Archive for: December 2004
§ ¶Cringely Lauds REALbasic
I don’t think of Cringely’s columns as focusing on such pragmatic topics as everyday developer tools. Usually he’s talking about how to use commuter planes to provide WiFi to a region or why Microsoft’s latest thing is really a sneaky step towards global domination. But in his latest column he gives credit to REALbasic, my favorite cross-platform development environment, as the Next Big Thing for Visual Basic developers sick of VB.
…the reasons you might want to learn it are simple. You can write software on a Windows machine, for one, and deploy it on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Or if you prefer to write software on a Mac, you can deploy on Windows, Mac, or Linux. And in the first quarter of next year, I’m told, you’ll even be able to write your REALBasic apps on a Linux workstation and deploy them on Linux, Windows, or the Mac. The applications are complied to machine language and don’t even require an installer. They tend to be smaller and faster than most alternatives, AND for Windows deployments they are backward-compatible to Windows 98, which current Microsoft solutions definitely are not.
Having used RB for the past few years, I find the main theme of his comments accurate. But it’s worth noting that because RB tries to be truly cross-platform, it’s often difficult to leverage the specific strengths of one platform. On Mac OS X, for example, applications built in Cocoa have access to a variety of functionality that RB-built applications don’t have. There are several third-party workarounds for this, but fundamentally, I think if you’re targeting only one platform, whether it’s Mac OS X, Windows XP, or Linux, you’re better off using a development environment designed for that platform. If, however, you’re in the cross-platform business, RB is pure gold. As Cringely points out, it’s not just for hobbyists.
Big supporters of REALBasic are Novell, IBM, Apple, and…Microsoft. A demo version of REALBasic ships with Mac Office, and Microsoft’s SQL Query app was written in RealBASIC.
§ ¶NCLB Summary at EdWeek
EdWeek has an end of year summary of where states are in terms of implementing NCLB. It’s a broad-ranging look at performance, costs, and other aspects of the law’s impact. Bottom line, states are trying to meet the demands of the law…
On virtually every indicator tracked by the Education Week Research Center, based on a survey of state education departments, the number of states meeting the law’s requirements in the 2004-05 school year has inched up from last year, although far more remains to be done.
…but since each state is essentially designing its own AYP (adequate yearly progress) measure, there’s incredible variation in the approaches.
Moreover, while the federal law requires states to set up a “single, statewide accountability system,” what that means is not always clear. Twenty-six states use criteria, in addition to those spelled out in the federal law, to assign ratings, according to Education Week’s survey. And sometimes schools may get dual ratings that do not always add up.
Often, that’s because state accountability systems focus on the overall performance of a school’s students or give credit for growth, while the federal law requires schools to get a minimum percent of students in each subgroup—including those who are poor, speak limited English, have disabilities, or come from racial- and ethnic- minority backgrounds—to the “proficient” level on state tests each year.
This subgroup demand is rough because a student can belong to multiple subgroups. In some cases, a single “unproficient” student (conceivably one who transferred into the district recently) may result in several subgroups failing to meet their AYP goals, setting off a cascade of events that leads to school reorganization. States and districts, obviously, don’t like this because it places so much responsibility for a school’s AYP on such a small number of students.
§ ¶Controlling RSS Bandwidth
If you run a blog and check your stats, odds are that your syndication feed is sitting on top. That’s certainly true for me. What’s interesting in my case is that this weblog has gone through three different incarnations, each with its own particular RSS URL. All three continue to be active. (I’ve taken pains to ensure that the old URLs redirect to the current RSS feed, so existing subscriptions don’t break.)
The simple step I’ve taken to cut back the bandwidth used by the feeds to to just reduce the number of entries that are included. That only goes so far. Glenn Fleishman has put up a new blog to explore more innovative (and, hopefully, more effective) solutions.
§ ¶Drug Store Ciphers
Rob’s got a really interesting page up about how some chain drugstores appear to encrypt their wholesale cost on the price tag that sits out on the shelf. It’s a simple substitution cipher (each digit gets a unique letter), and not too hard to crack with a little bit of data. He’s cracked one chain’s code already.
I took a shot at the other chain’s code. Based solely on the data on Rob’s page, I think the key is BRUSH CLEAN.
Since the wholesale price varies with the retail price, it’s pretty easy to get a rough ordering of the letters. Based on the eight data points on Rob’s page, I guessed, in order, B R U H L C A (leaving N E S as unknowns). Then, knowing that the key was likely something memorable, I made an educated guess. BRUSH CLEAN yields markups ranging from 34-99%… sounds about right.
§ ¶About design2learn
I haven’t updated this site’s mandate in ages. This post provides some detail about who I am, what I do, and how that’s related to the things I post.
(more)§ ¶Coming Soon...
From the latest Intel Innovator newsletter:
Intel® Innovation in Education plans to introduce its newest thinking tool in 2005, expanding the suite of online tools available for teachers to use with their students. The new tool is designed to support learners in the process of making well-reasoned, well-supported arguments. Developed in collaboration with cognitive scientists and now in the pilot phase, the tool is being tested for classroom use by experienced teachers.
The quote comes from an Ask the Expert feature with Kate McNeill, a doctoral student at Michigan. She talks about some of the challenges to scaffolding good argumentation skills, and how this upcoming tool may help address those challenges. We’ve been working with Intel on the design and development of the tool and can’t wait to see it go live on Intel’s education site.
§ ¶Sparklines
Looks like Tufte is working on a new book called Beautiful Evidence. He’s previewed a chapter called Sparklines. Sparklines are clever little data graphics that are intended to be used inline with narrative text, rather than set off from the text as figures and diagrams tend to be. It’s a nice idea, and there’s a open source php implementation of sparklines for those interested in incorporating these representations into their web sites. Here’s an example from the sparkline php site.
Yankees fan or Red Sox fan, Republican or Democrat, the growing US deficit is a grave concern in the coming years. A strong economy helped push down the deficit during the Clinton presidency. After President Bush’s first term and a costly war on terror, the picture is not so rosy. OMB data shows the ebb and flow of the deficit
from 1983 - 2003.
§ ¶Archive Maintenance
Existing links to older versions of this weblog (run first in Radio from January 2002 to April 2003, then in blosxom through July 2004, and now in Pivot) were coming up 404. That’s been fixed. Ideally I’ll import the old content into Pivot, which will make the archive searchable, but this short term fix ensures that existing links out in the wild will work.
§ ¶Blogging Creative Practices
Via BoingBoing, a really interesting weblog that’s archiving creative work habits from a wide range of professions.
We’re interested in the habits, rituals and small (and occasionally big) methods people and teams use to get their work done. And in the specific anecdotes and the way people describe their own relationship to their own work. Here’s a list of some stories and habits. Not sure it is actually useful for anything. Do any patterns emerge across stories, other than the obvious stories of super-focus, super-dedication?
§ ¶Nice Stats!
I just finished setting up automated web analysis using awstats. I hadn’t been paying attention to log analysis software for a couple years, but I’m real impressed with what this open source package can do. (For a sample, see BoingBoing’s stats page, which is where I learned of awstats.)
§ ¶iPods in Language Learning
Towards the end of this Newsweek article is a brief story of a Duke professor who uses iPods in her Spanish classes. I’ve thought for a while that the mp3 player market has the potential for some really interesting spoken-word uses in education. This is one example; the whole ipodder trend is another.