Link to the Squidoo™ site…

The site has a weird name, but you will be amazed at what you can create in a few minutes, with a minimum technical skills.

You can add pictures, YouTube Videos, Amazon™ links, and even earn money for your favorite charity, or yourself.

(Note: I donated the money that my page might earn to National Public Radio. Of course, if this page starts generating a fortune, I could change my mind. [Smile])

The page that I created was on helping children become all that they can become.

Here is the link to Education that helps Children Become All that they Can Be on Squidoo…

Capacities Galore!

The range of capacities that you can add to a Skidoo™ page are amazing.

Here is a list…

• Text, and registered visitors can leave comments
• Images
• Links to related Websites
• Live RSS feeds from other Websites
• YouTube™ Videos
• Links to stores like SuperStore™
• Links to eBay™ auctions
• Lots of other cool features

You can even insert a site-theme video, for example…

Give the Squidoo™ site a try with your class, and let us know how it works for you.

The Inspiration™ site contains professional development resources and a forum.

Link to the new Inspiration™ site…

Link to the Inspiration™ Forum…

Inspiration™ makes popular commercial mind mapping programs. What sets this company apart is:

• The software is reasonably priced for school district site licenses
• The software is focused upon instruction
• The company makes a version of the mind mapping software, Kidspiration™, that is suitable for primary age children
• The company has recently released a database program, Inspiredata™, that is suitable for K-12 instruction

(Note: Look for our review of the Inspiredata™ program in our April Classroom Toolkit newsletter.)

Link to the Classroom Toolkit newsletter… (Publication date for the Inspiredata™ review: April 30, 2007)

The newsletter will note that the while there are substitutes for the mind mapping programs, there is no competitive product for the Inspiredata™ program. It is a must have resource for teachers of all subjects and grade levels.

(Note: It is not often that Classroom Toolkit recommends a commercial program over Open Source programs, but, Inspiredata™ meets our high standards and wins our endorsement.

Inspiration™ Software and Open Source

The Inspiration™ software company does not sell a Linux version of their software. This is one reason for school districts to delay the adoption of Open Source desktops for all instructional environments until there is an Open Source program that can do what the Kidspiration™, Inspiration™ and Inspiredata™ software programs can do.

While there are Open Source substitutes for mind mapping software, none of those products is”kid friendly.”

But, the Inspiration™ software company has done it’s homework and gears its product for education.

(Note: I am publishing a series of articles about technology folks needing to do their homework in this Blog and in our newsletter. Technology folks and Open Source advocates should look at what the Inspiration™ software company is doing and start making educational software that is good for instruction and student use.)

Of course, school districts could run the Kidspiration™ and Inspiration™ on district servers, but each user that connects to those servers needs to have a Microsoft™ Server Client Access License (CAL).

The Choice of Software always Depends on the Application

The software selection process always goes like this…

1. The student learning activity and instructional application (and required outcomes) are identified
2. The specifications are developed
3. The software that meets those requirement is identified
4. Finally the hardware required to run the software is identified

Anyone that prescribes software or hardware without knowing the learning tasks and desired outcomes (that are the instructional focus) is going about the design and development process “backwards.”

For example, I use a commercial mind mapping program, Mind Manager™ rather than Inspiration™. The reason that I use a program that is four times as expensive as Inspiration™; and the reason that I don’t use Open Source mind mapping programs either, is that MindManager™ exports to Microsoft ™ Project, besides exporting to word processing and presentation programs. The requirement of integrating with a project management program is important for the work that I do, but is not a requirement that most teachers or students would have a need for.

Similarly, while I have both Microsoft™ Access and Microsoft™ SQL Server software, the much less expensive Inspiredata™ program does something that the programs that cost ten to thirty times as much cannot do, i.e., easily create little diagrams based upon small data sets that can be used to extend stories, news articles and other instructional materials. The full database management programs are too “heavy duty” and robust for the quick and agile requirement that I have for writing instructional content for children.

So join the Inspiration™ Software Community and check out the free resources that are available there for you..

P. S.
Classroom Toolkit does not have an affiliation with either the Inspiration™ software company or the MindJet™ company. We receive no compensation of any kind for recommending these programs, and the companies do not influence our editorial content in any way, except by providing usable software.

P. P. S.
Many school districts are already preparing their budgets for the 2007008 school year. Be sure to request (demand) that funds be included for the Inspiredata™ program site license for your campus.

If the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) were a cartoon character, what character would it be?

I pondered this as the “ultimate philosophical question,” although I admit that I would be better off doing something to get rid of the law than to look for any good that it might have inadvertently accomplished.

There were a lot of candidates, so I decided to let you decide.

Here are some of the candidates…

Charlie Brown © ®:

A well meaning but bungling character. Nothing goes right for him.

Mandrake the Magician © ®:

Deception and slight of hand are his hallmarks. NCLB pretends to help children, but really is designed to make public schools look bad so that public money can be funneled into church schools

The Punisher © ®:

Avenging the bad guys without a trial, sometimes the innocent are crushed in his wake

Scrooge McDuck © ®:

Penny pinching, “ultra unfunding,” stingy with resources

The Phantom © ®:

Product of the World War I and World War II, factory oriented, industrial age thinking

The Hulk © ®:

Seems to be mild-mannered, but has a “dark, destructive” side

Spiderman © ®:

“With great power comes great responsibility"

BC © ®:

A square wheel that will never roll

The King from Wizard of ID © ®:

Pint sized, but filled with the puffery of self-importance

Sad Sack © ®:

Can’t do anything right

Hagar the Horrible © ®:

Terrorizing and pillaging, all in a day’s work

Lex Luther © ®:

Doing evil in the name of science

Doonsberry © ®:

Selling out to the special (church school) interests

Kathy © ®:

Bloated and insecure

Lois Lane © ®:

Snooping and meddling where it doesn’t belong

Howard Huge © ® or Marmaduke © ®:

Throwing its weight around and doing exactly what it wants

Garfield © ® or Popeye’s © ® friend Wimpy © ®:

A fat cat gobbling up school district resources

Spawn © ®:

We know just where this law needs to return to

The Joker © ®:

I guess that joke’s on us, although the negative effects of NCLB are not a laughing matter

This list is not inclusive. What caricature would you ascribe to NCLB?

All characters are the property of their copyright ©, trademark ® or patent owners.

Great media coverage, "top spin" on the $200 million initiative, but what is the "rest of the story?"

The rest of the story is in the math, or lack of math. The math behind the program needs to be disclosed so that the voting public can evaluate whether this program is viable.

For example: The campus received $98,333.00 in the form of 59 laptops and other needed technology.

Great, except that 59 laptops are only frosting, not the real cake. It is going to take a lot more laptops to create a critical mass of equipment that will impact the instruction for all students on that campus. But, when you start providing enough laptops for a school to impact education on that campus, sooner or later, you come to grips with providing a laptop for every student.

This "Classroom of the Future" program delivered laptops (and other goodies) at a cost of $1,664.97 apiece. At this rate, for a campus of 1,000 students and 140 staff members; the cost of providing a laptop for every student and staff member would be $1,898,065.80…possibly higher, since every teacher would need all the associated equipment (instead of sharing components between groups of teachers).

The other "rest of the story."

The governor’s representative also noted that methods of teaching have to change for the laptops to be fully used. How much will this professional development cost over the three years that will be required to pull this off? How much for:

• Trainers?
• Stipends for Teachers?
• Substitute Pay for Release Time?
• Instructional Content for the New Method (since textbooks become "obsolete"

The cost of just 200 hours of professional development teacher stipends, at $25 per hour for 140 teachers would be another $700,000.

The salary for three trainers to service this staff of 140, at a meager $45,000 per year over three years would be $405,000.

(Note: We are not making this 200 hours of professional development number up.)

” In Utah, Missouri, and Maine, students in classrooms that participated in the eMINTS program–which provides teachers with educational technology, curriculum, and more than 200 hours of professional development–had tests scores that were 10 to 20 percentage points higher than students in the control classrooms, Wolf said. And in Iowa, after providing teachers with sustainable professional development and technology-based curriculum interventions, student scores increased by 14 percentage points in eighth grade math, 16 points in fourth grade math, and 13 points in fourth grade reading, when compared with control groups.
Source:
Major Study Questions Value of School Software
eSchool News
Link to the article…)

Some more "rest of the story"…

The cost of connecting 1,140 laptops to the Internet is expensive. The network infrastructure must also be "beefed up."

An analogy is the traffic on a country road. Sure, the residents might be able to tolerate the delays at intersections, might allow parking on lawns once during sunny days; but 1,140 vehicles would create a real mess, and during wet weather, 1,140 cars would be a nightmare.

Flimsy network infrastructure works exactly the same way. The cost of adequate wiring (or adequate wireless access) could be as high as $135 per computer.… This would add maybe another $153,900 to the cost of the project. Of course the cost could be much more expensive, depending on the design of the campus and the engineering needed.

More "rest of the story"…

This equipment will need maintenance and repair. All those laptops and the network infrastructure will require technicians, at least two, preferable three technicians at $40,00 per year and a network administrator at $60,000 per year. Over three years, this support staff might cost an additional $540,000.

Still more "rest of the story"…

We’re not through with this project. The project also requires servers, and lots of them. Teachers and students need to store their work, share their work, evaluate their work. For this adequate file storage, accessible from home, student portfolio software, grading software, course management software, Website software

So, let’s put together some "cheap but expandable" network storage at $50,000, the various servers at, say $15,000 to $30,000 each (we’ll use $20,000 as an average), and the two server engineers (we should hire a third) at $60,000 apiece to manage these. This component adds about $430,000.00.

And, this does not calculate the cost of adding extra electrical outlets, or the cost of the electricity to run all this equipment.

The rest of the rest of the story…

This little project of supplying a laptop for a small high school with 1,000 students and 140 staff members would cost something like $4,126,965.80 over three years.

The rest of the rest of the rest of the story…

We are not through here, because as any grant developer knows, there is a multiplier of maybe 15%, 18%, or more, that organizations add for the cost of managing a project. This is the cost of …overhead" (known as "Indirect Costs" and covers personnel costs, equipment, paper, copying, etc., on and on…

So, add another $412,000 to the cost of this project.

But, we are not done. as any project manager knows, but school district leaders always omit from their calculations because they are under funded; large-scale projects require a financial cushion, a contingency of at least 10% (preferably 15% or better yet, 20%) for unexpected occupancies, accidents, price increases, what not…

So, let’s add another $412,000 (the lowest level possible) to this project’s price to cover contingencies.

Adding these two necessities to the project calculation brings our total to $4,950,965.80.

The rest of the rest… (You get the picture.)

But, we are not through. After three years, few people would want these laptops, the laptops would be too slow, and actually the best school district strategy would be a lease-purchase with a $1.00 buy out, so that any student that wanted to keep the laptop could own it for only $1.00.

This means starting the cost cycle all over again.

What we do not want to do is make the mistake of thinking that these three-year old laptops should migrate to the Middle School for use for three more years before sending them to the Elementary School.

All our students deserve quality tools, not "hand-me-down junk." But, a good test might be be to see how many students would be willing to pay $1.00 for a three-year old laptop. I suspect that the number of students that would not pay $1.00 for a three-year-old laptop might be higher than school district administrators or political pundits might guess.

So, perhaps the $200 million initiative isn’t such a "big deal" after all. If we divide about $5 million for each high school project (done right), then we can see that the $200 million will serve about 40 high schools that have about 1,000 students each. This is a "drop in the bucket," insignificant impact on critical mass for all the high schools in the State of Pennsylvania. This would not cover the cost of laptops for all the high school students for even a top 20 US city.

Perhaps this is what Margaret Spelling, Secretary of Education, meant when she said that technology education is a "black hole."

Link to the Phoenix Business Journal article where Secretary Spelling refers to Ed Tech spending as a "black hole"…

Secretary Spelling might mean that doing technology education right can’t be done cheaply like the politicians wish that it could be done. Or Secretary Spelling might mean that doing technology education right can’t be done as a "one shot" investment; but that the investment in technology will have to be massive, long-term and "ever green." Doing Ed Tech right might look like a "black hole" pulling money that politicians don’t want to spend. The term, "ever green," would mean shoveling large amounts of "green" in Ed Tech to achieve the critical mass required to ensure the payback from an Ed Tech program.

Perhaps Ms. Spelling believes that money supplying technology to our public schools would be wasted because that money could be applied to better use by propping up church schools through an NCLB-enhanced voucher system. This might provide a rationale for why Secretary Spelling believes that educational technology funding is a "black hole."

So, here is a summary of the math that politicians and school district leaders should disclose when they take bows for wonderful programs that prove that they are education "boosters."

So, let’s do the math for our politicians and school district leaders, present the real-world costs to them, and find out just how deep their commitment to "fully funding" really is.

Ask them for a funding timetable for their great project once you do the math and show them that you know the "rest of the story."