This is a wonderful walkthrough by Fraser Speirs on how his school (Cedars School of Excellence in the UK)implemented an "iPad for Every Student" initiative and some of the resulting reflections the school has made. I'm prodding my beloved Spartanburg Day School to do the same (at an annoyingly daily rate, I'm sure). However, I was arrested for a moment when I came to this passage in the post...

An iPad for every child | Tablets | Macworld: "We are now at the stage where the iPad is embedded in the way we do business at the school. When we first started, we thought we could guard against misuse by threatening to take away the child’s iPad for a day or so. It turns out that doing so would now completely break the school day for that child. We might as well make them sit in the hallway and face the wall for the entire day. I did not expect that we would reach that point so soon."

I hadn't really considered how integrated a tool like an iPad could become to a classroom or a school. I have a "class" iPad that we use but we've only begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities and being that there's only one to go around, it's more difficult for students to dig deeper than note taking or quick reference searches with the device (although more and more students are getting iPads and bringing them to school). However, I've purposely gone half the year now without renting the "laptop carts" which carry 18 white Macbooks for class. I have a very liberal policy when it comes to technology in my classroom (allow iPods, earbuds, iPads, mobiles... and even Androids to be used at a student's discretion), but I don't want the students to feel as if the laptops are a crutch to fall back on when we need to find material, make a connection or prove a point. I guess that's the same reason I keep a "mimimalist" look to my classroom with as few things on the wall etc as possible. It's a science lab, but we're just meeting in that room temporarily. I don't want my students (or myself) to get fooled by the notion that the room itself is where science happens. Instead, I want them to look out the window at the beautiful dogwood just outside my classroom and realize that is their true classroom where all the lab supplies lie. Everything in my classroom is very modular and utilitarian. The laptops could certainly serve as part of that utilitarian design, but I'd rather let student discretion and need drive the decision to use the web or an IM or a text message rather than saying, "Today, we will use the internet!" for a lesson. I'm moving to a larger room next year with proper lab tables, gas lines, a chemical closet (and even an office). It will be interesting to see if my thinking changes then. Regardless, I wonder if/when my dream of having iPads deployed across our school happens if we'll have the same sudden realization about their essential nature to our character as a school. I also wonder about the ramifications if that does happen?

I love Apple and I agree with Steve Jobs when he says his devices (like the iPad) are revolutionary. However, this thing could be really revolutionary in schools for a number of reasons. Of course it's just a tool, but it's a tool that solves a couple of problems that we've been hashing over in our little bubble of education for a while.

Introducing The NEW Sharpie LIQUID PENCIL | Sharpie Markers Official Blog

The end of pencil sharpeners?? I for one welcome our new liquid graphite tools.

Personally, I'm not sure which I'm more over... Facebook or news sites that split up relatively short articles over multiple pages to increase page views.

The five stages of Facebook grief - Computerworld: A gaming site called Roiworld surveyed 600 teenagers and found that 20% of teens have either dropped Facebook or are using it less. Of those who have abandoned Facebook altogether, 43% say it's because there are "too many adults or older people," their parents are on Facebook or because they're concerned about privacy.

Thank goodness for RSS and Safari's Reader feature to help me avoid both (scams that prey upon human nature) as much as possible. /rant

I've had the "samharrelson.com" domain since 2006 and I've used it as the primary site of my personal blog since that time. I've also had my personal email there (along with a set of paid Google Apps which I've just recently moved away from). However, I started considering whether or not I could move my family to some sort of .harrelson domain that would stay in our family's possession, complete with backend storage for photos, files and memories. That would eliminate my/our reliance on corporations promising not to be evil or companies willing to brashly make decisions for me. Also, I'm looking to do something along similar lines with student blogs/digital portfolios in my 8th Grade Science class over at Griffin Science. Basically, I'd like to equip each student with a subdomain that would have either a Wordpress install or point to a blogging/site service of the student's choosing. So, each kid would have sam.griffinscience.com for perpetuity (if they'd like) but they'd certainly be able to have a copy of their work for the year. So, I came up with the harrelson.fm (on a Media Temple server) idea as sort of a test bed for GriffinScience as well as a way to scratch the indy itch I've had about my family's data. On Twitter, Margaret made the excellent suggestion that .fm could be short for ".family" which I think is just fantastic. If you check out harrelson.fm, you'll see links to Anna, our daughters (and my parents in the coming days). They've each got a large web disk that's triple backed up online and offline, an email account like sam@harrelson.fm and they can either have a blog/site install or go with a cname pointer (which is what Anna did). We also have a family calendar up (nifty Webcalendar install) as well as a family photo gallery and a shared file for docs, budgets, etc. I also get to admin my parents' email and sites/blogs (hope they do blog). I'm excited to see how this works and eventually how it works for GriffinScience. I'm a firm believer in having a central (and independent... corporate free) hub of presence on the web. Hopefully this will be my answer. Now if I can only get in on Dave Winer's Scripting2 experiment so I can take things to a whole different level of blogging and presence! 04e149af6db14524b6ce47d8b22e9b84

Apple's new ad unit promoting awareness of its FaceTime feature of iPhone 4 is remarkable in many ways. First, there's the striking simplicity of the presentation of complex emotions. There's also the lack of the iPhone being mentioned by name in the ad, but instead used as a utility or appliance (in this case with a "revolutionary" feature). Of course, video conferencing is nothing new (Skype, Nokia and Google Chat have all made use of the paradigm for the last few years) and I've spent my time video chatting with my daughter over the past year while teaching an hour and a half away from my home. As a result, perhaps what is most striking is the music choice behind the ad... Armstrong's "When You're Smiling." The song has enough cultural reference (even global culture as we'll see in a second) to elicit an emotional response and a feeling of connection or familiarity with a new device. The song itself makes use of familiar devices (such as chord progression and bridges) that were well established jazz fundamentals. However, I was most curious as to how the song has been used in advertising spots before Apple. What fascinated me the most were the range of intended emotions in the various ad spots. Apple's Facetime ad differs dramatically from some of these prior uses: First, Lebanon's MEA: Comfort? Security? Smile more at airports? Next, Coca Cola used the song in a 1999 Mexican ad spot to present a campaign to "Drink the Good Thing" (high fructose corn syrup FTW!): Coke will make you happy and all of your problems will go away (but watch out for the braces)! Of course the song has also been used for humor (as in Seinfeld). I'm constantly amazed at the depth and complexity of what seems to be a very simple concept (a song in an ad). However, as Apple (Steve Jobs) seems to be well aware, it's that complexity of emotions that can turn a device into a must have gadget.

What if Google designed a school? What if Apple designed a school? What if I designed a school?

Or Options 2, 3 or 4 Option 2: Option 3: Option 4 (my fav at the moment): The font is "Bouncer" from Fenotype. The font has a certain 60's playfulness that conjures Paul Rand (at least for me).

I have grand illusions of starting a Middle School (or perhaps sculpting a Middle School) where children (and their parents) in traditional 5th-8th grades would be challenged to think critically and become relevant and informed citizens. A part of that dream is the recognition that the demands placed on the teachers would be extreme. Our current 19th century Industrial Era school system does not fit that vision and only complicates the ability of people who have a similar-minded folks who'd like to change America by making better local schools. So, it's always promising to see results from studies that are seeking out a better way. However, what I find the most telling about this report in Mother Jones is that "scalability" comes into play:

KIPP: A Limited Educational Success Story | Mother Jones: "But there's always a 'but,' isn't there? And there are a couple of them here. First, although this study design is solid — it compares kids who got into KIPP schools via lottery with kids who applied but didn't get in — it's still the case that these are kids who applied to KIPP schools. All by itself that means they and their parents are part of the upper fraction who care about education and are willing to put in the work that KIPP demands of families. That's a limited set. Second, there aren't very many KIPP schools, and their structure is a built-in reason for this: KIPP schools demand a lot of their teachers, who work very long hours and are required to be on call at all times. They pay a bit more for this, but only a bit, and this isn't a model that scales well. You can always find a small cadre of dedicated young teachers willing to put up with this, but you're never going to find the hundreds of thousands you'd need to make this work on a large scale."

I'll say this (loudly): SCALABILITY IS IRRELEVANT. Scalability is especially irrelevant in the local school setting. While I do appreciate what the KIPP program is doing and I aim to copy their schedule (7:30-5:00pm including weekends and summer schooling), I'm not an adherent of their more rote and disciplinary methods. That said, we do need a vast change in how we teach our children. The United States cannot rely on our broken public (and private) education system to continue the trend we are on (emphasis on 19th century skills and standardized public tests) because NO education is standard. Let's change the world by realizing the mistakes of the education industry (and I don't use that word lightly) that so mis-informed my generation and instead ignoring scalability and practicality in preference of applicability and local needs (which are mainly covered by the need for critical-thinking citizens).

Paul Rand (one of my heroes):

"Perception—how we see something—is always conditioned by what we are looking for, and why. In this way we are always faced with questions of value. A turbine must be "scientifically" designed in order to operate, but to design it at all was at one time a matter of decision. Such decisions mayor may not be based on needs, but they are surely based on wants. Products do not have to be beautifully designed. Things can be made and marketed without our considering their aesthetic aspects, ads can convince without pleasing or heightening the spectator's visual awareness. But should they? The world of business could, at least for a while, function without benefit of art—but should it? I think not, if only for the simple reason that the world would be a poorer place if it did."

I'm really enjoying being back on a self-hosted Wordpress powered blog. Sure, having upgrades and bandwidth issues taken care of behind-the-scenes is nice, but there's nothing like plowing through a sidebars.php file or questioning what you really want in a header or footer file. Plus, I love Coda and Textmate and MarsEdit, which are the primary tools I use to sculpt out this digital David (it's a work in progress). One of the toughest parts of finding Wordpress (or blog in general) nirvana, of course, is nailing the right theme. To be honest, I can't stand busy themes (or classrooms or office spaces). My design ethic is definitely minimalistic. However, finding that perfect minimalistic blog is so challenging. I've been toying with the ultra-thin "mnmlist" theme here. It does what I want a theme to do; focus the reader on the content and allow for the reader to formulate their own experience with the text rather than be constrained by an experience I am attempting to thrust upon them with chicklets, images and heat-map derived colors. I'm going to give this theme and this experiment a try. There will be a little tweaking here and there as I break in these new shoes, but feel free to let me know your thoughts (sam@samharrelson.com or Twitter work fine).