Education — 1 comment
07
May 11

Public Education: no longer “free”

There was a time when you could count on your tax dollars to finance a world class, equitable public education system. But no longer. Consider the graph below:

Unrestricted Funding by School District

Unrestricted Funding By District

Focus on the far left and the far right. On the far left we have the Woodside School District, serving a small population of children in an area with very expensive houses. On the far right we see our very own Redwood City School District, serving a very large population of kids in an area that’s mixed, containing some expensive houses but mostly middle class ones. The result? Due to the intricacies of school funding, our district receives the minimum funding guarantee from the State while the Woodside district exceeds that lower bound with its own property taxes and receives a much larger chunk (the blue section of the bars). In addition to that, the Woodside district raises much more money per child, a result of having fewer children and a more affluent parent community. The red section of the bar shows a combination of donations and parcel tax income.

Regardless of the funding details, the inequity inherent in the system is outright immoral. Is a child in Woodside worth twice as much as a child in Redwood City? Think about that for a few seconds… Continue reading →

Technology — 1 comment
24
Apr 11

High Def, Low Def and Now Ultra Low Def TV

High Definition TV is great, amazing, a must have for sports. How did we ever manage to watch soccer games without it? Unfortunately, I’m forced to remember the horror every weekend, where I move from Barcelona’s glorious HDTV courtesy of GolTV HD to Boca’s horrific, ultra low def, courtesy of TyC Sports.

I claim that the video quality we get from TyC for these Argentinean soccer games is lower than Low Definition. Games look, really, really bad, much worse than low definition games you see on ESPN or even Univision. I don’t know why, but here’s the evidence.

What follows is snapshots of my LCD TV, with signal from DirecTV, comparing High Definition to whatever this other thing is. I used my digital camera, taking pictures at max resolution.

First, a snapshot of this weekend’s Barcelona Vs. Osasuna game.

Barcelona Vs. Osasuna in HD from GolTV HD

Barcelona Vs. Osasuna in HD from GolTV HD

Very pretty. Now here’s the capture of today’s glorious Boca Juniors victory over Huracán.

Boca Juniors Vs. Huracan in Ultra Low Definition, from TyC Sports

Boca Juniors Vs. Huracan in Ultra Low Definition, from TyC Sports

To highlight the differences even further, I took a picture of an actual player from each screen, of about the same size. Here they are, side by side:


HDTV Single Player Capture

HDTV Single Player Capture
Ultra Low Def Single Player Capture

Ultra Low Def Single Player Capture


Amazing, isn’t it? A testament to the power of the human brain who is able to interpolate splotches of color into humans playing soccer. Given a collection of a few, anti aliased fat pixels we’re able to make up people, limbs, a ball and more. Really quite something.

Now, I wonder why the signal from Argentina is so much worse than normal low definition broadcasts in the US. Is it the transformation from PAL to NTSC? Is it the satellite link uploading the signal the US? What?!

Education / Politics — No comments
09
Apr 11

Thoughts on “Waiting for Superman”

I missed “Waiting for Superman” when it was in theaters and recently got a chance to see it during a long flight, yes, on one of those tiny LCD screens. The film was rather controversial in educational circles when it came out and I was expecting a large reaction to its point of view, or approach to the subject or its choice of culprits for the current state of things. Not so. I thought the movie was quite sensible, that it made a number of valid points and that it was pretty fair.

One thing I did not enjoy was the focus of the ending on the lotteries that would decide whether the kids we had been following would get into their respective Charter schools, schools that would be the difference between success and failure. Dramatically the scenes work and we’re on the edge of our seats waiting to see if they make it in (most do not!), but the emotional kick from these scenes undoes a very important point the movie makes about Charter schools: just like normal schools, some of them work and some of them do not.

There were several points I thought the film made well:

  • Teacher tenure is a disaster.
  • Teacher Unions get in the way of real reform.
  • The achievement gap is real and cannot be ignored.
  • “Tracking” is problematic.
  • Charter Schools are an option but not a panacea.

But before that, an important note about the all important issue of money. Continue reading →

Technology — No comments
14
Nov 10

Fun with iMovie 11 trailers

iLife 11 came out recently and while there are a number of improvements everywhere, the Trailer templates in iMovie steal the show. The idea is simple: provide project templates that allow anybody to create professional looking trailers. So professional they look that Apple won’t allow you to enter the name of a real studio for fear people will think they’re watching an actual movie trailer!

But words are cheap. Here’s an example trailer, done entirely by Mijal, my 12 year old daughter, from video she took herself on a point and shoot digital camera:

YouTube Preview Image

What’s amazing about this is not only how easy it is to make trailers, but also that any video, no matter how inane or unexciting results in a trailer that promises lots of action, thrills, and fun.

Creating a trailer is amazingly easy. You get a template with placeholders for text and video clips. The transitions, music, and title sequences are canned and ensure the proper rhythm. You drop clips onto each slot and then open them up to select which section of the clip will be shown. Each clip lasts a very, very short time, typically around 1 second.

The whole thing is brilliantly executed and a joy to use. My only gripe, and a tiny one at that, is that it’s a pain to fill in the whole technical sheet that shows up at the end: directory, producer, casting, costume designer, music, etc. To its credit, iMovie remembers the last set used and you don’t have to type it again.

There are about 15 templates, some very, very good. Still, I wonder whether they will get too tiresome when you make more than a few and end up repeating template type. I assume Apple will ship more templates with new updates. Even better would be to open this up to third parties to provide their own…

And finally, when will they release templates for “Negative Political Ads”?

And to end, here’s their second trailer, this time it’s a moving love story: A Rock Story:

YouTube Preview Image
Uncategorized — 3 comments
15
Aug 10

Letter from summer camp

This summer our two daughters, ages 10 and 12, went to summer camp somewhere in the East Coast. It’s the second consecutive year that they go to this camp. The camp has a strict “no immediate contact” policy, to prevent kids from extreme homesickness and parents from freaking out and aborting the full, three week, camp experience.  So, no phone calls, no emails, no cell phones. The only mechanism of communication allowed is physical letters. The kids have off time during the day when they’re encouraged to write home. Letters are mailed using normal postage and take about 5 days to get to us on the other side of the continent. As soon as the kids leave we start mailing letters from home, so that they start receiving them during the first week and we space them evenly to keep them in good spirits. They typically start writing after a couple of days which means it takes a while to start getting news from them. (The camp posts pictures on their website, which also take a few days to appear).

The first few letters from Clara, our 10 year old were pretty normal. She wanted mail from us. She told us about her activities and also that she had been sick during the first couple of days of camp, which we knew because camp staff had communicated with us about it. Then, somewhere around the end of week 2 on our end, we got this gem:

The most memorable letter

So, how is a parent thousands of miles away to react to an obvious cry for help (or stuffed animals) such as this one? In this age of immediate communication we are really no longer used to the time travel effect of physical mail. Obviously she was in some distress when she wrote this, but when was that? And how would she be feeling in the present? After taking a couple of deep breaths we carefully weighed the evidence:

  • the repeated requests for stuffed animals did call into question how dire the situation really was
  • we did not receive any communication from camp staff about any problems (they do use email)
  • we did see several pictures of our kids seemingly enjoying themselves at camp
  • at this point there were only a few days left of camp, so there was not much that could be done anyway

So, we emailed the staff to verify that everything was OK and they responded quickly indicating that Clara was obviously having a great time, enjoying activities, seemed to be in good spirits, etc. So, we relaxed a bit. And soon enough we started getting more letters from her, of a totally different nature.

The girls flew back from the East Coast on their own and as we drove home they just talked excitedly about all the nice things they did at camp. And while Clara says she does not necessarily want to go again next year, on her first phone call to one of her friends she told her of this great summer camp that both of them should go to… when they’re a bit older. (not stupid)

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