RickScheibner.net

I’m not sure I’ll use either one of these, but there are a couple of web applications I’ve recently become intrigued with.  (Did I just end that sentence with a preposition?  Sorry Mrs. Schubert…)

Anyway, CoverItLive.com is a blogging tool that can be used for blogging live events and getting information to your blog as it unfolds.  Sure, you can probably get Twitter and Wordpress to (maybe) work together and get similar results, but this looks different.  Apparently, this uses Ajax that you embed into your post to give it live, up-to-the minute updates.  I’m not sure how I’d use that in my line of work, but it might be interesting for a conference or something.  I’ll keep it bookmarked and come back to it when I think I can put it to good use on here.

Another web app that is more geared toward productivity is IWantSandy.com.  “Sandy” is a virtual personal assistant that reminds you of important upcoming events and other reminders from your calendar.  It looks like there is even an option to have it sent directly to your twitter (via private message) and to your Google calendar.  Scott twittered it last week some time, so I’m taking a look at it to see how it can help me. 

Any other new and exciting web apps out there I need to know about?

With bi-partisan support, a new bill was introduced this past week that would improve funding for educational technology.  The Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act would target monies toward schools in need of improvement as well as increase funds of block grants.  In addition, this bill would require that school districts increase the amount of money they spend on professional development toward technology.  This bill would actually overhaul the existing Enhancing Educational Through Technology (EETT) program that currently funds technology in education. 

Link to eSchool News online - New bill would revamp ed-tech funding

If you’re looking for an electronic tool for gathering teacher observation data, you might want to check this resource out.  eCove is a Windows-based application that allows the school administrator to quickly count such teaching factors as:

• Speaking out of turn
• Selective verbatim
• Teacher talk
• Teacher travel
• On-task time
• Attention to gender

And many others.  This tool can also be used to gather data for individual students for behavior observation purposes. 

I’m taking my Instructional Leadership class right now that addresses teacher supervision and evaluation.  I will be doing a supervision cycle with one of our teachers next week, and I will download the 30-day trial version for the purpose.  I will report back with my results and level of satisfaction for how this works.  It retails for $189, and it looks like there is a PDA version as well. 

Link to eCOVE: The Observation Toolkit.

Will Richardson has some thought-provoking comments on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, which is currently beginning in some countries.  If you haven’t heard, the OLPC initiative is a program in which durable, child-friendly laptops that just cost $100 apiece are being distributed in third world countries.  These machines run open source software and are completely web-enabled. 

Richardson points to some photos of children in Nigeria who are just beginning to use the laptops.  He goes on to wonder what it’s going to take to get a similar initiative in our own country:

I don’t want to look at these pictures as a call to arms…it’s a celebration. It’s no doubt an important moment. But it should give us all pause. In a society that is more concerned with the father of Anna Nicole’s baby, one that spent almost $14 billion on Easter stuff, (the equivalent of 140 million laptops, btw) what’s it going to take before we understand what No Child Left Behind really means?

I would add this:  Many of the kids in my own district go home where there simply isn’t the money for technology.  Admittedly, in many cases the technology priorities in those homes are for videogames, but we’ll save that for a different post.  Their more affluent peers are MySpace-ing and IM’ing all the time, but they’re also getting a leg up by getting some research done and keeping up on the news going on around them.   Their connection is giving them an advantage that many of the other kids just don’t have.  It would be nice to get that playing field a little more level.  Here’s the link to Will’s original post:

Link to Weblogg-ed » One Laptop Per Child Begins…$14 Billion on Easter

Although this blog is only a few months old, I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now. I’ve picked up some tips along the way that have helped me out from time to time. I’ve written a new page on here called “Blogging tips” that you will hopefully find helpful as you continue to develop and improve upon your own blog. The link is at the top of the page, right next to the “Home” tab. There’s some advice here for writing, attracting readers, commenting, and hosting. I don’t consider myself an expert in this field, but these things have worked for me. And hey, if you’re 180 degrees away from me on a given point, or if you particularly agree with me on something, leave me a comment to let me know. I’d love to hear what you have to say about it.

Technorati Tags: blogging

If you’re running a WordPress blog, you might want to check and make sure your spam blocking plugins are installed and activated.  This morning before I left for school, my Akismet blocker indicated less than 400 spam comments blocked.  When I got home tonight, I had more than 600.  I went ahead and installed Bad Behavior in an attempt to block these automated comment bots from even being able to see my site.  Even after the install, the hits just keep on coming. 

Even though 99% of these posts never see the light of day on the blog itself, it takes me time and effort to remove them from the control panel.  And that’s not to mention the bandwidth they’re eating up.  Looks like it’s time to look for a decent word challenge plugin to add to the comments section, as much as I hate to resort to that.  If you’ve got any other ideas, let me know. 

I don’t know how your school does it, but here in Oregon we rely on a computer-based system to assess our students.  Technology-Enhanced Student Assessment (TESA) has been in place since 2001, and up until now it’s been a reliable, stable system to use for that purpose.  Like I said, though, that’s been up until now. 

For the past week or so, we’ve had daily, somtimes hourly, e-mail updates that have indicated the system’s on-again, off-again status.  We’re supposed to be testing our kids next week.  Thursday, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) is saying that it is down “until further notice.”  Our own local coordinators decided to postpone testing at all next week, regardless of whether or not TESA was going to be available.  That’s a good call.  It’s better in the long run to let this run the course and let them get whatever glitches figured out.  I would hate to see any of our kids get halfway through a test, and have the system go down with no database back-up in place.  However, this Eugene Register-Guard article is reporting that ODE has indicated that TESA will be available on Monday.  We’ll have to wait and see.

And, it may not be just a software glitch that is causing the problems.  Apparently, the vendor that is contracted to run TESA, Vantage from Pennsylvania, has not been contracted to do the work next year. These problems could not come at a more inconvenient time.  Most schools I know are planning on testing this week, and only have until the end of May to do so. 

TESA has been an important way of assessing our students for the past few years.  Let’s just hope that this is a blip on the radar screen and not a preview of things to come.