Lightning in a Bottle

There is a very interesting series of reports published in the Baltimore Sun profiling the largest educational software companies and how they are leveraging NCLB into software sales. For instance, this article looks at how companies use questionable research to sell large volumes of software to schools struggling with “adequate yearly progress.”. (Free registration is necessary to view the article. All of the other articles in the series and associated sidebar graphics are linked from this page as well.) It’s kind of disturbing to see how much money some schools and districts are spending on these products, based on claims that are most charitably described as “dubious.”

These reports should be required reading for every parent, principal, superintendent, and school board.

The problem of “copyright orphans” is the focus of a legal case and article in Wired. Originally, copyright protected a work for 28 years, and only if it was registered. It could be renewed once for an additional 28 years. Over the last 28 years, however, copyright law has been changed three times, and now copyright extends to 75 years after the death of the author, and no registration needs to take place.

This is a problem because it makes it extraordinarily difficult to find out if a work has fallen into the public domain. If the author hasn’t registered the work, it can be difficult or impossible to track them down. And since the copyright doesn’t relate to the publication date, there is no way to know just by looking at the age of the work whether or not the copyright has expired. The law was also made retroactive, so much of the 20th century falls into this confusing mess.

This has generated a world of “orphans”, or works that have little or no economic value, but potentially great educational or historical value. Since the authors can’t be located, they can’t be passed into the public domain. Even worse, the works may be lost or destroyed before being duplicated. Especially in this day and age of digital archiving, it seems amazing that we have such huge bodies of material that are blocked from being made available through digital means. (Like I’ve said before, it’s not all on the Internet, and much of it won’t be in our lifetimes!)

Here’s another article about videoconference-based museum visits. I found a couple of things interesting in the story. First, I like the fact that the “virtual visit” is combined with hands-on activities, with items being shipped out to the students before the program happens. Second, there was an interesting contrast between how North Carolina and Washington state installed educational videoconferencing. Washington funded the installation of videoconference systems in every district in the state, but most of these systems wound up in the administrative buildings in the districts and end up being primarily used for meetings. North Carolina, however, apparently focused on creating “cyberclassrooms,” which even in the naming of them made clear the purpose of the facilities.

When I worked in the outreach program at the Pacific Science Center, we sent teams of teachers in vans all across the state, reaching students in every one of the 39 counties. I always thought it would be really cool to do some form of follow-up visit to the students through a video link-up. Now here we are, twelve years later, and the technology is finally almost there. The last impediment is the data connection between the school and the district headquarters - most in-district networks don’t have the capacity to handle the amount of data that videoconferencing provides. But with WiMax, we may solve that problem, too!

There’s an article in Reuters today about a new wireless technology coming in a year or two. It’s called “WiMax”, and it’s intended to replace DSL or cable Internet access with no wires. Intel is promoting it pretty heavily, so you can expect to start hearing more about it. This could have some really important implications for schools, because the highest cost of connect to the Internet is the wiring from the main district out to the schools and then to the classrooms. If we can truly forget having to do that wiring (and make it truly secure), it could be a very revolutionary step for ed tech.

Microsoft has announced new fingerprint scanners that will work with Windows XP. Once set up and configured, the software/hardware combination will allow to control all of your password access by having the computer read your fingerprint. Once your identity is established, it will automatically log you in to your computer, password-protected applications and websites.

MSNBC has a review of the product. It sounds like there are a few caveats to considering its use (no big surprise here), but hopefully in the not-too-distant future we’ll be able to have a simple, quick login process that just requires placing a finger on a reader. Of course, in schools that will mean keeping a ready supply of hand wipes to clean the grubby little fingers first.

According to USA Today, Virginia has become the ninth state to require that districts offer alternatives to real dissection in science classes. Students that are opposed to cutting up actual animals need to be allowed to either use models or computer software that emulates a dissection. These laws are supported by the Humane Society and other animal protection organizations, but are unpopular with many science teachers that feel that the available substitutes don’t really measure up. (I suspect it’s also very popular with the makers of dissection software!)

The Washington Post has an article today about online tutoring. (Free registration required.) The profile is of Prince George’s Memorial Library system and its use of Tutor.com. The library buys a regional license to the service, which provides live online tutors from 2 p.m. to midnight every day. (For those of you from the Seattle area, there is a similar arrangement through the King County Library system at www.kcls.org. Other library systems subscribing to Tutor.com are listed at this page at their website.)

It sounds promising. According to recent reports, many kids actually communicate more through chatting online than sending email.

Right in sync with the new federal educational technology plan, Kentucky is preparing to pilot the use of onine standardized testing. The most powerful benefit of online testing is the rapid turnaround time - days instead of months. The biggest challenge is scoring open response or written questions. While companies such as NCS have spent years developing essay-grading software, many people remain skeptical of a computer’s ability to score something as complex as writing. (Maybe it’s from dealing with Microsoft Word constantly making inane grammar suggestions.)

An article in GlobeandMail.com looks at schools that have installed building-wide wireless systems. Usually part of a “ubiquitous computing” initiative, the wireless systems allow students to access the school network or Internet from anyplace in the school. Some critics still have questions about whether or not the use of Internet resources improves student learning, but then again I don’t know of much research that proves that the use of books improves student learning, either.