When I first got into teaching, I got in towards the late-end of a district's adoption into an all "leftist" exploratory K-12 math curriculum. I'm sure most of you are familiar with at least one series that falls into this category. We had "Math Investigations" in grades K-5, "CMP" 6-8, and Core-Plus 9-12. The core concept of this series was that teachers were not supposed to teach rote-learning of math facts. Calculators would supplant that "old-fashioned" method of learning. Kids grew up learning how to "explore" math, rather than memorize addition & multiplication tables, practice procedures repeatedly, and churn out page after page of "drill n' kill" problems.

I got these kids in high school. When we ended Core Plus and reverted back to a traditional textbook, they couldn't do 40% of what you would find in an Algebra I textbook, because they did not have these basic math facts. They couldn't divide, so they couldn't factor. They couldn't calculate powers, so they couldn't understand square roots. They could not see patterns in numbers, because they had never learned to calculate. When they let the calculator do all the calculations, their brain never stopped to watch the patterns that were emerging.

Now we want to give iPads to kindergartners. Has anyone stopped to think about what basic skill sets we'll be depriving these children of that we adults take for granted? The ones we take them for granted because we grew up w/o iPads to impede learning basic skills...skills like social interaction, self regulation, dialog and public speaking... Forgive me, it's been a while since I've studied child psychology, but there's a significant amount of neurological development that occurs in elementary school and continues on though middle and high school. Has anyone really stopped to examine and consider the long-term effects of significant exposure to this technology, especially at such young ages?

I may have grown up with a computer, as well as most slashdot readers out there. But it's mere empirical evidence to say, "Look at me, I turned out fine." (Besides, your concept of "fine" may include living in your parent's basement at the age of 35.) Are there any real studies (rather than some questionable poll) that have examined this subject?

As a math teacher, I'm tired of every Joe Millionaire stepping up and saying that education needs to be fixed. Education isn't the problem. For the millionaires who don't understand yet...public education is not about raising test scores. Public education is about civilizing our citizens. Without public education, the public will not understand civility en mass. As a teacher in a high-poverty rural school district, and I've seen how uncivil kids and adults can be even when they're educated. If we don't force parents to educate their kids, they'll run free, they'll run wild, and they'll be a plague on our populace.

That being said, if you want to raise test scores, there is one variable that has more correlation than all the others combined. Poverty. And I have the numbers to back it up. Using my home state of Minnesota as an example, look at the state test results hosted by the Star Tribune. Run a correlation study between percent proficiency on either test, and the % of test takers that are low-income. (Remove the districts w/ the small samples of less than 10 -- they're specialized cooperatives & magnet schools whose sample of students taking the test do not follow the same sampling as with general Independent School Districts.) Even better, run it on just the Minneapolis / St. Paul Metro Area districts.

I haven't calculated the results for 2011 yet, but I ran it for 2010 in the metro area. Metro-wide, the correlation coefficient between % proficient and low-income for math was -0.91 and -0.93 for reading. That's insane. You almost never get correlation coefficients that good anywhere in statistics, but it's happening here. Forget teachers. Forget schools. The single biggest factor impacting education is poverty and low-income. (And for those who want to chant, "correlation is not causation," I challenge you to walk into any inner-city school district and witness the behavior yourself. I promise you, there's more than just correlation there.)

If millionaires really wanted to fix schools, they'd have a much greater impact on education (and our society at large) if they gave away their money to the poor. Better yet, set up a stipend program like Brazil and other countries have.

What these business men are saying without saying it is that there's nothing "new" they can come up with for the PC. It's established technology. Sure, the graphics keep getting better, the windows look shinier, and the processors keep getting faster (while the OS's get slower), but there's nothing new they can invent for the PC. It does what it's supposed to do, and we just don't expect it to do anything more.

The PC market is saturated. No one who doesn't have one will feel motivated to buy one anymore, because everyone who wants one already has one. Sure, PC owners will upgrade. They'll fix. The market for PC won't shrink, but it won't grow either.

Businessmen want new. New sells. But new has to be different. New and different sells, because new and different means that, even if someone already has a PC, they'll still spend MORE money on what's new and different. New and different means that there's a new revenue stream that businessmen can tap into. New and different means more profit. That's what businessmen want.

So, to motivate consumers to spend money on the iPad, they must be manipulated into thinking that the PC is new and different. We must believe that the PC is not enough. We must seek more than the PC. We must buy iPad. What better way to do that than to think the PC is going the way of the dodo bird?

Two academics write in a recent article decrying that a third of Australian universities now offer courses in such subjects as homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine, which undermines science-based medicine.

I think that academic scrutiny and study are exactly what these areas of medicine need. While I would definitely argue that there are many areas of these medicines that are placebos at best, I have heard and witnessed accounts of individual remedies, scrutinized by science, which nevertheless empirically appear to be effective. I would hate to through the baby out with the bathwater by dismissing either subject entirely.

I don't want to feel that it's merely conspiracy theory to believe that "the man" / "big pharma" is trying to squeeze out all alternative medicine because it competes with their company. But, in the same sense, I don't want people acquiring argyria en mass just because they keep hearing about colloidal silver on the internet. Presently, US law outright forbids scientific study of these remedies. I believe they need to be studied so that there's conclusive evidence of what works and what doesn't work. And what we discover does work should be allowed in practice. The world of academia can help tremendously with that.

If you're seriously thinking that you need to go through that much trouble to hide your "bad work habits," the problem really is you. You appear to be aware of your less-than-exceptional work habits. Reading between the lines, it almost appears as though you lost another previous job because of your self-distractions during work.

Rather than try and hide your browsing history, why not try working for a change? They are paying you to work, after all. And on periods of downtime, bring your own laptop.

Yay, cloud!

First, create a nice, succinct list of issues and consequences that will take you ~5 min to read off. Prepare it so that it's as simple and as concentrated as possible. You have legitimate concerns that NEED to be expressed.

Then, assert your concerns to your director. If he doesn't listen, assert your concerns to his boss. If she doesn't listen, assert your concerns to the superintendent. If he doesn't listen, assert your concerns to the school board.

You have every right to tell the asst sup that she needs to delete emails. If she chooses to order you around like some slave, tell her very plainly that IT policy has limits of 5 Gb, and that's the limit because Joe Taxpayer pays your district so that everyone can use the tech resources provided, not just one email hog. The school parking lot is fairly segmented so that everyone has a place to park. Each student has the same size locker so that everyone has an equal storage space. She's not exempt from school board policy, and she's not exempt from IT policy.

And you have every right to tell everyone who has ears that, if the IT department does not have the right to manage IT, then IT will slowly fail, which will contribute to unreliable technology in the district, which will disrupt the learning environment, lower the moral of the students and staff, which contributes to declining enrollment. Declining enrollment is dollars walking out the door.

But seriously, assert yourself. And if nobody chooses to listen, find another school or position.

Unfortunately, IT is currently under the 'asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction,' who has no useful understanding of maintaining and acquiring IT resources and lets others make poor IT purchasing decisions, by bypassing the IT department, and dips into IT funds when their pet project budgets run low. How can this be reversed when you get commands like 'make it work' and the budget is effectively $0?"

Grow a pair.

Seriously. You're not asserting yourself. You're letting your assistant sup do whatever they want with your budget. And he/she's probably doing it because you're not putting your foot down.

I work in a small rural school as a tech coordinator, so from my experience, let me gather a few facts from your post. First thing's first: if you have an assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, your district's not small, as in small-small. Practically any district that's less than 2,000 students K-12 won't have any assistant superintendents. Maybe you're not LAUSD, but you're not small. Given those numbers, you are probably not the only guy in your IT department, either. I'd give a rough estimate of somewhere between 500 to 1,500 machines in your district. Long story short, your district has money. Maybe it's not flowing to your department, but your district has money.

Now, those machines need support, or they fail. Support costs money, both in parts and in human resources. You can easily communicate to your asst sup the poor return on investment he/she will get if they continue to underfund your department. If you want to illustrate the point more clearly, grab a faulty power supply out of your storage room (not one that fails outright, but one that has some inconsistent rails and a good heaping of dust bunnies to cause overheating), break into your sup's office and swap power supplies. When he/she calls you back the next day to complain, explain how you don't have any funding to repair the computer.

But that's the passive-aggressive approach. What you really should do is get in there and assert to the ignoramus that poor purchasing decisions and lack of funding are diminishing the quality of the tech equipment in the building. If you want to be professional about it, cite observations you've made about increased demands on the computer resources over the last few years and increasing complaints from teachers and staff about how current tech is not meeting those needs. Explain the financial angle of how failure to comply with software licensing issues can be very detrimental long-term. Explain how buying equipment incompatible with the current infrastructure is a waste of money and human resources.

And if he/she doesn't listen, go to the superintendent directly. If he/she doesn't listen, go to the school board. And if they don't listen, go to a different school.

But seriously, grow a pair.

I hope they have a huge successful IPO.
I hope the share price takes off like a rocket.
I hope the Koch brothers and every other Gordon Gekko pumps their "hard-earned money" into the stock.

And then I hope that it tanks harder than MySpace in the hands of Rupert Murdoch.

Superintendent Luna is quoted as saying, the computer 'becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.'

Here's the only question that matters: What research-based evidence supports this view that a computer is a better and more effective medium for accessing this information than the present status quo of books, the library, the handheld calculator, and a desktop computer?

Because, to put it in terms of business, if there isn't a decent Return-On-Investment with buying all this tech, than no citizen or politician should put money up to invest.