Month: February 2005

The new report contends the law leads to unintended consequences and that the federal government is indifferent to them – the lowering of academic standards, increasing segregation in school and the driving away of top teachers from needy schools. It claims the government is also violating the Constitution by coercing state compliance.

Chair of the House Education Committee (John Boehner) claims states want the money, but not the high standards that come with it.

Associated Press Article
CNN analysis

Committe Executive Summary

I have decided to turn off the comment option. While I can prevent spammer comments from being presented as part of the blog, I cannot prevent the accumulation of spam comments waiting for my approval. The automatic spam generation programs create a large volume of traffic that is of no value and slows down server functions.

I would be happy to read your comments if you send them to me directly.

Academics are beginning to think carefully about the potential value of blogs. I value the work of those who can structure information and ideas in ways that are complete and meaningful.

Here is a paper from Martin R??ll that offers a nice perspective on the value of blogs for knowledge workers.

The ipodlounge has a nice article on podcasting. Who is doing it? What does it take if I want to do it myself? Were is this activity going? Nice summary that answers a lot of questions.

eSchool News reports Taskstream intends to invite 50,000 high school students to sign up for a two-year research study intended to evaluate the value of eportfolios. Students will be provided free access to the eportfolio software. School districts and states are invited to propose projects.

The folks who oversee the development of web standards are involved in a dispute that will shape the future of the web as we know it. As the web takes on an every increasing role in many facets of life, there is a natural tendancy to expect more – to want the web to be capable of more powerful things. An important area of growth might be described as interactivity – how information can be exchanged between the user, the server, and other applications. (Note: You are getting my interpretation here so you might want to explore my sources.).

The basic mechanism for passing information is the form. You know forms as the text boxes and buttons you select to enter information or choices. Forms also convey information you cannot see – in this case this is a good thing and not some sinister hacker tactic.

The basic question is how to move beyond present capabilities. The controversy stems from companies pushing proprietary solutions – new capabilities that will work with one operating system, one browser, etc.

It seems possible that to move ahead to new capabilities we will move backward to a time when certain web sites and services will only work with certain software/operating systems.

ZDnet article

NPR has an audio piece on Wikipedia. At issue is the quality of Wikipedia as a resource for students and the general idea of Open Source.