develop number-sense activities). She had several other suggestions for activities and resources for developing activities. From her discussion I gathered that the staff participation in the development of her lab curriculum (integration) was somewhat minimalistic. She was taking her experience as a teacher, her knowledge of skills standards and creating the lab’s curriculum. This pointed out to me the gap between what the “technology teacher” does and how the “typical” classroom teacher approaches “having to use technology.”

Again, the classroom teacher is busy enough without having to consider how to work technology into her day. I’ve found this attitude to be held regardless of whether the teacher is a “veteran” or a “newbie,” and regardless of the site is “technology rich” or “technology deprived.” Those of us who come into the profession with pre-existing experience with technology generally are labeled “techno-geek” and are seen as an aberration to the norm. It’s unfortunate that the pressures of the profession prevent many of us from putting in the effort needed to make the most of the technology that we have instead of seeing computer lab time as “student-free” time. In my previous school we had a 32-station networked iMac lab and 5 to 6 networked Macintoshes in every classroom. It took those teachers over four years to go from seeing the computers as an occasional reward (with a game) to writing up their weekly lesson plans and class lists using Word and doing their Open House slide show with Kidpix. JBB

The agenda seemed to be directed at infrastructure and policy issues and entirely void of curriculum concerns. Then when questions were asked about using 802-11b (wireless technology) the coordinator quipped that after “you teachers go to these conferences and get all excited about using these technologies” that he had to go to other conferences on how to countermand these desires. Okay, we’re apparently not in Kansas anymore.

A question came up about iMac purchases and he said that he would not authorize any purchases until Apple agreed to take out the CD-writers and replace them with “regular” CD-players. That made me scratch my head a bit. Then when addressing the steps needed to upgrade a site’s computers from Windows 95 to 98 (step one: contact the project coordinator to calendar a meeting to discuss the project) he quipped that he didn’t understand why anyone would need to upgrade to Windows98 in the first place. This whole thing was beginning to remind me of childhood memories of watching President Johnson address the Press toward the end of his tenure in the White House (except that there seemed to be “more love in the room” when Johnson spoke).

It took me a bit to figure this out. Then I realized that his “vision” for an educational PC was lowest-common denominator. His thinking seemed to be what computer could he put in an unsupervised corner of a high school library and not expose the school district to a lawsuit because “Johnny” downloaded porn off the Internet and burned it to a CD on a district computer. Of course this begs the question about whether one size really does fit all. It’s a wonder that these things have been networked at all. Damn. JBB

Got a call from the teacher at my former school who has been given the network managament responsibilities (not the same guy who took over my broadcast job). Seems like their server went down some time during the summer and haven’t been able to get it up and working yet and he needed some info on sources to get things going again. I shared with him my idea about creating a tech coordinator’s group specifically to support the guys in the trenches. He really like the idea (especially about the part about getting together to rag on our schools over a couple of beers).

Beyond the shared ethos, one of my main concerns was that, as a group, we really don’t have time for any more meetings. Kind of as part of that I was thinking that, of any of the educational groups, we should really be taking advantage of our technological “expertise” when it comes to our get togethers. So, besides the more social gathering over suds, I was thinking that the more frequent support meetings should be done using something like netmeeting with webcams. This is something to consider, JBB

Today was my 2nd district level tech coordinators’ meeting. Needless to say, I wasn’t overly enthusiastic at the prospect. Silly me, I should have read the memo more completely. Today’s meeting was part of the district’s “Elementary Curriculum Teacher Forums.” Curriculum? This should be different.

First bit of happy news was meeting the “Technology Curriculum Leader,” BBB BBBBBB. We filled out a survey about our school site’s technology and the site support structure and received a lot of handouts. Even though things still seemed district-centric, the attitude was clearly different. BBBB’s went out of her way to ask what we needed. Wow.

We also got a copy a copy of the district technology plan with an invitation to participate in the committee to continue refining the plan. This might be something that I would want to get involved in. JBB

I ran the network at my former school and I understand the need for standarization to keep the network running and assist in troubleshooting. Of course there were always those who thought that the rules didn’t apply to them and had no problem disregarding my instructions. It’s a delicate balance between allowing for individuality and keeping the network running. The truth of the matter is that the standardization needs of the network is not the same as “one size fits all.” I eventually learned that with my small (single site) network.

Now that I’m a part of a much larger network I’m having a difficult time of my “one size fits all” restrictions. This week I started teaching my students on how to work with the Internet and ran headlong into one of the restrictions. One of the sites we were going to visit needed a plug-in (shockwave). Fortunately I was able to get a copy of the plug-in without going to the Shockwave site, because the site has been blocked by the district’s proxy software. Then when I went to install the plug-in I could only log onto three computers at a time because that’s the “teacher” profile restriction. That wouldn’t be a big deal in a typical classroom with two or three computers, but I run a 41-station computer lab. Logging in and logging out in groups of three is a royal pain and doesn’t take into account the nature of my job and my expertise. This really brought out the “who is serving whom” questions in my mind.

This point was further made when I realize the “login” hell that I’d put my 2nd through 5th graders through was not entirely necessary. Because my campus is networked with one computer in every classroom and we’re a technology Magnet campus one of the first things did was ask the IS department to create login accounts for all of our students. There was a bit of grumbling but then we were told they were going to use the “Digital High School” model to create the accounts (mostly because there is no other model, I think). Great, I thought.

Of course, I later discovered that the “Digital High School” model meant that the individual student’s login was going to be the nine-digit unique student ID number that is assigned to every student plus the four-digit year the student graduates from high school. Then the student’s password is the six-digit representation of the student’s birthday. Ack. But then I figured that this number was going to be with them for the rest of their “career” at our district, so they might as well learn it.

Typing in the 13-digit username and 6-digit password was a pain for the 4th and 5th graders. It was a bit challenging for the 3rd graders and downright painful for the 2nd graders. Close to the first ten-minutes of our 40-minutes together was being spent with 7- and 8-year-olds struggling to type in the correct digits. But I thought, well, it’s the district standard, and because we’re on the district network they have to maintain the district nomenclature. But then I discovered that we really didn’t need usersname/passwords that were entirely unique across the whole district’s network to get our files on our server.

Okay, let me explain. When anyone logs onto the server (teacher, staff or students), their computer has to be looking in the right area (folder) on the server. There’s an area on the server set up for staff, one for teachers and several folders set up for students (one for their graduation years). That means that the username/password only needs to be unique for the 150 students have folders in that area of the server and not the thousands of students attending schools in our district. Needing only 150 variations meant that their usernames could have been their first initial and first five letters of their last name instead of the mindboggling 13-digit username. So the question is, why force 150-seven and eight year olds to struggle through the 13- plus 6-digit process? Again, here is a case where we’re having to conform to a organizational directive that isn’t educationally friendly or functional. IS is making us serve them instead of serving us. Ack. JBB

I must be nuts. After my experiences putting this (Pepperdine) web page together I was getting comfortable enough with the process that I decided to create a webpage to help teach my students how to use the Internet (rules, tools, and a couple simple click-through exercises). Then when we visited the school web page it became woefully evident that someone needed to take over the site and make some good use of the URL. Besides pictures from three years ago, they still had my predecessor listed as the computer lab instructor and referred to our aging 166-MHz PCs as “state of the art.” So I talked my principal into letting me take over the page.

Well I was thinking that it’d be a good way for me to share work that my students are doing in the lab. I was also thinking that besides just having examples of student work, I could put together a group of students to manage some of the maintenance of the site. I ran a news station at my last school. The web page could become an inexpensive way to continue the “journalistic” spirit without any large funding outlay. In fact, I was thinking that the page might be able to address a “Yearbook” problem that my school has been having over the past couple of years (basically the yearbooks have been getting more elaborate and expensive and only covered the 5th graders). Anyway, those were some of my thoughts as the previous web-mistress gleefully gave me the needed information. Ack. This is certainly going to be an adventure. But I still have to wonder what the hell I was thinking. JBB

2002-06_twain-talk-online-example

I understand the liability issues, but it’s not as if my students have unsupervised access. If the district IS attitude about granting us some differentiated access is anything like their attitude about every student having the same username/password structure than I’m screwed [see One size does not fit all]. Here is a case where the technology can serve a purpose but we’re not permitted to use it because of the “potential” for misuse. What’s the point of bearing this huge expense if we can’t squeeze every benefit from the stuff. Damn. I think that I need to contact my distict technology curriculum person. JBB

Ok, I’m the new guy, twice removed. I’m new to this campus, so they don’t know me (and I don’t know them), and I am not a “fellow” classroom teacher. On the surface our goals are the same, but there is an unfortunately consistent human tendency to assume that the other guy (me) some how has it easier and is less deserving of cooperation than fellow grade level teachers. Nothing over the top, just not as much a part of the group. Damn.

And as I have noted in my blue print journal, I’ve tended to react to this by trying to carefully manage where our purposes and needs intersect and then do the rest by myself. Damn phone company training taught me to be as self-sufficient as possible because there’s nothing worse than not covering all of the possibilities before turning ones task over to another (it’s a trouble-shooter thing). Anyway, this is hard consistent with creating “communities of practice.”

I mean, on the low of the scale, I’m just the computer-guy who takes their kids for forty minutes so that they can attend to other duties. Our purposes intersect where they believe that it’s important that their students get “computer training” but they have no other active role in that. That’s the worse case scenario. And in four months I’ve only really gotten that response from a few of the upper grade teachers. The lower grade teachers just seem overjoyed that I believe that their students should get forty minutes a week in the computer lab. It’s amazing how well people react when they see you advocate their cause.

For the most part, for the majority of the staff, we’re still trying to create a common language. Because I’m the computer guy, they’re not entirely clear on what I’m trying to accomplish or how I plan to do it. In that I am a trained educator and not just a technician, we at least have that in common. But none of this comes to be full-blown or fully understood. We’re all taking time to understand the situation. Funny thing is that my predecessor messed things up last year, in part, because he knew that he wouldn’t be returning this year and wasn’t too happy that the principal wanted to bring someone else in. So it created a strain between the lab and the front office and the teachers. Part of my job has been to repair some of that disappointment and distrust (as if I need to add more to my job). JBB

Ok, I’m a hardware geek who disassembles PCs on a whim but it just struck me as I was scanning through the ERIC database how cool it is to be sitting in my little abode connected to this huge database finding over 6000 articles on technology and the classroom. It’s more than a little overwhelming. Let’s just say that I pulled down 37 articles before I decided that I needed to redefine my search to my ARP specifically. Man, I should have paid better attention during the “library” session at VirtCamp. Ack. JBB

I didn’t understand the delay. It’d taken the IS technician about two-days to create over 500 accounts and one day to create another 14 accounts. And now it was taking over 6-weeks to create the remaining 28 accounts? Queries to the help desk said that the matter had been turned over to the sysadmin and the district tech-coordinator. Oh great, for whatever reason, this has turned political. Crap.

I turned it over to my principal. His calls to the district tech-coordinator resulted in a message that the tech coordinator was on vacation. The district people also want to know why I needed these additional accounts (even though I’d clearly spelled out the situation in my e-mail). Great. In the meantime over 800 students were continuing to come through my computer lab doors, spending a good 10- or more minutes of their precious 40-minutes struggling with these damn meaningless numbers. Oh, some the GATE students appreciated the challenge but very few of the second grade teachers saw the benefit. Add to that, many of the second grade logins just didn’t work. So one could never tell at first if a login failed because the student didn’t key in the information perfectly or because it was just broke. The lab’s luster was loosing it’s shine for many of these young learners.

Then this week I just picked up the phone to call the district tech coordinator and he answered. Huh? That was too easy. Oh, he was familiar with my request and just had a few questions about why I needed these additional accounts. So I explained to him how the original system wasn’t working and that these accounts were meant to smooth things out. While I had his ear I told him that, given the way the district has set up their servers, there is a way to make things more conducive to elementary school students and teachers. He listened and admitted that it sounded like I’d had more experience with this problem than he had and that maybe he could call on me when he brings it to the sysadmin’s attention. Something about this surprising openness felt like the throne room scene in the Wizard of Oz just before it’s reveal who is really running the show. He then said that he’d refer the matter to the IS technician and within two days I had my remaining accounts. That was weird.

Here’s a clear case where an organization’s need to manage resources has resulted in those resources not being efficiently used. The processes is too centrally controlled and doesn’t take advantage of resources that are on-site. I told the tech-coordinator that it doesn’t make sense to have all requests for something as simple as adding an account go to an understaffed central location when you have someone onsite who does this job full-time (moi). Anyway, I fully intend to write him a follow-up memo delineating all of the points and possible solutions that I shared with him. Maybe it was worth the hassle after all. JBB

This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about my CoP (or the lack thereof). As I’ve noted before, this is my first year on this school site, so I don’t have the longstanding friendships to build from. There’s also the “role” gap of understanding between the perception of my role in the computer lab versus their role in the self-contained classroom. We’re still figuring that one out.

CRITICAL FRIENDS

But I’ve identified a number of teachers whom I think would be good “critical friends.” I understand their role as being a “sounding board” or additional set of eyes to comment or critique my progress and finding in my ARP. There’s a second grade teacher who has been a strong advocate for technology in her grade level (actually her and her partner) who would be helpful in this role. Then there’s a fourth grade teacher, one of the first teachers I was introduced to, who could had the technical expertise to filled my job, who would be a good person to advise me. Then there are a number of other teachers who might be a good “second tier” group, who may not have the technical expertise but have good relationship skills and classroom experience.

PARTICIPANTS

As I’ve originally thought about this ARP, my first thought is that my fellow technology coordinators and/or computer lab instructors would be the audience or group that I want to create a “support network” for. I’ve contacted four in my general area, but at my last district meeting there were dozens attending the meeting that might be interested in participating. Also, because of my recent employment at a neighboring district, I’m thinking that I want to include my contacts over there. I don’t see a requirement that this project be confined to just one district, if the contacts have already been made.

VALIDATING GROUP

I see that role most definitely being fulfilled by my fellow OMAET cadre members, particularly Christine Lorenz, Greg Thompson and Michelle Catlett. I might also include the fellow who took over my tech-coordinator position in my former school.

As I’m working through this list and the headings I can see how the roles and relationships can get a bit confusing. I’d very much like to include the Educational Technology director from my former district as a “critical friend,” his insight would be invaluable. But politically, I’m thinking that I really need to include my current district’s Technology Curriculum person . . . this still needs more thought. JBB

Originally I was thinking that I needed to create a support group for educational technology workers (tech-coordinators, computer lab instructors, district tech support). My main thought was to work against the isolation and frustration that many of us feel in our job by creating a CoP to influence our practice by sharing and developing resources and find a friendly place to vent.

My main concern was that we almost never have enough time for another meeting, much less for another group. So I started to think about using “technological solutions” (NetMeeting, Webcam, TI) to lessen the time/place requirements. But then, as anyone who has worked with cutting edge technology should know, if I “gain time” by not having to drive, I will most certainly lose twice as much time in the setup/troubleshooting phase. Hmmmm. I like the idea but I think that that might be too much to jump this first time around (that might be a case of technology getting in the way of the solution).

One of the things that one of my critical friend/participants said was that that will be a need for face-to-face/real-time semi-unstructured social interaction for this group. I tend to agree. At my former district the Technology Director used to get the tech coordinators from every school together about once every other month and we’d spend the first hour going around the table to sharing our schools’ latest exploits and vent. That time alone always made the meetings worth going to. Hmmm.

I’m still not convinced at the need for another “group” per se, if the main objective is support. Many groups that I’ve participated in have lots of “null” meetings and an occasional publication and in the end produce miniscule results. I’m wondering, if my goal is to share/exchange information/resource and provide an avenue of contact why not begin with a “publication” (webpage/e-mail newsletter) whose “real world” expression are “face-to-face/real-time semi-unstructured social interaction” at a local pub or social venue every other month (or so).

Such an arrangement would have the benefits of our own OMAET program with the non-sych aspect (webpage/newsletter publication) and sync part (pub meetings), with the “fun” aspect right up front. The seriousness is in the need to support each other and the dedication that we already bring to our profession. But there’s no reason why we can’t put a fun wrapper on it and have a playful side expressed in “meaningless” social “meetings” to be with people who do the same or similar jobs. Anyway, that’s the direction that I seem to be leaning. Pure information sharing/exchange via async, fun/breakout time via sync.

I think a good place to start to look at similar organizations is The Snorkle. I think this is doable. My background is communications with a B.A. in journalism. I think that this would be a good step for me to take.

Now, how does this improve my practice as a lab instructor and teacher? As I have chronicled in this journal and the BP journal, I’ve tended to work as a “solo” because it was more expedient and I was comfortable working that way. I know that I need to breakout of this “solo” mode for all of the same reasons that I originally considered the ARP to be of value, in order to prevent “burn-out” and keep from having to “re-invent the wheel.” Also, I’m thinking to expand my horizons and take my work beyond the walls of my lab, I know that I have learn how better to work well with others. JBB

Click here to go to My ARP INTRO page

I met with the tech coordinator who took over at my former school. It was a social visit to catch a showing of “The Lord of the Rings” that we had promised to make before the end of our Winter Break. Oops. Toward the end of the evening I brought up that I was putting together a group of tech support people (lab & coordinators) to support each other and that I was interested in having him participating. I mentioned that, besides the webpage/virtual support, I was very much interested in his organizational expertise to help put together the “social” aspect of our group. He said, “Sign me up.” Cool. One down, many, many more to go. JBB

I just got in from my three days on the road a couple hours ago. Man, I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed (talk about simple pleasures). Please let me know if I’ve missed something with this assignment. Joe Bustillos

My ARP

1. What is the purpose of your ARP? Tech Teachers Support System – to create a virtual and realtime support system for technology specialists/computer lab teachers

2. What is the “I” in your ARP? I will be working on my administrative and communication skills to develop the group that will assist in creating the website and organizing the “real-time gatherings.”

3. How will you use dialogue to measure your progress? The first part part would be responses to what material my critical friends/participants would like to have covered on the website, next part would be on-going surveys/polls as part of the content assessment and community building, and a third part is participation with the community building face-to-face social sessions.

4. What do you already know about this topic? This topic is based on previous knowledge as a classroom teacher, technology coordinator, journalism major and web-design.

5. What is already known in the field about this topic? Based on my experiences with the Tech Coordinators group at ABC Unified School District and work with OMAET, I recognize the need for synch and asynch interaction and support. Areas of study would be on the most effective means of supporting the specific needs of tech coordinators and teachers via web and real time interaction.

6. What are the resources that have deepened your understanding? ISTE, CUE, Classroom Connect, Computer Strategies & Snorkle for web examples/support; Jeff Cannon is my face-to-face realtime social/gathering support expert/resource.

7. What is the status quo that you will be working to improve? Technology Coordinators take on an overwhelming burden to support their site and are often isolated and/or unappreciated by their administration and/or staff. My ARP is designed to provide a means to simplify or address the need for information (“how do you do this?”) and the need for community to vent and feel appreciated.

8. What do you plan to be doing?
1) Poll my critical friends/potential participants to find out what specific areas they see a need addressing (e.g., “Palm/PDAs in the Classroom”) in the web-site forum and/or willingness to contribute to the site’s content.
2) Secure website (virtual space) & create content creation/management infrastructure.
3) Investigate/Search for resourse studies on staff development, techology curriculum integration and efficient group/community building

9. What are your artifacts? My artifacts will be the ongoing website and content material put together by the group.

10. How do you plan to evaluate your ARP? The ARP is about efficient technology support and community development so my ARP should be able to be assessed by tracking response/needs surveys/polls and community get-together participation.

My principal asked me to help setup our school’s “technology” display for the district’s “Educational Celebration,” at 8:30 on Saturday morning. I guess he doesn’t realize that Saturday mornings are practically sacred to me. Anyway, our technology display was just one of our ancient lab computers (Gateway Pentium-166 . . . it’s not even a Pentium II) running a HyperStudio sideshow that my predecessor put together last year. Ack, It’s too bad that I’ve been overly busy just getting back to the swing of things because this slide show could really use an Flash/Dreamweaver upgrade (even a nice animate GIF would have been nice). One good thing that came out of this disruption of my weekend was that I got a chance to see what the other schools in my district are doing (side note: most of the technologically “happening schools” seemed to be Mac-equipped . . . hmmm). I also had an opportunity to touch base with one of the lab teachers/tech coordinators whom I had consulted with back in the Fall. I let her know that I was closer to getting something going with the tech-support support-group.

One thing that concerns me is how to “support” sites such as this person’s site that run a different (Mac OS) platform. I mean, part of the value of my ARP is that it needs to address the needs of the tech support person better than the general tech media can. But how can I do this with so many different sites, running different OS and confronting different problems. Hmmmm, lot’s here to consider. JBB

The first part of our meeting had to do with our schools filling out their technology surveys and how the state was going to require that our staffs fill out the CTAP2 technology proficiency assessment tool as part of any grant or funding process. I can certainly understand the purpose but I can only imagine how resistant my teachers are going to be toward anyone knowing the ins and outs of their “proficiency” with technology. Ack. I saw Bonnie from the OMAET program at the meeting and we chatted a bit.

For the second part of our meeting the district technology curriculum leader wanted us to review the text of the tech plan that she was in the process of drafting. One of the items that jumped out at me was that the target tech-to-student ratios were 1-to-5 for high school, 1-to-10 for middle school and 1-to-20 for the elementary schools. What? This is their target? Basically it’s saying that the ideal is one computer per classroom for the elementary schools. This is ideal? I’m sorry, but I’ve been in the classroom just long enough to notice that one of anything is not enough for that thing to be a regular part of the students’ daily hands-on experience. It’s a bit like expecting my students to enjoy the experience of reading for themselves when there’s only one copy of the book for all 20 or 30 of them to share. Yes, it’s better than nothing, but we’re not talking about “better than nothing,” We’re talking about creating a district guideline for achieving optimum levels of technology in the classroom. One is not optimum.

Anyway, I spoke up and said that we’ve been in this business long enough to know that we will not be giving our students the experience we’re promising to the board or our communities if we ask for these low ratios. The curriculum person countered that not all school sites are as well funded as mine and that many do not have any computers in the classroom. I agreed but said that if we were going to have to fight for the funding, how about fighting for a number that was actually going to do us some good. She said that if the board rejects the document because we’ve asked for too much, they’ll reject the whole document and require her to go through the entire process again before she can make another proposal. In other words, the process doesn’t encourage risk-taking and is certainly not interested in what it actually takes to make the program work but what they can get away with. I guess it’s all about political expediency. Then again, maybe the question to ask is about what we’re actually trying to accomplish with our technology programs. Is it all about bobbles and pretty toys or equipping our students to regard technology as a basic tool for learning and preparing them to use this tool. JBB

One of the difficulties that I’ve had with my job (as computer lab teacher and tech coordinator) is adjusting to the learning styles and needs of the primary students and teachers. A lot of the difficulty, I think, is that in the past the teachers weren’t given a lot of computer time (one visit a month) and don’t know what we can do with our computer time. And because I haven’t been a Kindergarten or First Grade teacher, I don’t know the flow of the curriculum across the year.

It’s been the foundation of my philosophy since coming here that the computer lab curriculum is all about implementing the tools of technology to promote and support the learning in the classroom. The problem is how can I do this if I don’t know what’s going on in the classroom? Also, because I see two first, second, and third grade classes at a time (we do have 41 computers to accomidate the two classes of twenty) it’s imparitive that both classes are working on the same units or have at least already worked on the units. It does me no good to introduce “exploring the Internet for Dinosaur information” if the class is not going to study dinosaurs that year. Yeah, I know that the skills are in fact “transferable,” but the continuity, the connection with the classroom curriculum is broken, and the learning religated to the “novelity” bin.

So I met with the Primary Grades/SDC teachers and then with the first grade teachers to map out what we were going to do for the remainder of the year. I was hoping to have everything mapped out on a calendar long before now, but I’m learning that this is a year of getting to know the staff and our hardware/software. The calendar of “events” will be better arranged next year. JBB

Some time back I was lamenting my inability to not volunteer for new duties (Nov 3rd: Like Another Orifice). Last year my computer lab predecessor suffered at the hands of our school’s demanding parents over the creation of that year’s fifth grade yearbook. I guess it traditionally befalls to the lab teacher to be the staff representative because they need to use the computer lab to put the thing together. Anyway, last year the book bloated to 60-some pages, there were huge cost over-runs, and everyone complained. It got to the point that the parent volunteer who puts together our PTA Newsletter and spent a lot of time helping the lab program, decided to not return this year. Anyway, I was really hoping to avoid this whole thing because I was planning on presenting student work on our school’s website. Alas, that hope disappeared a couple of weeks ago when another parent volunter asked if I wanted to help with the yearbook and what days they could meet in the lab after school. Damn. Well, I guess this is the price for being at a good school with a really active parent organization. We’ll see how this one turns out. JBB

About five days ago my principal told me that the funding corrections had been approved so now I have $14,000 to spend by the beginning of March (but I needed to have the numbers in to school secretary by today). Ack (but a good “Ack”). I know that $14,000 sounds like a lot of money, but I have to spread that budget across the whole school site with over 30 classrooms. My major struggle was that I didn’t want to buy anything for the lab that I couldn’t put on the classroom computers. Also, our school is pretty much a barebones site with one computer per classroom and nothing more than Microsoft Office installed (the major difference between our site and others is that we are connected to the Internet and have our own server for student work). So the lower grades really needed a drawing program (KidPix) and I wanted to get a multimedia program for the upper grades (and break the HyperStudio hegemony!).

As a result of this exploration or because of this assignment I decided to do ED665’s the “Small Project” on Software/Electronic Resource on the multimedia application “Mediator 6.” I just wish that I had more time to evalute software/electronic resources before having to submit the purchasing requisition form. JBB

Somewhat late in the game I discovered that we weren’t going to talk about our small projects but we could go over any of the chapters that we read in mid-January. Oh boy. Well, I was greatly intrigued at many of Gardner’s comments (in the chapter and in articles in NG) The quotation that really piqued my interest was: ” . . . the findings of cognitive research over the past 20-30 years are really quite compelling: students do not understand, in the most basic sense of that term. That is, they lack the capacity to take knowledge learned in one setting and apply it appropriately in a different setting. Study after study has found that, by and large, even the best students in the best schools can’t do that.” (Educational Leadership, April 1993).

That was the foothold for my “TI.” I had decided that one of the things that’s been missing from our TI sessions was adequate structure to help us “cover” or discuss a certain amount of information so that at the end of our hour we can feel that we’ve accomplished something. In previous sessions the “whiteboard” function was used to direct the discussion but because the whiteboard uses the same conversation “stream” as the ongoing chat it’s difficult to look at the whiteboard and continue to follow the conversations. So I thought that creating a web page would serve that function better (and also a webpage would allow for something a bit more “meaningful” to the eye). In all I think that the idea and the night went over well. JBB

Michelle, Ron and I experimented with webcam conferencing over the past few days. Here’s Michelle’s report:

“Well, Ron and Joe and I were experimenting tonight with a PC-only freeware client called Eyeball Chat, available from download.com: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-3364651-100-7878568.html?tag=st.dl.3364651-106-2.lst-0-7.7878568

“It supports video chat through Yahoo, AIM, and MSN messaging services, as well as directly through its own service. We connected directly thru Eyeball’s servers tonight and weren’t able to figure out the AIM support. It has text chat, video messaging, file transfer, and I thought I saw a whiteboard in there as well. We seemed to only be able to do one video chat at a time, unfortunately, though you can have multiple text chats simultaneously… from all of your messaging clients at once, managed through Eyeball.

“We learned a few things about videoconferencing, including that running a firewall like Zone Alarm seriously interferes with it. You’ll have to designate certain ports as open, either through Zone Alarm Pro or through your router config if you have it. Joe and I had problems with this quite a bit; we both have router firewalls as well as software firewalls. File transfer was unsuccessful, probably for this reason. I think (but am not sure) that all three of us are using Windows 2000.

“Ron and I were able to connect completely for awhile; we were both using our Sony camcorders for cameras with a firewire/iLink cable and video capture card, and the image quality was absolutely stunning, though the signal was slightly jumpy at times. It rolled like a TV set sometimes does. I was wearing a headset and could hear Ron, presumably thru his camera’s mike. This was exciting, since neither one of us had any success at making Netmeeting work. I couldn’t even see my video signal with Netmeeting. If you decide to do videoconferencing with your digital camcorder, take out the tape to prevent the camcorder from timing out and stopping the signal.

“I must say video phoning lives up to its reputation beautifully. Ron could see my husband’s embarrassing background capers perfectly well, and I observed that Ron owns a highly attractive bathrobe.  Joe and I were able to connect partially. The video signal was free of static and choppiness this time. I could see him thru his” Firewire “camera (image quality quite good, but not as good as a camcorder), but he couldn’t see me. However, he could hear me very well through my headset mike…. but I couldn’t hear him. I did have a lovely tour of his surroundings including his new pillow and five (5) monitors, and he could hear every joke my husband cracked. LOL So I spoke into my headset and he typed answers via text chat. The discrepancy was a little disconcerting, but it was fun enough to not matter, LOL. Now I want to take a gaussmeter or electric field meter over to Joe’s and find out what it’s like in the mushpot between five monitors… Joe and Ron were also able to connect partially, but I don’t recall what worked and what didn’t for their connection. I wasn’t ‘there,’ LOL.

“So, Eyeball Chat probably isn’t the end-all for a conferencing solution for Cadre Bleu, especially since it doesn’t support Mac. However, it wasn’t too bad at all for a one-platform freeware client! I feel that the connection issues we have are solvable with this software. I don’t know if connecting thru AIM or Yahoo will solve the platform problem. If you want to experiment with this software too, let us know! And as we all have time, let’s keep looking around and letting the rest of us know what we find. I did see several highly rated videoconferencing tools on download.com, with a short free trial period and an inexpensive price (<$40), but my budget won’t allow it at the moment, and I’m sure no one wants that right now either. There are also broadcast tools on there that are cheap or free… let’s keep that in mind for webcasting our graduation.”

Michelle

My thoughts about video conferencing is that it really going to be revolutionary for those of us having to work at distances from our work partners. But then again Michelle, Ron and I worked at this for about three days before we “discovered” various workarounds. I had been briefly thinking that using webcams and web-conferencing would be a good way to accommodate the busy schedules of my tech lab teachers for my ARP. Well, given my experiences with my district’s firewall settings it’s doubtful that we would be able to get any webcam connection running. Ack. Then again, I don’t know that any of my teachers would be willing to dedicate the several hours needed to get the webcam-thing working. JBB

 had a great visit with Michelle and Bill recently. Bill was attending the Tech Ed conference and I think that Michelle was there for one day. I couldn’t break away (or afford) to go to the conference for anything other than visiting the vendors’ floor. I hate to think that I’ve become jaded when it comes to conferences and vendors’ floors but, well, I’ve certainly had to learn to pull back on the reins since my budget has been “reduced” both personally and at my school site (working at a Magnet site got me used to buying 50 iMacs at a time and $5,000 dollar video equipment). Interestingly, while cruising the floor I ran into the folks that sold my previous school’s broadcast studio equipment. Lisa Wiengold had been working for AVIDD Electronics here in Long Beach when I bought our Trinity switching/video production box and tons of studio equipment, but later started iTVStudios with Eric Pratt, the virtual sets magician. Anyway, Lisa and Eric had a booth in the center of the vendor floor because they had done some work for the convention folks. While I was catching up on things a woman from the National School Boards Association and asked about how the Trinity performed and I rambled on about what I had learned from my experience with the Trinity system versus the other closed box NLEs. Lisa and Eric were quite pleased with my spontaneous glowing review. The woman from NSBA was impressed enough to ask if I did any “presentation” work and gave me her card. Wow, that was very cool.

After our time on the floor Michelle, Bill and I headed across the street for dinner at the Rockbottom Restaurant. Even though it has been “too long” since Colorado, I really enjoyed just spending the time talking and blowing off steam with Michelle and Bill. Boy, we really need to get together more often. JBB

I’ve been working like a dog to the past few days to get my school’s web site up and renovated. Tough call with so many assignments falling due why I’m spending so much time on the school’s website but I’m hoping that I can use the website to improve teacher communication and I’m beginning to wonder if I might use the proposed “teacher training” section of the website for my support portion of my ARP instead of securing another ISP to create a whole new website.

Anyway, the school’s website was a static PR site with three-year old references and probably never got any hits from anyone in that time. A month or so ago I had done some light editing of the computer lab page to bring it into this century (they referred to the aging 166-MHz Pentium Gateway PCs in my lab as “state-of-the-art,” perhaps they were in 1997 but they can barely handle the word processing/Excel spreadsheet load today and we’re not doing any video or audio editing). Then a bit later I experimented with changing the style of the other pages to something that would later be capable of handing a more robust NAV bar and my own site management style (a folder for pages, a folder for images, sub-folders for different kinds of images and a more friendly naming style).

Then it dawned on me that our PTA puts together a pretty professional newsletter every month with input from the principal and every school department and that the editor, who puts the thing together with PageMaker, could send me a copy in PDF and HTML. Hmmm, that would really answer the problem of getting good, timely content on a regular basis and also would generate greater interest in the website. A couple months ago the editor had sent me a copy of the monthly calendar in PDF format. It should be pretty simple to take her already edited text and coax it into a workable web-publication.

I’d learned from my experience with my Pepperdine website that it’s important to set a style and get a working NAV bar as a first step. I decided to take all of the previous static PR stuff and create an “About Us” section with it. I put the principal’s message and messages from the school counselor and PTA president on page one and all the other news items on subordinate pages. I also set aside space for student work (a “Student Center”) and another area for timely teacher tech news (“Twain Teacher Tech News” or “3TN”).

Working with Dreamweaver was becoming pretty much second nature. I only ran into a couple of problems because the newsletter editor sent me some of the news items as graphic items (jpegs/gifs) instead of converting them to HTML text. Ack. Another problem that I ran into was that I’d selected a dark blue as the background color of my NAV bar and even though I tried to switch the hypertext-link color to white, it would default to blue and wouldn’t let me change it to white. Ack. So I switched it to red, which isn’t as good as white but much more readable than blue.

Because I didn’t want to make too drastic of a change on the website, I decided to keep the same initial splash screen, which didn’t really fit with the rest of the pages (it was predominantly green whereas the rest of the site was mostly blue). But later decided that it just didn’t fit and moved the famous “belltower” photo to the “About Us: Intro” and “Contact Us” pages.

2002-06_twain-talk-online-example

Dear Computer Lab Teacher/Site Tech Support Person,

Several months ago visited you and your lab to get some ideas about how I might want to run my school’s computer lab and hopefully learn from your experiences working at your schools and with the district support folks. At the time I mentioned that I was interested in creating a way to support our common goals to provide the best tech-ed programs for our students and communities and also to find a way to counter-act our tendency to burn out from the workload that we tend to bear. To that end I am creating a web resource that is designed to help us support our staff and students. The reason for this note is to find out what kinds of tech-topics you’d like to see in this resource.

Here’s a list of ideas that I’ve been bouncing around:

• List of one-stop web-resources that every lab teacher/tech support person should know,
• People/Groups to contact when . . . (contact list)
• PDAs in the classroom – Pros and Cons
• Making the most of your server resources – or – how I learned to live with NOS
• Tips for Mac Users Living in a “PC” World
• Tips for PC Users Living with Mac-Envy
• Dealing with the one-computer classroom and the teacher who confuses it with a coat-rack
• Which is more important: Having enough technology in the classroom or getting teachers trained to use it?
• Who do you turn to when you need training?

I am very interested in hearing any and all suggestions for topics and if you’d like to contribute an article on any tech subject (and if writing an article sounds way too scary I’d be willing to do the writing if you would rather “just talk”). Also, if there is enough interest, I am working with a friend to organize periodic “blow-off steam” essions at some local beverage establishment, because getting away from school and the computers is a very good thing.

Joe Bustillos
Twain ES Computer Lab Teacher
jbustillos@lbusd.k12.ca.us

Met with the 634 Video group tonight . . . late. It’s tough balancing my lab duties, supporting the other teachers, writing up the curriculum and chasing after the endless stream of Pepperdine projects. Last year (and the year prior to that) I tended to work at my school from 9 AM to 9 PM and then continue at home until 1 AM, worked through most of my Winter and Spring Breaks, and most of my last full summer at the district. My compensation? I got one extra-hour per day for my troubles and then I’d slip in eight-hours when I worked during the breaks or Saturdays. Needless to say because my principal only budgeted for the one-hour a day and my coordinator partner also only budgeted for one-hour I ran out of hours in February. So from March until I closed shop in June anything after 3 PM was on my dime. Anyway, when I began this year at my new school, because there is no money for extra hours, I’ve tried to keep things down to a 9-to-5 work schedule. But there’s always more than needs to get done.

So tonight’s AIM chat session was well underway by the time I got there. We pretty much just agreed to work together, that we’d do a Furby video at Sissy’s school but we needed a script. I agreed to put something together by next week and we agreed to meet after TI Tuesday next week. JBB

But even with the webpage support I found this TI session very frustrating. Even though there were only five of us in the session and we knew what we had to do (and I had set up the webpage outline), it was difficult to answer the flow of questions and challenges. Questions could be asked much faster than they could be answered and it didn’t take much for the conversation to drift off onto someone’s random thought.

TI seems very suited for guided “classroom” sessions where there’s one basic train of thought. But brainstorm sessions which require some completed product at its conclusion, there just isn’t enough “bandwidth” in the TI format.

In our session Michelle kept reminding us that we needed to demonstrate our “learning environment” better than my PSA version would. We couldn’t come to a conclusion but decided to get together again and try to hammer out a script then. JBB

EDC638 Furby Autopsy PSA v1 webpage

no one…

Message:

Working together “smiles”

Scenes:

Some kind of lab with a group of doctors/technicians wearing lab coats working around a central table and a single bright overhead light shining down on what they’re working on, the rest of the room is mostly in the dark Books and manuals are scattered along one wall as if they we’re recently consulted and then dropped in place, along another wall is the “bone yard” (boxes of spare and/or broken vanilla technology parts), some organization of the parts but more utilitarian than neat.

Script:

CAMERA in at floor level facing the tech team around the table and works about a third of the way in a circle around them, gradually raising to shoulder level (no faces). The team can be heard working before anything can be clearly made out by the camera, some random chatter but mostly checking and rechecking the “unknown” steps be performed on the unknown object:

TECH 1
OK, I THINK I HAVE IT IN IT’S PROPER ORIENTATION. CAN YOU ADJUST THE LIGHT A BIT

TECH2 reaches up and moves the light minutely
HOW’S THAT?

TECH1
OK

TECH3
I THINK THAT YOU NEED TO MOVE THAT ABOUT ANOTHER MILLIMETER TO YOUR LEFT

TECH2
NO, SHE HAS IT RIGHT

TECH1
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CHECK WITH THE MANUAL?

TECH3 reaches behind for some binders, flipping through pages can be heard (but not seen)
DAMN, WHERE IS THAT SECTION?

TECH1
GREAT, NOW MY NOSE ITCHES . . .

TECH4
FORGET THAT, I’M NOT TOUCHING YOUR NOSE

TECH1
OH . . . NEVER MIND
The faint sound of a nose being rubbed by a lab ocat sleeve

TECH2
COME ON, SHE HAS IT RIGHT . . .

TECH3
DAMN . . .OH, SORRY, WRONG BOOK
More page suffling . . .
HERE IT IS. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. ANOTHER MILLIMETER AND WE’D HAVE MISSED THE WHOLE THING

TECH1
OK, WHO AS THE DEVICE?

TECH4
OVER HERE
TECH4 hands something to TECH1

TECH1
OK, HERE GOES . . .
some clicking can be heard
CRAP, IT’S NOT THE RIGHT ONE

TECH4
LET ME CHECK

TECH2
COME ON, WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME HERE

TECH3
PATIENCE, IF WE’RE GOING TO DO THIS, WE BETTER MAKE SURE THAT WE’RE DOING IT RIGHT

TECH4
WAIT . . . WE WERE 180 OUT

TECH2
WHAT?!

TECH1
NOT POSSIBLE!

TECH4
YEAH, CHECK IT

TECH3
COME ON FOLKS WE ONLY HAVE FOUR MINUTES HERE

TECH1 fumbles through another manual
THIS IS WORSE THAN THOSE DAMN LEGO PROJECTS

TECH4
HERE, LOOK
TECH4 inserts the battery (unseen), we a “click,” the TECHS step a bit back so that the camera can see the FURBY sit up and begin to jabber.

TECH1
VERY GOOD JOB

TECH4
COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITH YOUR HELP

FURBY continues to chatter. TECH TEAM scatters
CREDITS ROLL

This little adventure began as an assignment for ED634 (Spring 2002 Shaping Learning Environments) after some late night conversations in Colorado about dismantaling a Furby. We had very little time to go from developing our concept to posting our finished video (a bit over two weeks). But because we’ve been working together online for over seven months we were able to produce the video (and a second “fun” video) with only two online planning sessions and the single day spent at Sissy’s lab filming and editing our videos.

Having experienced the frustration of trying to produce a project using only an online chat session, I posted the webpage with the first “treatment” of our project for us to use during our online planning session (Thursday, March 13, 2002). The first version of the script also has a transcript from our first online planning session attached at the bottom.

We met online very briefly for our second session (Thursday, March 19, 2002). This time I posted a tentative script which we haggled over (and continued to haggle over when we met to video tape our PSA). Alas, the “behind the scenes” video is still under construction (ack), but the Furby video is still posted on Sissy’s site. Bonus, “Why Did the Furby Cross the Road” video. Enjoy. JBB