My Third Eye

Best Web Designer On Earth

2008-03-08T13:17:00.001-08:00

My new favorite web developer.

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Home schooling is now illegal in California

2008-03-08T08:28:00.001-08:00

Citing state law that goes back to the early 1950s, Croskey declared that "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children." Furthermore, the judge wrote, if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.In our state, Home Schooling Parents must be a part of a home school association, and they have to follow a particular curriculum and keep very good records. From the details of this case, where a family was under investigation for child abuse because one of the children filed a complaint with the DCFS, I would say that the root of all of this is that the California DCFS was placing the burden of investigation and monitoring of this family on the public school system, instead of doing their job of monitoring the family with home visits and due diligence.

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Textbooks Driving School District Adoption of Vista, Office 2007??

2008-03-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

Apparently the newest "Computer Applications" textbook for High Schools in our state is based on Windows Vista and Office 2007. There is a debate in educational technology circles about having to upgrade and the issues involved with that. One of the participants in the discussion even invoked the "Conspiracy" theory meme, that M$ is working with the "approved" textbook publishers to get this sort of change made.

I think that in general, it's just the textbook company updating their texts to the latest versions, in order to sell new editions, and to keep from becoming outdated.

Suggestions from the group ranged from just staying on XP, to switching to Google Apps or OpenOffice for those classes. The Rebels!

I couldn't find the new textbook in our textbook ordering system, and I could not find any specific information on how M$/Vista/Office 2007 were required to be used.

Spartanburg 7: Instructional Technology Blog

Robot High School

2008-03-04T08:31:00.001-08:00

A coworker's son did this video for school. "Welcome to Robot High School, a modern day high school in which every student is a robot. Everyone obeys the dictating Principal and hopes that they don’t become scrap metal. But there is one Robot who stands out and is determined to escape from this communistic type society and be free."

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Crossroads Realty

2008-03-03T04:41:00.000-08:00

Recently, my partner and I worked on a new web site for Crossroads Realty in Columbia, SC

"All About" Real Estate

2008-03-03T03:57:00.000-08:00

My wife is working on a program for her Real Estate Clients where she is putting on a whole series of workshops and seminars so that all of her clients and anyone in the community can learn about how the real estate process works.

All About Real Estate

Buy a Tivo

2008-03-02T20:48:00.001-08:00

The answer to your question is easy.

They don’t care. DVRs are killing the existing model, even for Cable Companies who make a ton of cash selling advertising that they then play OVER THE TOP of time already sold to other advertisers.

Buy a TIVO, and send a REAL paper letter to your cable company, telling them that their business model will fail, eventually.

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New Nine Inch Nails record available for download RIGHT NOW!

2008-03-02T20:38:00.001-08:00

NIN surprises us with an unexpected self-released album: almost 2 hours / 36 instrumental tracks described as "music for daydreams." Available as a $5 download, or a FREE album-length download, as well as a variety of physical configurations. The new business model done right? If they can keep the servers up.

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Coldfusion Community Site

2008-03-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

I found this site a few months ago, it is a very nice setup based on ning.com.

Coldfusion Community

Bill Gates 'Innovation by Immigration' plan DOES NOT Hurt US workers

2008-03-02T06:15:00.001-08:00

True, "we must demand strong schools so that young Americans enter the workforce with the math, science and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the knowledge economy."

ALSO true: "We must also make it easier for foreign-born scientists and engineers to work for U.S. companies."

What hurts US workers is letting US companies pay these immigrant workers LESS than US born engineers and scientists.

WHY?

Because the world is flat.

Our economy MUST continue to be strong, and to do that, we need the best minds here.

This was also in a LinkedIn Question that Bill posed this week.

I didn't know then that he had tied his question about US education with immigration. In my answer I basically said that "lab" or hands-on project based education was the way to go, which is what he said in this OP-ED piece... weird.

In our work at the department, we are looking for ways to innovate the educational process, in our daily work, and as a regulatory agency for schools in our state.

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This. is. PORTAL!! [comic]

2008-03-02T05:25:00.001-08:00

Not to rain on anyone's parade or anything, but PA did this in a much nicer way much earlier..

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Adobe AIR 1.0

2008-03-02T05:21:00.001-08:00

We have started to use AIR and FLEX in our development process. We hope to have some real productivity gains for us and our users.

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Since you've been gone...

2008-02-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

This morning I have had 3 meetings, and in each one the major theme was communication. How do you foster the right amount and kind of communication in large organizations?

Organizational Structure

2007-07-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-04-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-04-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-03-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-05T09:31:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

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