Recently a new version of Shockwave was automatically updated on a large number of computers in my district. Probably it happened all over the country. I don’t know, I’ve been too busy to notice. One of the results of this update was to break the eTools (virtual manipulatives) piece of Pearson Success Net. The problem was referred to our district’s user support division. We were hoping for an automated fix. After spending a considerable amount of time trying to find a way to automatically push a fix onto all affected machines over the network, the technicians concluded that they just couldn’t find a way.
To understand the scope of the problem, you must realize that Success Net is part of a district-wide adopted elementary math program, and there are 208 elementary schools in our district, each with between 100 and 200 machines. The majority of these are used by students and teachers, hopefully for curriculum-related endeavors such as reinforcing math concepts using the aforementioned software. The technicians concluded that someone at each school would have to go to each affected machine, temporarily disable the anti-virus program, and reinstall the older version of Shockwave.
For the past 12 years, the someone who will be doing that at my two schools has been me–an ECS. That’s fine. I’m an Educational Computing Strategist, and that falls within my abilities and my job description. ECS is the label our district has given me and about 220 others who do my job. We have two jobs, really: to provide instructional technology to teachers and students, and to serve as level 1 technical support at our schools.
So, okay, I’ll get that done. I think the folks at user support do a pretty good job, and if they say they can’t find a way, then they can’t find a way, and I’ll just spend the time and do it. It’s only about 265 machines between my two schools that I’ll have to go around and perform those steps on. No, not quite that many. A few, maybe 30, are used by administrators and office staff, and I’m not going to worry about them. At least not for the current problem.
It should only take, um let me see, a huge chunk of my time! Time I won’t be spending on my other responsibilities, but, still, okay. I’m the one with the necessary rights to do the job, and I understand what I need to do without anyone having to talk me through it, provide me a handout, or send me to a training. Imagine if we asked the teachers to fix this problem on their own classroom machines and the ones in the common learning areas, as well! Imagine if the Shockwave update has also broken some other program that might be used in our 102 middle and high schools, or our 27 other facilities that provide special services to students who aren’t placed in “regular” settings.
But what about next year? When problems like this come up, who will be there for the teachers and students next year? You see, like many other parts of the country, we’re undergoing a budget crisis. The ECS position is being seriously looked at as one of many positions to cut in order to save money. The district believes it will save $18 million by sending ECSs back to the classroom. I have to wonder if, in the long run, it will cost them more than that by eliminating us.
If we’re all back in classrooms and User Support says,
“You’ll have to have your ECS …. no, wait! …. I forgot …. you don’t have an ECS anymore, do you? … um … sorry, we can’t help you. We don’t have any people left, either. Budget cuts. Well, actually we have a couple, but you’ll have to wait a few weeks until they can make it to your side of town. Try to find a computer in your building that’s still working and just use that one.”
Substitute any software title in the above for one of your choice. They all seem to break sooner or later and require timely human intervention: Fast ForWord, Lexia, AIMS Web, Accelerated Reader, Accelerated Math, Star Math, Dibels, Destination Math, Fastt Math, Study Island, eWalk, and several other titles in use that I can’t think of at the moment. Even the operating itself, whether Windows or Mac, is subject to damage when an update goes wrong. (Sometimes that requires that a machine be reimaged, a process where the machine’s hard drive is wiped out and then receives a fresh, uncorrupted load of the operating system and other software. That’s part of my job, too.)
My district has a huge investment in these programs and the machines that run them, and many have become important components of plans to meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). I hope the administration dwelling in the stratosphere know what we’ll be in for when stuff starts falling apart. Further, I hope our building administrators understand that a former ECS who has again become a classroom teacher has a full-time job planning, reflecting on his/her teaching, doing reports, grading, conferencing, meeting individual instructional needs, maintaining discipline, pulling duty, going to meetings, doing the bulletin boards, and probably a hundred other things I don’t remember that happen in an elementary classroom on a recurring basis.
I know my building administrators may not have a lot of power to affect the upcoming decisions about who is in which job next year, and I’m sure they’ve begun to ponder what they’ll have to do to try and keep as many of their instructional programs intact as possible. I know they have many other possible scenarios that should be bothering them by now, for example, “How will I get all the stuff done if my Literacy Specialist is cut”, or “Who will service my ELL (English Language Learner) students if I lose my ELL specialist?” But the e-tools problem is just such a nice example of how quickly an innocent automatic upgrade can quickly affect every machine in the district that uses a particular program, rendering it useless for a given task or program, or even useless, period!
A few weeks ago it was Fast ForWord on the Macs, requiring every Mac to be reconfigured by human hands in order to use the program again. Again, victims of an automatic update. Now, it’s e-Tools. What an impossible job it would be for user support to send technicians out to all these schools and touch all the machines that use this program. It will also be impossible for a bunch of former ECS’s, now classroom teachers, to deal with problems of this magnitude and do justice to their students.
Let’s hope our leaders decide not to save $18 million, only to have to spend much more to recover from a foolish decision!
This will be the third year we’ve tried to have a garden. The first year we planted way too late for Las Vegas. (In February you should plant beets, carrots, lettuce, chard, cabbage, cauliflower & all their relatives. By March you should plant watermelons, cantaloupes, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, gourds, cucumbers, and eggplant.) Most of what we planted stopped growing, long before it matured, when the heat of summer arrived. The second year we adopted a little dog who turned out to be quite a digger and chewer. I replaced most of the drip system at least twice, and most of the plants perished. This year we hope will be different. We’ve repaired the drip system, we’ve kept the dog out of the garden, and we’ve planted early.
Keeping the dog out was a little inconvenient. Being busy with other projects, I temporized a “gate,” which consisted of a piece of 3/4″ chip board that slid out from between our storage sheds to block the entrance along the side of the house. It was extremely heavy, and in using it for a few months, it left its mark in the stucco and more than a few splinters in my hands. I certainly had no intention of putting up with this arrangement as long as I did, but time has a way of slipping by. One weekend my wife and I agreed that if we were going to have a successful garden this year, we needed to have a more convenient gate or we probably wouldn’t visit and maintain it as often as we should.
The finished gate, hung on the post. The gate latches into a board mounted to the side of the house. I considered narrower gaps between the boards like the gate on the other side, but that would have required more wood, and I wanted to keep the gate as light as possible. There’s nothing square about this project. The ground slopes downward from the house to the shed (for drainage), so the left side of the gate is a few inches longer than the right side. The slope also dictated hinge placement. I really wanted it hinged on the house side, but would have had to put up with a huge gap under the gate on the left side in order to have it short enough to clear the higher ground next to the house when opened.
