Stephen’s Untold Stories

As long as teenagers are forced to go to high school, there will be bored students in high school. I know that they aren’t all bored, but some will still be bored even if the President is speaking.

A majority of U.S. high school students say they get bored in class every day, and more than one out of five has considered dropping out, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The survey of 81,000 students in 26 states found two-thirds of high school students complain of boredom, usually because the subject matter was irrelevant or their teachers didn’t seem to care about them.

Half of the students surveyed said they had skipped school without a valid excuse at least once, and 22 percent said they had considered dropping out. More than half said they spent an hour or less per week reading and studying.

Yet, three of four students surveyed said they expected to earn a high school diploma and go on to college.

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I am so thankful to Vicki Davis for pointing out this story.

A class of 4th graders in Nevada has made a 5-minute video showing how they are using Skype to allow a classmate who has leukemia to still be a part of the class.

http://www.arisleyschool.org/Inclusion.mov (7.3 megabyte video)

This will probably be the best video you’ll see today.

The video is in QuickTime format, so you might need to get the plugin from Apple.com.

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Very interesting stuff here.

 In the beginning, the iPod let you listen to every CD you owned, even when you were stuck on the Red Line. Then Steve Jobs said, “Let there be video,” and lo and behold, you could watch “Lost” die a slow, overwritten death on a two-inch screen. But while people seem content to load their little devices with as many songs and TV shows as possible, podcasts (think of them as radio programs that you download) tend to be neglected.

Which is really too bad, because some of the more educational ones can help give you a truly brainy rep — if you listen to them regularly. The free podcasts below can teach you how to say, “Where’d my job get exported to?” in Mandarin and why, psychologically speaking, listening to that Regina Spektor single makes you burst into tears.

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I really have to wonder if an actual crime was committed here. Was there an actual law forbidding the use of WiFi after hours at the library?

A police officer seized the laptop computer of a man using the Palmer Library’s wireless Internet connection outside the building after the library had closed.

Brian Tanner, 21, was sitting in his car Feb. 17 outside the Palmer Library playing online games. A police officer asked what he was doing, learned he was using the library’s wireless Internet connection and told him to leave.

A day later, police spotted him there again.

“It was kind of like, ‘Well gee whiz, come on,’” police Lt. Tom Remaley said.

The officer confiscated Tanner’s laptop to inspect what he may have been downloading, Remaley said.

Alaska State Troopers had chased Tanner off a few times at other locations, Remaley said.

Tanner said he used to park in his neighborhood and hop on unsecured wireless networks, but troopers told him to park in a public place. He found the network at the library, which was unprotected by a password.

Jeanne Novosad, the library system manager, said the wireless connection is normally shut off when the library is closed. The library was waiting for a technician to install a timer and the connection was left on for several days, she said.

Tanner said he does not think the case will go to court. Remaley said he’s not sure either. He has to talk to library officials, find out what their rules are, and make a determination.

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I don’t care what your politics are, this has always been my attitude.

By Daniel Merlin Goodbrey

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While I have thought that some schools (especially secondary) should perhaps start a bit later, I hadn’t seriously considered a longer school day. I’ll be very interested to see how it works in these places.

On average, U.S. students go to school 6.5 hours a day, 180 days a year, fewer than in many other industrialized countries, according to a report by the Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank.

One model that traditional public schools are looking to is the Knowledge is Power Program, which oversees public charter schools nationwide.

Those schools typically serve low-income middle-school students, and their test scores show success. Students generally go from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and for a few hours every other Saturday. They also go to school for several weeks in the summer.

That amounts to at least 50 percent more instructional time for students in such programs than in traditional public schools, according to the report.

The extended-day schedule costs on average about $1,200 extra per student, program spokesman Stephen Mancini said.

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I just added the 5 most recent shared items from my Google Link Blog to the left sidebar. I got this idea from Robert Scoble, who has thousands of items in his Link Blog. I guess it really isn’t technically a blog because all I do is hit shift-s when I come across an item in my Google Reader feeds that I want to share. It’s really just a list of cool things I find it my RSS feeds that I feel like sharing with the few of you out there who might be interested. I will occasionally repeat an item here on my main blog, but I try not to do that too often.

If any of you are doing the same, I’d like to know so I can subscribe to your shared links. You can add mine to your RSS feed with this link.

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Lot of good facts here.

How far does regular dust blow in the wind?
A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), where it’s caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust makes its way to North America, too.

What is the fastest surface wind ever recorded?
The fastest “regular” wind that’s widely agreed upon was 231 mph (372 kph), recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934. But during a May 1999 tornado in Oklahoma, researchers clocked the wind at 318 mph (513 kph). For comparison, Neptune’s winds can rage to 900 mph (1,448 kph).

Is the state of Louisiana growing or shrinking?
Louisiana loses about 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) of land each year to coastal erosion, hurricanes, other natural and human causes and a thing called subsidence, which means sinking. Much of New Orleans actually sits 11 feet (3.4 meters) below sea level. Parts of the French quarter have sunk 2 feet in the past six decades. The city is protected by dikes, but all experts agree that storm tides from a direct hit by a major hurricane would breach the system and swamp much of the city. In 2000, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Chip Groat, said: “With the projected rate of subsidence, wetland loss and sea-level rise, New Orleans will likely be on the verge of extinction by this time next century.”

Read the Rest Here

Check out the complete gallery.

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Wow…I had no idea that Google apps was so popular. I wonder what the folks in Redmond are thinking about this. I also wonder if any school systems have done this. I don’t know of any in our area, but it looks like it would be worth investigating.

Google’s newly released online productivity suite Google Apps has already replaced Microsoft Office at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises and has been deployed at two of the largest companies in the world, according to the search leader’s enterprise product boss.

Kevin Gough, product manager, Google Enterprise, told iTWire that prior to its official launch today businesses have already moved off their desktop systems to Google Apps, which includes wordprocessing, spreadsheet, calendaring, email and instant messaging capabilities. Gough also said that a number of large enterprises have also commenced deployment and pilots of the online system that is looming as a threat to Microsoft’s desktop-based office productivity dominance.

“We have hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses that have already done that,” said Gough. “They’ve already switched their entire infrastructure over to Google Apps. We have just released the Premier Edition of Google Apps today and today we already have GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. If on the first day of the launch we have two of the top 25 companies in the world. Imagine what’s going to happen in a month or a year from now.”

“There is a core versus context argument,” says Gough. “CIOs are increasingly looking at what can they safely outsource to a trusted partner and what is a core function that is going to give them a competitive differentiator. They’re realizing that email and productivity tools and the staff that have to maintain that is not a competitive differentiator for them and they can redeploy that staff on things that are more core to their business. These large companies have proven that they’re confident with Google and that email and productivity is something that they’re comfortable outsourcing.”

Gough believes that desktop office tools are anachronism from a different age when people worked in a different environment to the present.

LInk to full article

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I have never been a fan of Fuzzy Zoeller, but whoever did this to him on Wikipedia was very wrong to do so.

Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author who posted what he describes as a defamatory paragraph about him on the Internet reference site Wikipedia.

Zoeller’s attorney, Scott D. Sheftall, said he filed the lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won’t allow him to sue St. Petersburg-based Wikipedia. The suit alleges someone used a computer at Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, to add the information to Zoeller’s Wikipedia profile.

Wikipedia, which describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems.

The paragraph in question has been removed, but the information has been picked up by other Web sites. The lawsuit said it alleged Zoeller abused drugs, alcohol and his family with no evidence to back up the statements. The derogatory information was first added in August 2006.

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One of my favorite NBA players passed away today at the age of 52. Dennis Johnson played for Seattle, Phoenix, and, most famously, the Boston Celtics. Larry Bird even claimed that Johnson was the best teammate he ever had. That is quite a statement. NBA Commissioner David Stern issued the following statement:

“Whether he was leading his teams to NBA championships or teaching young men the meaning of professionalism, Dennis Johnson’s contributions to the game went far beyond the basketball court. Dennis was a man of extraordinary character with a tremendous passion for the game and his loss will be felt throughout the basketball community. On behalf of the entire NBA family, I extend my deepest sympathy to his wife Donna, his children Dwayne, Dennis and Daniel, and their entire family.”

A sad day indeed.

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Thank you so much to Andy Carvin for sharing this. This is a video blog done by an autistic woman who has a lot to say, despite her being diagnosed as “low functioning.”

She also has her own blog, which is very cool.

The reason that I have chosen one of the offensive terms used in the German eugenics movement against disabled people — which, for reference, predated Nazism, was heavily influenced by American ideas, and survived after World War II — is to force people to look at the sentiments that drove that movement, that came before it, and that are still prevalent worldwide today.

Ballastexistenz means about what it looks like: Ballast-existence, ballast-life. Some of the other terms that were applied to disabled people at the same time included leeren Menschenhülsen (empty human-shaped shells/husks), and lebensunwertes Leben (lives unworthy of life).

Here is a single download for some really helpful programs like Open Office and Audacity. I have used most of these, and I’m looking forward to trying the rest of them.

Software for Starving Students (Win/Mac)

I found out the other day that I will be able to attend the annual Consortium for School Networking Conference in San Francisco next month. I have been hoping for a chance to get back there after my trip last year. I’m going with a colleague, and we are going to be able to attend the Giants/A’s game on March 31st. Not only will the conference be a great one, but I’ll get to spend some more time in a fantastic city.

Here are the photos I took last year. I got lucky in that the sun came out around lunchtime the day I got to do some sightseeing.

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As someone who has recently returned to grad school, I must admit that I do take my laptop to class and try to use it appropriately. I will confess to veering off task a couple of times, but I have managed to get back on track quickly. I can see how the laptop could turn into a real distraction if I allowed it to be.

Anyway, it seems that the faculty at Princeton are having some problems with their students’ having laptops in class.

Technology may well turn out to be the new taboo on campus, as professors increasingly worry about laptops in lecture and other pitfalls of the 21st century.

Faculty members and technology experts debated the role of computers on campus yesterday, during the first Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting of the new semester. CPUC and the Office and of Information Technology (OIT) have joined forces to form a Strategic Planning Initiative, which will attempt to address the various uses and misuses of technology in Princeton academics.

Nevertheless, the University recognizes the benefits of laptop access in lecture accompanying its various distractions. Leydon noted that laptops cannot be outlawed from the classroom but must be regulated in some way. “Students learn in many different ways, and we must learn to accommodate that,” she said. “We are certainly not, at this point, looking at a ban on laptop use.”

“The consensus seems to be that it has many deserving functions,” she added, “and our most likely path, if we are to take one at all, is to adopt something similar to an Honor Code in several years’ time — something to put onto course syllabi to remind students to refrain from using laptops during lecture for purposes beyond research of class material.”

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The woodpecker story will not die!! (Nor should it.) I want to see one!

Deep in the bayous of eastern Arkansas, two robotic video cameras keep vigil for an elusive bird, aiming to capture conclusive evidence the ivory-billed woodpecker is not, as long feared, extinct.

Recent sightings have revived hope of the survival of the large and dramatically marked bird, with its characteristic white beak and red crest.

Now the search is on for proof — something scientists hope the robot video cameras can provide.

The cameras are part of a new project funded by the National Science Foundation to create automated observatories that can capture natural behavior in remote settings.

“Our idea is that robots can be useful for advancing science,” said University of California Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

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That is some serious ash.

Click here for the LARGE version

Or click here for the GARGANTUAN version

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Oh yeah, this is really great. Now when we try to make all female dinosaurs for out theme park, some of this frog DNA will probably get mixed in and they’ll start breeding anyway.

Thanks a lot, archeologists.

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XM and Sirius Satellite Radio have announced plans to merge. The deal still has to get approval from various sources, but they are going to give it a shot. My fingers are still crossed that this will happen.

I did post on this a while back and got a couple of good comments. Glenn, if you’re out there, let me know your thoughts!

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