Edubuntu Linux broken?

I have not been having good luck with Edubuntu Linux.  The 3 server CD images I downloaded had errors so it installed with errors.  I managed to get an installing a live CD download to install, but it did not install with the Thin Client server I wanted to use with Edubuntu.  So, I tried adding the package with the server.  As I noted in a previous posts, it did not “just work” “right out of the box” as  some forums said it should.  I even ordered a free server CD from Edubuntu, but it installed with errors.  The CD did not have errors, which means: a) the image is broken b) the Edubuntu is broken or c) my hard drive is dying.  I hope is none of the three, especially c), but I still can’t get a clean install of the thin client server.  Now my LiveCD Edubuntu won’t install either (I/O error #5), which I suspect means the work . . . It’s the hard drive.  I really want Edubuntu to work, but I am about to give up on it as a thin client solution.  I’m going to try a full reformat of the hard drive and give it one last try at a clean install.  After that, I might try OpenSUSE again.

Any advice?

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School Choice / Voucher Debate

Do you know those times when you have had a great response to a conversation you finished 1/2 an hour ago. I’m having that now. I have stopped for lunch on my way back from our Missouri Capitol, Jefferson City. I attended to an MSTA Capitol lobby day to lobby our state legislators.

I talked to my state senator, Gary Nodler. We debated a school voucher bill.

For those international readers, school choice /school vouchers refers to using the tax money that is paid to a public school for a student to pay for private school tuition if the student chooses to attend a private school.

Senator Nodler supported school choice for several reasons.

1. Competition between schools will improve the quality of the schools.
2. It will allow students to escape being “enslaved” in the failing and dysfunctional St. Louis school district (which makes up40% of the population if Missouri).
3. The money belongs to the parents, since they already paid it in taxes.
4. Parents are getting triple-taxed: paying the tax, paying private school tuition, and public schools get a windfall from getting the money for the student but not having to educate the student.

Do you find the arguments convincing? I had some answers then and have some afterthoughts now. Admitted, I did not win this lively debate, but I did enjoy the challenge.

Here are my answers:

1. There is no guarantee that the new choice will be any better than the public school. The senator’s answer was that anything had to be better than the broken St. Louis public schools. Afterthought: Competitions have winner and losers. What do public schools have that public schools do not? Better students and better parents because they do not have to deal with poverty and all the baggage that comes with it. There are excellent teachers in private schools, but there are also excellent teachers in public schools. Many times, the private and public teachers come from the same colleges. Many parents, especially poor and limited English speakers won’t understand the bureaucracy of how to choose another school or even know they have the option.
2. I acknowledged that St. Louis does have a problem with it’s schools and it’s administration. Afterthought: The problems with urban schools are complex and have more to do with cycles of poverty and it’s culture than schools not working hard enough to educate their students. My Carl Junction students are not in St. Louis and attend an excellent school district. The parents of my more affluent students would be more likely to choose a private school than my poor students. Since they would take the money with them, my class size would probably grow larger and I would be left with more poor achieving, special ed, and troublesome students. Does that make our school better? No, it just changes the population of our school. We are already doing our best to educate our students.
3. True parents did pay the money, but doesn’t paying state revenues to religious institutions violate the separation of church and state in the 1st amendment of our Constitution? He answered that our schools started as religious schools and our forefathers intended for religion to be a part of public schools. Afterthought: So the answer is Yes.
4. I oppose taking money away from my students, increasing class sizes, and cutting services our school provides to my students. Afterthoughts: Parents are entitled to their right to choose which school they attend, but they must pay. They are not entitled to take the money spent on my students and give it to religious (not necessarily Christian) schools.

I had more afterthoughts than answers to the debate. Some are along MSTA party lines and some are my own. I found the senator’s reasoning well thought out and convincing. I will have to ponder on this more. Are you convinced? Are your beliefs challenged? I welcome your input.

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@dwarlick Natives are born dig…

@dwarlick Natives are born digital, but it says nothing about how they should behave. Citizens have digital rights and responsibilities.

That was my first ever tweet on Twitter.  It was in response to David Warlick’s tweet “ Just because they’re digital natives, does that automatically make them digital citizens? How do digital immigrants become citizens?”  I didn’t realize that it would put my tweet right into my blog.

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What are the best practices in teaching?

What are the best practices of teaching. This top ten list of best principles of learning comes from New Zealand is the summary of a full report that is a synthesis of research-based teaching practices.

Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES) - Education Counts

1. Quality teaching is focused on student achievement (including social outcomes) and facilities high standards of student outcomes for heterogeneous groups of students. Research-based characteristics.
learning processes. Research-based characteristics are specific to curriculum context and the prior knowledge and experiences of the learners.
2. Pedagogical practices enable classes and other learning groupings to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.
3. Effective links are created between school and other cultural contexts in which students are socialised, to facilitate learning.
4. Quality teaching is responsive to student learning processes.
5. Opportunity to learn is effective and sufficient. Research-based characteristics
6. Multiple task contexts support learning cycles. Research-based characteristics
7. Curriculum goals, resources including ICT usage, task design, teaching and school practices are effectively Research-based characteristics
8. Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students’ task engagement. Research-based characteristics
9. Pedagogy promotes learning orientations, student self-regulation, metacognitive strategies and thoughtful student discourse. Research-based characteristics
10. Teachers and students engage constructively in goal-oriented assessment.

I found the study on a link from Tom Hoffman’s presentation at a educon2.0 workshop on the Coalition of Essential Schools Ten Common Principles The ten principles are:

Tuttle SVC: The Historical Role of the CES Common Principles

1. Learning to use one’s mind well
2. Less is More, depth over coverage
3. Goals apply to all students
4. Personalization
5. Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
6. Demonstration of mastery
7. A tone of decency and trust
8. Commitment to the entire school
9. Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
10. Democracy and equity

Lists don’t do as much for me as stories. I’ll look for stories that will help illustrate what best practices in teaching look like.

My thinking so far on best practices includes:

1. Helping my students be the best they can be, whether they want to of not.
2. Make learning centered around the student, not around the textbook.
3. Cooperative learning makes learning fun, and helps everyone in the group to learn more if done properly. Kagan cooperative learning structures are an excellent, but proprietary example.
4. Hands-on, minds-on learning is the best for all students.
5. It’s Ok for learning to be fun. Games focused on objectives are a fun way to reinforce learning.
6. Technology tools can amplify learning if used to categorize/organize, communicate, collaborate, and create.

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HB1314 in MO, USA seeks to Criminalize Social Networking with Students

Did a little more research into a post I did last week called Missouri is Criminalizing Social Networking with Students. Here is an except from a summary of the bill.

HB1314C-PROTECTIONS FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN

By January 1, 2009, school districts must establish policies on teacher-student and employee-student communication, to cover oral and nonverbal communication and appropriate use of electronic media, with a policy covering use of social networking sites to prohibit teachers from maintaining a work-related Internet site unless it is publicly available on at least one open-access network and to prohibit a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access to current or former students.

Does that mean that my Think.com site that is password protected to protect my student’s safety would be illegal? Would it then have to be publicly available to every stranger on the internet? Or does it just mean that it has to be maintained on our district network, which is one more hassle for an already overworked IT staff?

What does “open-access network” mean?

162.069. 1. Every school district shall, by January 1, 2009, promulgate a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communication. Such policy shall contain at least the following elements: (1) Appropriate oral and nonverbal personal communication, which may be combined with or included in any policy on sexual harassment; and (2) Appropriate use of electronic media such as text messaging and Internet sites for both instructional and personal purposes, with an element concerning use of social networking sites no less stringent than the provisions of subsections 2, 3, and 4 of this section. 2. As used in this section, the following terms shall mean: (1) “Exclusive access”, the information on the web site is
available only to the owner (teacher) and user (student) by mutual explicit consent and where third parties have no access to the information on the web site absent an explicit consent agreement with the owner (teacher); (2) “Former student”, any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated; (3) “Nonwork-related Internet site”, any Internet web site or web pages used by a teacher primarily for personal purposes and not for educational purposes; (4) “Work-related Internet site”, any Internet web site or web pages used by a teacher for educational purposes. 3. No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related Internet site unless such site is publically available on at least one open access network. 4. No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student.

I still don’t know what the pivot term Open Access Network means? I seems to have something to do with wireless internet access, but what does that have to do with social networks?

I also have privacy concerns about legislating school district policy
restricting my online, non-school related activity. If I allow my
students’ families to access to pictures on flickr
of my non-school related summer vacation (which would be restricted so
that stranger out there couldn’t see my children) I would be breaking
the law. What? <:o It is not directly school-related, but it
would be off school-time and it would allow my student’s families to
get to know me better. I would never harm my students, but this bill
treats me just the same as a child abuser. I understand that intent of
the bill, but that restriction goes too far. It is an unconstitutional
restriction on the control of my privacy. I do not leave my privacy
right at the school-house gate when I enter or leaver the school.

This legislator doesn’t seem to understand how social networks work in schools, and so seeks to ban it all. This bill tries to shape the future of School 2.0 by preventing it instead of directing it.

The two prohibitions on non-school related and school related web sites need to be taken out. This would then be a pretty good bill.

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