Power of the local press

The photo and caption appeared front page, above-the-fold in this morning's Mankato Free Press daily newspaper.  It was accompanied by this article with the headline "2005 referendum funding digital revolution." I read, as always, with great trepidation.

But the article was positive and pretty darned accurate as these things go. Thanks, reporter Tanner Kent! I just hope Ed the superintendent, gives it a positive review.

I am not sure how we do it, but our district has always managed to maintain a good relationship with the local press. While it helps that we are a very well-run district, we are also open, honest, available, and considerate to our reporters and newspaper editors.

A policy that I believe has a positive impact - indirectly - on kids. 

Anticipating TV changes

This question showed up in this morning's e-mail from a librarian friend down in Florida:

Yesterday I was appointed to a district committee to plan for the 2009 TV changeover - what we need, what we can do, etc.  Instead of reinventing the wheel here, I'm asking an expert: What plan does your district have for the HD switch?  Any information will be appreciated.

Gulp. Yes, I am the head of the projector sector (I mean AV department) for our schools, but the crown is pretty dusty. Here's how I replied:

There are basically two issues involved as I understand the future of TV.

The first is that by 2009 that all television transmissions must be digital. This has lots of people worked up but will ONLY effect those who get their TV signals over the air via antennae. They will need to buy a converter for their TVs for about $60. The government is supposed to offset this cost with a $40 coupon of some sort. If you get your TV signal via satellite or cable, you need do nothing and can use your current television sets.

The second change which is more problematic for us in our district is that it’s rumored that manufacturers will only continue TVs with LCD or plasma screens and stop making CRT screens. To me this is an issue because I don’t think our current mounting brackets (or carts) will hold the new flat screens. And I have no easy solution to this one. I expect we will eventually either stop buying TVs and just use LCD projectors connected to VCR/DVD tuners or buy the flat panels and mount them on the wall somewhere in the classroom and just remove our expensive mounts. But this I will worry about in onsies and twosies as the old TVs break down.

I hope there are Blue Skunk readers who follow this more closely than I do and have thought more about it. Advice?

 

And wouldn't you know these changes happen JUST as we mounted TVs in all our classrooms after about a 15 year effort! Dang.

OLPC XO field test - sort of

My XO sat charged and available in the family room all last week while grandsons Paul (age 6) and Miles (age 2) were visiting with their mom and dad.

To my disappointment, the reception to the XO was underwhelming. Paul lost patience after five minutes. Miles whacked at it for a while, mostly in imitation of his older brother who quickly reverted to using the desktop PC.  Even their tech-savvy dad spent very little time with the device, having minimal familiarity with Linux.

To be fair, these rather privileged boys had other distractions - new  Legos, Thomas the Tank Engine toys, videos, books, cookies, and even a sledding hill just out the back door. Not to mention two doting grandparents willing to play with them.

Some observations:

• A favorite website of these boys is Dave Pilkey's game pages. While we were able to connect to the page and even run Flash to see the game, none of the keyboard controls allowed game play. And, "Oh, man!" what a loooong wait for loads.
• At age 6, Paul has already become a some-what sophisticated Windows user. While he has no problem with the Mac operating system, Sugar threw him. Since Negroponte's theory is that kids will be able to teach themselves this OS, I gave Paul minimal instruction. He was unable or unwilling to invest the time it took to figure all but the minimum out about the XO.
  
• The XO was great at deflecting gooey fingers, snotty noses, and other liquidy sorts of attacks common with small boys in the winter. 
  

While my family is a very small petrie dish, I'd be willing to bet that if it were released in the US, the XO would be a computer of last resort - used only by those who could or would not spend slightly more on a faster machine with a more familiar acting OS. (The ASUS Eee, for example.) And I understand that Paul and Miles are not the intended audience for this computer. Still, I was a little disappointed that it was not better received. And neither boy (nor parents) lobbied for ownership of the XO.

However I still believe that anyone would rather have an XO than no computer at all.

For what it's worth.