Technology

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You Never Know What Is Getting Through

All Hail the parents and teachers of children with learning disabilities who never give up hope!  Special Ed teachers toil every day to teach students with a variety of disabilities. Some children, like the one in this news piece, may seem hopeless.  Day after day, teachers teach…but may never know if they are even being heard.  They may wonder, as these parents did:  “Is he even in there?”.  Imagine finding a way to communicate with people after being (seemingly) uncommunicative for nearly 20 years!

It is wonderful that the iPad released Watson from the prison of his disability.  But it was the parents and special ed teachers who never gave up that allowed Watson to recognize and use the keyboard letters to type out a message.  He obviously knew how to read and write.  He was just physically incapable of doing so until the iPad.  It was his teachers who taught him to be literate.  The iPad simply allowed them to see the fruits of their mighty efforts!  Technology, no matter how wonderful, will never replace the Annie Sullivans of this world with their relentless efforts to stream light and sound into seemingly closed worlds.

Autistic Man Breaks Through the Silence

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Retired old codger?

OK.  Now Doug Johnson is making fun of me!  🙂

Has retirement made an old codger of me?  (Have you noticed that there appears to be no female counterpart to the word codger?  Men can be irascible and loveable. Women apparently are just “old bags”!) Have I been reduced to starting all my sentences with “Hmmmpff!”?  Have I become ….gulp!…. a Republican?  You know – resistant to a changing world, unable to embrace anything new, paralyzed in the past?  Sorry – my political prejudices are showing.  Don’t hate me.  Some of my best friends are Republicans….but my Irish-American and British Labour Party forebears would turn over in their graves at the very thought.

OK – it is with much disgruntlement that I embark on giving Feedly a go.  Mainly I was ticked off at Google for giving so little notice.  Doug tells me that we have till June 1 – but the message I got before I commented on his blog was that we had to make the switch by March 20.  Perhaps I misread it. Failing eyesight you know…

Interesting take-away as I transition from GR to Feedly….  I am struck by the preference of graphic literacy vs print literacy.  All of the feeds default to “magazine view”.  I much prefer title view as this allows me to quickly scan the titles to decide which ones to read.  I am evidently able to “drink in” and digest great hunks of text in seconds.  The graphics are pretty – but they confuse me.  I am obviously very graphically illiterate.  The riot of color and images just  muddles my mind.

As near as I can figure – I have to change EVERY SINGLE BLOG feed to “title view” one at a time.  If anyone knows a way to do this in “one-fell-swoop” – please share.  The flip side  of my annoyance of having to go through the feeds one at a time is that it gives me the chance to weed-out the defunct blogs.

Where does a defunct blog go?  Bleaven? Blell? Blurgatory? Blimbo?  How does one mourn the death of a blog?  I SO miss Alice In Infoland’s Blog! I did NOT delete it. There is so much there to go back to and savor….

 

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iPads…not perfect

People sing the praises of Apple as being easier, more dependable and more intuitive than PCs. To be fair, this is my first Apple product since the Apple IIe. But I recently discovered a HUGE glitch with the iPad.

I’ve been using the Notes program that comes with the iPad for taking meeting notes, including the NYSCATE tech conference I recently attended.

After the conference, I wanted to paste an asterisk next to some action items. Alas! I accidentally chose “select all” and then paste. In an instant, two days worth of notes disappeared, replaced by an asterisk. And there is no “undo” button.

At least “clunky”, “uncool” Microsoft applications all come with an “undo” button. Maybe they recognize that since they are not perfect, perhaps some of their users are not uber-perfect either.

It’s pretty easy for your finger to slip and obliterate hours of work. Obviously, I will look for another note-taking tool. But I have to ask…..do only “perfect” humans use Apple products?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Do you know what folks don’t know?

You go along doing your job.  Mostly people seem to know what you do.  Some are down-right complimentary about the services provided.  Complaints are few and far between.  And then … surprise!!

Our Superintendent recently met with our district library team to discuss possible changes to our department’s roles and responsibilities.  We were a little nervous about the meeting.  I found myself reciting to myself  “I’m retired.  After this year, I don’t have to worry anymore.  But please…..don’t let it be job cuts.”

Well, surprise.  Our superintendent has been quite intent since he started to pin down roles and responsibilities, chain of command, procedures etc. throughout the district.  This meeting came as part of that effort.  He  had a list of technology related tasks …. projector & printer trouble-shooting, password management, some software management duties, future responsibilities for ebook readers etc. etc.  With the exception of ordering and distributing printer cartridges and our non-existent e-readers, we were already doing everything on the list.  And had been doing them for a number of years.

The most interesting discussion had to do with e-readers.  It never in a million years would have occurred to me that there would be ANY other possible choice other than the libraries to take over responsibilities connected with them.  Fortunately I had attended a workshop recently about the options, so I felt that I could say a bit more than “DUH!”

Yet another reason to be sorry to retire.  I would LOVE to introduce a new technology service  into our district libraries.  But I am afraid that baton will have to be passed to whoever comes after me.  Unless some money magically descends upon us this year.

Another eye-opener of the meeting….  In the context of software management, and aging computers, I mentioned  that our kids are getting the message that libraries are inferior to the labs because we don’t have the same software packages  …. not to mention the age of the elementary & middle school library computers.  The Superintendent was a bit taken back by that.  He acknowledged that even the high school’s new library computers were inferior to the lab computers because they were deemed as needed for only basic computing needs and web research.  He did not realize that although students often start their graphic and video projects in the labs, they almost always show up in the libraries to finish them.  They discover that the library computers are not up to the job, and they have to go into the labs to finish the projects.  Since the labs are often unsupervised during student free time, a certain amount of vandalizing occurs.   Not to mention that students make it  clear they don’t want to get “stuck” with the library computers because the labs are better.  Bad message for future use of libraries.  We should always have to best there is to offer.  We are learning labs and need to have EVERY possible tool available.  This meeting was a great opportunity to bring out that concept.

The point of all this rambling…… Don’t assume that because you have been doing something “forever’ that everyone knows.  Advocacy is absolutely my biggest weakness.  Kudos to our superintendent!  Not all superintendents would take the time to seek out our input.  Technology trouble shooting is an everyday part of our job.  Librarians are generally working closest to the “point of need” of their patrons – teachers as well as students.  Technology assistance and reference assistance are more closely bound than ever.  WE know that.  But do our tech people know?  Do our principal’s know?  Does the superintendent know?  Do all our teachers know?  Do all our students know?  And what about the parents and school board who fund our jobs?  We really need to get the word out there.

Easy for me to say.  I’m retired!!!

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Libraries and Laptops and Labs … Oh My!

We just acquired a mobile laptop cart.  It has made scheduling both easier and more complex.

Our procedures are designed to accomplish 3 major objectives:

FIRST (and most important) – Provide classes with maximum access to computers.

SECOND – Maintain the library as the “go to” place for all research needs.

THIRD – Minimize wear and tear and vandalism of the equipment.

Here’s what we have shared with the teachers:

Laptops and Libraries and Labs … Oh My!

I will let you know how this works for us.  If you have any ideas, tips, war stories etc.  – please share 🙂