SchoolZone woes (again...)

First day of term for most New Zealand schools today and I can't believe that the SchoolZone email system is not working! I shouldn't be surprised, as it's run by Telecom, but come on, probably the biggest ISP in New Zealand Schools and I'm greeted by a "we are having problems with email and are working on it " message when I ring for support. The phrases "Quality of Service", "Redundancy" and "House of cards" spring to mind....

Parental responsibility

A friend asked me today what I thought we should be doing as parents to protect our children in a connected world. I could have reeled off some of the well known pointers like keeping computers and cellphones out of childrens bedrooms, parental controls on PCs etc. but when I gave it some thought I began to think that although those sort of things might 'help' in the short term, they are really just ways of ignoring and delaying the issues. I think that the root of many of the problems related to children and the online world lie in the hands of parents themselves. First we replaced books with TV, then the VCR replaced TV. DVDs replaced the VCR and then along came the computer and for many parents it was just another way of keeping children occupied. Although most parents have come to realize that computers and the Internet is so much more than a distraction, I'm sure that the majority are still largely ignorant to the intracacies of what existing online means to young people. So my answer was that the best, and really the only thing to do was for parents to realize that they have a duty to upskill themselves so they do understand. Parents can no longer bury their heads in the sand or claim ignorance about computers, the Internet or technology in general. They need to learn, and then they need to communicate and keep communicating. To be continued......

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iPhone 3G Wifi Speed on Zyxel HW660 Router

More a  reminder for me than a real post, but if anyone suffers from the fairly common "iPhone 3G/3Gs slow wifi" issues (see here, here and here), follow the instructions in the third link and things should come right. I don't claim to really understand what RTS/CTS means (Zyxel's definitions are here) but having recently swapped my router at home for a Zyxel HW-660-D1 router (thanks Mike), I was suffering from incredibly slow wifi on my iPhone (all other devices were fine, just the iPhone's were having problems). I spent ages trawling the interweb and eventually improved things by changing these advanced settings on the router:

1. Disabled 802.11G+ (and just using 802.11G instead)
2. Changed to RTS/CTS Threshold to 2432
3. Changed the fragmentation threshold to 2432

Although it's not blisteringly fast, I can at least listen to BBC Radio Cumbria using WunderRadio without it buffering all the time.

Decent projector installation

Ah, the quest for a decent projector installation continues. Easy you'd think, buy a bracket and stick it up. OK. So what about the cables? How and where do I run them, what do I use, who do I use to do it? Having done a bit of this sort of thing myself in a previous job I have been disappointed by the installs that we have had done at school so far. With another classroom due for a ceiling mounted projector, sound etc. soon, I think I might do this one myself and see how it goes.

Dissapointed....

Yesterday I attended the "Future of ICT In New Zealand Schools" symposium, and it was unfortunately a real let down. I'd only found out about it the day before and was excited at the prospect of attending something with such a grand title. I took along one our ICT lead teachers and chatting with her and others afterwards, there was a definite feeling of confusion and that we had been a tad mislead by the title.

What the symposium turned out to be, was the launch of the new online version of the 'Computers in New Zealand Schools' journal (which in itself looks really good by the way). This was preceeded by a rambling presentation by Ed Strafford from the MOE on..... well, none of us were really sure what it was on actually (Sorry Ed...). There was then a panel presentation by three speakers, including Niki Davis, who I had heard before at U-Learn. Although there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the presentations and subsequent discussions, it just didn't all gel together and (comment if I'm wrong), most people left feeling a little dazed and confused. No fault of the speakers I think, more the organisation of it all perhaps.

2 things that stuck out in my mind were 1) Too many of the presentations I have seen by people from the MOE are badly organized 2) I am always amazed at the number of people involved in ICT that still use pen and paper for taking notes....

I did join the e-learning research network, which looks excellent, and I remain positive that what we are doing in our school with ICT is on the right track. I just feel a little deflated. I spend my days trying to help our staff understand the benefits of deep integration of ICT into their teaching, and often find myself defending technology to the naysayers. Sometimes though, I wonder if they are right....

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