Archive - 2008
December 16th
Quick Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 21:06I spent much of the day in New York, and not much time thinking about my blog. I want to write some additional thoughts about education and technology. It was an interesting education day with a friend tweeting from a PTA book fair and Arne Duncan named President Elect Obama’s Education Secretary.
I also want to write some about different advertising and traffic networks. I just joined Adgitize which I’ve been fairly happy with. I thought I might write about how this relates to EntreCard and related sites, but I just don’t have the energy. I also started to write about Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, BlogAds and Chitika, but I that didn’t really come together either.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of politics and local stuff to write about. I also want to respond to some recent comments here. Perhaps tomorrow.
December 15th
Woodbridge Board of Education Meeting Dec 15, 2008
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 20:47This evening will have the regularly scheduled Woodbridge Board of Education meeting. I’ve attended several of the meetings this year and watched as they’ve attempted to start using a program called eMeeting to manage the documents of the meetings.
An advantage of this is that documents which had to be printed before can be viewed from board members laptops. The downside of this is that unless you have a laptop with you that supports broadband wireless like EDVO, 3G or EDGE networks, or until the school works out issues of allowing citizens access to the schools WiFi network during meeting, unless they print out documents, which sort of defeats a key goal of eMeeting, then you probably can’t view the documents.
That is, with one additional caveat. Another advantage of eMeeting is that the documents are generally available online prior to the meeting. For example, most of the Woodbridge Board of Education Meetings are available online. You can read the agenda for this evening’s meeting and see key documents.
For example, this evening, Dr. Stella is scheduled to talk about a visit of thirty educators from the Shandong Province in China. A message to parents presenting the opportunity to help serve as hosts is included in the documents available online for this evenings meeting.
Another key issue to be discussed will be the 2009/2010 budget proposal. I’ve already had the opportunity to look at the budget. As it currently stands, the proposal is for the budget grow by 1.84% from about $11.7 million to $11.9 million. Some of that is because of the 7% increase in medical insurance, which adds $126,224 to the budget.
Other topics include the curriculum committee’s discussion about the Tri-State Consortium and upcoming curriculum and professional development initiatives. Policy updates, facility reports and financial reports are also available at the eMeeting site.
So, even though I don’t expect to be able to go online during the meeting, I will have access to many of the reports on my laptop. It would be great if more people would check reports like this and then attend meetings in their school districts.
Update 1:
They have managed to provide WiFi here, so I am managing to live blog, at least a little bit. The meeting started off with a call to order and Pledge of Allegiance.
For correspondence, there was a letter from Sen. Crisco recognizing Bunny Yesner. There was a discussion about the great role she played in the school and thoughts about how to honor her.
Dr. Stella spoke about the visiting educators from China as well as a business association that visited the school to encourage a winter vacation readers challenge.
The discussion moved on to the budget.
Update 2:
Dr. Stella started off by talking about the goal of attaining high performance and reaching 21st century skills, while at the same time not unnecessarily burdening taxpayers. There was a lot of discussion about funding of health insurance issues, both for current employees and for retirees.
The focus on professional development was emphasized, which makes a lot of sense. Approximately 80% of the budget is personnel related, so it makes sense that the school seeks to continue its most valuable asset.
Update 3:
During the discussion about the budget, the topic of the schools accounting software came up. Currently, the software is being hosted by the town and shared with the school. However, the town is moving to hosting the accounting software on an ASP. In doing so, the town will start sharing the costs with the school district. This has led to a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of the software, service agreements, the possibility of sharing the service with Amity school district.
Update 4:
The discussion moves on from budget to additional related issues. Dr. Stella speaks about the Tri-State consortium. Back in 2005, the Tri-State Consortium did an analysis of the school district. Dr. Stella has participated in doing analysis in other schools and he wants to encourage members of the staff to visit other schools. This would include training in the staff in program evaluation.
This opened up a discussion about what should go on with respect to the evaluation by Tri-State. Dr. Stella is seeking to get people more involved in Tri-State. This raises issues of timing with staff focusing program evaluation versus preparing for a visit by Tri-State to evaluate the school.
Update 5:
Carl notes that the five year budget had been projecting an increase of 5% for this year, and the 1.8% is, in part, due to good management by the administration. “Those costs that can be managed are being well managed.” At the same time, there was a recognition that some of the success in keeping the budget under control can be attributed to fortunate development in some mandated costs.
The budget was passed by the board and greeted with applause.
Update 6:
The PTO provided an update on their activities, including fundraising for the Kucinskas Memorial Loop. This was followed by a facilities committee report. A key focus is a three kilowatt solar array that has been granted to the town through the clean energy program. This array would be about ten feet by forty feet. The town would have the option to buy an additional kilowatt worth of panels, which would be matched. Issues about how the design and building of the solar array was discussed including where it should go, how it should be supported, and what additional costs there might be for the school.
Other benefits of the solar panels includes how they can be integrated into the curriculum. There was also a discussion about the pool drain. It is a different type of pool drain than those that have been problematic in other areas. There has been a discussion about whether or not an exemption could be granted or what kind of modifications were needed.
It was noted that the Recreation Department has just sent out an update that the pool will be closed from December to March to address this issue.
This was followed by a discussion of the curriculum committee. My batteries are about to die, so I will end the liveblogging here.
Connecticut Schools’ Three-Year Technology Plan
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 13:15After the 2008 Presidential Election, an election that saw great citizen involvement and use of technology, people are watching the Obama transition team and sites like Change.gov to see what sort of citizen engagement will emerge. However, there are important opportunities for citizen engagement available locally that too often get too little focus. An example here in Connecticut is the efforts by school boards across the state to form their new Three-Year technology plans.
My understanding of the process is that technology committees are supposed to meet in each school district with representatives from the school and from the community. I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a community member of the technology committee for the Woodbridge School District. It has been very challenging for me since some people seem to feel very uncomfortable with the openness that I believe is imperative for such a committee, especially given my approach to involvement as a blogger. It has also been very challenging because I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on technology and have viewpoints about technology and education that seems to be considerably different from that of some members of the committee.
Yet for all my disillusionment with the committee and how technology is and isn’t used at the school, it appears as if they are doing a laudable job compared to what I’ve seen searching the web for what other school districts are doing. I did find the agenda for the Canterbury Public Schools November 20th technology committee meeting.
A. Review of current Technology Plan
B. Brainstorm of possible additional committee members
C. Next steps
Hamden is the other school that stood out. They have version 1 of their 2009-2012 technology plan online.
Some schools had their 2006-2009 technology plans online, like Greenwich, Cheshire, and North Haven. Madison’s 2003-2006 technology plan is also online as well as other resources.
One of the best resources I found was the CT Educational Technology blog. It had links to some very interesting articles, such as a blog post about S.1492: Broadband Data Improvement Act, which includes Title II, “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.”. This section, which the blogger notes has implications for e-rate applicants.
Specifically, Section 215 imposes an additional CIPA requirement for E-rate applicants' Internet Safety Policies. Such policies must include "... educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response."
The blog also includes a link to an acceptable use policy that addresses Web 2.0 issues. The Franklin Parish, Louisiana acceptable use policy which includes
Teachers may allow individual students to use email, electronic chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites (I. E. facebook and myspace) and other forms of direct electronic communications for educational purposes only and with proper supervision.
I’m very interested to hear how school districts will educate students about appropriate online behavior on social networking sites, especially in districts that don’t allow students to access these sites.
It seems as if the blog and the online technology plans would be a great way for school districts to gather and share information to create better technology plans. Yet since the plans are mostly older plans, they may be of limited value.
More significantly, it seems to me as if there are a number of significant problems with many of the plans. Often the person representing the community is yet another teacher or aide at the school. I’ve been frustrated that the Woodbridge technology committee seems dominated by employees of the school district, yet the committee has more PTO members, Board of Educations members and simple parents like myself than any other committee that I’ve seen. If you want citizen engagement, these committees would be a great place to get involved.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been concerned that the Woodbridge plan seems much more focused on buying new hardware and software than on professional development and changes to the curriculum. Yet again, it seems like the Woodbridge plan is doing a much better job of this than many of the plans that have almost no money set aside for professional development. Some of this may be because I’ve mostly found older plans and perhaps this will change.
Yet trying to find resources on technology related professional development for educators also is a challenge. CT Kids Link has a policy brief on Technology Professional Development for CT Educators, but it is from 2000.
With this lack of focus on professional development, it seems as if many plans end up being shopping lists for hardware and software being pushed by educational technology corporations, and often the technology plans focus of specific brands of educational technology instead of getting to the underlying issues.
What are these issues? The template for technology plans has a great phrase, “The locus of control for learning must shift from teacher directed to student directed learning”. It seems as if this shift is very slow in coming. Woodbridge would seem to be well positioned maximize this shift.
According to the PTO site, The Woodbridge school policy focuses on resource based learning.
"Resource-based learning places students at the center of the learning environment which uses as many resources as possible, including teachers and textbooks." - Carol-Ann Haycock
The following statement, RBL - A Workable Comprehensive Definition, was developed by Beecher Road staff on November 30, 1996.
Students learn best through a wide variety of primary sources, personal relationships, cooperative explorations and print/non-print media. The Resource-Based Learning program at Beecher Road School is a system of study that encourages inquiry and enables learners, both students and teachers, to acquire and use information from multiple sources.
In this area, the Woodbridge Board of Education was forward thinking. Resource based learning seems like the logical basis for twenty first century learning and helps focus on the phrase about the shifting of the locus of control for learning that the State’s template provides.
I have much more to say about my thoughts about school technology plans. I hope many of you do too. Technology was a key factor in driving citizen involvement in the 2008 Presidential Campaigns. Let’s hope that it can be a key factor in driving citizen and parent involvement in the schools of our state and our country.
December 14th
Hard Cider – Batch 2
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/14/2008 - 15:47Yesterday, we opened one of the bottles of the batch 1 fizzy cider. It was very fizzy, spewing out of the bottle. We took a couple bottles to a party to share. Today, we racked batch two of the hard cider we made.
With that, I want to try and capture a chronology and some of the details of our cider production and consumption, as well as some of the notes about project.
For our first batch, we started with five gallons of fresh cider on October 25. We added some cider yeast, which I had not activated and let it ferment for twenty-four days. We then racked the cider and let it settle for four more days. During the racking and the subsequent bottling, we probably lost a little due to spillage, or cider that got thrown out with the dregs. We also siphoned off a few pints for testing.
With that, we ended up bottling twelve twenty-two ounce bottles of hard still cider, or about half of the cider. We also bottled nine twenty-two ounce bottles that we added two ounces of fresh sweet cider to. This was so that the remaining yeast would have a little sugar to ferment to make the cider fizzy. We also bottled four twelve ounce bottles with one ounce of fresh sweet cider. Some of this was so that we could open smaller bottles to test to see if the cider was fizzy enough.
Yesterday, three weeks after we had bottled it, we opened one of the twelve ounce bottles, and it was incredibly fizzy. The bottles that we took to the party were also incredibly fizzy. We decided we would use less fresh cider for batch two of our hard cider.
We started our second batch of hard cider on the day we bottled the first batch. This batch is six gallons. We used Belgian ale yeast for this batch. I properly activated the yeast this time, but only allowed it to work for half an hour to an hour, instead of three hours before adding it to the cider. The cider fermented for twenty-two days this time. It was still fermenting a little and we racked it off to our secondary container. Like with the first batch, we siphoned off a little bit for tasting. It is sweeter and more fruity flavored.
This time, we were going from a larger container, and so we ended up bottling eleven twelve ounce bottles directly, without them going through the second fermentation.
Between the cider we’ve given away, drank at home, and used in cooking, we are now at seven bottles twenty two ounce bottles of hard still cider from batch one, seven twenty two ounce bottles of hard fizzy cider from batch one and three twelve ounce bottles of hard fizzy cider from batch one. The hard fizzy cider is marked with a purple dot on the bottle cap. We also have eleven twelve ounce bottles of hard cider that has been through only the first fermentation from batch two. They are marked with a black Y on the cap.
Later in the week, we will bottle the rest of batch two and determine if we want to add any additional sweet cider, and if so, how much.
So far, the hard cider production process has been fun and has produced some good cider. It will be interesting to see how the ciders age and what we decide on doing next year.
December 13th
Graffiti and the Public Sphere
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/13/2008 - 12:38A week or so ago, Rick Edmonds wrote a piece on The Biz Blog at Poynter Online entitled, Freewheeling Comments, Traditional Owners Create Paradox of Topix where he looked at Topix and particularly the ongoing battle between Hartford’s Mayor, Eddie Perez and the Hartford Courant’s use of Topix.
A few days later, Heather Brandon tweeted, “@luiscotto was wondering if Courant and Perez admin came up w agreement about serious investigative articles not allowing for comments”. I responded to Heather by noting that people can still post comments elsewhere and noting that the New Haven Register had changed it’s policy to require registration. That makes a lot of sense to me. Dropping comments altogether doesn’t.
This caught the attention of Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, who sent me a tweet pointing me to a Topix blog post last January entitled, Anonymous Comments – By The Numbers.
Let me start off by giving Chris major props for being on Twitter. I believe that a lot of organizations would be much better off if their leaders had their ears a little closer to the ground, and could hear rumblings like the discussion about comments in Hartford.
Yet I found the blog post to be a bit lacking. The gist of the blog post was that Topix analyzed around 83,000 comments and found that 6.7% of those submitted by unregistered posters were rejected and 4.4% of those submitted by registered posters were rejected. Yet the 50% higher rejection rate was justified because anonymous posters submitted three times the content.
So, where do I think the problems are with this study? It is hard to choose where to start. First, it isn’t comparing a system that doesn’t require registration with one that does. It is comparing people who chose to register versus those who don’t on a system that doesn’t require registration. There is an untested assumption that the number of comments would decrease if registration were required. That might be true. Even if it is, the question remains, to what extent.
Perhaps the bigger issue, as Howard Owen put it in a response to Chris Tolles on his blog, “I think there is a difference between ‘acceptable’ and ‘accepted’.” A person identifying themselves as ‘Jason’ pushes this further with “Why is it that ‘acceptable’ or even ‘accepted’ are now the standard as opposed to excellent or exceptional?” There is a lot of content on Topix that may be accepted, but isn’t particularly acceptable, and is very far from being exceptional.
Another person addressed my first concern by noting that one organization he was at actually saw an increase in participation when the forums switched to requiring registration.
It could be that anonymous comments promotes traffic, which is good for the business side of things, and Rick Edmonds notes that Tolles expects Topix to become cashflow positive in 2009, but the bigger question is, is it promoting better discourse and citizenship.
I responded to Tolles via Twitter noting my concerns about his methodology and assumptions. He responded saying, “if you have a better study, happy to read it. :-) implementation is the only truth”.
I have even bigger concerns here. Tolles’ Topix makes its money off of user-generated content, for which he does not compensate the writers. It may work with people who aren’t willing to put their name to their words, but I’m not doing gratis research for Mr. Tolles. Nor am I inclined to follow him down a solipsistic rabbit whole believing that “implementation is the only truth”.
So, I don’t have any research to respond with. Instead, I would like people to consider a different angle. To the extent that we wish forums at newspapers to extend the public sphere, which I recognized is an assumption Tolles may not in his case be willing to grant, then it might be beneficial to look at other aspects of the public sphere.
Newspapers still publish letters to the editor, and most newspapers that I know of require writers to positively identify themselves, not only by name, but usually by location. To the extent that the writer has any particular ax to grind the newspaper likes to provide that information as well. Is there some reason for the vast difference between what newspapers consider acceptable for letters to the editors and what they consider acceptable for comments on their forums?
Then, let’s look at public hearings; at most public hearings, you need to be identifiable. Many of them require that you sign in and identify yourself before you are allowed to speak. Finally, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics calls on journalists to “Identify sources whenever feasible”. Registration systems for comments are very feasible.
This does recognize that there are times that it might be beneficial to the identity of a commenter hidden. Here, I think about whistleblowing. Yet a whistleblower should know better than posting a comment on an online forum and responsible journalists that deal with whistleblowers need to make sure that whistleblowers don’t do things to endanger themselves. It is far to easy to track the Internet address where the comment came from.
If anything, anonymous comments might best be viewed as another form of user generated content in the public sphere, graffiti. Granted, there is some graffiti that is masterfully done. There is some graffiti where the artists identifying themselves, in terms of some pseudonymous signature or style, but much graffiti is anonymous and does little to further public discourse.
Topix has an interesting potential for the future. It could become a profitable venue for distributing digital graffiti, or it could fight a harder and more nobler battle to become a profitable venue which expands the public sphere. I hope they will consider the latter. Until then, I’ll probably save most of my commentary for my blog.
