Archive for October, 2008
The launch of Connected.info
Posted by lou in connected.info updates on October 13th, 2008
On Wednesday, October 1st, we went live with www.connected.info and began the process of registering the users at our first pilot site. Our partner is the Center for Advanced Research and Technology (www.cart.org). CART is great high school located in Clovis, CA. They are a joint venture of the Clovis and Fresno Unified school districts. We had seven teachers and 615 students to register, along with their parents.
We opted to be on-site and present the goals of the pilot to the teachers and the students in the hope that this would encourage them to be more interactive on the site. The interesting thing for us is that the teachers are planning to use the capabilities of the site to post assignments and give the kids information on their assignments. In addition, the kids can create their own project teams.
So, the students rushed to register themselves. And, we ran into our first glitch. It seems the Google and Yahoo, which by far have the largest number of students using their email services, treated our registration confirmation email as coming from a mail relay and rejected the mail. Actually, now more than a week later, we are still struggling with this issue.
However, as of today, we are starting to see really good usage of the site and the capabilities of the product even though we have not started the phase of the product pilot where we ask users to do anything. Some things are very encouraging. We are seeing an average of 19 page views / visit and the average visit time is 10 minutes. The visit time has actually gone up over the past week, which is a really nice sign.
So, I would think Phase 1, the setup and registration phase should be considered a success so far.
Drugs on School Campus
Posted by lou in Parent's Opinions on October 13th, 2008
I know, I know, I should just worry about my own kids and not feel frustrated by the amount of drug use and cigarette smoking that happens on K-12 school campuses. As long as my kids don’t do it, it is the school administration’s problem, isn’t it?
Well, I can’t just let it go. Sorry. When I drive up to my local high school to pick up my daughter and there are literally dozens of kids smoking right next to the “This is a smoke free campus” sign, it ticks me off. Aren’t those teachers walking right past the kids? Why didn’t they say something, or at least shake their fingers at the kids? But, they just ignored it.
I asked my daughter and she says the teachers “Don’t care” about it. The teachers actually say that they are not paid to be babysitters. Wow.
And, cigarettes are not the only thing smoked on campus. During rallys when the kids are not really required to be at the rally but almost all of the teachers are at the rally, there are many kids that hang out “behind the buildings” to get high. How do I know this? My daughter told me. I did make the classic parent mistake of saying “Why don’t you report them?”. I got quite the look for that question and I remembered how it was when I was a kid and not being known as a “narc”. Still, this is really a bad thing. Where are the cops?
Well, I asked my daughter that question. She said that lots of kids are busted all the time. She said “Everyone does it. Except me and my friends of course.” There are so many kids on probation that the youth authority has to run extra anti-drug classes to keep pace with demand.
And, our high school is not alone in this. What can be done?