Lightning in a Bottle

There was a new online teacher certification progam announced earlier this week. Called “Passport to Teaching Certificate,” it’s being run by an organization called The American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence. The ABCTE page on the program is at www.abcte.org/passport.html. A more global overview of the program and comments on it are at eSchool News at www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryalert.cfm?ArticleID=4583.

Funded by $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the goal of the program is to provide an alternative route to certification for anyone with a bachelor’s degree. To quote the Department of Education, this route allows potential teachers to enter the profession “…without having to bear the burden and expense of a post-graduate education.” (”Meeting the Highly Qualified Teacher Challenge”, U.S. Dept. of Ed, www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/Title-II-Report.pdf.) It’s entirely competency-based, and competency is demonstrated through two computer-based tests, one on teaching skills (classroom management and such) and one on content knowledge. Currently, only Pennsylvania recognizes certificates granted by ABCTE, although others are considering it.

This program is obviously in the start-up phase. Many of the links on the home site go to empty pages, and as yet there is no research on the effectiveness of the approach. Another more established program is offered through the Western Governors’ University at www.wgu.edu/wgu/academics/itcee_listing.html. In contrast to the ABCTE progam, it does involve classroom experience and development of a teacher portfolio in addition to content/knowledge competency testing. Their certificates are directly accepted by five states (Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada and Texas), and almost all other states by reciprocity.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still remain a bit skeptical of teacher certification programs that do everything possible to keep prospective teachers from entering a classroom.

Now, this is either really cool or really creepy. Maybe both. The software company Reallusion has released a new software product called “FaceFilter”. It uses some fairly sophisticated visual tricks to fix photographs of people with less-than-perfect expressions. For instance, it can turn a frown into a smile, or open a squinted eye. And it can do it automatically, so the school photographer can run all his or her photos through to make sure everyone has a pleasant expression on their face, no matter how they looked on photo day.

How far do we want to let it go, though? To quote the product description, “By analyzing thousands of faces, FaceFilter has successfully extracted a formula for creating attractive faces.” Using FaceFilter allows you to “make faces look younger, slimmer, friendlier, smarter, kinder, confident, cooler or sexier, etc.”

So here’s an ethical question waiting for yearbook photographers in a year or so. There’s always been some ability to touch up pictures - remove blemishes, fix hair, and even replace hair with digital software. However, software like this lets you start messing around with the actual structure of the face. (”Please adjust the picture to make it look like I weigh 20 pounds less.”)

And hey, what about the teachers? Don’t we all want to look ten years younger? We’ll all want our turn, too!

You can check out the software at www.reallusion.com/facefilter/introduction.asp.

Toshiba has demonstrated a fuel-cell powered laptop to be brought to the market in 2004 (www.heraldnet.com/Stories/03/8/24/17151234.cfm). It’s expected to run five hours per methanol cartridge, while two years down the road they plan on models that will reach 40 hours of use.

Part of the hassle of using portable computing devices in education is keeping them continuously charged. Battery life is still less than a full school day on virtually anything with a color screen, except a few handheld computers. Perhaps sometime soon we’ll break free from that constraint. Still, it will mean swapping dead fuel cells out of computers (how long does that take with a lab full of machines?), and keeping boxes of new, flammable fuel cells somewhere. Will we just trade on hassle for another?

The Chicago Sun-Times has an fun article on ink-jet cartridges (www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-zay03.html). Did you ever realize that at the going prices for cartridges that you’re paying around $9,000 a gallon for ink? Needless to say, some folks are hard at work trying to develop alternatives. And the inkjet printer manufacturers are equally hard at work trying to stop them!