Decline of schools?

I was pretty pleased (in a twisted sort of way) to read this post from the Daily Grist about schools going 4 -day week due to high energy costs of running them. There are some unforeseen advantages to the energy crisis-this is one.
Beatrice

Quick Study
More school districts consider four-day week

As energy costs rise, rural school districts across the country may follow the lead of the 100 or so schools in 16 states that offer classes just four days a week. Cutting out a day of heating, cooling, and transportation fuel -- which can be significant in spread-out districts where school buses might travel 100 miles round trip each day -- allows schools to put funds toward valuable programs and staff. Advocates say four-day weeks can also improve student attendance and performance (though at least one district switched back to a five-day week after concluding that effective teaching and learning dropped off at the end of an extended day). Kentucky's Webster County School District switched to a four-day week in 2004, and has cut total costs by 3.5 to 4 percent. "If we were to go back to a five-day week," says Superintendent James Kemp, "the school board and I would be run out of town."

all new radio 4 all!

------ Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 07:48:34 -0400
From: "Shawn Ewald"
To: rp@radio4all.net
Subject: Welcome to the New A-Infos Radio Project

Please feel free to pass on to relevant mailing lists.

Yes, remember us? http://www.radio4all.net/

We've been limping along on limited bandwidth and resources for 12 years now. That's right, we've been online since 1996 which makes us 12 years old this year. We were the first project of it's kind on the internet and our model of open media inspired the developers of the original Seattle Indymedia, as well as other participatory media projects on the internet.

Yes, we've had spotty service in recent years and (as the main administrator of the project) allow me to apologize for that. However, our new site has been designed to remedy many of the problems that plagued our project in the past. This isn't to say that we will now be prompt about responding to people's e-mails -- after all, there are three people working on this project for free and we all have lives
--
what I am saying is the new site will be vastly more reliable and give people less cause to contact us.

Now for the good news: We have new powerful servers! Tim Pozar (http://www.lns.com/) of Bay Area Wireless Network fame has helped provide us with ridiculous amounts of bandwidth from one of the most reliable network providers in the country! And I have spent the last couple months finishing a completely rewritten update to the software that runs www.radio4all.net! This all means that the A-Infos Radio Project is getting a new lease on life.

Special thanks are due to David Josephson (http://www.josephson.com/) for setting up our new equipment, and for making contact with Tim Pozar and negotiating for our new internet connection.

The New Software:

I will not get into excessive technical details regarding the new software, but I will tell you that this version of the Radio Project software is a complete rewrite from the ground up. It is faster and more efficient. It is more secure and extensive measures have been taken to protect the site from spammers and e-mail harvesters while not inconveniencing our users with annoying anti-spam devices. The site's security has been designed to be effective against actual security threats while being transparent to legitimate users.

Searching and browsing for programs has been much improved, with new ways to find programs: by popularity (top 300 downloads), by license, and by content advisory. The latter is particularly useful for radio stations in light of the draconian measures taken by the FCC against U.S. stations who violate the "7 dirty words" or "safe-harbor" rules. Browsing programs by content advisory should make finding programs suitable for radio more convenient.

Other improvements include a better topic directory and easier topic categorization, the addition of creative commons license support (including public domain dedication, and sampling-specific
licenses), better support for international characters, and many other improvements.

Loose Ends:

One issue in particular that I wanted to elaborate on is our past statements that Archive.org would be mirroring our audio archive. Well, when we made those statements we were getting repeated
promises from people at Archive.org, who will remain nameless, that they would do just that. They were "very excited" to mirror our archive, and it seemed like every other week they would promise to begin downloading our archive to their servers "soon". I sent them a copy of our program
database, I sent them a schema of the filesystem layout on each of our archive servers, I contacted them repeatedly over several months, and nothing happened. I don't know why they made promises and did not follow through and I will not speculate because I never found out why, so that's the end of that story. All this is not to say that Archive.org isn't good project that should be supported -- we would still be delighted to have them mirror our audio archive. If anyone has contacts at Archive.org who might be more responsive, please let us know.

In closing, we're looking forward to a long future for the A-Infos Radio Project and we hope you will continue to support us and, most importantly, use our project. And I want to remind you to support us financially or in other ways if you can. This is a free service that has been maintained by volunteer labor for over a decade, but we still need your help to pay the bills. So, please visit our support page to find out how you can help: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/support/

Thank you!

The A-Infos Radio Project Collective
http://www.radio4all.net

Camps Out

Two of my three kids do not enjoy the day camp experience. While my oldest enthuses over Science Venture Camp and wishes it was ongoing (she likes the peer group,the company and the projects) the other two have a different take on the topic.

B flat out refused to attend after day 3. She found it "boring,and too long" and didn't like the way the instructors micro- managed them and had them in competing groups, taking off points for groups that were 'misbehaving'-"Oh oh! I'll be taking off 20 points if you do that again!".

Even the company had much to be desired; "I hung our with two girls that I didn't like."
To the question "why did you hang out with them if you didn't like them?" I got this reply; "There was no one else. I would have had to hang out with the boys. Yuk!"
Okay.

With M, she got back after day 1 saying "I hope this gets better." On day two she was wailing "This is going to make me hate acting If I keep going."
Seeing as this is an expensive gig, I urged her to continue and perhaps she would learn something useful. On the third day she claimed that the best part of the experience so far "was lunch" which I happen to provide
.
Today is day 4 and I wonder what the comment will be when she gets back. The "stupid games they make us play, the dumb clapping they do when they want our attention-it's like a military camp. And they yell."

What does this say about my kids? That I spoiled them by unschooling? That they are in for a shocker this fall when the 2 oldest go to school (their choice) is pretty obvious. But I think what is revealing is that they see the the structure of the institution be it camps,schools or what ever as rather demeaning, controlling and often trivializing to children.

Even when E enjoyed her experience she was well aware of the silliness of certain attitudes; Her friend had to "Go see Carm ('the 'principal')" for being "cheeky." "Big wow!" to quote my daughter. The lack of humour in matters of school affairs is legendary.

When M says the experience is making her doubt she wants to be an actor I point out to her that schooling might have the same effect on her learning. It makes me think of Einstein and what he said happened to him after exams- something like how after his exams he found the contemplation of any scientific problem distasteful for a full year later.

The school they will be attending is supposed to be respectful of the individual's learning process. It's said to be a 'program of innovation." We have yet to see.