President Obama highlighted education reform in his first address to Congress last night:

In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it is a pre-requisite.

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps.

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training….we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home.

I appreciate the call to personal responsibility for students and parents. Changing a system like education is a massive challenge. Sometimes, I’m afraid there’s a sense that people are looking to this new administration to solve all our problems for us. Certainly, government has the power to help or hinder reform.

But the only way to change a system is to change ourselves and make decisions that enhance education for students in our sphere of influence.

If you missed it, you can read the full text of President Obama’s address online.

I called a 1-800 number the other day to activate my new Discover card, and instantly wondered why they needed to transfer me to a live operator. In the past, I’ve just punched in a few numbers on my phone, and in a few seconds had a new, activated card.

After a short wait, I was greeted by a friendly female voice from a call center in Arizona. She commented on my new card design (lazy sunset….a “beautiful choice”) and asked if my wife needed a new card. So far, so good.

Very quickly, it went downhill:

Her: “Would you like to add account protection for only $2 a month?”
Me: “No, thanks.”
Her: “Are you sure? It’s only pennies a day.”
Me: “Yes, I’m sure (I can do the math).”
(repeat 3 times)

Her: “Ah, okay then. I’ll go ahead and sign you up for card protection.”
Me: “No. I don’t want that either.”
Her: “Well, many people use it. It’s a good deal, so I’ll go ahead and get you enrolled.”
Me: “No, no. I really don’t want that….”
(repeat 4 times)

Without exaggerating, I had to say “no” about eight times. Argggg!

I understand that I am a customer and Discover is trying to serve me as best they can by offering me new services.

But there is a fine line between serving a customer and annoying him.

By using their card, I’ve given them permission to offer me upgrades. But I haven’t given them permission to bother me after I’ve clearly declined. Service is about providing relevant information at the appropriate time. Relevant. Appropriate. An example of an inappropriate time would be, say, after I just declined your offer four times.

Everyone has customers. Yours might be students, teachers, or another business. Where are you on the service spectrum? Not providing enough help and information? Or being annoyingly persistent?

It’s a fine-line, but a line worth paying attention to.

Background

Dojo.data is a fantastic abstraction layer for data stores such as JSON and XML. Dojo.data provides a fetch method which works like a SQL select statement except that it’s asynchronous. Fetch is used by providing your query, a success callback, and a error callback. Once the query is completed the proper callback is called with the returned items. This asynchronous system works great in web applications, allowing the query to be run over the network in the background while not disrupting the user’s experience. This behavior is consistent with the fundamental principles of AJAX.

We, however, are not currently working on a web application. One of our projects has a desktop app component and we’re using Adobe Air and dojo to fulfill this requirement. An asynchronous fetch just doesn’t make sense while we’re doing our data processing. The first thing we tried was a Google search for “dojo.data fetch synchronous”. None of the results gave us information on how to make fetch synchronous, but the third link on that page does give some good information. In that post Nathan Toone explains why fetch is asynchronous and has this to say:

One of the more common questions that I’ve seen is “How can I make this call synchronous?” If you find yourself asking that, you should reexamine what you are trying to accomplish, and change your approach to be more asynchronous. You’ll gain a lot of performance benefits in the long run. Remember, dojo is an Ajax library – not an Sjax library.

But, as the Dalai Lama said, “Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” See how to make fetch synchronous after the jump.

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There’s a great column over at visualthesaurus.com that recently featured some great tips for writing in content areas.

Content-area writing is all about getting students to write outside of English class to help them better engage with and understand course material. Enhancing the lessons of any subject with writing activities helps students build connections, demonstrate knowledge and retain information.

Though its educational benefits are clear, assessing content area writing can be intimidating to non-English teachers. As Debbie Shults notes “some content area teachers feel they are not up to the task of ‘teaching writing.’”

Fair enough.
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