Mr. Michael Surran's Blog

Peanut Butter in the Space Bar (08/31/2010)

I was going to rib one of my teachers of having "peanut butter in his space bar", because his latest blog post has a number of words stuck together, but then I noticed that another teacher has the same problem. So, either multiple teachers are eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches over their keyboards, or there's a bug in our blog processor.

Our blog processor works hand-in-hand with our Google accounts. As Google updates their software, they sometimes change things that break our blog processor (grrr!!), and I suspect this may be the case now, since this problem is new. I'll check into it as soon as my schedule allows. I'll also make sure teachers are keeping their food out of the keyboards :-)

LI becomes TI (08/21/2010)

Hello my blog-o-sphere friends! I've been thinking (danger, danger!), and I believe our "Laptop Initiative" should be renamed to "Technology Integration Program". It's only a name, so don't get nervous, I'm not talking about changing the whole program. Rather, I think TI (actually, TIP) better reflects the goals and current state of our of LI program.

When we started our Laptop Initiative three years ago, it was something new for us, an "initiative". We're now three years into the program, and while we have by no means "arrived" at the perfect execution of our goals, LI can't be considered "new" anymore. The laptop was the current popular portable computer platform (fun wording, huh?) back when we coined "Laptop Initiative". Now with iPads, smart phones, the iPod Touch, and other pocket computers, the "laptop" is already feeling a bit dated.

Technology Integration Program also better reflects the original and continuing goal of LI - to integrate technology into the classroom, as mandated by the Federal Government. This technology need not solely be limited to laptops. In math class, technology can and often does include graphing calculators (which are computers in their own right). In science, technology can be measuring and analysis computers (something I hope our school can get sooner vs. later). The "pads" are coming and may very well replace laptops in the coming years in schools and colleges. I'd like to see more projectors and / or smartboards integrated into our classrooms. Technology comes in all shapes and sizes these days.

I'm also a proponent of flexibility in what technology students bring to class. Did you know that an iPod Touch can do most of what a full-blown laptop can do? It's pretty amazing, and I've been surprised at the number of students who now own an iPod Touch. If you are a high school student and have an iPod Touch (or an iPad for that matter), feel free to bring it to me to register on our network. It won't be able to replace a regular computer for everything, but if you know in advance that your teacher will be sending you to websites that are compatible with the Touch, then you can save yourself lugging around a big laptop. I'll talk about this more in a later post.

Technology is changing at a rapid pace, and thus our LI / TIP will need to be able to change with it. The good news is that technology is changing for the better - lighter, smaller, and much easier to use "pads" should eliminate the majority of stumbling blocks we currently face with our Laptop Initiative. That said, as fast as technology changes, it takes time to change with it. If you bought a laptop, please don't feel like you need to now get an "i" or other "pad". A laptop, after all, is technology! But over the next few years, I expect that the "pad" will replace the laptop. I suppose we could call our program the "Pad Initiative", but then holographic-projecting watches will come along :-)

ps - did you know that there is a bank in town giving away an iPod Touch for free when you sign up for a new account? It could be a great option for those looking to provide technology for a student at no cost. I forget which bank, so you'll need to ask around.

Trying to stay pure in an impure world (08/12/2010)

I find myself troubled as I write this blog. I love technology and use it for many great things, but I see a disturbing trend that is becoming harder and harder to fight - impure and immoral content spilling over into the "quality" sections of the Internet.

Here are a couple of examples: I often use Google Images to find pictures for various projects (or my own self-study), and it seems that now the most innocent searches bring up results seeded with inappropriate content. What does Lady Gaga have to do with Bess the Book Bus Lady?? The word "Lady", perhaps? From what I've seen, Gaga is no "Lady" by the traditional definition of the word (female, yes, lady, not so much). Another example is the awesome resource that is YouTube. I find lots of valuable, educational videos here, but again, seeded throughout YouTube is a vast collection of garbage and content that most parents won't want their kids accessing. Even the good videos are often marred by some terrible comments.

Perhaps you're wondering about the school's filters. Yes, GHCA has some pretty advanced filtering technology, but it is ineffective on visual content like Google Images. It takes a super computer network to do advanced image recognition, and even then we're not really there yet. Another problem is that the dividing line between what society considers impure / immoral and "the norm" is more and more blurred every day. Did you know you can get soft porn from Sears? I didn't until just recently, so blocking the Sears website was never on my mind. As other "social norms" blur with what used to be universally considered immoral, it's becoming harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The bigger picture is that GHCA's network is just a little silo in your child's networked life. Is your home Internet filtered? Do you have parental controls enabled on your TV and your X-Box? Does your child have an iPod Touch? A cell phone? These devices all have unfiltered access to the "raw" Internet. If I'm finding inappropriate material and I'm trying to avoid it, what about the curious child who with purpose seeks these things out? You might be surprised at just how popular "Gaga", pornography, explicit music, and other negative content is with children these days, even church kids.

The sad reality is the modern media, be it TV, music, video games, or the Internet, is becoming more and more immoral based on the standards of the Bible, while at the same time it's becoming more and more integrated with our everyday lives! Relying on technology to filter our kids from these things will only go so far, and I'm afraid technology-based filters will become more ineffective over time as immoral becomes the norm.

So what can we do? GOOD QUESTION... I don't have all the answers, but I know that it's going to take you, your school, and your church to educate our children (and most likely yourself) in how to make right choices regarding all forms of media. I'm evaluating my role at GHCA in preparing students to make these right choices, and I encourage you to evaluate your role as a parent (and perhaps youth worker at your church). Let me know what you think.

Technology at GHCA in 2010-2011 (07/30/2010)

Here's a quick look at what's happening in the realm of technology at GHCA this year:

New curriculum for grades 2-6: GHCA is partnering with Learning.com to bring a very solid computer curriculum to the elementary grades. This hands-on curriculum will ensure a consistent scope-n-sequence that will build up our students' computer skills, allowing us to meet the NCLB mandate to "ensure that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade".
More class time for grades 7-8: We're adding an extra day per week to our grades 7 and 8 computer classes, allowing more time to master Computer Technology and Computer Programming. I'll be teaching these classes.
Laptop Initiative: Grades 9-12 are entering their 3rd year of Laptop Initiative. Teachers have been encouraged to look at their curriculum over the summer and consider how to better integrate technology into the classroom, with the goal of meeting the NCLB standards.
SURRAnet 3.0: We're replacing the "old" 2.0 version of SURRAnet with 3.0, which is designed to make it quicker and easier for teachers to enter grades, attendance, etc. and for teachers, administrators, and parents to have more report information available. This transition will take some time, so please be patient during the first few weeks of school as we phase the new system in.

I'll also be looking into ways that we might be able to provide our teachers with better presentation equipment (see my last blog post), and we'll be gathering more resources for teacher training in technology integration as I work with the administration to build a solid technology plan for the coming years.

Of course, I'll be keeping a close eye on trends in technology and education, especially in "game-changing" areas like mobile computing (iPad, tablets, etc.). It's a rapidly-changing world!!

If I had a million dollars, I'd buy the school.... (07/17/2010)

Have you ever heard that fun, "If I had a million dollars, I'd..." song? It used to play on the Canadian TV channels all the time a few years back. I've often thought in a pipe-dream sort of way, what would I do with a million dollars? I won't bore you with my own personal plans of world domination (muhaha!), but let me share with you how I would use some of that money to help GHCA.

As a person with a passion for science and technology, I would focus on those areas. I could get new, top-of-the-line Mac Minis for the computer lab! Or perhaps buy 100 Apple iPads for our students to use! Or maybe I could buy Mr. Angotti a new science lab! But when I really consider what the Academy NEEDS first, it's presentation hardware.

So if I had a million dollars, what would I buy for our school? Smart Boards or digital projectors and screens. Right now our teachers have to share a couple of old, heavy CRT TVs that are rolled from one classroom to the next, and I think this is the #1 hinderance to our teachers really integrating technology into the classroom. Everything else is in place - we have a terrific network, each teacher has a computer, we even have our Laptop Initative, but without an easy way for teachers to share what's on their personal monitors with the rest of the class, we are indeed handicapped.

So what can you do? Well, you could pray that I get a million dollars, and when I do, I'll take care of the rest :-) More realistically, perhaps you are reading this blog and you have experience, or you know someone who has experience in applying for and writing grants. Perhaps you know a millionaire (six degrees of separation) or someone who God has blessed financially who also has either a passion for technology in schools or Christian education. If so, you could make them aware of our need. Maybe you know of a school or government organization that is upgrading older video projectors to newer ones, and they are looking for a charity to give the old projectors to. Perhaps you know of a business that is downsizing and has a few extra LCD projectors they no longer need. Perhaps you have an idea I haven't even thought of yet!

Our technology program at GHCA is really great. We have a wonderful computer lab, a great wireless network and laptop initiative program, SURRAnet, our website, etc., and we did it all for a small fraction of the cost of what most schools pay for similar equipment. I wanted to think that we had arrived at the mountain top, but both teachers and the recent accreditation process made me realize that we have at least one more need to fill in the area of technology.

So to summarize, I would really like to see our teachers equipped with projectors or Smart Boards in the next year or two. Can you help?

Eating my own dog food - Part II (06/26/2010)

In my earlier entry, "Eating My Own Dogfood", I talked about a challenge I was facing, something that seemed pretty difficult at the time. With perseverance, I overcame that challenge :-) This Spring I went through the process of becoming an official software developer for Apple, and just last week my first application was accepted and placed on the iTunes App Store for the iPad. The app is called "Word Cross", which is a crossword-style game that utilizes scripture to generate puzzles. Word Cross can be found here, with more details available here.

The specific challenge was creating the random puzzle generation algorithm from scratch. It was for me what an exam is often for my students - not that easy, but doable as long as I didn't give up. Needless to say, I did finally figure out how to solve this challenge, and now I can reap the reward of that labor. Had I given up, I never would have made it this far. This is possibly the greatest lesson I can teach my students. As Paul teaches, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize" and "Run in such a way as to get the prize." God can do mighty things with a person who presses on as Paul encourages - God can do mighty things with YOU!

Computers, Electronics, and Summer Storms (06/17/2010)

It's that time of year again - storm season! I'm talking about those cool electrical storms that bring us God's display of "fireworks." Part of me loves a great thunderstorm, but the part of me responsible for close to 50 computer systems is less than thrilled when the sky darkens.

Here is some advice. Unplug your computers during an electrical storm. Okay.. Your response is probably, "Duh!" But perhaps you are unaware of what qualifies as being a computer these days. My wife has heard me say, "Time to unplug our most expensive computer," only to watch me go and flip the breaker to our washing machine. Computer circuitry is everywhere these days - modern televisions, stereos, and even appliances like washers and dryers have microcomputers in them, all susceptible to power surges. In fact, our pellet stove is actually our most expensive (and hard to replace) computer, so that gets unplugged as soon as winter ends.

This can result in unplugging a great number of things every time a storm passes, so to save time, I'll properly power down anything running (like my desktop computer and home server), and then I'll throw open the main breaker, which completely isolates the entire house from the electrical grid. My breaker box is easy to reach, but you might find it just as easy to unplug things from the wall.

But that's not all! Electrical spikes can easily ride in on your telephone line and television cables as well! When a storm is close, I disconnect my various antennas from all my receivers / modems. It's a little bit of work, but much less "expensive" than replacing a blown computer / appliance.

If the rumbling is off in the distance, and the radar (which you can access by the weather link on our website) shows that the storm will miss my town, then I just turn off the main computers / appliances and call it good. Surge protectors and UPS battery backups can handle surges caused by a distant lightning strike. When the strikes get close, so that I can see the streaks of lightning or the thunder rattles the windows, then it's time to throw the main breaker and disconnect the antennas (and phones and satellite dishes and whatever else you may have).

While this sounds like a lot of work, I'd say it's an "ounce of prevention that's worth a pound of cure." Replacing a washing machine, for example, sounds like a lot more work and expense to me! If Ben Franklin only knew the trouble lightning would cause in the 21st Century....

Summer Message (06/08/2010)

It's kinda funny how when we're connected to a school, it's the school year that defines when summer begins and ends. In my mind, this is the first week of summer. For some of you, this means vacation time! For others (including myself), it means summer jobs. For parents, I'm not sure what it means...

Anyway, I hope everyone reading this has a wonderful summer. Whether it is a vacation for you or a chance to earn some extra money, I hope that God is part of it. If God is merely a religion for you, then summer will be a break away from God (though I would dare say that you've never been close to God if Christianity is merely rules and rituals to you). If God means more to you than the expectation of your parents, your teachers, and your youth leaders, then know that I will be praying for you, that your relationship with the creator of the universe will grow stronger, not weaker, over this summer break.

If your view of God is only ritual and rules, then you'll flee these chains and run into the arms of sin this summer, which calls out to all of us like the Siren of Greek mythology.Leonardo da Vinci wrote of the Siren, "The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners." It's a sad reality that I've witnessed too many times over the years...

Finally, remember this - maintaining Christian character is like maintaing a home. It requires constant diligence, otherwise soon clutter and garbage starts to take over. Thankfully, when you have Jesus helping you "wash the dishes", this isn't so much of a chore as it sounds :-)

God be with you!

Eating my own dog food (06/02/2010)

There's a saying in the software industry, "Eating your own dog food." The idea is simple - the product you make for others should be good enough for you yourself to use. I'm not sure why the term "dog food" is used, since it seems to imply that the product is only fit for dogs. Perhaps companies should recoin the phrase to be, "Eating my own amazingly tasty and healthy meal." Anyway, an example would be Google employees using Google Apps to manage their business, Apple requiring their employees to use Macs and iPhones, Microsoft requiring their people to use Office 2010, etc. It's a way for a company to show the world that their product is good, tested, and true.

Today I'm reminded of Paul's words, "you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?" I just recently wrote a post about some of the life lessons a student can learn while taking computer programming. Today I find my own words coming back to instruct me as I take my equivalent of a difficult exam. Specifically, I'm working to solve a problem, as part of my work outside of GHCA, that has no easy or obvious solution. I know what I need to accomplish, and I have learned the tools that I'll use to accomplish it, but the actual solution evades me.

There are a couple of things I want to say about this. First, I can relate to the challenges that I offer students in my class. I'm facing such a challenge today, and over the years I've faced many similar challenges (and not just in the field of computer programming). The temptation exists to say, "This is too hard, give me an easier problem," just as it does from time to time for my students. But as I face this challenge, my own words of encouragement for my students come back to me. "Surrender is not an option." "Don't give up before you even try." "The best way to solve a big problem is to break it down into bite-sized chunks." "Keep working at it, you can do it!" "In real life, you are not going to know all the answers ahead of time." "The greater the challenge, the greater the reward." Etc.

Second, being a Christian compels me to do my very best to overcome whatever obstacles are in front of me. "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might," and, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord." I'm not pretending to be perfect in this, but I do believe that the thing that compels me to push forward and not give up is indeed a gift from God. I've learned that failure is more often a lack of effort or a lack of faith rather than a lack of ability. Whether or not my students go on to become professional software developers is not important. Whether or not they learn to "work at it with all their heart" is.

So I'm going to get back to working on this project. I'm going to break it down into smaller, easier to "digest" pieces. I'm going to try a possible solution, most likely to fail on the first attempt, and thus try again, and keep trying until I overcome this problem. At this point, I'm just not willing to accept "giving up" as an option. In other words, I'm "eating my own amazingly tasty and healthy meal." :-)

The Year in Review - Part 2 (06/01/2010)

Today we finished Computer Programming class. This 8th grade class introduces the fundamental concepts of computer programming using the Python programming language and a fun extension called "Pygame." So why do we teach this, you may ask? It's not because US citizens need to be able to program a computer in order to contribute to society or the kingdom of God. Of course, understanding how computer technology works is a benefit, especially considering how much technology is integrated into every part of our lives. Learning to program is one of the best ways to learn how a computer works on the software level. So you could say that we learn computer programming for the same reasons we learn about biology or the arts or higher-level math. But this is not the only reason for the class.

One of the major reasons for Computer Programming class is because it helps young adults learn how to think. Computer Programming is all about problem solving, logical thinking, attention to detail, reasoning, etc. It is NOT rote memorization, in fact students are encouraged to use their notes and other online references when taking their tests! It's about teaching students to use a tool and then applying that tool to a problem they've not yet encountered. Sounds a lot like life, huh?

Not everybody's brain is wired the same way, and some people are more artistic than logical. This is why nobody has yet to fail my class, because some do struggle with logical problem solving. However, the word "struggle" does imply that a person is putting in an effort, and often the grade a person receives in this class reflects his effort more than his aptitude. Success is rarely handed to us on a silver platter, especially if we are following God. So while this class attempts to refine a student's logical thinking and problem solving skills, it also gives the student a chance to refine their character in the face of adversity.

Each year when a class finishes Computer Programming, each student will tend to look back at the subject with a strong opinion of it. Some students absolutely love the subject for the challenge it gave them. Others hate it for the very same reason. Some will dislike it because they just aren't made by God to be computer programmers, and I fully appreciate that. Some love it because they discover a tool to unleash their creativity and talent. Some may even go on to make a career in the field of software design / computer engineering. But whether a student loves or despises being put through a mental obstacle course, I'm quite sure that if student applied himself, he will be better off at the end than he was at the beginning. The mind after all is like a muscle, and exercising it, in the way that computer programming does, strengthens it. A stronger mind will be a great benefit to the student as he continues through school and beyond, assuming he doesn't allow his mind to grow weak from misuse. I have personally found that the exercise my mind receives from computer programming has helped me in all my other areas of study (including Christian study) and even in the day-to-day solving of life's problems!

In fact, some may think of Computer Programming as a "bootcamp" of the mind. I'm sure many of my students are glad that their time in "bootcamp" is over, but I trust like a true bootcamp, their training has prepared them for the bigger mental "battles" to come.

Do you have questions or comments about this blog? Email Mr. Surran at msurran@ghca.com!

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