Picture this. You’re a fly on the wall on Friday morning, and you’re in one of any of our Huntsville City Elementary Schools. As all elementary students (and I hope parents) are aware, Friday tends to be the default testing day in school. It’s the day when students are tested on all the things they learned during the week.

The weekend presents a natural break to the typical elementary schedule. On Mondays and Tuesdays, they learn new stuff. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, they master new stuff. On Friday, they demonstrate that mastery by taking tests. It’s just the way the world works. And so Friday is testing day. It might cover spelling, reading, math, science, grammar, or social studies, and it makes for a busy day on even the best of days.

Plus, it’s Friday. Like the whole rest of the world, our kids are tired and can’t wait for the weekend.

Earlier, in Huntsville City Schools, when a teacher gave a reading test, the class would take out their books, open them, read a passage, and then answer a series of questions about that passage on a piece of paper so the teacher could evaluate their reading comprehension. Perhaps a student or two might need to sharpen their pencils, but otherwise getting ready for the test takes a minimal amount of time. If the test had 20 questions, the total time, start to finish, to administer the test might take 20-25 minutes.

It was a tried and true system that had been honed to a pencil point’s sharpness. It worked.

Fast forward to the present and the wonders of computer-based testing. It’s Friday, and the teacher is getting ready to take that same reading test.

First, all the students have to get their netbooks out, turned on, and booted up. If they followed the suggestions of the district and shut their computers down at least once every night, getting the computers ready for use probably takes about 2-3 minutes. (The beauty of a textbook is that it doesn’t need to be booted to be useful.) While waiting for all 26 of the computers to boot and be ready to use, one student raises her hand. She says, “Ms. Doe? I left my computer at home.” As Ms. Doe moves to help her get set up at the old desktop left in the room, across the room, two more of students raise their hands to say that their batteries only have about 4% remaining on them. Either they forgot to charge them, or the batteries that are now about a year and half old are starting to lose their ability to hold a charge.

Being the master of multitasking (as all teachers are), Ms. Doe asks them to move to the carpet under the smart board and plug in to the outlet there.

Once everyone has a booted computer, Ms. Doe asks them to find the Pearson Reading site. As it’s April, this doesn’t take that long anymore, but at the beginning of the year, it was rather difficult.

You see there isn’t just one single unified Pearson curriculum that you click into on the computers. There’s a site for reading. There’s a site for math. Then there’s a site called Socrative that’s also used for computer-based testing.

Once everyone gets to the proper site, then Ms. Doe has to log-on herself and authorize the test. Usually this is a fairly simple and quick process, but when the entire school is trying to test using Pearson’s site, there are problems. Either the Pearson site cannot handle the load, or the school’s brand new and constantly monitored wireless network can’t.

So the class waits, as patiently as a group of 26 nine and ten year olds can manage, while Ms. Doe attempts to understand if the issue is on the school’s end or on Pearson’s end. Either one is certainly possible.

After about ten minutes, the site begins to work, and now the students have to connect to the test. This involves refreshing their Internet Explorer browser. (For some reason the district has decided that Microsoft’s browser, you know, Gates’ browser, is the only one that students should be allowed to use. It doesn’t matter that the Pearson site opens quicker in Firefox or Chrome, it doesn’t matter that many of the sites that teachers need to use really don’t open in Internet Explorer, that is the only browser allowed to be use on the district’s computers anymore under threat of suspension or even explosion.

Once everyone has a browser that has refreshed showing the available test, the class can finally begin to take the test.

And so, the class who’s patience has already been tested waiting for the system to work, finally begins testing about 25 minutes after they thought they were starting the brief, twenty-question test.

On a good day, that would be the end of the story. The class would complete the test and move on to something else. Perhaps one of the other tests scheduled for the end of the week.

But this wasn’t a good day.

First, one student raises his hand. He’s completed question 14, but for some reason, there’s no button on his screen to click next as there was for the previous 13 questions, and he has no idea how to continue with the test. While she’s working with him, one by one, Ms. Doe begins to be approached by students carrying their netbooks up to her. It seems that the rest of the class is having a similar issue.

Since this happens, oh, nearly every single Friday, Ms. Doe announces that those who are having issues moving forward in the test need to click the save button, close Internet Explorer, and restart the browser.

It seems the new WiFi network that was installed over the summer and that the superintendent has claimed has been “tweaked” ever since has brought all of the testing, on a simple 20 question reading quiz, to a screeching halt.

Literally. When a class of 26 are all stuck during a test, the collective sound is quite similar to a set of faulty brakes on an 18-wheeler, trying to stop at the bottom of Airport Road as it heads to the parkway.

It isn’t pretty.

After everyone in the class has closed their browser, restarted it, connected again to the Pearson site (assuming that the WiFi has stopped hiccuping), they can now get back to the quiz.

Luckily the Pearson people are used to this happening, so most of the class is able to start right back where they left off.

One girl raises her hand to let Ms. Doe know that she can’t go back to the question she was on. She can only go to the question before. So again, Ms. Doe has to work one to one with the student to help her calm down and start over.

When a student believes she’s lost her work, there often follows a fairly panicky few moments for her.

Luckily, there’s a caring human being in the room who can help calm her down so she can continue a quiz that everyone should have finished 15 or 20 minutes earlier.

When the class is able to settle down and continue the test, most of the students restart the test by re-reading the story, after all what was supposed to be a fair quick test is now taking them right up to lunchtime.

They re-start the test, and hopefully this time, they’re able to complete the quiz and see how they did. What should have taken about 20-25 minutes has now taken close to 90 minutes of class time to complete.

I’m sure it’s been a while since many of my readers have taken a test, so let me ask you this: when you really need to concentrate on a project at work, is it helpful or harmful to the quality of that work when the Internet crashes, your computer needs to be restarted, and 25 other nine or ten year-olds are jumping around in your office?

Do you, as an adult, find such an environment helpful?

I didn’t think so.

That’s what placing computers in our classrooms (at a cost of nearly $30 million) has brought us.

That’s what Pearson, HP, and Microsoft have introduced into the classroom.

I’ve asked around, and while this assessment isn’t scientific, the consensus seems to be that it isn’t unusual for a teacher to spend about 30 minutes a day addressing technical issues that our students are facing with the computers.

At 180 days in a school year, 30 minutes a day adds up to a loss of nearly 14 days. That’s almost three weeks of instructional time lost to having our teachers play computer technician.

So that’s what we’ve lost: concentration, money, and time.

What exactly have we gained from the 1:1 digital initiative?

Beginning on April 15th, all of our elementary schools will begin the end of year testing. Every one of them will be taking far more involved tests than a short reading quiz.

And every time the board has asked the superintendent for reassurances that our network will be up to the task of keeping everyone online, his response has been, shall we say, less that reassuring.

It has basically been, “we’ll take care of any issues that we face.”

Hmm, like the district has taken care of network issues that have been on-going since August?

It’s April and we still can’t rely on the computers to take even a simple quiz without interruption.

It’s time to turn them in, not purchase 2,000 more of them as the district approved on Thursday night.

And to those who at the beginning of the said, “We just need to give them time to work out these issues,” it’s April. If it isn’t fixed by now, it isn’t going to be fixed.

The post What The One to One Digital Initiative Really Looks Like appeared first on Geek Palaver.

If you are having issues downloading the documents from the district’s site (I’ve heard that some are), you may download them directly from this website as well. These are Word Documents, and there are three separate files. The first is “code of student conduct FEB FINAL“. This file contains all of the student conduct information found in the 2012-2013 Student-Parent Handbook plus the new additions of the discipline procedures for technology infractions.

The second document is “technology infractions final“. This contains just the three additional pages that have been added to the Code of Student Conduct. I have also posted the entire contents of this file below.

The final document is “Homeroom Signature Form – technology“. This is the roll sheet that students are being told that they must sign.

These files were downloaded from the district’s website just before noon on February 26, 2013.

Starting at least as early as Thursday, February 21, 2013, the district distributed to the schools a new computer use policy, and they began asking teachers to read this policy to students in their classes. Students as young as five-years old were then asked to sign a roll sheet that states:

Students: (Have students read)

By signing below, I acknowledge I have received, read, and discussed the Huntsville City Schools Technology Discipline Procedures for the 2012/2013 school year.

Students are then told that they must write their name and sign their name stating that they have “received, read, and discussed” the new technology discipline procedures.

New Tech Discipline Procedures

By itself, this is a bit disturbing. As I wrote last week, they are once again changing the ground rules that the students and parents are expected to play by. The problem here is that the district is implementing this new policy, and requiring students to sign it without parental notification or consent.

That’s right, students at least as young as five years old are being asked to sign a notice that they have “received, read, and discussed” these new discipline procedures without getting parents involved. In fact, they are planning to do a robocall about this new policy in the near future, but they are specifically waiting until after the students have “received, read, and discussed” this policy before calling parents.

If a student refuses to sign this roll sheet, they will not be allowed to take his or her computer home with them in the future.

And guess what? By having your child sign a document as a roll sheet, they’ve made it impossible for you as a single parent to ask to see the document, as it contains the names and signatures of up to 30 other students as well. Wardynski has read his Kafka, I presume.

Updated Code of Conduct

The updated code of conduct is 27 pages long. It is basically the Official Student-Parent Handbook that was sent home at the beginning of school with students with three additional pages. You may download just the updated Discipline Procedures for Technology Infractions if you prefer. These pages read:

Huntsville City Schools

Discipline Procedures for Technology Infractions

This is a companion document for Huntsville City Schools Code of Student Conduct.  Refer to the Board Policy and the Code of Student Conduct for additional information.

Technology offenses will be handled as set forth below.  Technology discipline offenses will also result in the restricted use of personal mobile computing devices while on school grounds.

Class I – Minor Offenses 1.19 Technology Infraction (a – e)

a)Unauthorized or inappropriate written/oral communication, use of E-mail, websites, apps, games, messaging services, chat rooms, or other non-school related activity.

School personnel may authorize educational use of the above applications during school hours or otherwise when school is not in session.

b)Use of non-directed profane, inflammatory, or abusive language.

c)Downloading, loading, storing, creating, unauthorized files, images, video, music, apps, data, or programs that do not result in damages to person or property.

d)Unauthorized transmission of personal information over the internet.

e)Activity that may be disruptive to the school environment

Consequences

•Classroom warning

•Possible loss of device access

•Temporary loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension not to exceed three (3) days.

Class II – Intermediate Offenses 2.36 Technology Infraction (a – l)

a)Negligent care of or vandalism such as malicious attempt to harm or destroy any HCS device resulting in damage less than $200.

b)Changing software/hardware configurations.

c)Downloading, loading, storing, or creating unauthorized files, images, video, music, apps, data, programs, or viruses resulting in damages to any HCS device.

d)Taking pictures, audio, and/or video without subject’s or school’s permission.

e)Use of unauthorized anonymous and/or false communications such as, but not limited to Google Chat, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger.

f)Unauthorized change of program settings or any behavior or activity that damages or disrupts network performance on school devices.

g)Sending, transmitting, accessing, uploading, downloading, or distributing inappropriate, obscene, offensive, profane, threatening, harassing, pornographic, or sexually explicit materials intended to harm or demean staff or students.

h)Deletion, examination, copying, or modifying of files/data/device settings belonging to other users including staff, students, and district to include sharing, using, or modifying usernames and/or passwords.

i)By-passing the HCS Web filter through a Web Proxy.

j)Cheating (refer to HCS Code of Student Conduct, Section II, 2.33)

k)Subsequent offenses that may be disruptive to the school environment.

l)Action violating existing board policy

Consequences

•Temporary loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension

•Out of school suspension not to exceed five (5) days

•Possible referral to law enforcement

•Restitution in vandalism instances for actual loss, damage, or repair

•Indemnification – HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy

Class III – Major Offenses 3.25 Technology Infraction (a – h)

a)Any activity that voids the device, service agreement, software license or warranty such as, but not limited to jailbreaking or rooting (process of hacking a device to bypass digital rights management software).

b)Unauthorized entry to program files/hacking.

c)Harassment (refer to HCS Code of Student Conduct, Section III, 3.24)

d)Vandalism such as any malicious attempt to harm or destroy a HCS owned device resulting in damages in excess of $200.

e)Sending, transmitting, accessing, uploading, downloading, distributing, or publishing obscene, offensive, profane, threatening, harassing, pornographic, or sexually explicit materials that result in personal injury to staff or students.

f)Use of school/district’s Internet or email accounts for financial gain or personal gain, or any illegal activity.

g)Offenses on multiple occasions that may be disruptive to the school environment.

h)Any use that violates local, state and/or federal laws or regulations

Consequences

•Loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension

•Out of school suspension not to exceed ten (10) days

•Suspension and/or recommendation for Superintendent Level Probation or expulsion and forfeiture of device.

•Restitution in vandalism instances for actual loss, damage, or repair

•Indemnification – HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy

How many five-year olds do you think understand a single word of that change? How many seventeen-year olds? Honestly, how many parents, even?

But wait, there’s more.

$750.00 Fines

In addition to these changes, there’s also the new statement on the splash screen that I wrote about last week.

Thanks to a close reader for pointing out that my interpretation of this splash screen wasn’t actually correct. When I first read this, I believed that they were raising the fee to repair/replace a device from either $250 for the netbooks or $600 for the laptops to $750.00.

However, what this screen actually states is that:

“Intentional misuse of this device (including destruction, defacement, installation of unauthorized software, or download of unauthorized programs) may result in disciplinary action including expulsion and a fine of up to $750.00)” (sic)

What I believe (I could be wrong) that this means is that if a student misuses the laptop, in addition to the “Consequences” listed above there may be a fine of up to $750.00.

If the computer is damaged and “misused” then the district could send you a bill of up to $1,350.00. ($600.00 replacement fee for the laptop and a $750.00 fine.)

This fine is covered under the Consequences for Class II and Class III offenses which state:

Indemnification — HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy.

That’s right. Your five year old has been forced by Huntsville City Schools to sign a document that states that she has “received, read, and discussed” the steps by which she could be expelled from school and charged up to $1,350.00 without your knowledge or consent.

Not Legally Binding Without Consent

Now, clearly this isn’t legally binding. A minor cannot enter into a binding contract of this sort without parental consent. They would be laughed out of any court that they tried to take this to.

So why are they doing it, and why are they doing it without getting parental consent first?

The only reasons that make sense to me are:

1. They’re trying to intimidate the kids.
2. They’re trying to intimidate the parents who don’t know better.
3. They’re hoping to lessen the blowback from the community about these changes by keeping them quiet until the students have already signed off on them in the hopes that they can then say, “Look, your child has already agreed to this, so there’s no need to complain.”
4. They’re just that convinced that they can do whatever they want in our schools.

Honestly, does anyone in their right mind think that these laptops are a good idea now? It’s time to return these netbooks and laptops to the schools and leave them there.

Just make sure that you ask for a receipt when you do.

The post Students Sign New Tech Discipline Procedures Without Consent appeared first on Geek Palaver.

By going so far as to produce talking points, it seems that the district really wants the public to support the idea of their one to one technology plan. They’re going so far to even distribute these  to teachers. Honestly it has much more of a political campaign feel than it does an educational decision made in the best interests of the children.

A Political Campaign

Compare this political campaign, for example, to their nearly silent support for the 6.5 mil ad valorem tax renewal, which actually was a political campaign. They held one joint press conference with the Mayor and City Council that lasted about 10 minutes, and then the superintendent mentioned it a few times at the end of a couple of board meetings.

They didn’t develop a FAQ.

They didn’t develop a thirty-minute video about it. (I wonder if they actually had parental permission to use the kids faces in that video from last Tuesday?)

They didn’t take children out of school on a “brief” bus ride on the third day of school as a testimony to how badly the tax renewal would be needed. (I’m hearing, regularly and often, that the superintendent did not get parental permission to take the kids out of school and off the Chapman campus for this bus ride photo-op. If any parents would like to provide some information about this, I would appreciate it.)

Talking Points Campaign

And they didn’t, absolutely didn’t, develop two pages of talking points that would later be shared with teachers so they would know what they could, and could not, say about the ad valorem tax.

Called “Key facts/discussion points regarding the Digital 1:1 Initiative,” the document contains 21 district approved talking points about the digital conversion.

In case the document is taken down soon, I thought it might be helpful to browse through the highlights of the talking points to see just how accurate they are. Surely, a document so important that teachers are being told it contains all the information that they need to share with parents about the conversion will be completely accurate, fair and balanced. Right?

The Agreement with Pearson 1:1 Learning will cover work at all 40 schools.

And right off the bat, we have a problem. There are actually 42 schools in the district according to the district’s own web site. And this list doesn’t include The Pinnacle Schools (thank goodness). An inattention to detail is one of the biggest problems that we’re facing in this digital conversion. I wonder which of the two schools are being left out? Is it possible to move my kids to those schools?

Perhaps the second talking point will provide more substance.

The date of school board approval of this initiative happens to also be the eighth anniversary of the day the first civilian spacecraft was piloted into space. It was on June 21, 2004 that SpaceShipOne, financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, flew to space with Mike Melvill as the pilot. Now, on June 21, 2012, the Huntsville City Schools will launch to a new frontier for learning for our students.

Okay, even I’m speechless here.

Someone, some cheerleader, in our district believes that a crucial point to understand the need to convert our district over to the Pearson way of doing education is to mention that the board approved the decision on the eighth anniversary of the first successful private journey into space. (Just curious, how many of my readers knew that the first private pilot was Mike Melvill? Okay, how many knew the first American in space on the public’s dime was Alan Shepard? Or that the first man on the moon was the late, and amazingly great, Neil Armstrong? Seems that the public venture was a bit more, um, historic?)

I wonder what else this foolish decision by our board commemorates? Just a few of the more relevant events might include:

• In 1527, Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, and hero to dictators everywhere, died.
• In 1964, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi fighting for civil rights.
• In 1970, Penn Central declares bankruptcy, the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history up until that time.

Clearly these events are just as important to commemorate, right?

On to the third:

The Wi-Fi will be operational but the district will not have all of the bandwidth in place at the start of school to provide the full access to the digital resources in every school. This is the transition year for the program.

Well, this is news isn’t it? When Wardynski was presenting the transition to the board in June, he told them that the bandwidth would actually be available at the start of the school year. On June 21st, Wardynski said:

So inside our schools we’ll have gigabit rate bandwidth to transfer data between kids and the data sources, this is the curriculum sources and so forth. Uh, the key question is will we have do we have the bandwidth coming into our schools. And so, LaQuita has been working that very hard with our consultants from PPT and we’re going to be moving from I think it was, correct me if I’m wrong, I think about 10 Megabits per elementary? . . . And now we’re up to 50 for the elementary and a 130 for the high schools? So we think that will be adequate. And if it’s not, we’ll adjust. And a good bit of that is coming from Alabama SuperComputer. And is under their e-rate provisions. Uh, a portion of it is under our e-rate provisions. And that should all be online as well now, in time for school’s start.

It wasn’t. It still isn’t. When the board made their propaganda presentation last week, they made no mention of the bandwidth issues. They were trying to cover it up. During the presentation, the only problem they would admit to knowing was that Huntsville Center for Technology was still having bandwidth issues.

Quick question: if the district knew it wouldn’t have the bandwidth available, why are they still insisting that every classroom be online the entire day?

Let’s leave that and move on to the next few questions.

Pearson is imbedding a team on the ground in Huntsville for two years, with other support rotating in and out. Pearson’s goal is to help HCS develop the capacity internally to support the initiative.

This partnership will move Huntsville’s entire curriculum to digital. Pearson will provide Huntsville schools hardback textbooks for the classrooms to make sure each room has a hard-copy of the digital curriculum while the district is transitioning to digital. This will help make sure that every student learns every day during the transition. This is important because this shift to digital is being phased in during the 2012-13 school year, and not every student will have access to all the digital resources at the start of the year.

Again, this is the first time they’ve admitted this little issue. Oh, and the imbedded Pearson teams are less helpful than they’ve claimed.

Just as the superintendent underestimated the cost of going digital, just as he overestimated the bandwidth, he has underestimated the impact this transition has had on student learning particularly since teachers are being threatened for not using the computers in the classrooms enough.

Moving on to point number six:

This effort gives Huntsville schools a common standard across the district, and educators will be able to make sure that students are progressing at their own pace.

The simple fact is that the transition was not necessary to bring standards across the district. Neither is it necessary to enable educators to allow students to progress at their own pace.

In fact, the laptops are actually taking time away from instruction as they are implemented now. Imagine that you want your students to read a certain passage before you discuss it in class. If you have a classroom of textbooks, you have your students take out a book, turn to a page and begin reading. The entire process takes less than a minute.

With the laptops, they have to boot, log-in, connect to the Pearson web site (making sure you’re going to the right one–there are multiple sites for every class), log-in to the Pearson site, find the reading, slowly advance the text to the right section, and then begin reading.

Suddenly, what once took about 60 seconds is now taking 10-15 minutes before reading can even begin depending on the technical skills for the students, the availability of the network, and the speed of the computers.

Talking point number six claims that computers will allow for individualized instruction. What it actually does is limit the amount of time available for individualization.

Point seven is perhaps the most honest of all the points made in the document:

This is part of the effort to bring a business-like approach to education.

I realize that people differ on their opinions here, but the simple fact is that Education is not a Business. A business has one goal: to improve the financial standing of the organization. Education has one goal: to prepare students for life. Those two goals are not the same, nor should they be. Those who wish to make them the same are simply demonstrating their complete lack of understanding of either paradigm.

This isn’t an attempt to excuse educators or schools from working hard; I would argue that few careers work harder than teachers. This isn’t an attempt to free educators from accountability. This is the realization that education’s purpose is not simply to allow students to get a job. Education’s purpose is to enhance the width and breadth of the human experience. It is designed to open us to new experiences, new ideas, new worlds in a safe environment where children, youth, young adults and adults can explore. As Dr. Gutting explained in the New York Times:

In our capitalist society, education must not be primarily for training workers or consumers (both tools of capitalism as Marxist might say). Rather, schools should aim to produce self-determining agents who can see through the blandishments of the market and insist that the market provide what they themselves have decided they need to lead fulfilling lives. Capitalism, with its devotion to profit, is not in itself evil. But it becomes evil when it controls  our choices for the sake of profit.

This move to convert schools into businesses is a move by businesses to control the American consumer. Those who are uneducated are far more likely to be swayed by advertisements and propaganda than those who are. The ideal American consumer is one who is therefore un-educated at best and under-educated at least.

Undoing education is the ultimate goal of those who wish for education to take on a “business-like approach.”

This partnership will give teachers and staff the resources and the training to make this adjustment to a digital learning environment to more effectively teach children.

The partnership with Pearson hasn’t accomplished this yet, and they’ve been working in the district for the past five weeks dropping in on classrooms for a few moments at a time to address emergency situations. They are not helping teachers teach more effectively. Often teachers are being told that Pearson cannot help, or that they will have to email them about a problem. On one occasion a teacher was told by Pearson, “I can’t help you. You’re special education.”

The Pearson assistance certainly isn’t worth the millions we’re paying for it.

One-to-One learning has been around a long time. A number of school districts around the country have made the shift to digital. The Huntsville district will be one of the largest to make the shift to digital district wide. In the past, traditional school structures and tools have forced teachers to teach to the middle. This will let teachers personalize the instruction much more.

You know, the cheerleaders are right on this point. One-to-one learning has been around a long time. It basically began the first time that one human attempted to teach another human how to do something. One-to-one is the best method of teaching as it allows for education to be perfectly suited to the student and the student’s needs.

The digital conversion is not one-to-one instruction. One-to-one instruction is one teacher and one student, not one student one computer.

In other words, this is an attempt by a district that has dramatically increased class sizes over the past two years to cover up that simple fact. They are lying to us.

How individualized can a computer make the educational experience of a student who doesn’t need assistance working with a computer, but rather needs assistance interacting with other human beings? This new, “personalized” instruction doesn’t meet that person’s needs at all.

Computers aren’t teachers. They are tools, and they can be effective tools of teachers, but they are tools. Plain and simple.

And All Semblance of Reason Leaves the Building

Huntsville led the way in the rocket age with the Redstone Rocket. Huntsville led the way to space with Wernher von Braun and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Huntsville helped put Sky Lab, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station into orbit. Huntsville has been the world leader in science, and now the children of Huntsville will fly into the digital age in the classrooms of schools across the city.

There is no better place in America than Huntsville, Alabama to launch this new digital learning environment in schools.

How dare they compare this fiasco to the work that took us to the moon.

There was no greater example of human initiative, human planning, and human organization than our space program. Comparing the district’s ineptitude of simply distributing computers to students to the Moon program is offensive.

This effort is about preparing our students for success in college and the workforce.

The purpose of education is not to prepare our students for success in college or the workforce. It’s to prepare our students for life. Those are two completely different goals. It’s a shame that our district’s leadership cannot see that.

This effort is about creating a learning environment that is relevant to today’s students.

Computers don’t make a learning environment relevant. Teachers do. And a teacher with no technology other than his or her mind is capable of making the student’s environment relevant. Adding computers to that mix doesn’t do it. Adding good teachers does.

The American education system, for the most part, is run the way it was over a hundred years ago, before mankind even flew in an airplane, much less flew in space.

So?

As new technology becomes available, teachers should and do adopt it for the classroom. But they should adopt it if and only if it improves the educational experience.

Forcing teachers to throw away pedagogical methods that have been successful for hundreds of years simply because HP is kinda-sorta giving us a deal is risky, foolish and stupid.

The decision to adopt new technology in a classroom should be made by the teacher as she seeks to meet the educational needs of her students.

The district exists to support the teacher. It doesn’t exist to rule over her.

Today, our kids live in a digital environment at home and out in the community, but when they come to school they are expected to unplug and logoff, and then study and learn the same old way their grandparents did.

Our students are, in fact, too wired in, plugged up, and logged on for their own good. As Claudia Wallis wrote for Time in 2006:

Generation M has a lot to teach parents and teachers about what new technology can do. But it’s up to grownups to show them what it can’t do, and that there’s life beyond the screen.

Our students need a variety of learning environments, both “plugged” and “unplugged.” One would hope that the top educators in a district already knew this. It seems they don’t since they are forcing teachers and students alike to adjust to the single method that they’re prescribing for everyone.

And that’s the real problem here. Their rhetoric sounds good, but once you scratch beneath the surface, you see that this has much more to do with Dr. Wardynski’s desires and needs than it does with meeting student’s needs.

He seems to want to push this through so he can add it to his resumé.

Dr. Wardynski isn’t involved with students on a daily basis. He doesn’t understand, for example, when he walks into a kindergarten class and sees children playing together that they are actually developing much needed social skills, or that they are developing their hand/eye coordination.

By forcing one single teaching method on the district as a whole, he is making a mockery of the very reasons why he claims he’s doing this transition in the first place.

The cheerleading continues with the following talking points:

This shift to digital learning in Huntsville schools is nothing less than a journey to a new frontier in education.

The students of Huntsville deserve to have the most relevant learning environment and be the most college-ready students there are anywhere.

This new digital frontier means students and teachers will use a high-quality digital curriculum that is aligned to the standards.

Will someone please cue Alexander Courage and William Shatner? We really need a sound track accompanying these points.

Of course the students of Huntsville deserve to have a “relevant learning environment.” They also deserve to be “college-ready students.” Where, oh where is the actual, peer-reviewed evidence that forcing computers into a classroom will accomplish this?

Oh, that’s right, there isn’t any.

The new digital learning environment will allow Huntsville schools to provide 24/7 access for students and teachers, at last doing away with the traditional boundaries of time and space that hamper old-style schools.

We should let Einstein know that the cheerleaders have re-written his theories. Do we really need 24/7 access for students and teachers? Doesn’t there need to be at least a few moments of sleep? Recreation? Play? Exploration? Reading an actual book? Going to a party? Talking to other actual human beings, face to face?

And again, where’s the evidence?

And My Head Explodes

The next to the last talking point wins the prize:

The difference in learning will be enormous. For example, students will be able to learn more about writing and effective communication because the new digital curriculum will allow teachers to assess 20,000 written compositions in the time it would have taken them to assess one composition. So teachers will be able to actually get back to teaching children how to write and effectively communicate.

What the cheerleaders are talking about here is Automatic Writing Evaluation, and frankly there is so much wrong with this talking point, it’s a wonder they saved it for next to last. First, the new digital curriculum doesn’t “allow teachers to assess 20,000 written composition in the time it would have taken them to assess one composition.” The new digital curriculum has a feature known as automatic writing evaluation (Pearson calls it, Knowledge Technologies or KT) that evaluates student writing via computer.

These compositions are not evaluated by teachers. They are evaluated by a computer program. It seems to be a fairly sophisticated computer program, but it is still a computer program. This technology has been in development since the 1960s, and to this day, the best that can be said about it by anyone other than the companies developing it is that we’re just now beginning to understand how best to evaluate it. 

In other words, would you like your child’s writing ability evaluated by an untested computer program, or your child’s teacher?

I write on a computer every day, nearly all day. It’s how I write. But no computer ever inspired me to write. That was done by a small group of writing teachers at Georgia Southern University and at Statesboro High School. There names are Dr. Curtis Ricker, Mrs. Sandra Rabitsch, Dr. Patricia Gillis, Dr. Fred Richter, Mrs. Elizabeth Brannen, and Ms. Shirley Hemsley.

Each one of them helped me to develop a love of writing. Dr. Ricker was the first teacher to push me to learn to create on the computer. But the reason they helped me learn to love to write was simple: they read my work. Dr. Wardynski and his cheerleaders are stripping away the best part of writing: being read.

Stupid.

And finally:

2012-13 will be the year of conversion to digital the digital learning environment. This is not an event, it’s a process. It will take time before every student can fully access all of the digital assets.

Should it take time for every student to be able to access their textbooks? How much time? A few weeks? A few months? A few years? How exactly is this benefiting our students and promoting student learning?

And those are the district’s talking points in support of the digital transition. Can someone please remind me of why the district felt it was necessary to publish these points? Could it be that they know they’re promoting snake oil?

Let Your Voice Be Heard

Tonight Dr. Wardynski was interviewed on WHNT by Jerry Hayes in a story called, “Taking Action Special Report: Tech Trouble.”

I wonder why Mr. Hayes never thought to ask the superintendent why not one teacher was willing to speak on the record about these issues. It seems that people are afraid to ask the superintendent questions, particularly if they work for him. Intimidation indeed.

The Huntsville Times is asking for comments on the question of “How is the Huntsville schools district’s digital transition working for you?”

Please contact Ms. Bonvillian and let her know your thoughts and opinions.

The post Talking Points For Digital Conversion appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Tonight, after listening to 84 minutes of propaganda from the superintendent’s phalanx of troops, I stood to offer three minutes of rebuttal to the digital-initiative-is-amazing storyline being proffered.

I have no delusions concerning my effectiveness; I was ignored as always. But at least the message was put out there. Someone had to stand up to Dr. Robinson’s assertion that teachers “had the flexibility to do what they needed to educate the kids.” According to Dr. Robinson, and agreed to by Dr. Wardynski, this includes the use of textbooks in the classrooms.

This is not accurate.

Teachers are regularly being threatened if their classroom usage isn’t what the Superintendent thinks it should be.

Every Breath You Take

The troops were bragging about being able to generate a “heat map” tonight that shows exactly where, in the buildings, people are logged on and working and where there might be interference to the network.

Here’s a picture of the “heat map” for Jones Valley:

Yes, they are clearly monitoring usage down to the student level in our schools.

Every Move You Make

They are even monitoring how often students log onto the Pearson websites over the weekends from home. On Labor Day, for example, 2,237 students logged onto the system.

Yes, a national company, with zero oversight from you, knows when your minor student is using their material. They know how long they’re logged on. They know what they’re looking at. They know who your children are. (How else would they know and be able to claim that 100% of Teachers and Students logged in by 8/24? By the way, that 100% number is not accurate. My son, for example, was not “logged in” by 8/24. His classroom hadn’t received the iPads by that date. But we’ve long since established that there’s little concern for children like my son in this district. Maybe he just doesn’t count.)

In short, the district and Pearson are watching everything down to even when the microwaves are in use.

They’re watching when your children are at home.

And they spent 84 minutes at tonight’s board meeting bragging about it.

Let’s Get The Media To Handle Our PR

Their propaganda was picked up and distributed by WAFF 48 tonight without raising a single question about it’s accuracy.

The only word from our teachers came in the form of pre-approved, edited public relations propaganda. Tautology aside, our district has certainly gotten better at telling parents just how much better our district is.

HEA Is Silent

The only voice for teachers tonight came from one parent, your truly, standing up to read comments from teachers about the conditions of their classrooms.

HEA was strangely silent on the matter. Which may be a blessing. During the Second Budget Hearing this afternoon at 4:00pm, Topper Birney asked the superintendent about the possibility of offering our teachers a cost of living raise next year in FY 2014. After the superintendent summarily dismissed the idea, Uniserv Director Rex Cheatham stood and had this to say about a cost of living raise:

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Topper Birney and thank Laurie McCaulley for speaking up for our employees. We do understand the financial crisis. We understand the tough decisions that Dr. Wardynski and you have had to make.”

With three sentences, Mr. Cheatham has told the Superintendent and the public that teachers don’t need a cost of living raise. With friends like these . . .

After a 84 minutes sales pitch from Dr. Cooper, Dr. Wardynski, consultant Ms. Nelson, consultant Dr. Jamison of Pearson, and Ms. Anderson, the district effective convinced their cheerleaders who were present, at least, concerning the digital transition, “It’s working. It’s great.”

And so I stood to read comments from our voiceless teachers concerning their thoughts about the transition.

A Voice For The Voiceless

In no way should this be considered a representative sampling (but then neither should the 84 minutes of propaganda produced by the district be seen that way either). I didn’t conduct a survey. What I did do was listen to them. What I did do was be a person who could be trusted in the hostile working environment that they’re working in. What I did do was ask them for their honest assessment: is the transition helping our children?

These words were some of their responses.

“It has been a nightmare in the classroom. Teachers have been working until 6 or 7 at night trying to fix problems because all of the tech staff were cut. The e-text won’t even load into the iPads for K-2 because it requires adobe flash player. So, the kids will have to use textbooks after all.”

“It took an entire class period and five, yes 5 Pearson representatives in my classroom to log on 25 students onto their textbooks. They were already enrolled in the class – I had done that earlier. I probably would have gotten the students logged in faster if the Pearson reps hadn’t barged into my classroom and had been able to get the attention of my entire class at once.”

“Many high school students are also confused because there are four different platforms for the textbooks, depending on which book a class uses: SuccessNet, SuccessNetPlus, Mastering/MyLab, and CourseSmart. Also, the students also are using Edmodo and Moodle, and are unsure which website to go to when.”

“So, as a result of this technology “improving” our teaching, I am four days behind where I usually am in my lessons this time of year.”

“At my school, we are still short laptops and iPads. Plus the ratio is changing, they say the iPads will be 1:3 for kindergarten and 1:5 for Pre-K. I had a hard time testing kids because they kids were bumped off line: not enough bandwidth.”

“What you wrote sounds like what is happening in my room only with i-Pads. I don’t have the time to trouble shoot them when I should be teaching. There are still not enough i-Pads and I can’t access the e-books so the students have to use the textbooks, plus I haven’t seen a Pearson consultant to help me. Don’t get me wrong I like the new technology, but it should have been phased in, not thrown at us.”

“Technology when working properly is an incredible tool that can be used to teach our children. However, a program created for profit is absolutely NOT the only way in which our children should be instructed. We are not educating the whole child when our focus is monitoring the amount of time students spend logged into the program/internet while in class. No school district should ever have a “war room” tracking the number of pings from classrooms.”

“My wife is a teacher and one of the central office staff recently came to her room and informed her that she should be proud that she and her student were using the system more minutes per class than any other teacher of her subject.”

I spoke because our teachers are voiceless in this system. Their opinions don’t matter. Any questions raised about the wisdom of the actions the Superintendent is forcing through are challenged, disregarded, and labeled, as Dr. Wardynski referred to them tonight as “ankle-bitters.”

In short, you must not question the propaganda being distributed at public expense. You must not voice any dissenting opinions.

The Superintendent, our board, and even HEA are seemingly willing to only accept your full-throated support of whatever reckless idea the Superintendent can come up with next.

Treating Teachers The Way You Wish To Be Treated

Near the end of the long meeting, the board was approving the Human Resources report. When they saw that the report contained the resignation of three teachers during the past week and a total of six resignations since the August 16th meeting, board member responded that they were frustrated with hearing of the resignation of these teachers at this point in the school year.

Rather than ask why these resignations might be happening, they looked to Strong Leader for an answer.

His solution was simple. Rather than treating our teachers as the professionals they are, rather than treating our teachers the way he expects to be treated, he’s convinced it would just be simpler to buy them off. And so, at some point in the near future, the Strong Leader will bring a proposal to the board concerning offering retiring/resigning teachers a financial incentive to give the district a “heads up.”

Since the only thing that seems to motivate our Superintendent is money (how much you have, how much you offer him), he’s convinced that the only way to correct the situation of having teachers resign two weeks into a new school year would be to buy them off.

While I’m aware that the Superintendent disregards solutions that don’t involve money, here’s one for free that the board should consider: If you treat your employes the way you wish to be treated, they will freely tell you when they’re planning to leave. If you don’t, they won’t.

As we like to say around here, this isn’t rocket science. Just simple human decency.

The post A Word From Our Teachers appeared first on Geek Palaver.

That huge rushing wind sound you’re hearing . . . me heaving a huge sigh of relief.

I believe that I have things back to just about normal around here. It is now officially safe to share links to the site again. (And please do so.)

So, what happened?

The simple answer is that my site was hacked. Someone (or thing–much hacking is automated) gained access to my server and installed a bit of code there that redirected links from other sites to mine to spam sites.

When you clicked on a Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Bing link to a post of mine, you would be redirected to a site selling Starbucks or fake Antivirus Software.

As I said, I’ve now corrected this problem. The site is safe for viewing and sharing as you wish.

Let me take this moment to apologize to all of you for the problems the site has had over the last week as well as for your having been redirected to sites that you did not wish to view. I hope that this was only an inconvenience for you, and that it did not cause you serious issues. If it did, please contact me via the comments feature at the bottom of the page.

Credibility is a difficult thing to build, yet insanely easy to lose. I pay close attention to the content of my site because of this. (This is why I do not have, and will never place any ads on this site. This isn’t about getting rich or famous. It’s about making our schools better than they are.)

Where I failed was that I did not pay closer attention to the impact that the delivery system could have on my credibility. I know that my credibility was harmed by the spam sites as well as the outages, and I take full responsibility for all of it. I will do a better job of monitoring the site in the future, and should I find that something has caused my readers issues, I will move to address that problem immediately.

Part of the reason this event took so long to address was that I couldn’t believe that I had been hacked. Once it became clear that I had, fixing it really didn’t take very long.

So again, I apologize.

In the future, I will verify links that I post are not redirecting my readers away from the site, and I will do my best to address the issue much quicker than I did this time around. Most of my readers hear about my posts because y’all share them, and I absolutely need that to continue.

Finally, I would like to take just a moment to address a rumor/joke that has circulated around my outage. A few friends have joked that perhaps the outage was caused by Dr. Wardynski or someone connected to Huntsville City Schools. For the record, I have no reason to believe that Dr. Wardynski or anyone else connected with the district had anything to do with this outage.

Frankly, it would be stupid for Dr. Wardynski to attempt to silence me by hacking my site. Doing so would give instant credibility and credence to my questions and posts. Dr. Wardynski is not stupid.

__________

On one other note, I posted on January 29th that I was hearing rumors that Huntsville City Schools had blocked access to my site through their servers. I was able to confirm yesterday that you can actually access Geek Palaver from the HCS servers. However, as with many things, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. I would still recommend that readers access the site on their own time.

Remember that you may do so via email or by subscribing to the RSS feed above.

The post Things Returning to Normal appeared first on Geek Palaver.

In case you haven’t noticed, things have been hinky around here lately.

On Monday, January 23, 2012 the website went down for no apparent reason. It was displaying simply a white page. No text. No links. No way to access the administration side of things to alter things. After a day of attempting to get information from my host, I found that others had had similar issues through a google search. It seems that the problem was a bad plugin.

Disabling all the plugins on the site got us back up and running, but things haven’t been right since.

This morning it seems that links on Google and Facebook to my site are now sending people to spam sites.

Yes, if you google Geek Palaver, most of the links you find there now send you to other spam related sites.

Stranger still, if you click on a link that’s posted in Facebook, that link will take you not to the Geek Palaver site, but rather to spam sites. Potentially they will lead you to sites that could give you a virus.

No, I don’t have any idea what’s happening here. I am trying to find out, but until things get corrected, please don’t share links to my site particularly via Facebook.

Strangely enough, the links on Twitter are still working fine. I also believe that the email distribution is working just fine.

I am working on this, but honestly this is all brand new to me. In the past, links take you to the place where you were intending to go. Now, not so much.

This is also only happening to the Geek Palaver site. It isn’t happening to my other site which is hosted on the same server.

So, I apologize for the inconvenience. I am working to fix it.

Thanks everyone, for reading my thoughts on the school board. I’ll keep you updated.

The post Strange Days at Geek Palaver appeared first on Geek Palaver.

“If you want to witness a miracle, watch a teacher teach. And you will believe.”

It is my distinct honor to play host to a collection of excellent writers who share their ideas on education. If you’re used to reading my stuff, please take a few minutes to read the writings of my friends from here in the Rocket City. Their takes on education are all well worth your time.

Education is an amazing, miraculous process of communicating, uncovering and connecting with our brothers and sisters who are passing through this world with us. It is, to steal a line, our last, best hope of co-creating a world in which we would all want to live.

It is a miracle.

Come join in this miracle with a few of the best writers in the city.

__________

• Jennifer Breuer, of Rocket City Mom, shares with us her conviction that our teachers are our heroes in “One of the Good Ones.”
• Ty Fauscett, of Dragonfire Online, calls for cutting the education “leaders” salaries down to a teacher’s level in “Education in Public Schools Today.” (Good idea, that one.)
• Heather Smith, of Calluna, reminds us that education requires an open-mind, especially towards the ideas that we think are settled in “Open Mind to Home School.”
• Nina Soden makes a case for school uniforms in “School Uniforms/Dress Codes – For or Against?“
• R S Buckner, of Seeking Him In A Crazy World, discusses the controversy over the naming of the new Lee High School that erupted last week and how to decide what’s best of your kids in “Change is in the air.”
• Lee and Shannon McBride, of Food from the Yard, provide clear, educational steps in planting trees in “Fall is for planting . . . TREES.”
• Courtney, of twirling on tiptoes, writes about the stresses that our teachers face everyday from first hand experience in “Parental Target.”
• Suzanne Haggerty, of Entirely Adequate, discusses the sheer joy going back to school in “Everybody back to school.”
• Harold, of unstable mind, also talks about going back to school to “remap” our brains in “Remapping my brain.”
• David Hitt. of Stories in My Pocket, talks about the joys of being a substitute teacher in “Back to school.”
• Heather McIngvale, of Tennessee Valley MOMS Network, shares a beautiful story of the importance of education that she learned from her mom in “A Mother’s Education.”
• And wrapping up the carnival this month is Carol Marks, of Carol Marks Online, shares the other side of the coin by opening up her story of a mother’s sacrifice for her son’s education in “Military School.”

Thank you Rocket City Bloggers for allowing me to learn from you all.

Education is a miracle.

The post Rocket City Bloggers: On Education appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So you may have heard that the fireworks show last night at the Space and Rocket Center was a bit of a bust? Yes, sadly, it was. What you may not have heard was why . . . until now.

You see at about 8:15pm tonight, I snapped this picture with my iPhone.

As I was waiting while the kids continually road the Kiddie Launcher (as they were still a few inches shy of getting to ride the real one), I saw this, and was stunned. So, I tried getting a shot.

Then, wanting to share one of those rare photos I take that doesn’t suck, I posted it on twitter with the caption, “Who Needs Fireworks?”

So, there you have it. It was my fault. Sorry Huntsville; I jinxed the show resulting in a firework being fired every five minutes or so over the Space and Rocket Center.

I take full responsibility. So if you want to blame someone, blame me.

____________

The Space and Rocket Center offered Huntsville a great venue for a show that despite a few technical difficulties, offered the children of our city a chance to dream again. Thank you. I mean that sincerely. Ever since I heard about the tickets going on “sale” (they were free, but you had to order them) on June 6th, I’ve been looking forward to tonight.

Let me say that again. I’ve been looking forward to July 4th.

Truthfully, I haven’t cared for fireworks or July 4th celebrations since I was a kid and we had, and no I’m not making this up, greased pig chases at the Statesboro Recreation Department.

Really.

Hundreds of kids chasing a buttered-up piglet in 135 degree heat.

Ah Statesboro, how I miss you.

(Okay, so there’s a little sarcasm for you.)

So I haven’t really cared for The Fourth much since about that time. There just isn’t anything inspirational about torturing a poor animal.

But this year was different. See, I love that I live in Rocket City, and the thought of watching fireworks on the 4th between the rockets that carried us to the moon simply stirred the wanderlust for the stars that I’ve felt since I was born.

My early childhood was filled with the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo Missions. I was a little over a year old when Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin landed on the moon. The first mission I actually remember was Apollo 17 with Cernan, Evans and Schmitt. The mission I remember like it was yesterday didn’t happen until 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Deke Slayton’s and Alexei Leonov’s “hug” in space convinced me, like nothing before or sense, that common goals make even enemies, friends.

Apollo-Soyuz

I’ve believed that ultimately the survival of our race depends on our ability to touch the stars.

And so with that backdrop, I became once again, excited about celebrating our Declaration of Independence. If we could work with the Russians at the height of the Cold War (when my friends and I were still regularly practicing “Duck and Cover” drills by rushing to hide under our desks whenever we saw a bright flash of light), perhaps someday we could also celebrate our independence from war, hatred, envy and strife.

Touching stars has a way of lifting you out of the pettiness of getting to the front of the line to get out of a parking lot. It has a way of letting you enjoy a cool July evening even when the fireworks are disappointing.

Perhaps my children and someday maybe my grandchildren might find a way to live in peace from such silliness. Perhaps they’ll find a way to live in peace in the stars.

The Space and Rocket Center did not disappoint in this regard. From the moment I walked onto the campus, holding the hand of my little girl, I felt that rush all over again.

And despite the technical difficulties that plagued the firework display, I’m still proud of my family, my city, and my country. And I have the team at the Space and Rocket Center to thank for that.

So thank you.

And yes, even though the Bridge Street fireworks looked better tonight, if you open your gates again next year, my family and I will be returning to sit among the rockets and enjoy the sunset.

I only hope that by this time next year, instead of mourning the end of the shuttle missions, we’ll be celebrating the launching of the missions to Mars. Perhaps we’ll call them the Athena Missions as we seek wisdom.

Now more than ever, our nation and our world needs to find wisdom as we touch the stars.

And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.

– Gene Cernan

The post Thank You Space and Rocket Center (No Sarcasm) appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Yes, I’m going for a massive amount of hits for this one.

Full disclosure: I am a newbie to Macs. I bought my first iMac in 2007 right after they switched to Intel. I went in to get a Mac Mini thinking it would be fun to play with, but when I looked at the cost of adding a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., I decided that a 19″ iMac might be a better deal (especially since they were on sale at the time).

We took it with us on vacation, and I fell in love the moment I took it out of the box. Apple knows what they’re doing with the purchasing experience. I had never (I’ve owned approximately 30 computers dating back to the Commodore PET! that loaded programs from a tape deck, and could only play Space Invaders.) opened a box, plugged in the power cord, mouse, keyboard and had a fully usable computer within 20 minutes. The first thing most PCs require at setup is a clean install to clear off the crapware in order to make the system usable. (This is, of course, not true of the systems I’ve built myself, but those systems take days to purchase, build, and setup.)

The iMac was a thing of beauty coming out of the box, but it wasn’t enough to convince me to switch. That occurred when I bought my first iPhone, but that’s a different posting. This is about windows.

Even though I switched to Mac during the Vista era, I am not a Vista hater. I was an early adopter. As soon as it was available preinstalled on the Lenovo ThinkPad (T61), I ordered Ultimate and was quite happy. Yes, I had trouble with drivers for printers (All-in-Ones from HP were notoriously slow being released), but I was quite happy with the laptop, and with Vista as a whole.

Here’s the problem. I’m setting up a desktop that’s been sitting in the corner collecting dust for my brother-in-law. (Yes, I’m that guy, but then the “Geek” in the title of the blog really should have been a giveaway.) This is a machine that I built, so I’m not blaming any manufacturer other than myself. As I said, this machine has been sitting in a corner, so it needed to be updated. There were approximately 60 critical updates that needed to be applied, including Vista SP1.

Everything was going along slowly but surely until I finally got to SP1. Then, I got the dreaded Windows Update Error message stating that the SP1 patch could not be applied.

It seems that there are many people who have had problems with this very same issue. It also seems that the only way to fix this issue is to disable everything that can be disabled in Windows, and reinstall them from the Setup disk. In short, to install a service pack to make Vista secure and stable, I need to reinstall Vista again.

As ridiculous as this is, it by itself isn’t why Windows sucks. Windows sucks not because it breaks sometimes. It sucks because one of the richest companies in the world, which is owned by one of the richest men in the world, decided that it needed to be just a little bit richer and require that costumers who had paid for the software jump though hoops of “Authentication” when trying to fix problems that Microsoft itself should have fixed long ago. SP1 was released nearly 2 years ago. (Authentication only affects honest customers. The dishonest ones have long since circumvented this problem.)

Why should I have to go through this trouble of proving to Microsoft that the software I bought, and authenticated three years ago, needs to be shown to be authentic again? Especially just to update the software to the latest version?

This is why I switched to Macs: Microsoft is a monopoly that has no reason to be concerned about the User experience. If they lose one, so what! We have millions of others who are willing to put up with being hassled for no reason whatsoever.

The post Why Windows Sucks appeared first on Geek Palaver.

It seems there’s water up there after all! LET’S GO SWIMMING!

Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water – Yahoo! News.

The post Yes! I want to go swimming in low-g! appeared first on Geek Palaver.