Taste of Tech

Back in the dark ages, when I was a kid, there were nine planets. Mr. McClain, our science teacher, taught us a mnemonic to remember them. “My very educated mother just served us nine pizza-pies.” Lots of kids learned this mnemonic, though some mothers served other P-foods. Other mothers showed their kids nine planets instead. Still, it helped us learn the order of the planets in the solar system. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

Then, when I was in second grade, chaos took hold of the elementary science classroom. Neptune’s and Pluto’s orbits cross, so from 1979-1999, Pluto was actually closer to the sun than Neptune. So the mnemonic changed. My very educated mother just served us pistachio nuts. Problem solved. In 1999, we reverted back to the pizzas, and we shouldn’t have to worry about the pistachio nuts for another 250 years.

But then in 2006, Pluto was declared a dwarf planet. That’s good, because there are lots of dwarf planets, and our mnemonic sentence was in danger of becoming a mnemonic paragraph. But with just eight planets to remember — now that’s not so bad. So old mom has been variously serving “noodles,” “nachos,” “naan,” and, well, “nothing.”

Now, the International Astronomical Union recognizes three dwarf planets. These bodies are large enough to have enough gravity to be round, but they are not large enough to have cleared the neighborhoods of their orbit. Right now, there are three named dwarf planets: Pluto, Ceres, and Eris. But there are at least 42 other bodies floating around up there that might also fit this definition.

National Geographic Children’s Books thought it would be a good idea to have a mnemonic so school children can memorize the names of all eleven planets now. So they had a contest to come up with one. Ten-year-old Maryn Smith of Great Falls, Montana had the winning entry. “My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.” Poor Mom was left out of the picture entirely.

The mnemonic is being recorded into a song by Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Lisa Loeb. There’s no word yet on what’s going to happen when the other 42 dwarf planets are named.

I’ve always thought of snow days as a gift. I never really count on them. There’s no guarantee that we’ll have any in a given year. I always assume we’re going to have school. Then, when they come, it’s a pleasant surprise.

Truth-be-told, it shouldn’t make that much difference. I don’t work directly with students anymore, and I have to work on snow days. Except the extremely rare occasions when they’re called the night before, I’m always either en route or already at school when I get the call, so there’s no sleeping in. For me, snow days should be very similar to other days.

But they’re not. It’s different. Quiet. No one is around. I can work on servers and network equipment that has to be up when school is in session. I can do more writing and reflecting without interruption. I can shift focus to some of the things that we never get around to doing on normal days.

The first snow day is a breath-catching one. It usually comes when the desk is piled-high with projects that aren’t getting enough attention. The inbox is overflowing. It’s a chance to get back on the ball. When school returns the next day, I don’t feel like I’ve had a break. But I do feel like I’ve caught up a little.

The second snow day is a family day. I used to take this day off entirely, but rule changes now specify that I report to work. Still, I take care of the essentials, put in a few hours, and then spend time with the kids. After all, the world is a very fun place when there’s a foot of snow. It’s not going to last (and they’re not going to stay young) forever.

On the very rare occasions when there are more than two snow days, it usually means work on some sort of project. This year, I’ve been working on backup servers on snow days. Other times, we’ve rewired network closets, installed firewalls, and undertaken all kinds of different tasks. We always have that list of things that can be done if there’s a snow day. But I wonder…

Teachers don’t have time. I hear that a lot. “When I have time, I’m going to start a blog.” “When I have a chance to sit down and explore, I’m going to find some online resources for my class.” “I really need to get caught up with this technology stuff, but there never seems to be enough time.” It doesn’t happen during the school year. It doesn’t happen on those twice-a-year inservice days, when we’re trying to cram everything from differentiated instruction to safety and security to school legal updates into a catch-all staff development program. It doesn’t often happen in the summer, when priorities change and there’s some vacation time and summer camp and swimming lessons and…

Can it happen on snow days? We’re geared up. Ready to go. It’s not like summer, when they’re trying to clean the rooms and we’re updating computer labs and there’s construction going on and someone is testing the fire alarms. Until an hour ago, we thought there was going to be school today. So what’s to keep me from teaching a class on blogging? Or one on Moodle? Or just spending some unstructured time looking at Internet resources?

Sure, there are challenges. For one, many teachers have kids, and those kids don’t have school. But they could bring them along. The kids could play on the computers, too. Or we could set up a projector and show a couple DVDs. Or, if we have some responsible older kids who can supervise the younger ones, they could go out and play in the snow. Or, they could go to the gym and play. We could order lunch in. Or have hot chocolate. Very informal. Just for a few hours. It might even be fun.

We wouldn’t do it on the first snow day, of course. That’s catch-up day. And we probably wouldn’t do it on the second one. That’s family day. But the third one? Maybe.

Do you think anyone would come?

“Is this file too big to send in an email?”

“Why, yes, I’m glad you asked.” I had spoken to a teacher on just this topic earlier in the day, after she tried to send a 100 MB attachment. Several times.

“So how am I going to get it to him?”

“Use Senduit.com.”

“Senduit?”

“Send you it.”

“How does it work?”

“Go to the web site. Browse for a file on your computer to upload. The file can be up to 100MB. Decide how long you want it to be available (30 minutes to one week). Click the giant upload button. It will upload the file, and give you a customized web address to that file. Then, just email the link to someone, and they can retrieve it.”

“Aren’t there privacy concerns?”

“Well, technically, yes. There aren’t any passwords involved, so anyone with the web address will be able to retrieve the file. But the custom generated address is cryptic enough that people aren’t going to be able to guess it. Still, I wouldn’t use it for confidential documents.”

A few minutes later, the link was on its way to the recipient, and everyone’s email servers were happy.

The results from the latest Biennial Educational Technology Assessment are in. Every two years, teachers in Ohio are required to complete the 48-question BETA surveys that measure teachers’ access to, use of, and attitudes toward technology.

I haven’t really spend much time digging in to this year’s results, but I did notice that teachers’ attitudes about technology have changed in our district over the last two years. The number of teachers with positive views of technology has increased significantly.

While one could certainly argue that these aren’t the most probing questions about technology beliefs, it does represent a significant shift toward greater acceptance of technology. This attitude change is also reflected in some of the things they’re doing with technology, and I’ll be looking at those numbers a little more closely in the next couple weeks.

I received our Asus eeePCs yesterday. After playing with a couple at the tech conference last week, I thought it would be worth the investment to try a few out in the district. I bought one for each building, plus one for my techs to share and one for me to play with. That’s a total of eight.

I purposefully didn’t pre-configure anything. I simply put two lists of questions in the box, and delivered them to the tech team members in each building. The first list was a list of questions that already have answers:

What is this?
This is an Asus eeePC 4G Surf. It’s a small, low end laptop with a 7” screen. There’s no hard drive – just 4GB of flash memory that holds the operating system and applications. It has 512 MB of RAM. You can save data to an SD card or to a USB flash drive. It has a productivity suite (word processor, spreadsheet, etc.). It also has a web browser and can access the network wirelessly or wired. It has an external VGA port, so it could be connected to a larger monitor or to a projector.

Can I keep it?
For now. One was purchased for each of the schools, the technology coordinator, and the tech department. By the end of the school year, we hope to have determined what role (if any) these devices can play in our schools. At that point, we may decide to collect them all and put them in the same place so students can use them.

In the meantime, use it. Share it with teachers and administrators and students. Figure out if it’s a useful tool or just a gadget. Try to think about the questions that need answers. We’ll be discussing them at the April (and maybe May) tech team meetings.

Will it run Successmaker / Kid Pix / Accelerated Reader / Keyboarding software?
No.

Then what good is it?
This device will do most of the things we need computers to do. You can word process, create presentations, use the web, and access network resources (file servers, printers, etc). When you think about what most people use computers for most of the time, this little laptop can do most of it.

How much does it cost?
It costs $367.37. Price-wise, it’s about half the cost of a desktop computer and a third of the cost of a traditional laptop. Compared to the Alphasmart Neo, it’s about 50% more expensive. So for the same cost as 30 Neos, you could have 20 of these. At the secondary level, it’s about 3 times the cost of a graphing calculator, and only slightly more than an ebook reader.

It seems like this little machine has a lot of value given the things it can do and the relatively low price point.

The second list was a list of questions that need answers. I fully expect this list to grow, but right now, this is it:

Does this device work well enough to have a place in our schools?

How could this be used effectively with students?

What limitations are there that would affect its usefulness?

Are there solutions to overcome those limitations?

What technical hurdles would have to be overcome to make the use of these devices successful?

If we were to start using these computers, what could they replace? What could we buy fewer of to make this cost effective?

Are these computers durable enough for student use?

Is Linux too complicated / different / cumbersome / annoying to be used in this environment?

I’ll let you know how it goes.