Odds and Ends - Rainy Fall Sunday

After a very nice trip to do workshops and presentations at the Washington/Oregon Joint School Library Conference in Portland last week, it's great to be home to enjoy Minnesota's fall colors, muted by rains this quiet Sunday. Life is good.

A few things that caught my eye this past week and you might find interesting as well:

It's not what you know but who you know...
When my superintendent showed an interest in podcasting and asked for examples of other educational administrators who were creating these things, I turned to Scott McLeod who put the question to his readers of  Dangerously Irrelevant and they generated a nice list. Thanks, Scott and your groupies.

Another post of Scott's made me stop and think a bit. In Messianic arrogance, Scott asks "Passionate, visionary leadership or self-righteous, messianic arrogance?" Is there a difference? Hmmmmm... Do you you offer Kool-Aid to your guests?

In print
It's always fun to see one's article published in a print magazine, especially a magazine like School Library Journal. I'm kinda proud of ’Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad (c)?” - it's controversial and good for kids, teachers and librarians. The topic has been great fun in the conference presentations I've given about it these last two weeks. I'm pleased SLJ put it online. Illustration at right by Mark Tuchman from SLJ Oct 08

Are you willing to get fired for your beliefs?
I've extolled the humor of Librarian Wham on the Books, Bytes and Grocery Store Feet blog before. But this week his How Firm is Your Stand? post tells the story of the economic and career consequences of being a principled person - about standing up to one's supervisor and getting fired for it.

Most of us talk a good game about going to any length in upholding our ideals, acting in the best interest of our students, playing David against the administrative Goliaths. But I suspect that niggling self-doubt and mortgage payments combine to trump principle in all but the true heroes among us.

Oh, speaking as a supervisor, principled people can be scary to have working for you too.

A short list of technology competencies
Senator McCain has infamously admitted to his lack of Internet(s) savvy. Knowing how to send an e-mail probably isn't crucial to being the Leader of the Free World, but it does seem a bit anachronistic. Heck, my mom does e-mail and she's even older than McCain. But then she doesn't have an aide at her beck and call either. Except my brother.

Anyway, Seth Godin has a pretty good list of technology competencies in his post The growing productivity divide. David Pogue has some similar basic tech tips. How would your teachers do if given a test on these?

A good question
How would you answer this question that popped up in a workshop last week during a discussion on evaluating web resources:

But what do you do when you've steered your students to "authoritative" sites and the good sources don't all agree? I had students use three reliable sources to find the maximum speed of a cheetah and they came back with three different answers!

Average them? Give a range?

Hell, just use Wikipedia.

What gets tested, gets taught
By way of my friend Mary Mehsikomer:

ON THE WAY: NATION'S FIRST TECH-LITERACY EXAM, eSchool News
For the first time ever, technological literacy will become part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card. Beginning in 2012, the test will measure students' proficiency with technology in addition to reading, math, science, history, writing, and other subjects. The new test will mark the first time students' technology literacy has been assessed on a national level.http://benton.org/node/17652

Is this what it will take to get schools to address the tech skills kids need? How sad.

Off to Montana this week
The LWW and I leave this Wednesday for Missoula in the great state of Montana. I'm working at a conference on Thursday, visiting with our friend Sally Brewer on Thursday evening, and then heading to Glacier Park for a long weekend.

I'll tell the grizzly bears you said hello.

Send your tech a compliment day

I propose that 10-10 be the official "Send Your Tech a Compliment Day."

This came in this morning's e-mail via one of our school LMSs:

I know that sometimes, good news does not travel very fast. I want to share that DJ updated my computer to Jaguar. In addition, he helped me install my backup external hard drive so that it will efficiently work with my home and school computer.

Earlier this month, he had shared with me exactly what type of external hard drive equipment would be needed to work well with MacBook. I did not follow his instructions, but INSTEAD listened to the salesperson who seemed to know what he was talking about. This created more work for DJ. He respectfully reminded me of what he had said and why. He then told me how this would effect my system and then continued to service me well. MY SYSTEM WORKS PERFECTLY, thanks to DJ.

I am telling you this in an email, because everyone deserves to have good things shared about them to their boss. You have helped him do his job better, and he in turn has made my teaching better. Thank you to you BOTH.

Yes, this is the same DJ, I wrote about a dozen years ago in The DJ Factor. It's still a pretty good column, if I do say so myself.

The problems and complaints my department hears out number the positives by probably about 1000 to 1, so comments like this are what keep us going.

So, send your tech a compliment for something she/he has done for you.

Even better, send a box of doughnuts.

My new toy - iPod Touch

While I am not in league with "Gadget Girl" Kathy Schrock, I am a sucker for new toys that blink and beep now and then. After an Apple demo at a tech meeting last week, I just happened to be in a mall's Apple store this weekend and bought my first iPod. Looks like this:

It is just the weenie 8 Gig model, I'm afraid.

After playing with the "funnest iPod ever" (the cutsie grammar nearly kept me from buying it) for a few days, here are some observations:

It really is simple to use. Even for a tech director.

Apple makes it really easy to buy little apps. Too easy maybe.

The wireless connectivity works great. (My IT guy tells me the lack of an individual MAC address will soon prohibit us from using this with our HP wireless router security system though.)

The games are actually pretty fun - especially the ones that take advantage of the device's tilt sensor. I love MonkeyBall.

The little story in e-book format I downloaded was surprisingly easy to read.

The photos display beautifully. Now I have a way to bore people with pictures of my grandsons.

The on-screen keyboard works OK. I have been typing everything with my left thumb. I'm not planning to write any novels on it soon however.

Oh, it plays music.

The biggest downside is that it has been a bugger getting my Entourage 2008 calendar to synch. Good thing I keep good back ups since somehow I managed to lose my laptops's calendar at one point. Why in God's green earth does getting things like calendars to synchronize ALWAYS have to be so darned hard?

Do I jailbreak the machine? (Crack the system so non-Apple approved software can be loaded.) I would sure be fun to be able to use Skype on this. The blogs seem to be divided about jailbreaking the 2.0 operating system.

Do we recommend this as a PDA for our school staff? Seems a better solution than the Palms and such I've used in the past.

Advice?