[SGVLUG] Still shopping for school computers

[juanslayton @dslextreme.com]

Back again...

> BTW in your picture, where do those keyboard cables go?

     In the classroom pictured, one old legacy computer was polling
the keyboards through the parallel port by means of homemade interface
cards located in those yellow rails.  After I retired, the devsig
group here pointed me in the direction of the USB and I discovered I
could do the same thing using USB keyboards without making my own
hardware.  In fact I can do it using wireless USB keyboards and
eliminate the wiring.
     This system is entirely Linux, so it's maybe not relevant to your
situation.  But I do have an explanation of what it's about at
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/classnet.

>  What computer-aided instruction have you found is effective,
> and for what grade level?

     This one is harder.  An honest answer would be that in my 21
years of teaching I didn't come across much that would justify the
kind of money currently being spent.  Our district (El Monte City)
currently seems to be going with web app services (particularly
Waterford).  Working as a substitute from time to time I get around to
a number of the school computer labs, and I also get called on to
manage clusters of computers in regular classrooms.  How effective are
these programs in producing results?  I'm afraid we could have a real
round-table discussion on that....  My impression of the various
studies that publishers produce to claim effectiveness is that they
frequently reduce to the observation that the more time students spend
on this or that program, the more they learn.  But this is true of
_any_ form of study; what is really needed is cost-effective
comparisons.

John