Dr. Science

Dear Dr. Science,
I am a 26 years old and can't remember what it was like to live without the Internet. Do you remember what it must have been like?  ------------- Jerry Roberti from Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Just barely. I'm 47, and my memories are of a Webless[IB1] World as diaphanous as the seat of my old suit pants, but it seems to me that people used to read and write. They would hold pieces of paper in front of their faces and grunt softly in understanding, or sometimes imprint words on a piece of paper and then wrap that piece of paper in another, put a gummed picture of a dead president on it, and then place the whole arrangement in a box, waiting for someone to physically take it across the country, or sometimes even the world, to its intended recipient. I know it sounds crazy, but the antiquated system used to work, most of the time. Now that system is only used to sending bills and junk mail. But back in those olden days, that's all there was!

Yes, Dr. Science is alive and well at <http://www.drscience.com/> and he still knows more than you do!

Does technology = more work for teachers?

This afternoon, my number one grandson Paul starts kindergarten. His father has promised not to cry until he has left the building after dropping him off.

He and his parents participated in an open house this week. When asked what he thought of his room and teacher, he thought for a while and then said, "Well, I was very impressed with the number of tables in the room."

While Paul was impressed by the furniture, I was impressed with his teacher's web site.  Not only is it not ugly, it contains a wealth of good information for his parents, including calendars (August 31st is Purple Day), policies, reading lists, and the daily schedule. There are (or will be) class photos which require a password to see. All in all, a very, very nice resource for Paul's parents. Were I to meet Mrs. Fairfield, I am sure I would be impressed and glad that Paul has her as his first teacher.

But as I was looking at this website, a recent comment by teacher and blogger, Dennis Fermoyle, to a recent posting on the Blue Skunk kept running through my mind:

 It seems like the more technology there is, the more hours I end up putting in. I'm not sure why that should be, but it's just the way it is. It seems like it makes it easier to do more, so you end up doing a lot more.

Has Mrs. Fairfield's web site increased or decreased her workload?  Is she working on her website when she should be interacting with Paul, preparing a lesson, or taking a well-earned break?

Every technology should make a teacher either 1) more efficient or 2) more effective - or why bother? (I don't  know that the promise has ever been that technology makes one life's easier.)  It could be argued that Mrs. Fairfield's website helps her to be both: it's more efficient to post parent information online than copying and mailing lots of copies, and more informed parents will lead to a more productive class. What I have often observed is that technology adoption often has a big, immediate upstream time cost with  smaller, longer-lasting downstream time savings.

What do you think? Is tech more work or less? 

So ugly it hurts

He's so ugly his parents had to tie a porkchop around his neck to get the dogs to play with him. - old school yard joke.

In helping a friend do a Delphi study for her PhD program, I've been looking a LOT of school library media center websites. God bless any librarian who makes the effort to provide good online resources for his/her kids. A lot of thought and sweat are on display.

But there are way too many school library websites that can only be described as butt ugly. I don't care how good the links on them are, if the colors and layout make one's teeth hurt, it just doesn't matter. Get your art teacher or a person with some design sense in to critique your pages. Or follow Robin Williams's advice in her The Non-Designer's Web Book. Or hire a student who's doing well in art class. If you can't get to beautiful, at least shoot for non-offensive.

Remember Daniel Pink's admonition that it's "Not just function, but also DESIGN. Are you scaring kids away from your virtual library?

Now, about those curtains...