From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 09:17:41 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Tue Nov 2 09:47:09 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] a new blog Message-ID: Dr. Scott McLeod, who is on the TouchSmart Publishing advisory board has started a new blog. Below is the guidance from him regarding it... As you know, it's impossible to keep on top of all of the information sources (listservs, newsletters, bulletins, magazines, journals, web sites, etc.) that have information on school technology leadership issues. Some are from the ed tech arena, some cater to ed leadership folks, some are random education sources, etc. So... we're starting a blog. The idea behind the blog is that school leaders (principals, superintendents, district tech coordinators, CTOs, CIOs, media specialists, etc.) and educational leadership faculty will be able to go to one place, the blog, to stay up-to-date regarding current school technology leadership news, events, and issues. The blog will utilize multiple authors and will draw from a multitude of sources. By spreading the information monitoring and posting load, we can have a powerfully current information source without overly burdening one or a few individuals. The blog will be located at ??http://www.schooltechleadershipblog.org If you go there now, you'll see our test posts. The blog will officially start on Nov. 10, so if you're interested in being a blog author, please complete the online signup form by Sunday, Nov. 7: ?? http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB223W5M3FC3X Thanks! SCOTT ============ ABOUT THE STLI Administrative leadership may be the single most important factor affecting schools? successful integration of technology. The University of Minnesota School Technology Leadership Initiative (STLI) was created to help address the critical nationwide shortage of administrators who can effectively facilitate the implementation of technology in schools and school districts. The STLI graduate certificate is the first and only academic program in the country to comprehensively address the breadth and depth of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) and has been found by the American Institutes for Research to have statistically significant effects on students? technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. Our students are superintendents, principals, technology coordinators, media specialists, teachers, and other educators. More information on the STLI, including application materials and curricular info, is available at www.schooltechleadership.org. STLI POSTSECONDARY PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM (P3) Could your local university educational administration preparation program use some help preparing future administrators to understand technology leadership issues? You might want to encourage them to become involved in our Postsecondary Partnership Program (P3). P3 is an opportunity for other educational leadership preparation programs to receive assistance with their technology-related preservice and inservice training of school administrators. Departments selected for P3 receive 1) license-free access to STLI course descriptions, syllabi, lesson plans, reading lists, classroom activities, teaching techniques, and electronic learning objects for the duration of the partnership; 2) access to the STLI?s growing library of school technology leadership resources; 3) regular updates regarding current school technology leadership topics and recently released technology leadership resources; and 4) a free site visit to the University of Minnesota to meet with the STLI project team and members of its support network. The deadline for applications is noon, December 1, 2004. More information about P3 is available at ?? http://www.schooltechleadership.org/page.cfm?p=8 ====================== Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D. University of Minnesota Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Policy and Administration Project Director, School Technology Leadership Initiative Affiliate Faculty, Law School Attorney at Law 330 Wulling Hall 86 Pleasant Street SE Minneapolis, MN 55455-0221 (612) 626-0768 (office) (612) 624-3377 (fax) mcleod@umn.edu www.umn.edu/~mcleod www.schooltechleadership.org --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4798 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/6cac9767/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 23:01:17 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Tue Nov 2 23:01:03 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Press Release Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20041102230055.019a5fc8@pop3.mail.wowway.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Present Touch User Interface (TUI) Technology for Education at AACE Conference TouchSmart Publishing LLC is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. regarding the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology for education. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 1, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced it is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, Room 7. When: 430pm EST, November 3rd, 2004. Jason Barkeloo, President and founder of TouchSmart Publishing will present ?Connecting to Digital Content Through Textbooks: Introducing the Touch User Interface (TUI) Textbook that Bridges the Digital Divide.? This paper and demonstration will attempt to show how the TUI may bridge the digital disconnect as described by Doug Levin and Sousan Arafeh in ?The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools? (2002). Barkeloo says that ?the five primary reasons for the digital disconnect as articulated by Levin and Arafeh may be overcome with this technology. This paper and demonstration will attempt to show the digital divide bridging effect of the TUI.? The discussion and presentation will show the promise of decreasing the cost of textbooks while inversely increasing the amount of content. The TUI can connect multiple learning styles and disabilities to digital content that is warehoused on optical media as well as hard-drives. The TUI turns the textbook into a remote control. According to Barkeloo, ?the E-Learn Conference is one of the finest international electronic learning forums with over seventy countries represented and more than a thousand participants. I am excited that we were selected to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? He added, ?This technology may well meet many of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) mandates.? Co-author and TouchSmart Publishing co-founder, Kathleen MacMahon, DVM claims, ?Many more students may educationally benefit as a result of this technology. Presenting science educational content by pressing pictures and words in a textbook brings a new meaning to ?let your fingers do the walking?. When I taught college-level biology and anatomy and physiology I think the students would have benefited from a multi-sensory presentation approach. Dr. MacMahon finished by saying that ?Reading about the four-chambered heart is taken to a new level when the student can press the picture of the cardiac muscle in the book and it is presented as a audio/video on a monitor or television.? Barkeloo continued that, ?Dr. MacMahon is a world-class researcher. I am pleased that she has chosen to be involved with this endeavor to make delivery of educational content more effective and efficient for students, especially those with special needs or socioeconomic disadvantages.? Barkeloo concluded ?as Dr. MacMahon indicated, presenting an audio/video clip on the screen directly from the textbook has promise to make learning more exciting. When you consider that Braille imprint on the pages can lead to auditory-only content for those students with visual impairments, or that the audio/video can be complete with sub-captions or American Sign Language for those with auditory impairments, I am excited about the prospect of this technology bridging the digital divide.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is a developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are currently connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. Over 1,000 participants from 70 Countries attend. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org/conf/elearn Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/69ab9d9f/attachment.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 22:56:28 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 3 00:30:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] (no subject) Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20041102225552.019fbbd0@pop3.mail.wowway.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Present Touch User Interface (TUI) Technology for Education at AACE Conference TouchSmart Publishing LLC is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. regarding the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology for education. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 1, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced it is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, Room 7. When: 430pm EST, November 3rd, 2004. Jason Barkeloo, President and founder of TouchSmart Publishing will present ?Connecting to Digital Content Through Textbooks: Introducing the Touch User Interface (TUI) Textbook that Bridges the Digital Divide.? This paper and demonstration will attempt to show how the TUI may bridge the digital disconnect as described by Doug Levin and Sousan Arafeh in ?The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools? (2002). Barkeloo says that ?the five primary reasons for the digital disconnect as articulated by Levin and Arafeh may be overcome with this technology. This paper and demonstration will attempt to show the digital divide bridging effect of the TUI.? The discussion and presentation will show the promise of decreasing the cost of textbooks while inversely increasing the amount of content. The TUI can connect multiple learning styles and disabilities to digital content that is warehoused on optical media as well as hard-drives. The TUI turns the textbook into a remote control. According to Barkeloo, ?the E-Learn Conference is one of the finest international electronic learning forums with over seventy countries represented and more than a thousand participants. I am excited that we were selected to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? He added, ?This technology may well meet many of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) mandates.? Co-author and TouchSmart Publishing co-founder, Kathleen MacMahon, DVM claims, ?Many more students may educationally benefit as a result of this technology. Presenting science educational content by pressing pictures and words in a textbook brings a new meaning to ?let your fingers do the walking?. When I taught college-level biology and anatomy and physiology I think the students would have benefited from a multi-sensory presentation approach. Dr. MacMahon finished by saying that ?Reading about the four-chambered heart is taken to a new level when the student can press the picture of the cardiac muscle in the book and it is presented as a audio/video on a monitor or television.? Barkeloo continued that, ?Dr. MacMahon is a world-class researcher. I am pleased that she has chosen to be involved with this endeavor to make delivery of educational content more effective and efficient for students, especially those with special needs or socioeconomic disadvantages.? Barkeloo concluded ?as Dr. MacMahon indicated, presenting an audio/video clip on the screen directly from the textbook has promise to make learning more exciting. When you consider that Braille imprint on the pages can lead to auditory-only content for those students with visual impairments, or that the audio/video can be complete with sub-captions or American Sign Language for those with auditory impairments, I am excited about the prospect of this technology bridging the digital divide.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is a developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are currently connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. Over 1,000 participants from 70 Countries attend. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org/conf/elearn Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/f79152b2/attachment.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 08:55:43 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 3 11:29:15 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Purdue and Touchsmart Message-ID: <2881.131.167.74.168.1099490143.squirrel@131.167.74.168> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled ?Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.? This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing?s President, Jason Barkeloo ?The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? Barkeloo added, ?Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.? Dr. Mott finished by saying ?The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 09:07:27 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 3 11:29:31 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Touchsmart to Present at E-Learn with Purdue Professor Message-ID: <60151.66.42.143.210.1099490847.squirrel@66.42.143.210> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled ?Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.? This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing?s President, Jason Barkeloo ?The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? Barkeloo added, ?Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.? Dr. Mott finished by saying ?The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 10:09:01 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 3 11:35:28 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Touchsmart to Present at E-Learn with Purdue Professor Message-ID: <20041103150901.49183.qmail@web61102.mail.yahoo.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 – TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled “Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.” This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing’s President, Jason Barkeloo “The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.” Barkeloo added, “Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.” Dr. Mott finished by saying “The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.” For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com/a -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041103/ac5cd116/attachment.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 8 10:48:57 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Mon Nov 8 10:49:16 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] CAST workshops Message-ID: To all: I received the following newsletter of CAST workshops. I have highlighted those workshops that are of extreme value to some in this forum. I have been to CAST and they have a beautiful facility. Their researchers are tops in the field. Bottom line: Worthwhile if you go. Best Regards, jb > CAST to Lead Centers that Improve, Implement National Instructional > Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). Read about this significant > step forward for students with disabilities. Read CAST?s press release here and Read NIMAS, related documents here > New and exciting Professional Development Opportunities CAST Institutes are two-, or three-day sessions that offer information, awareness, and hands-on activities, focusing on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and other important educational issues. Each institute features presentations from experts on UDL and other CAST professional development staff. Institutes have a maximum of 24 participants which allows for small group work, hands-on technology (one computer to two participants), individualized support from CAST staff, and direct application to participants? practice. All institutes are held at CAST in Wakefield Massachusetts, a suburb approximately 15 miles north of downtown Boston and convenient to public transportation. ? For more information contact: Grace Meo, gmeo@cast.org or call 781-245-2212, ext. 263 To register contact: Leslie O?Callaghan at locallaghan@cast.org or 781-245-2212, ext. 273 Register online at http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=2417 ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 01 Universal Design for Learning and Post Secondary Education Featured Presenters: Tracey Hall and Skip Stahl Dates: January 31-February 1, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: Post-secondary Faculty Cost: $620 Faculties from institutions of higher education are invited to learn about the principles of UDL and application to post secondary practice. This institute focuses on applying the UDL principles to the development of course materials, syllabi, assessments and goals to meet the needs of learners with diverse needs, backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities. ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 02 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: February 10-11, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 03 Universal Design for Learning and Data-Driven Decision Making Featured Presenters: Bart Pisha and Grace Meo Dates: March 10-11, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute will appeal to educators interested in learning to use classroom level data reflecting student learning to inform their everyday teaching.? Key topics to be addressed will include Universal Design for Learning, Action Research, and data collection strategies. ?A major focus of this institute will be the use of hand held computers (also known as PDAs) such as Palm, Sony Cli?, or iPAQ to collect and analyze classroom data.? -------------------------------------------------?? ? Institute #: 04 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: April 7-8, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 05 Universal Design for Learning and Struggling Readers Featured Presenters: Bridget Dalton and Patrick Proctor Dates: April 25-26, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute is designed to provide educators at the upper elementary, middle and high school levels with an understanding of Universal Design for Learning and application of principles to literacy skills of struggling readers. The content of the workshop draws from research based practices in literacy and strategic instruction. Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, strategies, and methods that support struggling readers as they ?read to learn.? ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 06 Universal Design for Learning and Post Secondary Education Featured Presenters: Tracey Hall and Skip Stahl Dates: June 2-3, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: Post-secondary Faculty Cost: $620 Faculties from institutions of higher education are invited to learn about the principles of UDL and application to post secondary practice. This institute focuses on applying the UDL principles to the development of course materials, syllabi, assessments and goals to meet the needs of learners with diverse needs, backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 07 What does Brain Research Tell Us about Learner Differences? Featured Presenter: David H. Rose Dates: June 16-17, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All Educators Cost: $620 In this institute, participants will learn how brain research when viewed from an educational perspective can illuminate and refine an understanding of differences between learners.? With an understanding of learner differences, participants will learn how to design educational experiences to meet individual needs. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 08 Universal Design for Learning and Literacy for English Language Learners Featured Presenter: Patrick Proctor Dates: June 27-28, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute is designed for educators who face the challenge of making literacy accessible for English Language Learners. Participants will learn about the principles of UDL and its application to literacy curriculum for English Language learners.? Issues related to cross-language relationships, language learning differences, immigration, and inclusive teacher practices will be discussed. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 09 Universal Design for Learning and Math Featured Presenter: Boo Murray Dates: July 7-8, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 The institute is appropriate for educators who teach mathematics. Participants will learn about Universal Design for Learning, barriers in the math curriculum, and strategies to make the math curriculum accessible. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 10 Cognitive Disabilities, Literacy, and Strategy Instruction Featured Presenters: Peggy Coyne and Grace Meo Dates: July 13?15, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 2 Educators Cost: $930 This institute is specifically designed for teams of kindergarten ? grade 2 educators and is designed to support the emergent literacy for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the framework for the Institute. Participants learn to apply UDL to the development of curriculum that supports emergent literacy. Participants will use varied technologies to support emergent literacy and will learn to apply these technologies to the development of supported literacy materials. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 11 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: July 27-29, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 12 Shaking Up the Classroom:? Using UDL to Engage All Learners in an Interdisciplinary Unit Featured Presenters: Patti Ganley, Jeremy Price, and Amy Ingalls Dates: August 3-5, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 Bring in learning goals you have found challenging for your students, and leave with a plan to reach the diverse learners in your classroom.? Guided by the principles of Universal Design for Learning and focused on designing interdisciplinary curriculum units, this institute will engage and connect educators with strategies, tools, methods, techniques, and each other, to develop a usable curriculum unit that addresses the diverse needs of all learners and meets local standards. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 13 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: August 24-26, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. Newsletter Archive ------------------------------- This issue: http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=5344 Online archive of the Consortium newsletters ? take a look at back issues that highlight varied topics for providing access to the general education curriculum for all learners: http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=1100 ------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your interest in CAST and our work. It is our intention to send this newsletter to individuals who have requested to receive it. If you believe you are receiving this in error or wish to no longer receive it, you can unsubscribe by sending a message to natconsortium@cast.org with a subject of "unsubscribe consortium". Grace J. Meo Co-Director of the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning mailto:gmeo@cast.org http://www.cast.org --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 12894 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041108/7dd181a3/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 8 18:12:02 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Mon Nov 8 18:12:15 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] must have technologies for schools Message-ID: <9942B61E-31DB-11D9-99FE-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> CoSN profiles 'must-have' technologies By Corey Murray, Assistant Editor, eSchool News November 4, 2004 Datacasting, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, student web logs (blogs), and intelligent essay graders are among a dozen technologies likely to emerge as must-have solutions in the nation's schools, according to a report unveiled Nov. 3 by the Washington, D.C.-based Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The third in a series of CoSN-sponsored reports dedicated to emerging technologies, "Hot Technologies for K-12 Schools" examines the usefulness of such heretofore little-known technologies in schools and begins to explore how such innovations might be used to transform learning in the 21st century. To develop the guide, CoSN's Emerging Technologies Committee (ETC) initially identified five key educational issues schools are facing today--the instructional process, assessment and evaluation, diverse learning styles, the building of communities, and improving the efficiency of school administration. In considering which technologies to include, the report's authors devised a list of technologies they felt would not only make a fundamental impact on education, but would be economically and financially feasible enough for schools to begin integrating sometime in the very near future. "Most schools embracing technology today have primarily focused on its deployment for administrative purposes or for the back office," said Keith Krueger, CoSN's chief executive officer, in a statement. "Our hope is that this guide will provide technology leaders with a strategic understanding of technologies that can truly transform their schools over the next three to five years." On the instructional front, one technology that is just beginning to crop up in schools is datacasting. A descendant of streaming video, which enables students to view snippets of teacher-selected educational videos from their desktops, datacasting provides similar capabilities--but with higher-quality results, says Gene Broderson, director of education for the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Unlike streaming video--which has been criticized for hogging precious bandwidth across school networks and sometimes appearing blurred and sluggish, Broderson said--datacasting enables students to view content in full-screen, broadcast-quality video and sound. Instead of streaming videos directly to students' desktops, Broderson said, datacasting lets educators download whatever content they need to a central server, so it can be accessed whenever it's needed. Often, he said, the videos are accompanied by corresponding lesson plans, interactive student assignments, and other teaching materials. In the assessment and evaluation category, CoSN's report looks closely at emerging concepts known as pattern analysis and performance projection. According to Karen Greenwood Henke, who helped spearhead research efforts on the project, "these are technologies that help administrators make sense of the data schools are collecting." With the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) demanding a move toward more data-driven decision making in the nation's schools, Henke said, administrators must consider solutions that are capable of analyzing patterns "not really apparent to educators." Henke suggested pattern analysis and performance-projection tools could be used to help gauge how students are likely to perform on standardized tests. Through personalized charts and graphs, she said, the technology will provide educators with a way to more accurately target remediation for struggling students. "Universal design" is another emerging technology concept garnering attention from the nation's top ed-tech enthusiasts. With the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) slated to take place during the next session of Congress, Raymond Rose, vice president of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit educational research and development organization based in Concord, Mass., says the pressure is on for schools to begin looking at solutions that meet all students' needs--and not just those with severe disabilities. Under the concept of universal design, Rose said, technologies are beginning to emerge that can be used for dual purposes--to the benefit of everyone within the school system. The concept, he said, is similar to that of building a wheelchair ramp. Though the ramp is built specifically for students confined to a chair, it can be equally useful for students with temporary ailments--or even those with too much in their hands, who might have difficulty navigating traditional steps. "Schools need to think about tools that will meet all students' needs," Rose said. According to the report, administrators also are increasingly concerned with technologies that spur greater community involvement and communication throughout the school system. Technologies such as programmable phone systems, which enable administrators to send out pre-recorded messages to parents and stakeholders, are already coming in handy in some parts of the country, says Tom Rolfes, education IT manager for Nebraska's office of the chief information officer. Instead of relying solely on television and radio stations to get the word out about school closings on snow days, for instance, schools can use their own prerecorded messages, sent out simultaneously to every parent of every student. That way, he said, administrators needn't worry if students will show up at school only to find themselves locked out in the cold. Rolfes also touched on the growing importance of comprehensive student information systems used to track and monitor student progress, as well as the use of blogs as an increasingly popular tool for building stronger school communities--spurring much-needed communication among students, parents, and educators. Also highlighted in the report: a concept known as RFID. Darrell Walery, director of technology for Consolidated High School District 230 in Orland Park, Ill., projects the use of RFID chips--tiny microprocessors capable of holding and storing all types of student information, from lunch accounts to daily student schedules--eventually will help administrators keep better attendance records and more accurately track inventory of library books and supplies. Though the technology still remains cost-prohibitive for some schools--with RFID readers costing in the range of $1,000 to $2,000 apiece--the chips themselves are relatively cheap, Walery said. And that's not the best part. Walery reports that the attendance-taking capabilities alone have saved some early adopters up to 90 hours of instructional time per day district-wide, adding, "This is something that is going to be important in the next few years." Other technologies covered in the report include highly portable large storage devices; digital assessments; sound-field amplification; multisensory, customized learning tools; and advanced learning management systems. When deciding which technology options to pursue, CoSN offers these four suggestions: (1) look for solutions that will engage and empower students; (2) think about how the technology will be implemented and used before you purchase it; (3) vet purchasing decisions with concerned stakeholders, including community members and parents; and (4) try to identify unintended consequences--from potential instructional and legal hurdles to security issues, privacy concerns, technical glitches, and financial headaches. "A critical factor in the success of deploying technology within a school environment is that it be embraced not only by teachers but by parents and the community as well," said Steve Rappaport, chairman of CoSN's ETC. "To broaden adoption, it's important these technologies are convenient, customized, content-rich, collaborative, creative, and compliant." A final version of the report is expected to be available no later than Nov. 15. Links: Consortium for School Networking http://www.cosn.org eSN Online Store (upon final report's availability) http://www.eschoolnews.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=26 http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5361 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 8882 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041108/3873abc2/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 17 08:52:51 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 17 08:53:02 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Innovate Magazine webcast and live forum Message-ID: James L. Morrison the Editor-in-Chief of Innovate Magazine, a progressive and forward leaning education leadership forum with a focus upon technology that I recommend, sent this out: The Innovate-Live Portal ( http://www.uliveandlearn.com/innovate/ ) featuring webcasts and discussion forums, is the interactive centerpiece of Innovate. We have two Innovate-Live webcasts scheduled for Friday, November 19th: "Effective Technology Integration in Teacher Education" and "The Future of Learning Technologies." You may register for these events at the Portal. If you are not able to join us, the webcasts will be archived in their respective articles at www.innovateonline.info While at the portal, you may also register to participate in our first Innovate-Live forum, which will focus on ePortfolios. Kathryn Barker, chair of the Learning Innovations Forum and president of FuturEd Inc., is serving as forum leader and as guest editor of a special issue on ePortfolios that we will publish next year. We seek manuscripts that identify and evaluate current uses of ePortfolios or forecast their future applications in all educational sectors. We will use the forum to experiment with a process whereby participants present their manuscript ideas for discussion before formal submission and whereby participants can comment on the manuscripts that are submitted for publication consideration. If you are interested in ePortfolios or in this experiment, please join us. http://www.innovateonline.info --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2130 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041117/0ccd8330/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 17 22:12:34 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 17 22:12:39 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Tracking students with RFID Message-ID: In Texas, 28,000 Students Test an Electronic Eye By MATT RICHTEL SPRING, Tex. - In front of her gated apartment complex, Courtney Payne, a 9-year-old fourth grader with dark hair pulled tightly into a ponytail, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement is observed by Alan Bragg, the local police chief, standing in a windowless control room more than a mile away. Chief Bragg is not using video surveillance. Rather, he watches an icon on a computer screen. The icon marks the spot on a map where Courtney got off the bus, and, on a larger level, it represents the latest in the convergence of technology and student security. Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track livestock and pallets of retail shipments. Here in a growing middle- and working-class suburb just north of Houston, the effort is undergoing its most ambitious test. The Spring Independent School District is equipping 28,000 students with ID badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on and off school buses. The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators. In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district in November is starting a project using fingerprint technology to track when and where students get on and off buses. Last year, a charter school in Buffalo began automating attendance counts with computerized ID badges - one of the earliest examples of what educators said could become a widespread trend. At the Spring district, where no student has ever been kidnapped, the system is expected to be used for more pedestrian purposes, Chief Bragg said: to reassure frantic parents, for example, calling because their child, rather than coming home as expected, went to a friend's house, an extracurricular activity or a Girl Scout meeting. When the district unanimously approved the $180,000 system, neither teachers nor parents objected, said the president of the board. Rather, parents appear to be applauding. "I'm sure we're being overprotective, but you hear about all this violence," said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34, the parent of a fourth grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus." The project also is in keeping with the high-tech leanings of the district, which built its own high-speed data network and is outfitting the schools with wireless Internet access. A handful of companies have adapted the technology for use in schools. But there are critics, including some older students and privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who argue that the system is security paranoia. The decades-old technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is growing less expensive and developing vast new capabilities. It is based on a computer chip that has a unique number programmed into it and contains a tiny antenna that sends information to a reader. The same technology is being used by companies like Wal-Mart to track pallets of retail items. Pet owners can have chips embedded in cats and dogs to identify them if they are lost. In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved use of an RFID chip that could be implanted under a patient's skin and would carry a number that linked to the patient's medical records. At the Spring district, the first recipients of the computerized ID badges have been the 626 students of Bammel Elementary school. That includes Felipe Mathews, a 5-year-old kindergartner, and the other 30 students who rode bus No. 38 to school on a recent morning. Felipe, wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt with a Spiderman logo and blue high-top tennis shoes also with a Spiderman logo, wore his yellow ID badge on a string around his neck. When he climbed on to the bus, he pressed the badge against a flat gray "reader"just inside the bus door. The reader ID beeped. Shortly after, he was followed onto the bus by Christopher Nunez, a 9-year-old fourth grader. Christopher said it was important that students wore badges so they did not get lost. Asked what might cause someone to get lost, he said, "If they're in second grade they might not know which street is their home." But on the morning Felipe and Christopher shared a seat on bus No. 38, the district experienced one of the early technology hiccups. When the bus arrived at school, the system had not worked. On the Web site that includes the log of student movements, there was no record that any of the students on the bus had arrived. It was just one of many headaches; the system had also made double entries for some students, and got arrival times and addresses wrong for others. "It's early glitches," said Brian Weisinger, the head of transportation for the Spring district, adding that he expected to work out the problems. But for the Enterprise Charter School in Buffalo, where administrators gave ID cards with the RFID technology to around 460 students last year, the computer problems lasted for many months. The system is set up so that when students walk in the door each morning, they pass by one of two kiosks - which together cost $40,000 - designed to pick up their individual radio frequency numbers as a way of taking attendance. Initially, though, the kiosks failed to register some students, or registered ones who were not there. Mark Walter, head of technology for the Buffalo school, said the system was working well now. But Mr. Walter cautions that the more ambitious technological efforts in Spring, particularly given the reliance on cellphones to call in the data, are "going to run in to some problems." In the long run, however, the biggest problem may be human error. Parents, teachers and administrators said their primary worry is getting students to remember their cards, given they often forget such basics as backpacks, lunch money and gym shoes. And then there might be mischief: students could trade their cards. Still, administrators in Buffalo said they had been contacted by districts around the country, and from numerous other countries, interested in using something similar. And the administrators in Buffalo and here in Spring said the technology, when perfected, would eventually be a big help. Parents at the Spring district seem to feel the same way. They speak of momentary horrors of realizing their child did not arrive home when expected. Some older students are not so enthusiastic. "It's too Big Brother for me," said Kenneth Haines, a 15-year-old ninth grader who is on the football and debate teams. "Something about the school wanting to know the exact place and time makes me feel kind of like an animal." Middle and high school students already wear ID badges, but they have not yet been equipped with the RFID technology. Even so, some bus drivers are apparently taking advantage of the technology's mythical powers by telling students that they are being tracked on the bus in order to get them to behave better. Kenneth's opinion is echoed by organizations like the A.C.L.U. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes "digital rights." It is "na?ve to believe all this data will only be used to track children in the extremely unlikely event of the rare kidnapping by a stranger," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the A.C.L.U. Mr. Steinhardt said schools, once they had invested in the technology, could feel compelled to get a greater return on investment by putting it to other uses, like tracking where students go after school. Advocates of the technology said they did not plan to go that far. But, they said, they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, they could see using the technology to track whether students attend individual classes. Mr. Weisinger, the head of transportation at Spring, said that, for now, the district could not afford not to put the technology to use. Chief Bragg said the key to catching kidnappers was getting crucial information within two to four hours of a crime - information such as the last place the child was seen. "We've been fortunate; we haven't had a kidnapping," Mr. Weisinger said. "But if it works one time finding a student who has been kidnapped, then the system has paid for itself." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/technology/17tag.html?oref=login --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 9267 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041117/695d11b4/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Fri Nov 19 18:30:47 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Fri Nov 19 18:33:57 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] incredible article! Message-ID: <0A90E423-3A83-11D9-89F3-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> [I have bolded one passage in particular, near the end, that is critical and exactly what TouchSmart Publishing has been advocating with Open Source Publishing.] The Muddle Machine Confessions of a Texbook Editor by Tamim Ansary SOME YEARS AGO, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas. Not so. I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!" Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business. Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages. Welcome to the Machine The first product I helped create was a basal language arts program. The word basal refers to a comprehensive package that includes students' textbooks for a sequence of grades, plus associated teachers' manuals and endless workbooks, tests, answer keys, transparencies, and other "ancillaries." My company had dominated this market for years, but the brass felt that our flagship program was dated. They wanted something new, built from scratch. Sounds like a mandate for innovation, right? It wasn't. We got all the language arts textbooks in use and went through them carefully, jotting down every topic, subtopic, skill, and subskill we could find at each grade level. We compiled these into a master list, eliminated the redundancies, and came up with the core content of our new textbook. Or, as I like to call it, the "chum." But wait. If every publisher was going through this same process (and they were), how was ours to stand out? Time to stir in a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean a pedagogical idea. These conceptual enthusiasms surge through the education universe in waves. Textbook editors try to see the next one coming and shape their program to embody it. The new ideas are born at universities and wash down to publishers through research papers and conferences. Textbook editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism? Project-based learning? At those same conferences, senior editors look for up-andcoming academics and influential educational consultants to sign as "authors" of the textbooks that the worker bees are already putting together back at the shop. Content Lite Once a philosophy has been fixed on and added, we shape the pulp to fit key curriculum guidelines. Every state has a prescribed compendium of what kids should learn -- tedious lists of bulleted objectives consisting mostly of sentences like this: The student shall be provided content necessary to formulate, discuss, critique, and review hypotheses, theories, laws, and principles and their strengths and weaknesses. If you should meet a textbook editor and he or she seems eccentric (odd hair, facial tics, et cetera), it's because this is a person who has spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing countless pages filled with such action items, trying to determine if the textbook can arguably be said to support each objective. Of course, no one looks at all the state frameworks. Arizona's guidelines? Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn. Rhode Island's? Pardon me while I die laughing. Some states are definitely more important than others. More on this later. Eventually, at each grade level, the editors distill their notes into detailed outlines, a task roughly comparable to what sixthcentury jurists in Byzantium must have faced when they carved Justinian's Code out of the jungle of Roman law. Finally, they divide the outline into theoretically manageable parts and assign these to writers to flesh into sentences. What comes back isn't even close to being the book. The first project I worked on was at this stage when I arrived. My assignment was to reduce a stack of pages 17 inches high, supplied by 40 writers, to a 3-inch stack that would sound as if it had all come from one source. The original text was just ore. A few of the original words survived, I suppose, but no whole sentences. To avoid the unwelcome appearance of originality at this stage, editors send their writers voluminous guidelines. I am one of these writers, and this summer I wrote a 10-page story for a reading program. The guideline for the assignment, delivered to me in a three-ring binder, was 300 pages long. Bon App?tit with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? With so much at stake, how did we get into this turgid mess? In the '80s and '90s, a feeding frenzy broke out among publishing houses as they all fought to swallow their competitors. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Houghton Mifflin bought D.C. Heath and Co. McGraw-Hill bought Macmillan. Silver Burdett bought Ginn -- or was it Ginn that bought Silver? It doesn't matter, because soon enough both were devoured by Prentice Hall, which in turn was gobbled up by Simon & Schuster. Then, in the late '90s, even bigger corporations began circling. Almost all the familiar textbook brands of yore vanished or ended up in the bellies of just four big sharks: Pearson, a British company; Vivendi Universal, a French firm; Reed Elsevier, a British-Dutch concern; and McGraw-Hill, the lone American-owned textbook conglomerate. This concentration of money and power caused dramatic changes. In 1974, there were 22 major basal reading programs; now there are 5 or 6. As the number of basals (in all subject areas) shrank, so did editorial staffs. Many downsized editors floated off and started "development houses," private firms that contract with educational publishers to deliver chunks of programs. They hire freelance managers to manage freelance editors to manage teams of freelance writers to produce text that skeleton crews of development-house executives sent on to publishing-house executives, who then pass it on to various committees for massaging. A few years ago, I got an assignment from a development house to write a lesson on a particular reading skill. The freelance editor sent me the corresponding lessons from our client's three major competitors. "Here's what the other companies are doing," she told me. "Cover everything they do, only better." I had to laugh: I had written (for other development houses) all three of the lessons I was competing with. The Cruelest Month In textbook publishing, April is the cruelest month. That's when certain states announce which textbooks they're adopting. When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school districts. Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months they will have zero sales in that state. Among the adoption states, Texas, California, and Florida have unrivaled clout. Yes, size does matter. Together, these three have roughly 13 million students in K-12 public schools. The next 18 adoption states put together have about 12.7 million. Though the Big Three have different total numbers of students, they each spend about the same amount of money on textbooks. For the current school year, they budgeted more than $900 million for instructional materials, more than a quarter of all the money that will be spent on textbooks in the nation. Obviously, publishers create products specifically for the adoptions in those three key states. They then sell the same product to everybody else, because basals are very expensive to produce -- a K-8 reading program can cost as much as $60 million. Publishers hope to recoup the costs of a big program from the sudden gush of money in a big adoption state, then turn a profit on the subsequent trickle from the "open territories." Those that fail to make the list in Texas, California, or Florida are stuck recouping costs for the next six years. Strapped for money to spend on projects for the next adoption period, they're likely to fail again. As the cycle grows vicious, they turn into lunch meat. Don?t Mess with Texas The big three adoption states are not equal, however. In that elite trio, Texas rules. California has more students (more than 6 million versus just over 4 million in Texas), but Texas spends just as much money (approximately $42 billion) on its public schools. More important, Texas allocates a dedicated chunk of funds specifically for textbooks. That money can't be used for anything else, and all of it must be spent in the adoption year. Furthermore, Texas has particular power when it comes to high school textbooks, since California adopts statewide only for textbooks from kindergarten though 8th grade, while the Lone Star State's adoption process applies to textbooks from kindergarten through 12th grade. If you're creating a new textbook, therefore, you start by scrutinizing Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This document is drawn up by a group of curriculum experts, teachers, and political insiders appointed by the 15 members of the Texas Board of Education, currently 5 Democrats and 10 Republicans, about half of whom have a background in education. TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will therefore get. Texas is truly the tail that wags the dog. There is, however, a tail that wags this mighty tail. Every adoption state allows private citizens to review textbooks and raise objections. Publishers must respond to these objections at open hearings. In the late '60s a Texas couple, Mel and Norma Gabler, figured out how to use their state's adoption hearings to put pressure on textbook publishers. The Gablers had no academic credentials or teaching background, but they knew what they wanted taught--phonics, sexual abstinence, free enterprise, creationism, and the primacy of Judeo-Christian values--and considered themselves in a battle against a "politically correct degradation of academics." Expert organizers, the Gablers possessed a flair for constructing arguments out of the language of official curriculum guidelines. The Longview, Texas-based nonprofit corporation they founded 43 years ago, Educational Research Analysts, continues to review textbooks and lobby against liberal content in textbooks. The Gablers no longer appear in person at adoption hearings, but through workshops, books, and how-to manuals, they trained a whole generation of conservative Christian activists to carry on their work. Citizens also pressure textbook companies at California adoption hearings. These objections come mostly from such liberal organizations as Norman Lear's People for the American Way, or from individual citizens who look at proposed textbooks when they are on display before adoption in 30 centers around the state. Concern in California is normally of the politically correct sort -- objections, for example, to such perceived gaffes as using the word Indian instead of Native American. To make the list in California, books must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children. Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what will and won't get past the blanding process of both the conservative and liberal watchdogs. Responding to citizens' objections in adoption hearings is a delicate art. Publishers learn never to confront the assumptions behind an objection. That just causes deeper criticism. For example, a health textbook I worked on had a picture of a girl on a windy beach. One concerned citizen believed he could detect the outlines of the girl's underwear through her dress. Our response: She's at the beach, so that's her bathing suit. It worked. A social studies textbook was attacked because a full-page photograph showed a large family gathered around a dinner table. The objection? They looked like Arabs. Did we rise up indignantly at this un-American display of bias? We did not. Instead, we said that the family was Armenian. It worked. Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That's why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things. What do they know? Mainly, they know how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an organization called One World Council, rumored to be a "Communist front." At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a chance? Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author, incidentally, was celebrated bestselling science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Turn the Page There's no quick, simple fix for the blanding of American textbooks, but several steps are key to reform. # Revamp our funding mechanisms to let teachers assemble their own curricula from numerous individual sources instead of forcing them to rely on single comprehensive packages from national textbook factories. We can't have a different curriculum in every classroom, of course, but surely there's a way to achieve coherence without stultification. with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? # Reduce basals to reference books -- slim core texts that set forth as clearly as a dictionary the essential skills and information to be learned at each grade level in each subject. In content areas like history and science, the core texts would be like mini-encyclopedias, fact-checked by experts in the field and then reviewed by master teachers for scope and sequence. Dull? No, because these cores would not be the actual instructional material students would use. They would be analogous to operating systems in the world of software. If there are only a few of these and they're pretty similar, it's OK. Local districts and classroom teachers would receive funds enabling them to assemble their own constellations of lessons and supporting materials around the core texts, purchased not from a few behemoths but from hundreds of smaller publishing houses such as those that currently supply the supplementarytextbook industry. # Just as software developers create applications for particular operating systems, textbook developers should develop materials that plug into the core texts. Small companies and even individuals who see a niche could produce a module to fill it. None would need $60 million to break even. Imagine, for example, a world-history core. One publisher might produce a series of historical novellas by a writer and a historian working together to go with various places and periods in history. Another might create a map of the world, software that animates at the click of a mouse to show political boundaries swelling, shrinking, and shifting over hundreds of years. Another might produce a board game that dramatizes the connections between trade and cultural diffusion. Hundreds of publishers could compete to produce lessons that fulfill some aspect of the core text, the point of reference. The intellect, dedication, and inventiveness of textbook editors, abundant throughout the industry but often stifled and underappreciated, would be unleashed with -- I predict -- extraordinary results for teachers and students. Bundling selections from this forest of material to create curriculum packages might itself emerge as a job description in educational publishing. The possibilities are endless. And shouldn't endless possibility be the point? Tamim Ansary, a columnist for Encarta.com and author of West of Kabul and East of New York, has written 38 nonfiction books for children. He was an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for nine years and has written for Houghton Mifflin, McDougall Littell, Prentice Hall, and many other textbook publishers. Write to edit@edutopia.com. http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1195&issue=nov_04 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 18686 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041119/cc58e27b/attachment-0001.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Fri Nov 19 18:59:17 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Fri Nov 19 19:00:06 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] incredible article! References: <0A90E423-3A83-11D9-89F3-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> Message-ID: <030c01c4ce93$c8c4edc0$a4c1be3f@TommyBoy> very timely article...consider contacting the author? _t ----- Original Message ----- From: bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net To: bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 5:30 PM Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] incredible article! [I have bolded one passage in particular, near the end, that is critical and exactly what TouchSmart Publishing has been advocating with Open Source Publishing.] The Muddle Machine Confessions of a Texbook Editor by Tamim Ansary SOME YEARS AGO, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas. Not so. I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!" Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business. Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages. Welcome to the Machine The first product I helped create was a basal language arts program. The word basal refers to a comprehensive package that includes students' textbooks for a sequence of grades, plus associated teachers' manuals and endless workbooks, tests, answer keys, transparencies, and other "ancillaries." My company had dominated this market for years, but the brass felt that our flagship program was dated. They wanted something new, built from scratch. Sounds like a mandate for innovation, right? It wasn't. We got all the language arts textbooks in use and went through them carefully, jotting down every topic, subtopic, skill, and subskill we could find at each grade level. We compiled these into a master list, eliminated the redundancies, and came up with the core content of our new textbook. Or, as I like to call it, the "chum." But wait. If every publisher was going through this same process (and they were), how was ours to stand out? Time to stir in a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean a pedagogical idea. These conceptual enthusiasms surge through the education universe in waves. Textbook editors try to see the next one coming and shape their program to embody it. The new ideas are born at universities and wash down to publishers through research papers and conferences. Textbook editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism? Project-based learning? At those same conferences, senior editors look for up-andcoming academics and influential educational consultants to sign as "authors" of the textbooks that the worker bees are already putting together back at the shop. Content Lite Once a philosophy has been fixed on and added, we shape the pulp to fit key curriculum guidelines. Every state has a prescribed compendium of what kids should learn -- tedious lists of bulleted objectives consisting mostly of sentences like this: The student shall be provided content necessary to formulate, discuss, critique, and review hypotheses, theories, laws, and principles and their strengths and weaknesses. If you should meet a textbook editor and he or she seems eccentric (odd hair, facial tics, et cetera), it's because this is a person who has spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing countless pages filled with such action items, trying to determine if the textbook can arguably be said to support each objective. Of course, no one looks at all the state frameworks. Arizona's guidelines? Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn. Rhode Island's? Pardon me while I die laughing. Some states are definitely more important than others. More on this later. Eventually, at each grade level, the editors distill their notes into detailed outlines, a task roughly comparable to what sixthcentury jurists in Byzantium must have faced when they carved Justinian's Code out of the jungle of Roman law. Finally, they divide the outline into theoretically manageable parts and assign these to writers to flesh into sentences. What comes back isn't even close to being the book. The first project I worked on was at this stage when I arrived. My assignment was to reduce a stack of pages 17 inches high, supplied by 40 writers, to a 3-inch stack that would sound as if it had all come from one source. The original text was just ore. A few of the original words survived, I suppose, but no whole sentences. To avoid the unwelcome appearance of originality at this stage, editors send their writers voluminous guidelines. I am one of these writers, and this summer I wrote a 10-page story for a reading program. The guideline for the assignment, delivered to me in a three-ring binder, was 300 pages long. Bon App?tit with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? With so much at stake, how did we get into this turgid mess? In the '80s and '90s, a feeding frenzy broke out among publishing houses as they all fought to swallow their competitors. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Houghton Mifflin bought D.C. Heath and Co. McGraw-Hill bought Macmillan. Silver Burdett bought Ginn -- or was it Ginn that bought Silver? It doesn't matter, because soon enough both were devoured by Prentice Hall, which in turn was gobbled up by Simon & Schuster. Then, in the late '90s, even bigger corporations began circling. Almost all the familiar textbook brands of yore vanished or ended up in the bellies of just four big sharks: Pearson, a British company; Vivendi Universal, a French firm; Reed Elsevier, a British-Dutch concern; and McGraw-Hill, the lone American-owned textbook conglomerate. This concentration of money and power caused dramatic changes. In 1974, there were 22 major basal reading programs; now there are 5 or 6. As the number of basals (in all subject areas) shrank, so did editorial staffs. Many downsized editors floated off and started "development houses," private firms that contract with educational publishers to deliver chunks of programs. They hire freelance managers to manage freelance editors to manage teams of freelance writers to produce text that skeleton crews of development-house executives sent on to publishing-house executives, who then pass it on to various committees for massaging. A few years ago, I got an assignment from a development house to write a lesson on a particular reading skill. The freelance editor sent me the corresponding lessons from our client's three major competitors. "Here's what the other companies are doing," she told me. "Cover everything they do, only better." I had to laugh: I had written (for other development houses) all three of the lessons I was competing with. The Cruelest Month In textbook publishing, April is the cruelest month. That's when certain states announce which textbooks they're adopting. When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school districts. Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months they will have zero sales in that state. Among the adoption states, Texas, California, and Florida have unrivaled clout. Yes, size does matter. Together, these three have roughly 13 million students in K-12 public schools. The next 18 adoption states put together have about 12.7 million. Though the Big Three have different total numbers of students, they each spend about the same amount of money on textbooks. For the current school year, they budgeted more than $900 million for instructional materials, more than a quarter of all the money that will be spent on textbooks in the nation. Obviously, publishers create products specifically for the adoptions in those three key states. They then sell the same product to everybody else, because basals are very expensive to produce -- a K-8 reading program can cost as much as $60 million. Publishers hope to recoup the costs of a big program from the sudden gush of money in a big adoption state, then turn a profit on the subsequent trickle from the "open territories." Those that fail to make the list in Texas, California, or Florida are stuck recouping costs for the next six years. Strapped for money to spend on projects for the next adoption period, they're likely to fail again. As the cycle grows vicious, they turn into lunch meat. Don?t Mess with Texas The big three adoption states are not equal, however. In that elite trio, Texas rules. California has more students (more than 6 million versus just over 4 million in Texas), but Texas spends just as much money (approximately $42 billion) on its public schools. More important, Texas allocates a dedicated chunk of funds specifically for textbooks. That money can't be used for anything else, and all of it must be spent in the adoption year. Furthermore, Texas has particular power when it comes to high school textbooks, since California adopts statewide only for textbooks from kindergarten though 8th grade, while the Lone Star State's adoption process applies to textbooks from kindergarten through 12th grade. If you're creating a new textbook, therefore, you start by scrutinizing Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This document is drawn up by a group of curriculum experts, teachers, and political insiders appointed by the 15 members of the Texas Board of Education, currently 5 Democrats and 10 Republicans, about half of whom have a background in education. TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will therefore get. Texas is truly the tail that wags the dog. There is, however, a tail that wags this mighty tail. Every adoption state allows private citizens to review textbooks and raise objections. Publishers must respond to these objections at open hearings. In the late '60s a Texas couple, Mel and Norma Gabler, figured out how to use their state's adoption hearings to put pressure on textbook publishers. The Gablers had no academic credentials or teaching background, but they knew what they wanted taught--phonics, sexual abstinence, free enterprise, creationism, and the primacy of Judeo-Christian values--and considered themselves in a battle against a "politically correct degradation of academics." Expert organizers, the Gablers possessed a flair for constructing arguments out of the language of official curriculum guidelines. The Longview, Texas-based nonprofit corporation they founded 43 years ago, Educational Research Analysts, continues to review textbooks and lobby against liberal content in textbooks. The Gablers no longer appear in person at adoption hearings, but through workshops, books, and how-to manuals, they trained a whole generation of conservative Christian activists to carry on their work. Citizens also pressure textbook companies at California adoption hearings. These objections come mostly from such liberal organizations as Norman Lear's People for the American Way, or from individual citizens who look at proposed textbooks when they are on display before adoption in 30 centers around the state. Concern in California is normally of the politically correct sort -- objections, for example, to such perceived gaffes as using the word Indian instead of Native American. To make the list in California, books must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children. Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what will and won't get past the blanding process of both the conservative and liberal watchdogs. Responding to citizens' objections in adoption hearings is a delicate art. Publishers learn never to confront the assumptions behind an objection. That just causes deeper criticism. For example, a health textbook I worked on had a picture of a girl on a windy beach. One concerned citizen believed he could detect the outlines of the girl's underwear through her dress. Our response: She's at the beach, so that's her bathing suit. It worked. A social studies textbook was attacked because a full-page photograph showed a large family gathered around a dinner table. The objection? They looked like Arabs. Did we rise up indignantly at this un-American display of bias? We did not. Instead, we said that the family was Armenian. It worked. Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That's why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things. What do they know? Mainly, they know how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an organization called One World Council, rumored to be a "Communist front." At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a chance? Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author, incidentally, was celebrated bestselling science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Turn the Page There's no quick, simple fix for the blanding of American textbooks, but several steps are key to reform. # Revamp our funding mechanisms to let teachers assemble their own curricula from numerous individual sources instead of forcing them to rely on single comprehensive packages from national textbook factories. We can't have a different curriculum in every classroom, of course, but surely there's a way to achieve coherence without stultification. with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? # Reduce basals to reference books -- slim core texts that set forth as clearly as a dictionary the essential skills and information to be learned at each grade level in each subject. In content areas like history and science, the core texts would be like mini-encyclopedias, fact-checked by experts in the field and then reviewed by master teachers for scope and sequence. Dull? No, because these cores would not be the actual instructional material students would use. They would be analogous to operating systems in the world of software. If there are only a few of these and they're pretty similar, it's OK. Local districts and classroom teachers would receive funds enabling them to assemble their own constellations of lessons and supporting materials around the core texts, purchased not from a few behemoths but from hundreds of smaller publishing houses such as those that currently supply the supplementarytextbook industry. # Just as software developers create applications for particular operating systems, textbook developers should develop materials that plug into the core texts. Small companies and even individuals who see a niche could produce a module to fill it. None would need $60 million to break even. Imagine, for example, a world-history core. One publisher might produce a series of historical novellas by a writer and a historian working together to go with various places and periods in history. Another might create a map of the world, software that animates at the click of a mouse to show political boundaries swelling, shrinking, and shifting over hundreds of years. Another might produce a board game that dramatizes the connections between trade and cultural diffusion. Hundreds of publishers could compete to produce lessons that fulfill some aspect of the core text, the point of reference. The intellect, dedication, and inventiveness of textbook editors, abundant throughout the industry but often stifled and underappreciated, would be unleashed with -- I predict -- extraordinary results for teachers and students. Bundling selections from this forest of material to create curriculum packages might itself emerge as a job description in educational publishing. The possibilities are endless. And shouldn't endless possibility be the point? Tamim Ansary, a columnist for Encarta.com and author of West of Kabul and East of New York, has written 38 nonfiction books for children. He was an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for nine years and has written for Houghton Mifflin, McDougall Littell, Prentice Hall, and many other textbook publishers. Write to edit@edutopia.com. http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1195&issue=nov_04 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bridging_the_divide mailing list Bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/bridging_the_divide -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041119/0683a4b2/attachment-0001.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 09:17:41 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] a new blog Message-ID: Dr. Scott McLeod, who is on the TouchSmart Publishing advisory board has started a new blog. Below is the guidance from him regarding it... As you know, it's impossible to keep on top of all of the information sources (listservs, newsletters, bulletins, magazines, journals, web sites, etc.) that have information on school technology leadership issues. Some are from the ed tech arena, some cater to ed leadership folks, some are random education sources, etc. So... we're starting a blog. The idea behind the blog is that school leaders (principals, superintendents, district tech coordinators, CTOs, CIOs, media specialists, etc.) and educational leadership faculty will be able to go to one place, the blog, to stay up-to-date regarding current school technology leadership news, events, and issues. The blog will utilize multiple authors and will draw from a multitude of sources. By spreading the information monitoring and posting load, we can have a powerfully current information source without overly burdening one or a few individuals. The blog will be located at ??http://www.schooltechleadershipblog.org If you go there now, you'll see our test posts. The blog will officially start on Nov. 10, so if you're interested in being a blog author, please complete the online signup form by Sunday, Nov. 7: ?? http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB223W5M3FC3X Thanks! SCOTT ============ ABOUT THE STLI Administrative leadership may be the single most important factor affecting schools? successful integration of technology. The University of Minnesota School Technology Leadership Initiative (STLI) was created to help address the critical nationwide shortage of administrators who can effectively facilitate the implementation of technology in schools and school districts. The STLI graduate certificate is the first and only academic program in the country to comprehensively address the breadth and depth of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) and has been found by the American Institutes for Research to have statistically significant effects on students? technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. Our students are superintendents, principals, technology coordinators, media specialists, teachers, and other educators. More information on the STLI, including application materials and curricular info, is available at www.schooltechleadership.org. STLI POSTSECONDARY PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM (P3) Could your local university educational administration preparation program use some help preparing future administrators to understand technology leadership issues? You might want to encourage them to become involved in our Postsecondary Partnership Program (P3). P3 is an opportunity for other educational leadership preparation programs to receive assistance with their technology-related preservice and inservice training of school administrators. Departments selected for P3 receive 1) license-free access to STLI course descriptions, syllabi, lesson plans, reading lists, classroom activities, teaching techniques, and electronic learning objects for the duration of the partnership; 2) access to the STLI?s growing library of school technology leadership resources; 3) regular updates regarding current school technology leadership topics and recently released technology leadership resources; and 4) a free site visit to the University of Minnesota to meet with the STLI project team and members of its support network. The deadline for applications is noon, December 1, 2004. More information about P3 is available at ?? http://www.schooltechleadership.org/page.cfm?p=8 ====================== Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D. University of Minnesota Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Policy and Administration Project Director, School Technology Leadership Initiative Affiliate Faculty, Law School Attorney at Law 330 Wulling Hall 86 Pleasant Street SE Minneapolis, MN 55455-0221 (612) 626-0768 (office) (612) 624-3377 (fax) mcleod@umn.edu www.umn.edu/~mcleod www.schooltechleadership.org --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4798 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/6cac9767/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 23:01:17 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Press Release Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20041102230055.019a5fc8@pop3.mail.wowway.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Present Touch User Interface (TUI) Technology for Education at AACE Conference TouchSmart Publishing LLC is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. regarding the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology for education. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 1, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced it is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, Room 7. When: 430pm EST, November 3rd, 2004. Jason Barkeloo, President and founder of TouchSmart Publishing will present ?Connecting to Digital Content Through Textbooks: Introducing the Touch User Interface (TUI) Textbook that Bridges the Digital Divide.? This paper and demonstration will attempt to show how the TUI may bridge the digital disconnect as described by Doug Levin and Sousan Arafeh in ?The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools? (2002). Barkeloo says that ?the five primary reasons for the digital disconnect as articulated by Levin and Arafeh may be overcome with this technology. This paper and demonstration will attempt to show the digital divide bridging effect of the TUI.? The discussion and presentation will show the promise of decreasing the cost of textbooks while inversely increasing the amount of content. The TUI can connect multiple learning styles and disabilities to digital content that is warehoused on optical media as well as hard-drives. The TUI turns the textbook into a remote control. According to Barkeloo, ?the E-Learn Conference is one of the finest international electronic learning forums with over seventy countries represented and more than a thousand participants. I am excited that we were selected to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? He added, ?This technology may well meet many of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) mandates.? Co-author and TouchSmart Publishing co-founder, Kathleen MacMahon, DVM claims, ?Many more students may educationally benefit as a result of this technology. Presenting science educational content by pressing pictures and words in a textbook brings a new meaning to ?let your fingers do the walking?. When I taught college-level biology and anatomy and physiology I think the students would have benefited from a multi-sensory presentation approach. Dr. MacMahon finished by saying that ?Reading about the four-chambered heart is taken to a new level when the student can press the picture of the cardiac muscle in the book and it is presented as a audio/video on a monitor or television.? Barkeloo continued that, ?Dr. MacMahon is a world-class researcher. I am pleased that she has chosen to be involved with this endeavor to make delivery of educational content more effective and efficient for students, especially those with special needs or socioeconomic disadvantages.? Barkeloo concluded ?as Dr. MacMahon indicated, presenting an audio/video clip on the screen directly from the textbook has promise to make learning more exciting. When you consider that Braille imprint on the pages can lead to auditory-only content for those students with visual impairments, or that the audio/video can be complete with sub-captions or American Sign Language for those with auditory impairments, I am excited about the prospect of this technology bridging the digital divide.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is a developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are currently connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. Over 1,000 participants from 70 Countries attend. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org/conf/elearn Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/69ab9d9f/attachment-0002.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 2 22:56:28 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] (no subject) Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20041102225552.019fbbd0@pop3.mail.wowway.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Present Touch User Interface (TUI) Technology for Education at AACE Conference TouchSmart Publishing LLC is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. regarding the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology for education. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 1, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced it is presenting a paper at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, Room 7. When: 430pm EST, November 3rd, 2004. Jason Barkeloo, President and founder of TouchSmart Publishing will present ?Connecting to Digital Content Through Textbooks: Introducing the Touch User Interface (TUI) Textbook that Bridges the Digital Divide.? This paper and demonstration will attempt to show how the TUI may bridge the digital disconnect as described by Doug Levin and Sousan Arafeh in ?The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools? (2002). Barkeloo says that ?the five primary reasons for the digital disconnect as articulated by Levin and Arafeh may be overcome with this technology. This paper and demonstration will attempt to show the digital divide bridging effect of the TUI.? The discussion and presentation will show the promise of decreasing the cost of textbooks while inversely increasing the amount of content. The TUI can connect multiple learning styles and disabilities to digital content that is warehoused on optical media as well as hard-drives. The TUI turns the textbook into a remote control. According to Barkeloo, ?the E-Learn Conference is one of the finest international electronic learning forums with over seventy countries represented and more than a thousand participants. I am excited that we were selected to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? He added, ?This technology may well meet many of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) mandates.? Co-author and TouchSmart Publishing co-founder, Kathleen MacMahon, DVM claims, ?Many more students may educationally benefit as a result of this technology. Presenting science educational content by pressing pictures and words in a textbook brings a new meaning to ?let your fingers do the walking?. When I taught college-level biology and anatomy and physiology I think the students would have benefited from a multi-sensory presentation approach. Dr. MacMahon finished by saying that ?Reading about the four-chambered heart is taken to a new level when the student can press the picture of the cardiac muscle in the book and it is presented as a audio/video on a monitor or television.? Barkeloo continued that, ?Dr. MacMahon is a world-class researcher. I am pleased that she has chosen to be involved with this endeavor to make delivery of educational content more effective and efficient for students, especially those with special needs or socioeconomic disadvantages.? Barkeloo concluded ?as Dr. MacMahon indicated, presenting an audio/video clip on the screen directly from the textbook has promise to make learning more exciting. When you consider that Braille imprint on the pages can lead to auditory-only content for those students with visual impairments, or that the audio/video can be complete with sub-captions or American Sign Language for those with auditory impairments, I am excited about the prospect of this technology bridging the digital divide.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is a developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are currently connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. Over 1,000 participants from 70 Countries attend. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org/conf/elearn Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041102/f79152b2/attachment-0002.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 08:55:43 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Purdue and Touchsmart Message-ID: <2881.131.167.74.168.1099490143.squirrel@131.167.74.168> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled ?Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.? This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing?s President, Jason Barkeloo ?The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? Barkeloo added, ?Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.? Dr. Mott finished by saying ?The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 09:07:27 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Touchsmart to Present at E-Learn with Purdue Professor Message-ID: <60151.66.42.143.210.1099490847.squirrel@66.42.143.210> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 ? TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled ?Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.? This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing?s President, Jason Barkeloo ?The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.? Barkeloo added, ?Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.? Dr. Mott finished by saying ?The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.? For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 3 10:09:01 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Touchsmart to Present at E-Learn with Purdue Professor Message-ID: <20041103150901.49183.qmail@web61102.mail.yahoo.com> TouchSmart Publishing to Jointly Present Paper at E-Learn Conference with Professor Michael Seth Mott PhD, Purdue University Calumet TouchSmart Publishing LLC, is conducting a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2004 – TouchSmart Publishing LLC, today announced a joint presentation with Purdue University Calumet researcher, Michael Seth Mott, PhD at the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) Conference in Washington, D.C. Where: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City, 2799 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Arlington, VA 22202 USA, telephone 703.418.1234, room 9. When: 1115am, EST, November 5th, 2004. Dr. Mott is presenting a paper entitled “Developmental Phonics Instruction with Touch User Interface Technology: Moving Toward a Multi-Sensory Approach for Grades Pre-K-2.” This paper proposes the use of the Touch User Interface (TUI) technology platform to create a multi-sensory phonics program "workbook" with digital elements and will discuss the possible benefits to students for using this technology. According to researcher and author Dr. Mott, "TouchSmart Publishing products could meet the needs of a wide-array of struggling readers." Dr. Mott added, "A wide-array of research, from comprehension of text to hypermedia-authoring, anecdotally indicates promise that this technology may help students achieve a new level of learning. It is my intention to see if it does." This is the second joint presentation between professor Michael Seth Mott of Purdue University Calumet and TouchSmart Publishing in preparation for the pilot studies. According to co-author and TouchSmart Publishing’s President, Jason Barkeloo “The E-Learn Conference is an international forum. I am excited by our selection to demonstrate and discuss the touch user interface (TUI) technology.” Barkeloo added, “Dr. Mott is a leader and visionary for helping students learn. I am proud that he has chosen to focus his research talents toward the TUI.” Dr. Mott finished by saying “The current phonics approach I am proposing would be the first truly multi-modal emergent reading program available and would, by design, meet a wide array of learning styles and needs.” For further information, please contact TouchSmart Publishing at 513.225.8765 or visit TouchSmart's website at http://www.touchsmart.net. About TouchSmart Publishing, LLC. TouchSmart Publishing is developmental-stage company poised to distribute touch-sensitive wireless textbooks to K-12 math, science, and special education needs students. The Company's mission is to create and distribute exciting and easy-to-use interactive textbooks that connect to digital content by using touch user interface (TUI) technology that allows a student to touch pages in a book that wireless connect to digital content. TouchSmart Publishing expects to be a bridge over the digital divide for more students, regardless of learning style, special needs or socioeconomic position, than are current connected. As a result, TouchSmart Publishing is the only complete No Child Left Behind (NCLB) solution poised to meet the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). TouchSmart Publishing is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio as a Main Street Ventures company, www.digitalrhine.com. For more information, please visit the TouchSmart Publishing web site at www.touchsmart.net. About the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), E-Learn Conference E-Learn 2004 -- World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning. This annual conference serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications of all topics related to e-Learning in the Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education sectors. For more information, please visit the AACE website at www.aace.org. # # # Contact: TouchSmart Publishing Jason Barkeloo, 513.225.8765 Dr. Michael Seth Mott, 219.989.2335 e-mail protected from spam bots Source: TouchSmart Publishing http://prweb.com/releases/2004/11/prweb174401.htm --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com/a -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041103/ac5cd116/attachment-0002.html From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 8 10:48:57 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] CAST workshops Message-ID: To all: I received the following newsletter of CAST workshops. I have highlighted those workshops that are of extreme value to some in this forum. I have been to CAST and they have a beautiful facility. Their researchers are tops in the field. Bottom line: Worthwhile if you go. Best Regards, jb > CAST to Lead Centers that Improve, Implement National Instructional > Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS). Read about this significant > step forward for students with disabilities. Read CAST?s press release here and Read NIMAS, related documents here > New and exciting Professional Development Opportunities CAST Institutes are two-, or three-day sessions that offer information, awareness, and hands-on activities, focusing on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and other important educational issues. Each institute features presentations from experts on UDL and other CAST professional development staff. Institutes have a maximum of 24 participants which allows for small group work, hands-on technology (one computer to two participants), individualized support from CAST staff, and direct application to participants? practice. All institutes are held at CAST in Wakefield Massachusetts, a suburb approximately 15 miles north of downtown Boston and convenient to public transportation. ? For more information contact: Grace Meo, gmeo@cast.org or call 781-245-2212, ext. 263 To register contact: Leslie O?Callaghan at locallaghan@cast.org or 781-245-2212, ext. 273 Register online at http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=2417 ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 01 Universal Design for Learning and Post Secondary Education Featured Presenters: Tracey Hall and Skip Stahl Dates: January 31-February 1, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: Post-secondary Faculty Cost: $620 Faculties from institutions of higher education are invited to learn about the principles of UDL and application to post secondary practice. This institute focuses on applying the UDL principles to the development of course materials, syllabi, assessments and goals to meet the needs of learners with diverse needs, backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities. ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 02 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: February 10-11, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 03 Universal Design for Learning and Data-Driven Decision Making Featured Presenters: Bart Pisha and Grace Meo Dates: March 10-11, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute will appeal to educators interested in learning to use classroom level data reflecting student learning to inform their everyday teaching.? Key topics to be addressed will include Universal Design for Learning, Action Research, and data collection strategies. ?A major focus of this institute will be the use of hand held computers (also known as PDAs) such as Palm, Sony Cli?, or iPAQ to collect and analyze classroom data.? -------------------------------------------------?? ? Institute #: 04 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: April 7-8, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ------------------------------------------------- ? Institute #: 05 Universal Design for Learning and Struggling Readers Featured Presenters: Bridget Dalton and Patrick Proctor Dates: April 25-26, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute is designed to provide educators at the upper elementary, middle and high school levels with an understanding of Universal Design for Learning and application of principles to literacy skills of struggling readers. The content of the workshop draws from research based practices in literacy and strategic instruction. Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, strategies, and methods that support struggling readers as they ?read to learn.? ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 06 Universal Design for Learning and Post Secondary Education Featured Presenters: Tracey Hall and Skip Stahl Dates: June 2-3, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: Post-secondary Faculty Cost: $620 Faculties from institutions of higher education are invited to learn about the principles of UDL and application to post secondary practice. This institute focuses on applying the UDL principles to the development of course materials, syllabi, assessments and goals to meet the needs of learners with diverse needs, backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 07 What does Brain Research Tell Us about Learner Differences? Featured Presenter: David H. Rose Dates: June 16-17, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All Educators Cost: $620 In this institute, participants will learn how brain research when viewed from an educational perspective can illuminate and refine an understanding of differences between learners.? With an understanding of learner differences, participants will learn how to design educational experiences to meet individual needs. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 08 Universal Design for Learning and Literacy for English Language Learners Featured Presenter: Patrick Proctor Dates: June 27-28, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All grade 4 ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 This institute is designed for educators who face the challenge of making literacy accessible for English Language Learners. Participants will learn about the principles of UDL and its application to literacy curriculum for English Language learners.? Issues related to cross-language relationships, language learning differences, immigration, and inclusive teacher practices will be discussed. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 09 Universal Design for Learning and Math Featured Presenter: Boo Murray Dates: July 7-8, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $620 The institute is appropriate for educators who teach mathematics. Participants will learn about Universal Design for Learning, barriers in the math curriculum, and strategies to make the math curriculum accessible. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 10 Cognitive Disabilities, Literacy, and Strategy Instruction Featured Presenters: Peggy Coyne and Grace Meo Dates: July 13?15, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 2 Educators Cost: $930 This institute is specifically designed for teams of kindergarten ? grade 2 educators and is designed to support the emergent literacy for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the framework for the Institute. Participants learn to apply UDL to the development of curriculum that supports emergent literacy. Participants will use varied technologies to support emergent literacy and will learn to apply these technologies to the development of supported literacy materials. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 11 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: July 27-29, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 12 Shaking Up the Classroom:? Using UDL to Engage All Learners in an Interdisciplinary Unit Featured Presenters: Patti Ganley, Jeremy Price, and Amy Ingalls Dates: August 3-5, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 Bring in learning goals you have found challenging for your students, and leave with a plan to reach the diverse learners in your classroom.? Guided by the principles of Universal Design for Learning and focused on designing interdisciplinary curriculum units, this institute will engage and connect educators with strategies, tools, methods, techniques, and each other, to develop a usable curriculum unit that addresses the diverse needs of all learners and meets local standards. ? ------------------------------------------------- Institute #: 13 Universal Design for Learning: Reaching and Teaching All Learners an introduction for pre-kindergarten ? 12 educators Featured Presenters: CAST Professional Development staff Dates: August 24-26, 2005 Time: 8:30 ? 3:30 Audience: All pre-k ? 12 Educators Cost: $930 How do I address the diversity of students in my classroom? How can I design my curriculum to take advantage of the new technologies and principles of Universal Design for Learning? Learn about and apply UDL to practice. This Institute is an introduction to Universal Design for Learning and its application to classroom practice.? Participants will have hands-on experiences with materials, technologies, and strategies, and are supported as they develop realistic action steps that apply UDL to their own practice. Newsletter Archive ------------------------------- This issue: http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=5344 Online archive of the Consortium newsletters ? take a look at back issues that highlight varied topics for providing access to the general education curriculum for all learners: http://www.cast.org/udl/index.cfm?i=1100 ------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your interest in CAST and our work. It is our intention to send this newsletter to individuals who have requested to receive it. If you believe you are receiving this in error or wish to no longer receive it, you can unsubscribe by sending a message to natconsortium@cast.org with a subject of "unsubscribe consortium". Grace J. Meo Co-Director of the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning mailto:gmeo@cast.org http://www.cast.org --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 12894 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041108/7dd181a3/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 8 18:12:02 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] must have technologies for schools Message-ID: <9942B61E-31DB-11D9-99FE-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> CoSN profiles 'must-have' technologies By Corey Murray, Assistant Editor, eSchool News November 4, 2004 Datacasting, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, student web logs (blogs), and intelligent essay graders are among a dozen technologies likely to emerge as must-have solutions in the nation's schools, according to a report unveiled Nov. 3 by the Washington, D.C.-based Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The third in a series of CoSN-sponsored reports dedicated to emerging technologies, "Hot Technologies for K-12 Schools" examines the usefulness of such heretofore little-known technologies in schools and begins to explore how such innovations might be used to transform learning in the 21st century. To develop the guide, CoSN's Emerging Technologies Committee (ETC) initially identified five key educational issues schools are facing today--the instructional process, assessment and evaluation, diverse learning styles, the building of communities, and improving the efficiency of school administration. In considering which technologies to include, the report's authors devised a list of technologies they felt would not only make a fundamental impact on education, but would be economically and financially feasible enough for schools to begin integrating sometime in the very near future. "Most schools embracing technology today have primarily focused on its deployment for administrative purposes or for the back office," said Keith Krueger, CoSN's chief executive officer, in a statement. "Our hope is that this guide will provide technology leaders with a strategic understanding of technologies that can truly transform their schools over the next three to five years." On the instructional front, one technology that is just beginning to crop up in schools is datacasting. A descendant of streaming video, which enables students to view snippets of teacher-selected educational videos from their desktops, datacasting provides similar capabilities--but with higher-quality results, says Gene Broderson, director of education for the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Unlike streaming video--which has been criticized for hogging precious bandwidth across school networks and sometimes appearing blurred and sluggish, Broderson said--datacasting enables students to view content in full-screen, broadcast-quality video and sound. Instead of streaming videos directly to students' desktops, Broderson said, datacasting lets educators download whatever content they need to a central server, so it can be accessed whenever it's needed. Often, he said, the videos are accompanied by corresponding lesson plans, interactive student assignments, and other teaching materials. In the assessment and evaluation category, CoSN's report looks closely at emerging concepts known as pattern analysis and performance projection. According to Karen Greenwood Henke, who helped spearhead research efforts on the project, "these are technologies that help administrators make sense of the data schools are collecting." With the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) demanding a move toward more data-driven decision making in the nation's schools, Henke said, administrators must consider solutions that are capable of analyzing patterns "not really apparent to educators." Henke suggested pattern analysis and performance-projection tools could be used to help gauge how students are likely to perform on standardized tests. Through personalized charts and graphs, she said, the technology will provide educators with a way to more accurately target remediation for struggling students. "Universal design" is another emerging technology concept garnering attention from the nation's top ed-tech enthusiasts. With the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) slated to take place during the next session of Congress, Raymond Rose, vice president of the Concord Consortium, a nonprofit educational research and development organization based in Concord, Mass., says the pressure is on for schools to begin looking at solutions that meet all students' needs--and not just those with severe disabilities. Under the concept of universal design, Rose said, technologies are beginning to emerge that can be used for dual purposes--to the benefit of everyone within the school system. The concept, he said, is similar to that of building a wheelchair ramp. Though the ramp is built specifically for students confined to a chair, it can be equally useful for students with temporary ailments--or even those with too much in their hands, who might have difficulty navigating traditional steps. "Schools need to think about tools that will meet all students' needs," Rose said. According to the report, administrators also are increasingly concerned with technologies that spur greater community involvement and communication throughout the school system. Technologies such as programmable phone systems, which enable administrators to send out pre-recorded messages to parents and stakeholders, are already coming in handy in some parts of the country, says Tom Rolfes, education IT manager for Nebraska's office of the chief information officer. Instead of relying solely on television and radio stations to get the word out about school closings on snow days, for instance, schools can use their own prerecorded messages, sent out simultaneously to every parent of every student. That way, he said, administrators needn't worry if students will show up at school only to find themselves locked out in the cold. Rolfes also touched on the growing importance of comprehensive student information systems used to track and monitor student progress, as well as the use of blogs as an increasingly popular tool for building stronger school communities--spurring much-needed communication among students, parents, and educators. Also highlighted in the report: a concept known as RFID. Darrell Walery, director of technology for Consolidated High School District 230 in Orland Park, Ill., projects the use of RFID chips--tiny microprocessors capable of holding and storing all types of student information, from lunch accounts to daily student schedules--eventually will help administrators keep better attendance records and more accurately track inventory of library books and supplies. Though the technology still remains cost-prohibitive for some schools--with RFID readers costing in the range of $1,000 to $2,000 apiece--the chips themselves are relatively cheap, Walery said. And that's not the best part. Walery reports that the attendance-taking capabilities alone have saved some early adopters up to 90 hours of instructional time per day district-wide, adding, "This is something that is going to be important in the next few years." Other technologies covered in the report include highly portable large storage devices; digital assessments; sound-field amplification; multisensory, customized learning tools; and advanced learning management systems. When deciding which technology options to pursue, CoSN offers these four suggestions: (1) look for solutions that will engage and empower students; (2) think about how the technology will be implemented and used before you purchase it; (3) vet purchasing decisions with concerned stakeholders, including community members and parents; and (4) try to identify unintended consequences--from potential instructional and legal hurdles to security issues, privacy concerns, technical glitches, and financial headaches. "A critical factor in the success of deploying technology within a school environment is that it be embraced not only by teachers but by parents and the community as well," said Steve Rappaport, chairman of CoSN's ETC. "To broaden adoption, it's important these technologies are convenient, customized, content-rich, collaborative, creative, and compliant." A final version of the report is expected to be available no later than Nov. 15. Links: Consortium for School Networking http://www.cosn.org eSN Online Store (upon final report's availability) http://www.eschoolnews.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=26 http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5361 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 8882 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041108/3873abc2/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 17 08:52:51 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Innovate Magazine webcast and live forum Message-ID: James L. Morrison the Editor-in-Chief of Innovate Magazine, a progressive and forward leaning education leadership forum with a focus upon technology that I recommend, sent this out: The Innovate-Live Portal ( http://www.uliveandlearn.com/innovate/ ) featuring webcasts and discussion forums, is the interactive centerpiece of Innovate. We have two Innovate-Live webcasts scheduled for Friday, November 19th: "Effective Technology Integration in Teacher Education" and "The Future of Learning Technologies." You may register for these events at the Portal. If you are not able to join us, the webcasts will be archived in their respective articles at www.innovateonline.info While at the portal, you may also register to participate in our first Innovate-Live forum, which will focus on ePortfolios. Kathryn Barker, chair of the Learning Innovations Forum and president of FuturEd Inc., is serving as forum leader and as guest editor of a special issue on ePortfolios that we will publish next year. We seek manuscripts that identify and evaluate current uses of ePortfolios or forecast their future applications in all educational sectors. We will use the forum to experiment with a process whereby participants present their manuscript ideas for discussion before formal submission and whereby participants can comment on the manuscripts that are submitted for publication consideration. If you are interested in ePortfolios or in this experiment, please join us. http://www.innovateonline.info --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2130 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041117/0ccd8330/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 17 22:12:34 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Tracking students with RFID Message-ID: In Texas, 28,000 Students Test an Electronic Eye By MATT RICHTEL SPRING, Tex. - In front of her gated apartment complex, Courtney Payne, a 9-year-old fourth grader with dark hair pulled tightly into a ponytail, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement is observed by Alan Bragg, the local police chief, standing in a windowless control room more than a mile away. Chief Bragg is not using video surveillance. Rather, he watches an icon on a computer screen. The icon marks the spot on a map where Courtney got off the bus, and, on a larger level, it represents the latest in the convergence of technology and student security. Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track livestock and pallets of retail shipments. Here in a growing middle- and working-class suburb just north of Houston, the effort is undergoing its most ambitious test. The Spring Independent School District is equipping 28,000 students with ID badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on and off school buses. The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators. In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district in November is starting a project using fingerprint technology to track when and where students get on and off buses. Last year, a charter school in Buffalo began automating attendance counts with computerized ID badges - one of the earliest examples of what educators said could become a widespread trend. At the Spring district, where no student has ever been kidnapped, the system is expected to be used for more pedestrian purposes, Chief Bragg said: to reassure frantic parents, for example, calling because their child, rather than coming home as expected, went to a friend's house, an extracurricular activity or a Girl Scout meeting. When the district unanimously approved the $180,000 system, neither teachers nor parents objected, said the president of the board. Rather, parents appear to be applauding. "I'm sure we're being overprotective, but you hear about all this violence," said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34, the parent of a fourth grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus." The project also is in keeping with the high-tech leanings of the district, which built its own high-speed data network and is outfitting the schools with wireless Internet access. A handful of companies have adapted the technology for use in schools. But there are critics, including some older students and privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who argue that the system is security paranoia. The decades-old technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is growing less expensive and developing vast new capabilities. It is based on a computer chip that has a unique number programmed into it and contains a tiny antenna that sends information to a reader. The same technology is being used by companies like Wal-Mart to track pallets of retail items. Pet owners can have chips embedded in cats and dogs to identify them if they are lost. In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved use of an RFID chip that could be implanted under a patient's skin and would carry a number that linked to the patient's medical records. At the Spring district, the first recipients of the computerized ID badges have been the 626 students of Bammel Elementary school. That includes Felipe Mathews, a 5-year-old kindergartner, and the other 30 students who rode bus No. 38 to school on a recent morning. Felipe, wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt with a Spiderman logo and blue high-top tennis shoes also with a Spiderman logo, wore his yellow ID badge on a string around his neck. When he climbed on to the bus, he pressed the badge against a flat gray "reader"just inside the bus door. The reader ID beeped. Shortly after, he was followed onto the bus by Christopher Nunez, a 9-year-old fourth grader. Christopher said it was important that students wore badges so they did not get lost. Asked what might cause someone to get lost, he said, "If they're in second grade they might not know which street is their home." But on the morning Felipe and Christopher shared a seat on bus No. 38, the district experienced one of the early technology hiccups. When the bus arrived at school, the system had not worked. On the Web site that includes the log of student movements, there was no record that any of the students on the bus had arrived. It was just one of many headaches; the system had also made double entries for some students, and got arrival times and addresses wrong for others. "It's early glitches," said Brian Weisinger, the head of transportation for the Spring district, adding that he expected to work out the problems. But for the Enterprise Charter School in Buffalo, where administrators gave ID cards with the RFID technology to around 460 students last year, the computer problems lasted for many months. The system is set up so that when students walk in the door each morning, they pass by one of two kiosks - which together cost $40,000 - designed to pick up their individual radio frequency numbers as a way of taking attendance. Initially, though, the kiosks failed to register some students, or registered ones who were not there. Mark Walter, head of technology for the Buffalo school, said the system was working well now. But Mr. Walter cautions that the more ambitious technological efforts in Spring, particularly given the reliance on cellphones to call in the data, are "going to run in to some problems." In the long run, however, the biggest problem may be human error. Parents, teachers and administrators said their primary worry is getting students to remember their cards, given they often forget such basics as backpacks, lunch money and gym shoes. And then there might be mischief: students could trade their cards. Still, administrators in Buffalo said they had been contacted by districts around the country, and from numerous other countries, interested in using something similar. And the administrators in Buffalo and here in Spring said the technology, when perfected, would eventually be a big help. Parents at the Spring district seem to feel the same way. They speak of momentary horrors of realizing their child did not arrive home when expected. Some older students are not so enthusiastic. "It's too Big Brother for me," said Kenneth Haines, a 15-year-old ninth grader who is on the football and debate teams. "Something about the school wanting to know the exact place and time makes me feel kind of like an animal." Middle and high school students already wear ID badges, but they have not yet been equipped with the RFID technology. Even so, some bus drivers are apparently taking advantage of the technology's mythical powers by telling students that they are being tracked on the bus in order to get them to behave better. Kenneth's opinion is echoed by organizations like the A.C.L.U. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes "digital rights." It is "na?ve to believe all this data will only be used to track children in the extremely unlikely event of the rare kidnapping by a stranger," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the A.C.L.U. Mr. Steinhardt said schools, once they had invested in the technology, could feel compelled to get a greater return on investment by putting it to other uses, like tracking where students go after school. Advocates of the technology said they did not plan to go that far. But, they said, they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, they could see using the technology to track whether students attend individual classes. Mr. Weisinger, the head of transportation at Spring, said that, for now, the district could not afford not to put the technology to use. Chief Bragg said the key to catching kidnappers was getting crucial information within two to four hours of a crime - information such as the last place the child was seen. "We've been fortunate; we haven't had a kidnapping," Mr. Weisinger said. "But if it works one time finding a student who has been kidnapped, then the system has paid for itself." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/technology/17tag.html?oref=login --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 9267 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041117/695d11b4/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Fri Nov 19 18:30:47 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Sat Nov 20 05:29:19 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] incredible article! Message-ID: <0A90E423-3A83-11D9-89F3-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> [I have bolded one passage in particular, near the end, that is critical and exactly what TouchSmart Publishing has been advocating with Open Source Publishing.] The Muddle Machine Confessions of a Texbook Editor by Tamim Ansary SOME YEARS AGO, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas. Not so. I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!" Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business. Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages. Welcome to the Machine The first product I helped create was a basal language arts program. The word basal refers to a comprehensive package that includes students' textbooks for a sequence of grades, plus associated teachers' manuals and endless workbooks, tests, answer keys, transparencies, and other "ancillaries." My company had dominated this market for years, but the brass felt that our flagship program was dated. They wanted something new, built from scratch. Sounds like a mandate for innovation, right? It wasn't. We got all the language arts textbooks in use and went through them carefully, jotting down every topic, subtopic, skill, and subskill we could find at each grade level. We compiled these into a master list, eliminated the redundancies, and came up with the core content of our new textbook. Or, as I like to call it, the "chum." But wait. If every publisher was going through this same process (and they were), how was ours to stand out? Time to stir in a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean a pedagogical idea. These conceptual enthusiasms surge through the education universe in waves. Textbook editors try to see the next one coming and shape their program to embody it. The new ideas are born at universities and wash down to publishers through research papers and conferences. Textbook editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism? Project-based learning? At those same conferences, senior editors look for up-andcoming academics and influential educational consultants to sign as "authors" of the textbooks that the worker bees are already putting together back at the shop. Content Lite Once a philosophy has been fixed on and added, we shape the pulp to fit key curriculum guidelines. Every state has a prescribed compendium of what kids should learn -- tedious lists of bulleted objectives consisting mostly of sentences like this: The student shall be provided content necessary to formulate, discuss, critique, and review hypotheses, theories, laws, and principles and their strengths and weaknesses. If you should meet a textbook editor and he or she seems eccentric (odd hair, facial tics, et cetera), it's because this is a person who has spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing countless pages filled with such action items, trying to determine if the textbook can arguably be said to support each objective. Of course, no one looks at all the state frameworks. Arizona's guidelines? Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn. Rhode Island's? Pardon me while I die laughing. Some states are definitely more important than others. More on this later. Eventually, at each grade level, the editors distill their notes into detailed outlines, a task roughly comparable to what sixthcentury jurists in Byzantium must have faced when they carved Justinian's Code out of the jungle of Roman law. Finally, they divide the outline into theoretically manageable parts and assign these to writers to flesh into sentences. What comes back isn't even close to being the book. The first project I worked on was at this stage when I arrived. My assignment was to reduce a stack of pages 17 inches high, supplied by 40 writers, to a 3-inch stack that would sound as if it had all come from one source. The original text was just ore. A few of the original words survived, I suppose, but no whole sentences. To avoid the unwelcome appearance of originality at this stage, editors send their writers voluminous guidelines. I am one of these writers, and this summer I wrote a 10-page story for a reading program. The guideline for the assignment, delivered to me in a three-ring binder, was 300 pages long. Bon App?tit with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? With so much at stake, how did we get into this turgid mess? In the '80s and '90s, a feeding frenzy broke out among publishing houses as they all fought to swallow their competitors. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Houghton Mifflin bought D.C. Heath and Co. McGraw-Hill bought Macmillan. Silver Burdett bought Ginn -- or was it Ginn that bought Silver? It doesn't matter, because soon enough both were devoured by Prentice Hall, which in turn was gobbled up by Simon & Schuster. Then, in the late '90s, even bigger corporations began circling. Almost all the familiar textbook brands of yore vanished or ended up in the bellies of just four big sharks: Pearson, a British company; Vivendi Universal, a French firm; Reed Elsevier, a British-Dutch concern; and McGraw-Hill, the lone American-owned textbook conglomerate. This concentration of money and power caused dramatic changes. In 1974, there were 22 major basal reading programs; now there are 5 or 6. As the number of basals (in all subject areas) shrank, so did editorial staffs. Many downsized editors floated off and started "development houses," private firms that contract with educational publishers to deliver chunks of programs. They hire freelance managers to manage freelance editors to manage teams of freelance writers to produce text that skeleton crews of development-house executives sent on to publishing-house executives, who then pass it on to various committees for massaging. A few years ago, I got an assignment from a development house to write a lesson on a particular reading skill. The freelance editor sent me the corresponding lessons from our client's three major competitors. "Here's what the other companies are doing," she told me. "Cover everything they do, only better." I had to laugh: I had written (for other development houses) all three of the lessons I was competing with. The Cruelest Month In textbook publishing, April is the cruelest month. That's when certain states announce which textbooks they're adopting. When it comes to setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school districts. Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months they will have zero sales in that state. Among the adoption states, Texas, California, and Florida have unrivaled clout. Yes, size does matter. Together, these three have roughly 13 million students in K-12 public schools. The next 18 adoption states put together have about 12.7 million. Though the Big Three have different total numbers of students, they each spend about the same amount of money on textbooks. For the current school year, they budgeted more than $900 million for instructional materials, more than a quarter of all the money that will be spent on textbooks in the nation. Obviously, publishers create products specifically for the adoptions in those three key states. They then sell the same product to everybody else, because basals are very expensive to produce -- a K-8 reading program can cost as much as $60 million. Publishers hope to recoup the costs of a big program from the sudden gush of money in a big adoption state, then turn a profit on the subsequent trickle from the "open territories." Those that fail to make the list in Texas, California, or Florida are stuck recouping costs for the next six years. Strapped for money to spend on projects for the next adoption period, they're likely to fail again. As the cycle grows vicious, they turn into lunch meat. Don?t Mess with Texas The big three adoption states are not equal, however. In that elite trio, Texas rules. California has more students (more than 6 million versus just over 4 million in Texas), but Texas spends just as much money (approximately $42 billion) on its public schools. More important, Texas allocates a dedicated chunk of funds specifically for textbooks. That money can't be used for anything else, and all of it must be spent in the adoption year. Furthermore, Texas has particular power when it comes to high school textbooks, since California adopts statewide only for textbooks from kindergarten though 8th grade, while the Lone Star State's adoption process applies to textbooks from kindergarten through 12th grade. If you're creating a new textbook, therefore, you start by scrutinizing Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This document is drawn up by a group of curriculum experts, teachers, and political insiders appointed by the 15 members of the Texas Board of Education, currently 5 Democrats and 10 Republicans, about half of whom have a background in education. TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will therefore get. Texas is truly the tail that wags the dog. There is, however, a tail that wags this mighty tail. Every adoption state allows private citizens to review textbooks and raise objections. Publishers must respond to these objections at open hearings. In the late '60s a Texas couple, Mel and Norma Gabler, figured out how to use their state's adoption hearings to put pressure on textbook publishers. The Gablers had no academic credentials or teaching background, but they knew what they wanted taught--phonics, sexual abstinence, free enterprise, creationism, and the primacy of Judeo-Christian values--and considered themselves in a battle against a "politically correct degradation of academics." Expert organizers, the Gablers possessed a flair for constructing arguments out of the language of official curriculum guidelines. The Longview, Texas-based nonprofit corporation they founded 43 years ago, Educational Research Analysts, continues to review textbooks and lobby against liberal content in textbooks. The Gablers no longer appear in person at adoption hearings, but through workshops, books, and how-to manuals, they trained a whole generation of conservative Christian activists to carry on their work. Citizens also pressure textbook companies at California adoption hearings. These objections come mostly from such liberal organizations as Norman Lear's People for the American Way, or from individual citizens who look at proposed textbooks when they are on display before adoption in 30 centers around the state. Concern in California is normally of the politically correct sort -- objections, for example, to such perceived gaffes as using the word Indian instead of Native American. To make the list in California, books must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children. Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what will and won't get past the blanding process of both the conservative and liberal watchdogs. Responding to citizens' objections in adoption hearings is a delicate art. Publishers learn never to confront the assumptions behind an objection. That just causes deeper criticism. For example, a health textbook I worked on had a picture of a girl on a windy beach. One concerned citizen believed he could detect the outlines of the girl's underwear through her dress. Our response: She's at the beach, so that's her bathing suit. It worked. A social studies textbook was attacked because a full-page photograph showed a large family gathered around a dinner table. The objection? They looked like Arabs. Did we rise up indignantly at this un-American display of bias? We did not. Instead, we said that the family was Armenian. It worked. Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That's why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things. What do they know? Mainly, they know how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an organization called One World Council, rumored to be a "Communist front." At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a chance? Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author, incidentally, was celebrated bestselling science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Turn the Page There's no quick, simple fix for the blanding of American textbooks, but several steps are key to reform. # Revamp our funding mechanisms to let teachers assemble their own curricula from numerous individual sources instead of forcing them to rely on single comprehensive packages from national textbook factories. We can't have a different curriculum in every classroom, of course, but surely there's a way to achieve coherence without stultification. with so much at stake, how did we get into this mess? # Reduce basals to reference books -- slim core texts that set forth as clearly as a dictionary the essential skills and information to be learned at each grade level in each subject. In content areas like history and science, the core texts would be like mini-encyclopedias, fact-checked by experts in the field and then reviewed by master teachers for scope and sequence. Dull? No, because these cores would not be the actual instructional material students would use. They would be analogous to operating systems in the world of software. If there are only a few of these and they're pretty similar, it's OK. Local districts and classroom teachers would receive funds enabling them to assemble their own constellations of lessons and supporting materials around the core texts, purchased not from a few behemoths but from hundreds of smaller publishing houses such as those that currently supply the supplementarytextbook industry. # Just as software developers create applications for particular operating systems, textbook developers should develop materials that plug into the core texts. Small companies and even individuals who see a niche could produce a module to fill it. None would need $60 million to break even. Imagine, for example, a world-history core. One publisher might produce a series of historical novellas by a writer and a historian working together to go with various places and periods in history. Another might create a map of the world, software that animates at the click of a mouse to show political boundaries swelling, shrinking, and shifting over hundreds of years. Another might produce a board game that dramatizes the connections between trade and cultural diffusion. Hundreds of publishers could compete to produce lessons that fulfill some aspect of the core text, the point of reference. The intellect, dedication, and inventiveness of textbook editors, abundant throughout the industry but often stifled and underappreciated, would be unleashed with -- I predict -- extraordinary results for teachers and students. Bundling selections from this forest of material to create curriculum packages might itself emerge as a job description in educational publishing. The possibilities are endless. And shouldn't endless possibility be the point? Tamim Ansary, a columnist for Encarta.com and author of West of Kabul and East of New York, has written 38 nonfiction books for children. He was an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for nine years and has written for Houghton Mifflin, McDougall Littell, Prentice Hall, and many other textbook publishers. Write to edit@edutopia.com. http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1195&issue=nov_04 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 18686 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041119/cc58e27b/attachment-0002.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 22 11:04:06 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Mon Nov 22 12:54:41 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] IDEA will allows for Supplemental Materials Message-ID: <230F20C8-3CA0-11D9-9075-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> New IDEA Will Allow for Supplemental Materials AEP Position Prevails in IDEA Conference Committee Report WASHINGTON--Congress has approved a key provision that will permit teachers to use supplemental instructional materials to support the instruction of children served in programs authorized by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The provision is in the IDEA Conference Committee report, which both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved today. IDEA bills passed earlier this year set the expectation that reading instruction offered in pre-referral or early intervening programs must be grounded in a scientifically based, comprehensive reading instruction program as required by the No Child Left Behind Acts (NCLB) Reading First program. The expectation would have created an inferred prohibition of supplemental instructional materials, which are often the instructional materials that children in IDEA programs need the most. "This is a wonderful victory for special needs kids and a clear recognition of the value of the learning resources supplemental publishers provide," said Charlene F. Gaynor, executive director of the Association of Educational Publishers. "We commend the legislators whose conviction and action have thrown open the window of success to all types of learners." Supplemental materials take a variety of forms including workbooks, readers, software and hands-on products. Most supplemental materials are targeted to certain types of students or sub-groups of students, and many such materials are based on research. The language on supplemental materials in the committee report reads: "The Conferees believe that early intervening services should make use of supplemental instructional materials, where appropriate, to support student learning. Children targeted for early intervening services under IDEA are the very students who are most likely to need additional reinforcement to the core curriculum used in the regular classroom. These are in fact the additional instructional materials that have been developed to supplement and therefore strengthen the efficacy of comprehensive core curriculum. Per the requirements of NCLB, core curriculum must meet standards of scientific rigor. As supplementary materials to these core programs, they are aligned with and designed to reinforce the skills taught in these comprehensive research-based texts." Throughout the negotiations, AEP maintained that supplemental materials, by their nature, augment the provision of a comprehensive scientifically based reading program. Core instruction in each of the five essential reading components defined in NCLB--phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency and reading comprehension--should be reinforced by supplemental instructional materials to ensure student success. "Children targeted for IDEA pre-referral or early intervening services are the very students who are most likely to need additional reinforcement from supplemental materials," Gaynor said. "By definition, these children are not mastering required skills when provided with regular instruction. They need targeted services that are often best delivered using supplemental materials." --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4150 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041122/43a50f9b/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Mon Nov 22 18:56:54 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Mon Nov 22 18:57:07 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Increased computer use = lower academic performance? Message-ID: <2F7BE0DE-3CE2-11D9-9075-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> A recent study of the effects of computer use on teenage students suggests that increased computer use may result in lower academic performance. The authors of the study, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of the CESifo economic research organization in Munich, looked at data on many thousands of students in 31 countries. Initial results indicated a positive relationship between computers and academic achievement, specifically in math and reading. When the results were adjusted, however, to compensate for the higher levels of wealth and education in homes where computers are more likely to be present, the data showed that the more computers there are in the home, the lower the student's performance. In addition, despite showing higher test scores for increased time spent using computers at home, the study showed that the more time students spent using computers at school, the lower their test scores. According to the report, "the initial positive pattern on computer availability at school simply reflects that schools with better computer availability also feature other positive school characteristics." BBC, 22 November 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4032737.stm --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Wed Nov 24 20:05:33 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Wed Nov 24 20:05:44 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Student Special Needs Tools Message-ID: <1B7FBF01-3E7E-11D9-BADD-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> Conferees preview special-needs tools By Dennis Pierce, Managing Editor, eSchool News November 24, 2004 Educators, researchers, and technology makers at the annual Technology Innovators' Conference in Washington, D.C., Nov. 16 got a first look at some of the most revolutionary solutions currently under development for special-needs students. Among the items causing the biggest stir was a free online tool teachers and other educators of special-needs students soon will use to help them find and compare appropriate reading software programs. The first-of-its kind Reading Matrix is being developed by the National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI), a division of the American Institutes for Research. NCTI is funded by the Education Department's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and is charged with advancing the development of new technologies for students with disabilities. The group announced the project at its annual Technology Innovators' Conference. The Reading Matrix will allow users to search for software according to six main purposes: * Building reading skills and comprehension; * Converting text to speech; * Providing text in alternative formats; * Providing electronic resources; * Organizing ideas; and * Integrating literacy supports in a single application. When you choose one of these options, the matrix will display all relevant software titles in a grid that lets you quickly see which of the following features each program contains: * Highlighting (text, adjustable, masking); * Text-to-speech features (pronunciation, speech synthesis, natural speech, multiple voices); * Customizing features (font control, reading-rate control, desktop/view options); * Electronic resources (dictionary, thesaurus, synonym/antonym support, text notes, bookmarks); * Navigation features (search/find, jump to segment); and * Other features (voice input, multi-user profiles, animation, ability to read graphics, proprietary scanning). A beta version of the matrix is available now for testing and feedback. The final version is set to launch Dec. 1 with at least 35 products, and more will be added on a continuous basis, said NCTI Director Tracy Gray. "We realized there was no one place where educators or researchers could go to get information about the technologies currently available for teaching reading skills to students with disabilities," Gray said in explaining the new tool. The matrix is actually one of two new resources developed by NTCI that will launch Dec. 1. The other is a free Networking Service that aims to bring researchers and software developers together to foster the development of new products for special-needs students. The Networking Service works "like an online dating service," Gray said. Users create a profile that explains what they do, what their interests are, and the kinds of partnerships or resources they're looking for. The service then generates a list of potential matches. Collaboration is key Arjan Khalsa, CEO and Founder of IntelliTools Inc. demonstrates the IntelliTools Classroom Suite at the 7th Annual Technology Innovators' Conference in Washington. (Photo courtesy of Michael Smith-Welch) The goal of NCTI's new Networking Service mirrors the goal of the conference itself and NCTI in general, Gray said--to "bridge the divide that exists between special-needs researchers and technology developers." To achieve this goal, the conference provided several opportunities for face-to-face meetings between members of these two communities, including a special networking lunch. Collaboration is essential for helping students with disabilities attain success, said keynote speaker Tom Wlodkowski, director of accessibility for America Online Inc. (AOL). "The corporate and R&D worlds have a lot to learn from each other," he told the 100-plus audience. "If we all work together, everybody wins." Wlodkowski also discussed AOL's efforts to expand the accessibility of its products and services. The company's latest such effort is its AIM Relay Service. Introduced in July, it allows users of AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) who are hearing-impaired to place telephone calls through IM. Telephone users also can place "calls" to hearing-impaired AIM users by dialing a special telephone number. More than 100,000 calls were placed through the service in its first month alone, Wlodkowski said. Explaining the significance of the service, Wlodkowski noted that 59 percent of internet users in the United States use IM--and 29 percent reportedly send more instant messages than eMail. Of even more relevance for educators, an estimated 90 percent of internet users between the ages of 13 and 21 use IM, which is "revolutionizing communication for the deaf," he said. Following Wlodkowski's address, a group of panelists underscored the need for special-needs researchers and developers to work together in a session titled "Collaborations: Nuts and Bolts for Success." "We don't know how to pitch, and the vendors don't know how to catch," said Jeff Higginbotham, associate professor of communicative disorders and sciences for the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. Higginbotham has teamed up with Greg Lesher, director of research for DynaVox Systems of Pittsburgh, which makes keyboard-based communication devices and text-to-speech software for people with speech, learning, and physical disabilities. He said the partnership gives him enhanced IT and engineering support for his research, as well as the emotional and financial satisfaction derived from seeing his ideas turned into products. For DynaVox, the benefits of the partnership include the credibility and access to additional grant funds that teaming up with a respected university provides, as well as new contacts and perspective on the industry. Technology demonstrations During the conference, NCTI hosted a special Demonstration Event at which more than two dozen technology vendors and researchers displayed their latest solutions for special-needs students. Here are some of the highlights: " Utah State University's WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) demonstrated the WAVE, a "web accessibility validation tool" that automatically checks any web site for how easily it can be read by persons with disabilities. When you type a URL into this free, internet-based system (http://wave.webaim.org), the site you're checking will appear in the browser window with red, yellow, or green icons next to all of its elements. Red icons mean the element in question is inaccessible or unreadable to certain users; yellow icons mean the element might present a problem for some users; and green icons mean the element is accessible to all users. Explanations for each of these icons also are available. # Viable Technologies demonstrated Viable Real-time Transcription (VRT), a remote, real-time transcription service for students with disabilities. The speaker speaks normally into a lapel microphone or an extra-sensitive microphone installed in the classroom. The microphone is connected to a telephone line, which transmits the audio to Viable Technologies' call center. A transcriber at the call center creates captions of what the speaker is saying, and using a notebook computer connected to the internet, the student can receive captions of the lecture in real time. While reading the transcription, the student can scroll back and forth to review important points. The student also can add notes for later review, and a text-to-speech application enables students with hearing loss who have difficulty speaking clearly to voice their comments and questions with ease. All the student has to do is raise his or her hand, type out what he or she wants to say, and press a button to voice the question. # Two companies were on hand to demonstrate eye-gaze solutions that allow students with severe physical disabilities to control a computer cursor with only the motion of their eyes. Solutions for Humans displayed ERICA (Eye-Gaze Response Interface Computer Aid), a Windows-based system that includes a tablet PC propped up in a stand with an attached camera. The user sits motionless in front of the tablet and calibrates the system to recognize his or her eye movements by focusing on a series of dots that appear on the screen. Once calibrated, the system offers a keyboard interface on the screen that can be controlled through the user's eye gaze. ERICA costs about $10,000 but requires a consistent head position, making it suitable only for users who are fully immobilized. A more expensive, but also more forgiving, system was on display from LC Technologies Inc. The company's Eyegaze Communication System seemed easier to control during a demonstration but comes with a heftier price tag: around $15,000 for the full solution. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5390 --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 9555 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041124/13f8ddf1/attachment.bin From bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net Tue Nov 30 21:10:00 2004 From: bridging_the_divide at touchsmart.net (bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net) Date: Tue Nov 30 23:09:51 2004 Subject: [Bridging_the_digital_divide] Dec04/Jan05 Innovate Magazine Message-ID: <1ADAC4EE-433E-11D9-A824-000A95A5E63A@touchsmart.net> The December 2004/January 2005 issue of Innovate will be available at http://innovateonline.info one minute after midnight ET on December 1. I am distributing this announcement now because one minute after midnight on December 1 ET I will be on a heavier-than-air craft winging my way to participate in the Online Educa Berlin conference that begins later that day. :-) Innovate is a peer-reviewed, bimonthly e-journal published as a public service by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. It features creative practices and cutting-edge research on the use of information technology to enhance education. The issue begins with my interview of Bill Graves, a pioneer in information management. Graves offers insights on service, program, and course redesign strategies and explains how they can improve educational delivery while lowering institutional costs. The authors of our second article use research on adult learning to identify pedagogical strategies and practical techniques for writing instructional articles in adult online education. Verne Moreland and Herbert Bivens put their recommendations into concrete form with an alternate version of their Innovate article in prime educational format. Bruce Howerton and Nicholas Moss follow with individual articles on multimedia teaching resources at a prominent dental school. Howerton reviews the technical potential of three software programs to enliven traditional dental lectures. Moss describes his classroom use of these programs, complete with results and student reactions. Both authors provide sample multimedia materials for readers to explore. The next two articles focus on online instruction. John Sener discusses the scrutiny that online learning constantly undergoes, pointing out the problematic nature of comparing it to traditional education and arguing for a separate frame of evaluation. Mark Mabrito leads us into the heart of the online learning experience with a review of the tools, techniques, and policies he uses to enhance interaction on three fronts. The issue concludes with another interview, a conversation between board member Scott Windham and Dee Dickinson, the chief learning officer of New Horizons for Learning. Dickinson reflects on her organization's past,amazing array of resources. Logging on is simple--but we invite you to do more than simply read. Use the journal's one-button features to comment on articles, share material with colleagues and friends, and participate in Innovate-Live webcasts and discussion forums. Join us in exploring the best uses of technology to improve the ways we think, learn, and live. Please forward this announcement to appropriate mailing lists and to colleagues who want to use IT tools to advance their work. Many thanks. Jim ---- James L. Morrison Editor-in-Chief, Innovate http://www.innovateonline.info Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership UNC-Chapel Hill http://horizon.unc.edu --- Jason Barkeloo President TouchSmart Publishing 6522 Waldorf Place Cincinnati, OH 45230 http://www.touchsmart.net t: 513.225.8765 f: 206.666.4856 This electronic mail (email) communication, and any files transmitted with it, are confidential, and intended solely for the indicated recipient(s). Any review, use, or distribution by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, or are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender, and delete all copies immediately. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3684 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/bridging_the_divide/attachments/20041130/9f5053e7/attachment.bin