In 1999, Sun Microsystems acquired StarDivision, and its flagship product, Star Office. The following year, they took aim at Microsoft’s near-monopoly on the desktop productivity market by offering a free, open source version of the package, StarOffice 5.2. In my December, 2000 technology newsletter, I wrote: Sun Microsystems has decided to play Microsoft’s game [of underpricing their products to force the competition out of business] … Continue reading Is it Time for OpenOffice?

I thought the story of George Vaccaro’s trouble with Verizon was a bit ridiculous. His Verizon Math blog chronicles his struggle to explain to Verizon the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars. Apparently, before leaving the United States for Canada, he was quoted a data rate for his cell plan of 0.002 cents per kilobyte. He confirmed this with Verizon, and verified that this … Continue reading Bad Math Hits Home

I started blogging in late December, 2005. Initially, I was looking for a replacement for the monthly technology newsletters I used to write. Each month, I would create a two-page newsletter and distribute it to all of my staff members. It included 4-7 short items about current technology happenings in the school district, online resources, technology tips for teachers, and other short, useful bits of … Continue reading Reflecting on a Year of Blogging

I had an interesting conversation earlier today with Jeff Lebow and Doug Symington as part of the traditional Wordbridges end-of-year webcastathon. Among lots of other things, we discussed professional development for teachers. In our case, we have half a day, twice a year, for professional development. In those two half-days, we have to teach our teachers everything they need to know. That includes instruction on … Continue reading Professional Development

CNN reported this week that the youth of today couldn’t care less about space exploration. “Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA’s new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.” I wonder why. Let’s take a couple huge leaps back in space time. On October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was launched by … Continue reading Space Exploration (yawn)

A necessary component of critical thinking is the ability to draw logical conclusions. Our students have to be able to draw logical conclusions given a set of rules and circumstances. For example, take this rule: “If it’s raining, then it’s cloudy.” Which of the following conclusions are valid? It’s cloudy outside, therefore it must be raining. It’s not cloudy outside, therefore it must not be … Continue reading Logical

A recent study at the University of Liverpool has determined that reading Shakespeare excites positive brain activity. Shakespeare’s writing uses functional shifts, where words are used as different parts of speech. “Thou losest here, a better where to find,” declares Kent to Cordelia in King Lear. In this case “where” becomes a noun. In the Tempest, Caliban protests at being treated like an animal with … Continue reading Shakespeare Excites the Brain

Earlier this week, I distributed a cd of free software to my tech team. These are various applications that may be useful to teachers and students. It’s a little old-school to actually burn the discs and pass them out, but I find that they’re more likely to actually take a look at something if I hand it to them instead of just sending them a … Continue reading The Best Things in Life

‘Tis the season for lists, and I might as well jump on the bandwagon. Microsoft® is in the midst of convincing everyone that they have to have the new version of Windows® (Vista®). The marketing machine is just starting to gear up, even though Vista isn’t yet shipping to home users, you can’t buy a computer with Vista preinstalled, and corporate customers would have to … Continue reading Why Not Vista

The current Time magazine cover story (“How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century,” December 2006) highlights the need for students to learn 21st century skills in order to compete in the global economy. Specifically, we should be teaching our children to: Know more about the world in which we live Become innovative and creative thinkers and problem solvers Develop information literacy skills … Continue reading Teaching for Tomorrow

We’re working on some new site designs for our district web site. It’s part of a bigger project intended to make the site easier to use, provide more useful and up-to-date information, and improve the visual design of the site. With a school web site, color decisions are generally pretty easy to make. Our school’s colors are crimson and gold. Two years ago, we spent … Continue reading Painting a Web Site

You can’t divide by zero. Everyone knows that. Well, almost everyone. University of Reading professor Dr. James Anderson doesn’t know that. Neither do the year 10 kids he’s been teaching. It seems he’s “solved” the problem of dividing by zero. It’s simple, really. Just say that anything divided by zero is nulity. Pick a Greek letter to represent the concept. Then, get a film crew … Continue reading Dividing by Zero