I’m a fan of The Answer Sheet. I think Valerie puts up some great things about challenging the current state of education in our country, but I have some serious problems with the essay (which was guest authored by Marion Brady) that was put up today, and I think that any high school level English teacher would have the same problems I do. I would hope that any editor of a major newspaper would also have these issues had this been a new article and not on the op-ed page.

The lead paragraph sets up the story pretty well, but the second paragraph completely turned me off.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

My first thought when I read that was, what does ANY of that have to do with this person’s knowledge base or their ability to answer questions correctly on a test. If you can’t see that, substitute “my friend” with “Charles Barkley,” or “Christina Aguilara.” Just because someone has a lot of money does not mean they are smart. I think that’s one of the biggest problems in this country at the moment. We equate wealth with intelligence. We equate popularity with intelligence. It’s part of the reason we’re in this mess in the first place…the politicians with the most money are the ones who get elected, even if they aren’t the smarted people around.

One of the arguments I hear quite often on Twitter is that the people with money are throwing around their influence to back charter schools, when it is clear that charter schools do not outperform public schools. Yet, because of the money and power behind them, they are getting the media attention. Money does not equal intelligence.

The second half of the post is written well, but the entire argument base for it hinges on this:

A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.

And yet, this is exactly the same problem that plagues politicians. They can’t possibly see the merit in anything other than what they decide. The author states that it could be argued that if he was in 10th grade before taking the test, he might have done better.

This is where I practically shouted “YES” at my monitor. I know from personal experience that if you don’t use it, you lose it. I was two years removed from taking math classes when I had to take a placement test for college math, and I didn’t do well. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to do that math, but I was rusty. I hadn’t used it. And if I could do poorly on a college placement test two years removed from high school, how bad would I be 20 years removed? 40?

But that isn’t the point.

The point is, we are trying to prepare high school students for college and careers beyond college. That career might be acting, programming, auto repair, or engineering, but if we don’t give students a solid basis in ALL disciplines before sending them off to college (or the real world), then we are severely limiting their options as far as future careers.

Just because you, in your career, don’t use the math you learned in high school doesn’t mean that nobody uses it, and it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be learned or tested.

Do I have issue with the amount of tests and the weight that they’re given in judging schools? You bet I do. But arguing against testing a subject just because “I don’t use it and I’m successful” isn’t any more of a reason to ditch the tests than “I’m in charge and I say so,” is a reason to give them.

But (and there’s always a but, isn’t there?) I have some serious issues with the “update” from version 1 of the G+ app for Android to version 2. I’m posting here in the hopes that someone from Google will finally take notice, since I’ve submitted feedback on Google Plus, posted questions on both Google Plus and Twitter, and received exactly zero feedback.

So, short synopsis of what brought me to this point:

I updated my Google Plus app when version 2 came out.  Besides the design changes, I also noticed some differences in the wording on the instant upload settings. Nothing major, so I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Last week, I shot a bunch of photos with the Retro Cam app, a few with the regular camera app, as well as some video, at a Friday night football game. I noticed that the the pictures I took with Retro Cam and the video didn’t upload, but the photos I took with the regular camera did.

The next morning, I tried the “upload all” option in the settings (which is another thing I don’t like about the new version of the app, but I’ll get to that in a moment), and when I looked at my photos, there still weren’t any of the Retro Cam pictures or any of the video I’d shot.

Last night, I decided to try a little experiment, and compare the previous version of the app with the current version. I found the .apk for version 1 of the Google Plus app online. I uninstalled the current version from my phone, downloaded version 1 and loaded it onto my phone. The very first thing I noticed was a HUGE size difference.

Version 1	Version 2

I would assume this has something to do with being able to do mobile hangouts with the new version, but since I have a Nexus One without a front-facing camera, I don’t have that option, so this size difference alone is enough to make me want to stay with version 1.

Here’s the next thing that’s hugely different – the wording on Instant Upload has changed from “photos & video” to just “photos”:

Version 1	Version 2

Now, I get the changes in the wording on the options…the “Upload…when roaming on data network” is a little confusing…do I check the box if I want to upload on roaming, or not? But excluding the word “videos” combined with my issues makes me think they discontinued video uploading, yet in places in the online help, videos are still referenced, for example, at the bottom of this page:

And then there’s this page about Instant Upload settings:

So…what is it, Google? Only photos? Or photos and video?

And this option flat out doesn’t exist in version 2 – it only mentions photos via mobile or via wifi:

And when it comes to uploading the photos you’ve taken that haven’t been uploaded yet, version 2 is very misleading. In version 1, you would press “upload existing photos” and it told you it was scanning for photos:

Then it told you how many files it found that hadn’t been uploaded yet and what the status was on uploading  them:

Version 2 throws a warning at you telling you that it could take a long time:

Then it looks like it’s upload ALL of your photos, rather than just the ones that haven’t been uploaded yet (it isn’t).

The first time I did I, I actually canceled it because I was afraid it would take forever. So Google fixes the confusing wording on some menus, but makes the upload all misleading about what it’s actually doing. Nice going.

Now, as to what it actually uploads.

When I reloaded the old version of the app and did the “upload existing” option…those 16 photos it’s showing? Those are the videos I’d shot and photos I’d taken with Retro Camera a few days earlier that HADN’T been uploaded with the new version of the app:

You can see in my Instant Upload gallery, when the pictures are left alone (sorted by when they were uploaded), the ones I took at the game with the stock camera were uploaded that night. The photos in between those and the Retro Camera ones and the videos I shot Friday night are photos I’d taken at other points over the course of the week.

So, the question is, why would version 1 of the app upload photos taken with Retro Camera, as well as videos, but the NEW version wouldn’t? It seems to me like features have been REDUCED in the new version.

Just to make sure, I shot a couple of pictures with FX Camera and Retro Camera, as well as the stock camera (since I knew it would be uploaded anyway, I wanted to see if it was something with Retro Camera, or it was all third party cameras). All photos taken uploaded instantly with version 1 of the app, as did a short video I shot.

I uninstalled version 1, and reinstalled the current version. I took another photo with FX Camera, and shot another video. Then I uninstalled the current version again and reinstalled version 1. I did not hit “upload existing” and instead just shot one more video so I could show the discrepancy in the gallery:

And looking at the comments on the app page in the Google market, it looks like I’m not the only one seeing this discrepancy.

So for now, I’m sticking with the earlier version until they get all the kinks worked out. But, come on, Google…at least acknowledge that you’ve changed stuff!

I’m in one.

We are needing data now to back up everything we do in our district (imagine that!) and unfortunately, the data I’m gathering about the Gmail pilot does not jive with what I know is true.

The reason it doesn’t match up is because Gmail isn’t set up ideally, and I know the parts that are being marked down on my survey are because we are routing our email through our current server, then back out to Gmail, and we don’t have all of the accounts for the district provisioned, meaning contacts are an issue.

There are some legitimate concerns, and there are some things that are just training issues. We’ve been using Open Text’s FirstClass for almost 10 years in this district, and the fact that they have been focusing more on their “social workplace” piece than on developing for mobile platforms (other than Mac) show that they don’t know what their customer needs.

I KNOW that Gmail is a superior product, and I know that once the routing and contacts are fixed, that the survey results will change. But how do you justify changing those things when the initial data doesn’t point in that direction?

Luckily, the people in my department responsible for making the decision to continue or not understand my position. I just hope that those higher up the chain see it the same way.

To be fair, I did kind of thrust myself (and my opinion) into this debate without being asked, and I pulled a classic troll move of just dropping a response and leaving, so I deserve what I got. And I do see Tim’s point that at least the state is trying to provide something. I get that, and I understand how Project Share could be a potential gold mine for people who don’t have any form of collaborative space in their district. I get that.

What I don’t get is why the state felt the need to pour money into something that wasn’t being used by (it seems) ANYONE in K-12, something that was proprietary, something that wasn’t free or open source.

I don’t work at the state level, and I wasn’t in on those meetings, so I can’t begin to understand the hows or whys of decisions made at TEA. I have no idea if they consulted anyone at TCEA, or at any districts about what might work best for districts around the state. To me, a logical decision would have been to invest the money in a statewide Moodle system since, from my limited interaction with tech folks throughout the state, it seems like that is what people who are using online courses are using to deliver them. It’s free, it’s got a huge support community, and a lot of the tech folks in the state are already familiar with it.

From my perspective, on the ground, at the campus level, I can tell you this: we already have too many things for teachers to log in to and remember a password for. We have our network (which, fortunately is tied to our web page system and Eduphoria), our email system (which in my district is not tied to the network login, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post), CSCOPE for curriculum, Gradespeed. Now, add yet another system in Project Share on top of that.

Tim said:

Have we gotten so spoiled that we must insist that if a service provided by the state doesn’t meet our EXACT needs (it isn’t Moodle!), we, like a bunch of little teenage girls will badmouth it, not play with it, and ignore it?

And I think the answer to that is, shouldn’t we expect that if something is coming from the state that it DOES meet our needs? Shouldn’t we expect that the state would try to gather some input from people around the state about what those needs are before they try to meet them? Were any of you contacted by TEA asking what you needed in an online courseware system? Were any of you invited into that conversation? If the answer is yes, then I apologize…I obviously pegged the state wrong. However, I haven’t heard anyone, in any of these conversations saying that the state asked what they needed, and they evaluated several different systems to make sure the needs of the teachers and students were met.

I’ve mentioned before about the training session I sat in on where I heard the trainer say, “It’s like a combination of Facebook, Twitter, and Moodle but not quite as good as all of those,” and me sitting there wondering, well then, why would we use it over those things? The other thing that was overheard in that session was from someone from Epsilen saying (out loud to the room), “The state wants to see teachers in the system so it will continue to be funded.”

Call me cynical, but to me, that just sounds shady. I have a problem using something just so it can continue to be funded.

I’m not against trying to use it, and I’ll gladly support our teachers if they want to use it. In fact, I was one of the first ones in our district to suggest Project Share for student use, because I want to see if it meets the needs of our teachers and students.

But as they say, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” and my first impression of Project Share wasn’t great. It’s going to take some work to win me over.

I’ve been looking, thinking, for a while about what to do for backup options, since the Windows-based backup system stopped working on my computer.

I have a Flickr Pro account, which is great because I don’t have to pay a lot of money to upload a ton of pictures, but I wanted something that was a bit more automatic, and I don’t really want my Flickr stream to get cluttered with pictures that I don’t think are great. I’ve gotten used to putting only my best pictures up there, and I’d like it to stay that way.

I looked into purchasing an upgraded Sugar Sync or Dropbox account (Sugar Sync is the better value, IMHO), but if I was going to do that, I was going to back up a lot of things, not just photos, so I was looking at the 100 gig account, which runs about $150 per year. That’s a lot of money for a finite amount of space which would mainly be used as storage.

I wanted the convenience of automatically syncing things without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it.

Enter Picasa, which I’d played with a bit in the past, but the idea of trying to upload all of those photos (I have over 17,000) was just too daunting.

I decided to see what would happen if I just told it to do a bulk upload and keep everything intact. I chose just a month’s worth of pictures from back in the early 2000s, and started the upload.

It worked just fine, but because iPhoto (when I had a powerbook) organized everything into a day folder within a month folder within a year folder, I ended up with Picasa web albums with names like “4″ and “8″ that had one or two pictures in them. I could see where this was heading, and it wasn’t pretty.

I stopped the upload and deleted the album from the web and started the task of reorganizing.

I began simply renaming folders with the year, month, day and moving them up to my pictures folder, then deleted the “originals” and “data” folders. I figured that I wasn’t going to throw these into iPhoto again (because I’m not buying another Mac) and if I hadn’t messed with the originals in years, so I didn’t need them.

After I had renamed and moved each day folder up to the top level of my pictures folder, I started thinking that I was still going to have a ton of albums with just one or two pictures in them. My naming problem was solved, but my number of albums was going to be just obscene. So then I started in on the task of moving all of the pictures in each day folder to a folder for each month. So where I previously had 2005-07-01 and 2005-07-03 and so on, without many photos in each, now I had a folder (which would turn into an album online) with lots of pictures, sometimes several hundred, which in my mind is better than several hundred albums with very few pictures in them.

Next came the upload. I finished the organizing around 11:30 Sunday night, then started the upload. The desktop Picasa application gives you the option to upload full size (which eats up your 1 gig of space) or at 1600 pixels (which doesn’t count against your space). I could have uploaded the pictures through Google Plus which would have resized them to 2048 pixels, but 1600 is really not a bad size. I have a bunch of photos from my old Canon Powershot that are 1600 x 1200 and I have printed 8 x 10s from them, and they look great.

I started the upload and waited, not knowing how long it would take to finish. During the day Monday, I checked in on my home computer to monitor the progress, and about midway through the day, I ran into a glitch. I was getting an upload error, but I couldn’t read the whole error message. I expanded the window and realized that I’d hit the photo limit for one of my albums. I had a “Mobile Photos” folder that had about 1500 pictures in it. Google limits each album to holding 1000 images, so I had to go in and create another folder and split the mobile photos between the two folders. Luckily, there is this great feature in Picasa where you can split a folder at a specific picture.

You then get the option to name the new folder (I named it Mobile Photos 2) and it automatically moves all the pictures after and including the one you’ve selected into the new folder.

After I figured this out, I went into the folder for July 2005 (the month we got married) and split out the photos into a few different folders – two for pictures from the wedding (about 900 photos in each folder) and another for photos from our honeymoon road trip (another 900).

I let the upload continue to run, and as of 10:30 Monday night, there were only a few folders left that hadn’t been synced. I went to bed and when I get up Tuesday, everything was finished.

So now, I have all of my tunes in Google Music and Amazon Cloud, I’m creating all of my documents in Google Docs now, and I have all of my pictures backed up as well.

The best part of all of this is that I can access all of my music, photos, and documents on the go, from my phone.

The cloud, and more specifically, Google, is taking over my life. But I’m all for it!