Blurts

Schools are having difficulty filling open positions. In North Dakota, there are currently 200 open slots. These are clearly challenging times and various strategies have been proposed to keep an adult at the head of the classroom.

The Educational Standards and Practices Board in ND has proposed a new solution to the Governor. How about if student teaching, the supervised semester that preservice teachers spend in a classroom, just be eliminated if an unfilled position is available and the novice be declared the teacher of record.

OK. Depending on how an educational major has arranged his or her schedule, the student teaching experience could be the last semester of college. Why not help a school out and fill in? When I student taught many years ago, my in-school cooperating teacher was very seldom in the classroom. After a week or so of observing, I first took over sophomore biology sections on film day. The teacher had a day a week dedicated to showing biology-related films. Access did not allow many of such films to be relevant to the current topic, but you took what you could get. I had decent AV skills and had mastered the challenge of looping the film just right so it would feed through the projector without a problem and as long as I could control the class with the lights off I was golden. After I rolled the empty 55-gallon aquarium into the store room so students could not get a handful of gravel to throw at each other during the film sessions, things went well. I moved on to actually deliver presentations while my mentor spent time in the teachers’ lounge doing other stuff.

Why is the ND proposal any different? I think it is because the students knew their “real” teacher was still in the building and I was a kid a few years older than them substituting for a few weeks. The data on new teacher survival are discouraging. Nearly 50% of new teachers quit within the first five years. This plan may make things worse in the long term. Having a good experience as someone new to the profession is very important and being thrown directly into the fire without much support is not likely to improve the present dismal odds.

I became concerned when I realized I had logged into my password manager while writing at what I think of as my “home” coffee shop. I don’t typically pay much attention, but realizing that all of my long passwords would do me no good should someone be able to connect to the password manager somehow reached my consciousness. The concern has passed and I think that I would be alerted from the company hosting my password collection should a new device be used when connecting to my vault. Anyway, I did do some research on Wi-Fi vulnerabilities in what I consider the “modern era”. 

Here is a useful resource should you want an analysis of some of the many dangers (likely and unlikely) that you face when using public Wi-Fi. Here are a couple of things that caught my eye as issues that are common enough to recognize. 

User error is likely the greatest danger. Two examples from the review I cite caught my attention. First, there is danger in connecting to an unknown hotspot. If you are in a coffee spot, the identity of the hotspot and password are probably displayed. You can get in trouble when you try to access a different hotspot that may have been set up to have a similar name or an inviting name. I used to frequent a Starbucks adjacent to a Bruegger’s Bagels. I would often use the Bruegger’s Wi-Fi even though I was in Starbucks because it offered a stronger signal. Safe in that case because I had been in both establishments, but generally not a good idea. Some communities have a free Wi-Fi service, but there is nothing that prevents you from naming your own hotspot “Free Wi-Fi” and evil people could easily use this ploy. BTW – my favorite hotspot name is one I encountered when I lived in Grand Forks, ND. From a downtown shop we spent a lot of time in, I could see “Bring the beer” which I assume was the property of a student living in a nearby apartment.

Your browser should tell when you are attempting to connect to a “secure” site. The URL should begin with https, but you can look for a lock symbol that should appear in front of the URL in your browser. BTW, I looked afterward and the URL for my password manager did show the lock signal.

Access to my password manager would be a severe problem, but using a password manager with unique long passwords for the many different logins you want to protect is important. A password manager allows a single access point, but then automatically connects to the various sites with the long and distinct passwords that the experts recommend you use. Reliance on a simple password for multiple logins is a common rookie mistake that is easy enough to avoid.

You may have heard that some schools are having difficulty filling open positions and some states are looking at changing the qualifications necessary to become a teacher. This article from CBS News does a nice job of describing the situation. 

Since 1970 the percentage of college students enrolled to become teachers declined from 17% to 4%. Those seeking business degrees have been the major benefactor of this decline. Part of the decline may signal an improvement in career options for women, but the relatively low pay in comparison to those with comparable degrees and the perception that society has lesser respect for educators are also recognized as causes. Public school teachers earn about 24% less than peers. This pay gap has widened since 1980. Public perception of the profession is difficult to assess, but only 22% of those responding to a University of Chicago poll said they would encourage young people to become educators.

Before the release of the Twitter alternative from Meta (Threads), ChatGPT had been the fastest growing online resource. It appears this interest has peaked and use of the online site declined 9.7% in June.

Explanations for this decline vary but pundits following this decline in interest propose that it is likely due to:

• Students not being in school
• Experiences of users that include the inclusion of false information in AI generated content
• Companies refusing to allow employees to use AI services for feat of the lose of company secrets.

Source: Washington Post