Organizational Structure

I have been thinking about organizational structure for a long time, even before our agency released the new org chart that described the big changes in store for our organization. Communicating an organizational shift is very hard, and can take a long time and a lot of effort.

I have a feeling that more discourse is needed to understand the role of technology in our agency, and how we can leverage it to better serve our customers.

Innovation doesn't happen on it's own. It has to be nurtured and tended to. The right culture and the right types of leadership must be put into place to foster innovation.

Lunch Meeting with Chip and Melissa

I love these two people. I haven't seen an example of two people more committed to their business, and to each other, in forever. They run one of the oldest professional schools.

ed.sc.gov

Well, this past week has been very busy. I think that our guys put in about 3 regular weeks during that one week. We got the new layout up and running at http://ed.sc.gov and we presented on Google stuff at the Webmaster's meeting. (I am sure that link will change soon.. making it irrelevant.) That was fun. I hassled Berry about trying to heckle me during my presentation. We also put in some purchasing stuff and we are working on like 3 or 4 different web applications.

Nursery Road PTA

Well, it looks like I am doing more than just one web site now. I have started working on several different sites. This is not what I expected 3 months ago. I was looking to do less actual work, and more leadership. Maybe that will still come about.

Danger in our schools!

We have a clipping service at our job (I have ranted and railed about RSS, they can't hear me) and these two articles came up this morning, go look, I'll wait.

Greenville Hacker

and

Myrtle Beach Gunman

What I thought that was interesting was that each of these students were handled using the criminal justice system, with apparently different results, one has been charged, and one hasn't, guess which is which. Also, there is a lot of detail about the computer "hacking" student, and almost no information about the gun toter.

Security in schools is very important, and it requires attention. We have to work on physical security of the students and staff, AND we have to work on the security of the data. These should be easy to answer questions, but we aren't getting it done.

I have been thinking about these kinds of things for a long time, and I believe that we need to adjust our perspective about this as we would anything else. It has to be done right, and from the beginning. We are not seeing the leadership from the people involved needed to make a clear impact on kids and parents.

I am not saying I believe in zero-tolerance, but we must make a stand on violence and weapons in schools. If intent and purpose are clear, then students should not be allowed back in.

We also need to make data security a priority. Giving districts the guidance and templates for sound security policy is required of our state.

dotProject

This looks like a great application. I really like all of the features and the fact that it's open source. We don't run PHP in our environment, but I was starting to become willing to do it for this app. After opening up the install file for the RC1 release, I got cold feet. It looks like a lot of configuration is needed, which means time. Which we don't have. Back to the drawing board.

SQL Server 2000 Row Limit?

I didn't know that SQL Server 2000 had a max row data size of something like 8K? How can this be right? Well, after one google search, I have found the answer. The limitation is 8060 Bytes for each insert, but you can update each column separately. Also, if you use a text field or an image field, you are safe. Reference and here too.

Sad Little Blog

I got into a discussion at a meeting last week where the merits of blogging were being debated. The most interesting thing that I heard was that if you don't have any comments, you must be wasting your time, or that you are a sad little person. I think I disagree.

Did you know?

They started sending this presentation around in my department last week. I am not sure that we knew where it came from. I did the minimal leg work, and I got back to The Fischbowl.


Did you know?

Games in Education

David Warlick posted today about a conversation he had with Wesley Smith of iWorlds Simulations. Being an avid gamer and long time theorist on how we learn from games, I was quite interested.

I do believe that we learn from games, simulations, and interactive experiences. I believe that we even learn from music, tv, and radio, probably a lot more than we ever learned from books. But one of the things that I can say without a doubt, is that 99.9% of all "educational" software titles miss the mark.

They fail.

They don't engage children. They don't create compelling immersive environments that catch children's attention. They don't convey the breadth of material that could be conveyed given the bandwidth of the medium. They hardly, if ever, move out of the first or second levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

I know this from my half-hearted research, and the research of others, but mostly from personal experience. Almost every software title that I have had the displeasure of using has some defect or flaw that, in the minds of someone who has knowledge of educational principles, and the power of modern media and interactive experiences, causes the software to be a failure.

The sheer capability of the current crop of gaming rigs (XBOX360, PS3, Wii) is leap years beyond what any educational title is even close to implementing.

Real-time interaction in high definition 3-D virtual environments is here, now on these machines. Just think of the possibilities if a game design studio actually created serious educational content.

Educational software developers have to start playing ball NOW in that arena. Why? Because that is where children are creating their standard for digital media. If we put interactive simulations in front of them that are half-hearted, or lower in production value, many of them will immediately poo-poo it as "soooo... last year"

BUT, there is one way that lower production values can be successful, and that is game-play. Fun games are fun regardless of how good they look. Educational games can be fun if they sneak in the learning, if they work on the game-play first, and then add in the smarts.

Well I have to go eat. More later.

Virtual schools

What do we do about the technology have-nots when we are dealing with systems and services that should be open and accessible for all? I worry that we sometimes aren't seeing all of the issues that need to be addressed when we start to debate bills like these that appropriate large sums of money for relatively few students.

I truly do see the potential in creating alternative methods of reaching students, but again, there is a lot to be said for spending money on basic school needs for these students that have tangible benefits that last for more than one semester.

Link: Virtual schools bill hits unexpected snag