Lightning in a Bottle

More and more schools are setting up their student record systems to allow parents to log in and check student grades on a regular basis. Some students aren’t too keen on it, but parents really like it. The experience of schools doing this is discussed in an online edition of the Lexington newspaper at www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/6742823.htm.

It appears that allowing this access improves parent involvement and communication. That makes sense, of course - the more you open up the process to parents, the more they’ll feel like true partners.

Barnes and Noble has decided that eBooks aren’t ready for retail prime time yet. The decision to shut down their online eBook businesses is discussed in a CNET News article at news.com.com/2100-1019_3-5073796.html?tag=fd_top.

Ebooks seem to be a technology that makes sense from an engineering point of view, but doesn’t work for customers. Devices for reading are expensive and cumbersome, and while handheld computers are easy to carry around, their reduced screen size is a problem for many readers.

My concern in seeing turns like this is that the downdraft of ebook failure in the wider marketplace could slow or stop progress in the development of electronic textbooks for education. Kids don’t have the same problem with reading from a screen that most adults do, and it would be a huge chiropractic benefit to students to ditch spine-warping backpacks full of books for a portable electronic version. A laptop may be heavy, but it weighs a lot less than three middle-school textbooks.

Some schools are now using “biometric scanning” systems for student identification. A biometric is a measure of a personal physical characteristic, such as a fingerprint, retinal pattern, face, voice, or whatever else some creative engineer comes up with.

Fingerprint scanning seems to be the most widely used. (The top-of-the-line HP iPaq handheld computer has a thumbprint scanner built into it for keeping files secure.) Wired has an article at www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60342,00.html that looks at schools’ use of fingerprint scanners for cafeteria purchases, checking out library books and other such activities. Some find it an obvious, simple solution to lost ID cards, while others find it a bit creepy, in a Big-Brother-is-watching-you kind of way.

If you aren’t familiar with the FIRST Lego League Robotic competitions, drop by www.firstlegoleague.org for a peek at the program. Geared at upper elementary through middle school, the Lego League competitions are based on the Lego Mindstorms robotics kits. The program is team-oriented, and stresses cooperation at least as much as competition.

This year there will be a Washington state regional competition for the first time. It will hosted by the Washington Engineering and Technical Outreach Council at Newport High School in Bellevue on December 6th. The page with details on this program is at hwww.wetoc.org/fll2003/.

Now in its sixth year, there are already 2,266 teams registered all over the world for this year’s challenge. Registration is open until the end of September.

I have to say that of all the extra-curricular activities I have participated in over my twenty-five years in education, Lego robotics is definitely the most involving and successful. It doesn’t seem to matter what a student’s learning style is, or their gender, or whether or not they like math or science. The levels of sophistication and complexity of the robots the kids design are always higher than I expect, as is the learning they experience. To see examples of what I’m talking of, visit this website at the North Central ESD in Wenatchee. They held four weeks of Lego Robotics camps this summer ? www.ncesd.net/summertechcamp.

From an article by Ed Hardy, Editor-in-Chief, Bighthand.com - September 8th, 2003

In Japan, Sony has just announced a small device that can record TV programs onto a Memory Stick in a format suitable for playing on one of its handhelds. It is called a PEGA-VR100K. It acts somewhat like a VCR. Therefore, the images it records are only 320 by 240 pixels. Still, they can also be played on a regular TV. At the highest image quality level, a 1 GB Memory Stick can hold a bit over four hours of video. At the lowest quality, even a 128 MB Memory Stick can hold over two hours of video.

eSchoolNews has an extensive article on the challenges to Texas Instruments in the graphing calculator market (www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=4629). Hewlett-Packard is making a push back into the market, and Casio continues to try and get attention for its products. In addition, handhelds and graphing calculator software are beginning to make their way into classrooms.

It’s a complicated choice. Much math curriculum is specifically built around the TI calculator line. On the other hand, the other manufacturers’ devices have might have additional functions like Reverse Polish Notation (I’m not making that up) or lower costs. Handhelds have much more functionality, but higher cost.

While not strictly technology-oriented, there is an informative research article on the use and potential misuse of performance standards at epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n31/. As stated in the abstract,

“It is argued that the insistence on reporting in terms of performance standards in situations where they are not essential has been more harmful than helpful.”

In particular, the No Child Left Behind act bases their Adequate Yearly Progress sanctions on performance standards. The problem is that each state defines this on their own, so there is no consistency between state measures. The authors point out that only 7% of 8th grade Arizona students met their math standard, while 74.6% of North Carolina students did. However, when measured on the national NAEP math test, 21% of Arizona students met standard, and only 30% of North Carolina students did.

The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago has developed an online set of art activities for students at smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/smartkids/. It has great activities, such as touring an artist’s studio (with interview), Artwork of the Month, and Art Detective. All are linked to an illustrated dictionary of terms and concepts. While the animation and popup windows sometimes go a little overboard, it’s a very informative site. For instance, now I know the symbolism of Daphne transforming into a laurel tree to escape Apollo. (If you want to find out for yourself, visit the Art Detective.)

eSchoolNews has set up (with very clear sponsorship from eZedia) a new resource page on multimedia at www.eschoolnews.com/resources/reports/multimedia/index.cfm. It’s primarily an archive of previous eSchoolNews articles on multimedia and it’s impact on student learning, but it’s handy to have all the references and links in one place. I found some articles in there I had missed!