MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-05-20 |
| FROM | Dave Williams
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Alt schools demo
|
These are exactly the issues I kept running across in my research -- the
people who settle into IT services jobs at places like the DoE are
generally the least motivated. That's a fair criticism for most
industries, even in difficult economic times.
The only approach that could make a dent (in my opinion) is creating
pilot programs that actually produce measurable results, and even that
is likely to be shot down by political maneuvering at the top.
Simultaneously recruiting the support of an influential administrative
"champion" could offset that, but in NYC that's just begging for a
backroom MS "deal".
By the way, I manually corrected the reply. Not quite a solution, but
it will have to do.
On Tue, 2003-05-20 at 02:14, Sunny Dubey wrote:
> On Sunday 18 May 2003 11:07 am, Marco Scoffier wrote:
>
> > The reliance on external companies, or web-service portals shocked me
> > because the teachers are imputting their entire lesson plans through
> > a web form and relying on the continued well being of a distant company
> > offering a "free as in beer" service over the net, which seems to me to
> > be an incredibly precarious way of running classes.
>
> The reality that having it done externally might be cheaper than doing it in
> house on a per school basis ... if this was done at each individual school,
> there would always be a demand for someone with that specific know-how ...
> and even for the better schools of NYC that is much easier said then done ...
> (read my next quote where I reverse this statement)
>
> > Why can't the Board
> > of Ed offer these types of systems in house, to ensure the safety of the
> > teacher's data.
>
> Good question, you should visit the Dept of Ed's website, they talk about a
> city wide Outlook server as the next best thing. You'll get a few good
> laughs out of the tech pages.
>
> The DoE *Could* do something ... it would be great for the schools and
> cheaper/safer/better too ... well actually they could do a lot of other
> things too .. heh ... good luck getting them to do anything
>
> Whats more amusing is that there are these paid "technical computer
> consultants". Who make more than 120k per year, and sit in lovely little
> offices in the Brooklyn Marriot (which also costs a pretty penny). I still
> have yet to figure out what exactly do they do, or better yet, what have they
> done so far. (Some Union had an entire article about this a while back.)
>
> > There are so many ways free-software could improve the technological
> > situation in the public schools, they could not possibly fit in an
> > email.
>
> You are dealing with a bunch of people who tend to know only of Microsoft, and
> also the DoE has city wide contracts with Microsoft as well, so the software
> is essentially "free" for a school to use. (Use some common sense and don't
> debate me on the usage of the word free in this context.) These people
> often won't care about ideals, the only time they will care about OSS is when
> they notice the gimp is free, and photoshop is not.
>
> Sunny Dubey
>
> PS: someone needs to fix hangout so replies are automagically sent to
> hangout instead of the original author.
>
> LEGAL JARGON: My opinions above are not in any way the opinions of The Bronx
> High School of Science, The Alumni Association of the Bronx High School of
> Science, nor the New York City Department of Education.
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