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Morning shorts

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Illinois

* Topinka Spot Sets Off ‘Ad War’ In Race For Gov.

* Hefty turnover predicted for City Council

* Marin: It’s never dull behind the scenes in Cook County politics

* Court upholds dismissal of Chief Illiniwek lawsuit

* Topinka proposes research panel to create high-tech jobs for Illinois

* Smoke ‘at your own risk’ - CMS warns employees at local state-leased buildings

* Editorial: An organization called Speak Out for Illinois Schools is asking voters statewide to give their views on education funding, but we wonder: Will anyone listen?

* Chefs, grocers toss spinach to be safe

* More later. Running way late.

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 9:02 am

Comments

These “reform” commisioners are the scum of the earth! As Ted Dibiase used to say, everybody has a price.

Any else tired of the Rod ads with the little kids/old lady saying “What’s she thinking?” Very annoying.

Comment by Wumpus Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 9:11 am
The news spot run last night about JBT’s new ad and what will sure to be more news spots could end up being the David slays Goliath story of Illinois politics. For all of the accussed corruption, this birthday check sure is the story that sticks. Time for the Guv’s team to try something other than avoiding the media.

Comment by leigh Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 9:15 am
The dismissal of the Chief Illiniwek suit isn’t any big surprise. Without the courts (which the plaintiffs did a darn good job of venue shopping for) to do the heavy lifting, it’s down to the UI Board of Trustees to act on the Chief if the status quo is to be abandoned. Don’t count on that happening, sports fans…

Comment by Anon Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 9:29 am
“Since the Chicago Tribune broke the story that the FBI was investigating the $1,500 gift, Blagojevich has made some public appearances, but his staff has tried to prevent Chicago reporters from learning about them in advance, saying only that Blagojevich is unavailable.”

What does this guy’s reaction say? Why doesn’t he just hop into a white Ford Bronco and go for a ride down the expressway with the cops following him?

Comment by VanillaMan Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 10:27 am
Marin is wrong about Illinois election law, as I understand it. If you lose in the primary you can’t run for the same office in the general election. Claypool couldn’t run for County Board President.

Her larger point is that the Stroger family mislead the public to keep others from organizing a third party candidacy.

This may be true. I’m not sure having a Green candidate in the race wouldn’t help Stroger. Stroger could win with under 40% of the vote.

Comment by Carl Nyberg Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 12:49 pm
This wasn’t in the morning roundup, but I see this Blago press release about the “free” laptops and I have to say, it looks good at first blush but i feel it is wasted money and effort in the wrong direction.

You say “more computers in the classroom” and everybody is supposed to be impressed; “well, that must mean we get more and better learning!”

Not generally true. Not at gradeschool level, anyway. Otherwise, why do we still make kids all get together in a room with a live teacher? We could give eveybody some DVD’s and let them homeschool themselves. These laptops will spend more time playing music and games and photoshopping the teacher’s head on a variety of pets, or gathering dust, than teaching useful things.

Computers are just tools, and these laptops are tools with painfully short lives, and limited utility in a school environment. They will be broken by rough student handling, or obsoleted by newer technology and changes in software in just 2 years. Then what? They also need software to be of much use, who’s going to pick and pay for that after the first year? And update it and oversee it? Grade School I.T. departments? Don’t make me laugh.

And what will the kids be doing on these laptops? Cruising the internet to do “research” by cribbing from Wikipedia? The thing computers are great at is individualized self-paced drills, and testing of rote knowledge. But you can only do so much of that in a day and still have time for actual teaching.

Don’t tell me about the kids “learning to keyboard” and to make stupid powerpoint slide shows. That is very unproductive “learning”. Powerpoint is the worst thing to give young kids trying to make a written or oral report, as it is in the business world. Instead of researching and then weighing the information and synthesizing an understanding, an interpretation from it, powerpoint only teaches how to make an outline of raw bullet points, and how to make really ugly slides with useless “special effects” to “illustrate” the bullet points. It is the difference between reading just the headlines or the whole news stories. What the kid delivers at the end of the process is, they read the outline aloud one line at a time, but can’t speak in depth about any one of the bullet points they list, can’t make connections between the lists of facts. Useless. If instead the kids are learning to write actual computer programs, maybe you have something there. With all the demands of NCLB in core curricula, I’m sure they can find more time for that in most schools… not.

But I think I have a better answer.

I think while flashy technology looks good in a press conference, we could be getting more for our education dollar by doing a much better job selecting excellent and durable textbooks, books that could last much longer than the laptops will. The current selection process is a travesty: the schools are full of decrepit outdated books with no budget to replace them properly, and no good way to select really excellent books from cheap, disposable, poorly-written ones shoved down school board’s throats by the publishing lobby.

Spend the money on resources that give the best ROI. Laptops come and go. But good textbooks never crash.

Comment by Substituted teacher Wednesday, Sep 20, 06 @ 9:49 pm