Blurts

This article from the Wall Street Journal describes the decision of some states and districts to just end the school year instead of trying to finish the year online. [As an aside, I know this article is behind a pay wall and you may not have a subscription. I would recommend the Apple News subscription as a remedy. You get access to multiple magazines and several papers including WSJ for $10 a month.] The states include Texas, Georgia, and D.C.. I understand that teachers had little time to prepare, many students lack the necessary equipment and bandwidth, parents struggle to assist, etc.. I also understand that stopping a few weeks early will not be catastrophic in the big scheme of things. Our family lived through an early closure 20 or so years ago when Grand Forks, ND, was completely flooded and the city was shut down for months. There are circumstances that warrant giving up for the year.

Still, I wouldn’t have shut down. I would have reduced demands and expectations and carried on. What if this is not the end and it is not practical to open as normal in the Fall? The same challenges will exist in the Fall and states, districts, educators, and parents will have had no experience to draw on. It is possible budgets in the Fall will be even worse than at present. It is possible there will not be new money to provide devices and hot spots for families presently in need. It is possible that state budgets will require cutbacks in school personnel and funds for the purchase of curriculum materials designed for technology-based delivery. It is possible there will not be funds to bring educators back a month early to prepare for online instruction. Why not use the present as a time to explore and develop resources?

I think it very possible the time we are living through will generate permanent changes in many industries and the new normal will not be the same as the previous normal. Exploration, research and development, or whatever you want to call the invest in exploring options is desirable even in fields that are resistant to change (education). I think many states are passing up an opportunity.

As the competition between many to many video services has ramped up, Google is making Google Meet available to all users (not just those participating in a GSuite program). The present capacity is 100 participants for unlimited interaction, but Google suggests it may cut the time limit back to one hour at the end of September.

If you have tried Google Meet don’t expect it to just start working, the service will be rolled out and you should enroll to be notified using this link

Wunderlist was my todo app. Maybe you don’t use a todo app and I admit I used one only when deep into a project and wanting to keep track of specific things I needed to do. Wunderlist was free, but there are other free todo apps. What I liked about Wunderlist was that it could be installed as a Chrome extension and it would appear any time you opened a blank tab. This seemed to be a great way for me to remind myself that I had a todo list and what happened to be on it. It was not intrusive. Most of the time I was not interested and I would just enter the address I wanted to view and that site would be loaded.

Wunderlist was purchased by Microsoft. You can migrate your Wunderlist todos to Microsoft To Do, but I want an approach integrated into Chrome. The new MicroSoft product linked from the old Wunderlist address is nice looking, but a standalone product.

I have switched to Chrome extension called Checklist for Google Tasks. It seems crude in appearance, but it works. It is triggered by a menubar icon that drops down a space within which are the todo items.

I encourage teachers I work with to write, read, and make use of blogs in their classrooms. Typically, my recommended platforms are Blogger or WordPress. I recently became aware that SeeSaw includes an embedded class blog tool. This tool allows control of public access, teacher moderation, and control of commenting. The video that follows provides a simple description of this tool.

YouTube offers age-grouped collections of videos for children and adolescents through a version of YouTube labeled YouTube Kids. Before I go further I acknowledge that some have issues with this program. There are two issues; a) videos may contain ads and b) videos may be inappropriate. People have various views on how serious these issues are. Google claims it selects videos carefully for the different age groups served by YouTube kids. Google also claims the same for the ads. It is possible to use the service without ads and to designate what channels children can see, but the best of these controls requires participation in a paid plan. What I describe below is the fee (ad supported) plan.

A parent or guardian sets up a YouTube Kids account. There are a couple of settings to consider at this point – a) the age group of the child and b) whether you want to allow searches.

The video access screen looks like this. Across the top are icons for movies, music, and educational content. The content associated with a selected category appears below. This account has been set up to allow searches. The two red boxes offer a parent/guardian options. The lock icon allows adjustments to the settings for a particular child. The icon in the left shows the history of videos viewed. If for some reason content that has been viewed does not meet parental approval, there is a way to block content from that channel.

In the lower right-hand corner of the image for most video channels, you should see three dots. Selecting this icon allows the channel to be blocked.

Adults may have a different reaction toward children viewing ads than toward their own exposure to ads. Perhaps adults might try to block all ads. Note that Google does offer the opportunity to subscribe to a service that blocks YouTube ads. I have this service as a secondary benefit of paying for Google Play Music. When blocking ads it is important to consider that ads provide revenue for Google and for some content creators. The subscription option provides an alternate way to support these services.