homoLudens

The one and only Fafblog:

See Rafe’s pithy summing up on the Magdalene Sisters homes in Ireland, the subject of a notable documentary: “When one reads about Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums, it makes it clear that the Taliban aren’t as far divorced from Western culture it would be comfortable to believe.” And that “c” in the ‘one church universal’ is a capital “C,” as Frank Rich researches in Mel Gibson’s case: “These days American Jews don’t have to fret too much about the charge of deicide ó or didn’t, until Mel Gibson started directing a privately financed movie called ‘The Passion,’ about Jesus’ final 12 hours.”
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and put your money where his mouth is.’ Lots of comments and e-mails to the effect that some readers want to take the Piraat bet. Be my guests, but be forewarned as well.

Piraat is very good beer. It is also expensive beer. ($4 for a small bottle.) And it’ll knock you on your butt. As it should for the winner of the bet. This necessitates a bit of background from the bookie.

“Hell is paved with good intentions.” Yeah, and populated by the dupes who went along with the evil intentions of bureaucrats. Here’s the real skinny on the Weblog deployment proposal to my district. (Well received by willR, terryE, eLearnSpace and some guy in Russia, for chrissakes. All of whom, unlike the ‘factotum’ referenced below, will abide by the proposal’s Creative Commons “share the credit” badge.)

[ Russian guy ref-ed above ain't either. "Pat, I'm not Russian guy, I'm a girl :))) And at the moment I'm not in Russia???--Lilia [Mathemagenic] from Russia/Netherlands” Netherlands? We crossed blogs non-virtually not more than two weeks ago! Hope she’s still near Amsterdam this summer.]

Our school district’s main office is located at 555 Franklin St., in an ugly ’70s punch card building filled with people who haven’t been anywhere near classrooms in a very, very, very long time. We call it ‘666, Frankly.’ If Bureaucratic Satan doesn’t run the place, a minion certainly does, and the big guy holds the lease.

Why would any of the minion’s factotums be interested in a ‘disruptive technology’ like Manila? Well, they want to close off access to a server on which district teaching staff have traditionally hosted websites created for their schools. You heard right - very soon in the future, ‘666′ IT (Info Technology) will pull the plug on the server used by school sites. ’666′ wants to ensure that “the look and feel” of district-related websites are “uniform.”

As ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, bureaucratic homogeneity procreates hegemony.

Manila, even though ’666′ doesn’t quite understand it, is an apparent solution. ’666′ will soon announce to tech specialists and other teachers currently hosting sites on the district server: “OK, boys and girls, especially you boys and girls still using overly colorful Frontpage templates without navigation bars. By such and such a date you can either find your own way to host websites or use a district Manila site. If you use something other than Manila, we will not support links to or from your official district school page to those sites. If you do use Manila, we will (generously) allow links from your official sfusd school page to your school’s Manila site(s).”

Question, dear reader: Is the factotum or the minion or the leaseholder at all interested in kids or teachers using the Web as an interactive read/write-speak/listen-show/watch learning environment?

Answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The factotum/ minion/ leaseholder want stuff that looks good. Like good looking test scores, good looking scope and sequence documents, good looking daily lesson plans for every period a teacher teaches, good looking web sites.

What appeals about Manila isn’t its power; the templates are what appeals! None of those (Thank you Bryan and friends.) look as haphazard or unprofessional or messy as what an overworked, underpaid, non-designer, computer access-deprived teacher would create.

But it’s worse than the above suggests.The factotum/ minion/ leaseholder aren’t really interested in the new template-improved sites. They’re REALLY more interested in the affected teachers choosing freely to not use the templates. See, then the factotum/ minion/ leaseholder can say, “Don’t complain that we didn’t give you a way to post a Website. You could have spent your free time learning Manila.” This explains why the factotum/ minion/ leaseholder do NOT want to talk to us advanced users about the money and time and staff required to provide the kind of training that would make Manila fly.

Given the above background, I bet a six pack of Piraat. In my beer-soaked dyspepsia, I know that the whole damn thing of public education is irreparably broken, and that in this time of gobbledy-gook speech like “death tax” and “double taxation on stock dividends,” no denizen of any address beginning with ‘666′ should be trusted. (Looking thru the eye of a needle, these people make a fat camel look anorexic.)

There’s a ‘666′ near you, but take the bet anyway. I’m thirsty.

righteous anger.’ One of those days. Found out that the district had ignored contractual obligations and hired an uncredential-ed, inexperienced teacher (yeah, right) for the h.s. library job I’d applied for. This after I’d won a grievance about the earlier hiring of the same tech-dull newbie. Then learned that the district  and other ‘friends’ offered to support a district K-5 school with a Frontier installation. Note, please, we’ve been suggesting for 2 years at MLK that someone - district or IU or whoever - support us in a Frontier installation. We love Kern County, but why go so far away for ISP arrangements? We’d arranged a free and then a discounted install with Userland. Even offered to facilitate a district/Userland meeting.

What’s the problem here - are we too abrasive? Or are they all too self-satisfied and distant from the sweaty reality of people working in schools?

You figure it. My stomach is too sour for thought.

Chris Ashley writes that IU made no such offer. Text above shows the retraction. Word we got was that a Digital Story Telling in-service left folks with a taste for Manila and the impression that they might get a modicum of Frontier support from somewhere. And they did, from sfusd. What a nice idea, eh? To actually get some local, ongoing support from the district and its partners to implement a content management system that benefits teachers and students.