Fife Schools Technology

Here is a blog post that did a good job summarizing RSS and why it is a nice technology.

RSS Appreciation Revisited

I use RSS all the time and would encourage others to become familiar with it.

Amazon’s electronic book reader, called the Kindle, has been available for about 1 1/2 years. When it first came out, I was struck when hearing about an intentional design quality of the Kindle.

Here is a excerpt from the Amazon website:

Lose Yourself in Your Reading

The most elegant feature of a physical book is that it disappears while you’re reading. Immersed in the author’s world and ideas, you don’t notice a book’s glue, the stitching, or ink. Our top design objective was to make Kindle disappear–just like a physical book–so you can get lost in your reading, not the technology.

I see that as a fundamental goal for all technology. Another way I would describe this is making technology “transparent”. We shouldn’t be using technology for technology-sake but looking beyond the technology to what we are trying to accomplish. It shouldn’t stand in our way. While technology becomes increasingly powerful and complex, our experience should ideally be a simple one.

This is not an easy challenge. Making something transparent yet still useful for the end user often means more planning and complexity behind the scenes. It also means having a good understanding of how people use technology and what they are trying to accomplish. And it involves educating users.

Simply put, I believe that in our schools, technology should be powerful yet transparent.

Not sure who knows about this or how often it is used but all of our libraries have a list of their book collections online. The only catch is that they are only available from inside the district.

Discovery: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=dis
Endeavour: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=end
Hedden: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=hed
SLMS: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=slm
FHS: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=fhs
CJH: http://draco.fifesd.net:50000/webopac/main?siteid=cjh

Happy reading!

Update (7/6/09): We made some changes this summer and the above links have been updated.