Please contact your system administrator.
I’ve been collecting the increasingly easy-to-find examples of American ignorance for a while now, so I think it’s time to start displaying them. Most of these come from two primary sources, Florida and airports. You’ll see what I mean as the collection grows.
I think I’ll start out with one of the most common indicators that something is terribly wrong with the way we’re educating our workforce. You, no doubt, have yourself seen examples of the kind illustrated here. They seem to plague airports more than anywhere else, except the desktops of the hapless “knowledge workers” who must sit in fear everyday of a similar event occurring on their “information appliance.”
I’m glad the auto industry doesn’t hire the same computer “science” graduates to program the computers that run our cars. Can you imagine what your daily commute would be like if you never knew whether you speedometer might suddenly (and sometimes did) display the message “Please contact your system administrator”?
I just saw an ad on the Weather Channel, I think it was sponsored by Accura. They identified G Gordon Liddy as a “Radio Talk Show Host.” How nice. Have we all forgotten his role in the White House Plumbers that resulted in his spending four years in prison?
The Plumbers, if you’re too young (or too old!) to remember, were a extra-legal group organized by Nixon’s white house to perform illegal acts of sabotage, etc. against Nixon’s opponents. The whole operation eventually led to Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. Liddy was a key player and went to jail for his part. How many other crimes did Mr Liddy and his crew commit that were never discovered? We’ll never know. Now we “respect” him as a “Radio Talk Show Host.” turns my stomach.
Filed under: Education
A recent article on the San Francisco Chronicle web site mentions one of the author’s concerns about the use of e-textbooks, particularly those now being offered for the iPhone and iPod but it applies generally to any source of information — specifically he states:
“Then there’s the potential for cheating at exam time when students can stealthily view their iPod to get information from an e-textbook to answer a tough exam question. Hey, it could happen. Maybe you’ll have to leave your iPhones and iPod Touches at the door as you enter the exam room to prevent cheating. Could we eventually see students being patted down by hand for their iPhones or iPod Touches at exam time as they enter the room?” Read more: http://tinyurl.com/n5gddd.
It’s obvious that the whole idea of cheating needs to be totally rethought in this age of information overload and instant access. To think that your doctor, lawyer or IT professional will solve all your problems without referring to some reference material is ludicrous. Tell me, quick, IT nerds, what port does kerberos use? If you have to look it up, well, you’re cheating, right? Crazy. No sane professional relies entirely on their memory for important information these days, there’s just too much information to memorize. Would you feel comfort after describing a complex series of symptoms to your family physician to have her instantly prescribe a costly medicine? Of course not! We need to be teaching our students how to look up and utilize the information they need, not to memorize a tiny subset of facts that most likely won’t be sufficient to solve any real world problem.
The same can be said about collaboration. Ever had your doctor call on a specialist for help? Is your doctor incompetent? No, of course not. There are just too many known conditions in every professional field for any one professional to have a complete understanding of all of them.
Just in case you didn’t catch it the first time around, we need to forget about expecting our students to memorize factoids and help them learn to locate, evaluate and synthesize answers to problems that may never have come up before. That is the true role of education.
Filed under: Music, Our World | Tags: Jim Boyd, Native American Rights, Political Songs, Small World
The story this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition about the inability of law enforcement to prosecute rape cases on reservations immediately brought to mind a powerful song “Small World” (available on iTunes) by Jim Boyd and Sherman Alexie.
“It’s a small world,
You don’t have to pay attention.
It’s the reservation
The news don’t give it a mention,
It’s a small world,
getting smaller and smaller.
It’s a small world,
It’s getting smaller and smaller andsmaller. ”
© 1995 Thunderwolf Records
If you’re into astronomy at all, even just a little, If you’ve ever looked at the night sky for more than ten seconds, if you’ve ever been awake after dark, then you’re going to want to get Distant Suns for the iPhone. What? You have no iPhone? Well, get one because once you have it, you’ll be able to run Distant Suns.
This amazing program was first written by Mike Smithwick in the mid 1980′s. that’s right, way back in ’85 or ’87 (depending on whether you read his website or the App Store blurb.) At any rate, it’s been around a while but it still shines (sorry.)
In a nutshell it is an interactive guide to the night sky, showing stars, planets, constellations, deep sky objects, even a choice of foreground landscapes to present a more realistic horizon. Each item in its huge database has information about what it it, where it is, and in many cases (I couldn’t check more than a few) photos. The photo of Saturn, for instance, is just beautiful.
The user interface is a joy to use allowing you to view two preset magnifications plus stretch or shrink the view with the two-finger squeeze gesture. You can turn on all sorts of information like constellation names, outlines, star names, a grid, etc. and then toggle them all with one simple touch of a control. This makes it wonderfully easy to switch between a view of what the sky actually looks like and the sky with the information you’re interested in superimposed on it. You can view the sky from any place on earth at any time in the past or future. It can use the iPhone’s location awareness to automatically adjust the view to your current location. Of course it has a night vision mode in which all of the text pages are in red on black. The list of features goes on and on.
Don’t let the rather “high” price tag put you off. It’s definitely worth every penny of its $5.99 App Store price.
Filed under: Our World
I suppose this could fall under the category of Technology, but I think the irony of the situation places it more firmly in the World topic.
“Document destruction, done right” is an advertising phrase of a company called Shred-it. They send big trucks (as you can see) to your site and shred your documents. This truck was parked outside the FSU Police building which leads me to believe that shredding the documents wasn’t destructive enough. 
