Written by John Buckley on July 15th, 2009
Educators should take advantage of a free digital copy of ASCD’s stimulus-funding report and other materials to make sure they are gaining as much funding as possible from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) takes effect, funding is now available to help decision makers at the school, district, and state levels make “improvements in teacher effectiveness and in the equitable distribution of qualified teachers for all students, particularly students who are most in need,” according to the guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Education. many of these funds can be used for
Many of the materials and resource links available at http://www.ascd.org/programs/ARRA_resources.aspx can help provide the extra funding that your district may have had to cut during these hard financial times.
Posted in Educational Funding | No Responses »
Written by John Buckley on July 12th, 2009
This past two weeks has seen much about cloud computing. Here in New York’s capital district, the Capital District Transit Authority is offering free wifi service on its Northway Xpress bus service. Google is going to issue its own operating system to make small portable computers (Netbooks) able to work more efficiently and faster be able to use the Google Apps that are already available on the web. California is moving to do away with textbooks and provide the textbooks for downloading and many are already available on iTunes. Most textbooks today are also available on line along with supplementary materials for teachers, students, and parents.
These changes are taking place in large part because businesses are trying to attract new customers and state and school institutions are trying to cut costs. However, they are making changes that are long overdue as part of living in the 21st Century. How long will it be until we see school buses equiped with wifi, all textbooks available to all students online, and computer applications not on your computer, but in the “cloud”.
We should look at this shift in computer use as a real benefit to education. Students will no longer be carrying heavy textbooks around, they can use the time on the bus more productively, especially in those areas where there are long bus trips home and to school, and we can save money in the long run. One thing we have to be sure of is that we provide the connectivity that all students will need to use these services. Of course, we will have a whole new excuse for not having homework not done: “the Network is down.”
Posted in Web Applications | No Responses »
Written by John Buckley on July 9th, 2009
There a number of posts on the website about Google’s new OS Chrome which will not be out until the second half of next year. I hope they are better at keeping production dates than Microsoft.
I really thing this and the advent of netbooks over the past year shows a strong directional shift in the use of technology. A small compact device with applications provided on the web appears where people want to go. The circle is coming around to where technology was when we first started using computers. However, at that time we had big mainframes and terminals attached to the mainframes. People wanted a little more independence which lead to the personal computer with everything stored on one’s own machine. Now with the advent of high speed Internet access, we are moving back to having everything stored on a big mainframe and we will be using little portable terminals.
The only difference is that we will have much more portability and easier access to information as long as “Big Brother” keeps his fingers out off the mix and we make sure that no matter where your are, you have quick, easy, and affordable access to a free World Wide Web.
Posted in Web Applications | No Responses »
