Daily Archives: August 21, 2005

City of Peoria

Internet Every Day

I was checking out the Peoria Public School District 150 website, and I came across a link that said simply “Technology.”  I thought it looked intriguing, so I clicked on it and came across a plethora of internet links for students and teachers.  The most curious one was labeled “Internet Every Day.”  This links to another page on the school district website that includes this introduction:
As a classroom teacher with 5 computers and a new “attachment” to the wide area network and the World Wide Web, I want to see my students engaged in meaningful use of these resources.  I have researched numerous sites that I feel would be useful for my students to access on a daily basis and also resources for teachers to use for their daily tasks.  Try as many of these sites as you like and see what you think.
After this are several links to “sites for kids” and “sites for teachers.”  The sites for kids include “Time.com for Kids,” “Yahooligans! News, Jokes, and Sports,” “Brainteasers,” “EduPuppy,” and several others.
 
This is ridiculous.  First of all, when did using the internet become a basic skill right up there with readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic?  Using the internet is not that difficult, folks.  You don’t have to do it every day of your school year to figure it out.  I never even had the internet until I was past college age and I picked it up without any trouble.  My parents are in their late fifties/early sixties and they use it.  So don’t tell me this is a life skill that kids need to learn early or they’ll just never make it in the real world If I want to learn more about tv and internet packages then I can do so pretty quick. 
 
As far as using the content of the internet for educational purposes, I think it’s a waste of money.  There’s great cost in wiring schools for internet access and purchasing computers and paying network administrators to keep it all humming, and for what?  I’ve clicked on many of the links on the “Internet Every Day” page, and they’re nothing that needs to be done on a computer.  For example:
  • Brainteasers:  I used to do brainteasers in school — they used to call them “story problems,” and the teacher handed them out on a piece of paper.  This gave me the added benefit of being able to work out the math on the paper itself so the teacher could see how I came up with my answer, not just whether or not I got the right answer.
  • Word of the Day:  We used to call these “vocabulary tests.”  We’d have a list of words for which we needed to know each spelling and definition.  Another way we got a “word of the day” was by reading books.  When we came across a word we didn’t know, we’d look it up in the dictionary (that’s a book filled with “words of the day” and their definitions).
  • Yahooligans! News:  We read the newspaper — they still publish these today.
  • Ask Jeeves:  We used a set of books called an “encyclopedia.”  The World Book encyclopedia was especially kid-friendly, with well-written but easy-to-understand entries and lots of pictures and diagrams.  Some entries even had little science projects you could do!  For really complicated questions, you might have to go to the library and look up more information in books.
  • A Game A Day:  We used to play games with each other instead of with a computer.  Board games often required skills like counting, making change, or memorization.  Outdoor games required strategy and physical agility.  Playing outside instead of on the computer would go a long way toward keeping kids from getting fat, too.
Certainly none of these internet sites warrant visiting them every day.  Besides their questionable value, there’s also the issue of advertising on several of the sites and the effect that can have on children. 
 
U.S. students are not lagging behind other countries like Germany and Japan because they don’t know how to use Google.  We’ve got them beat on that front.  If you really want to teach the kids something, have them take the computer apart and put it back together.  Then at least they would be learning something about electricity and the properties of certain metals.  They may even get interested in engineering or chemistry as a result.
Uncategorized

Note to Bill Dennis: Stop the annoying “jump to”

As avid readers of Bill Dennis’s Peoria Pundit site (like myself) have no doubt discovered, he’s just putting up headlines with teasers now, and you have to jump to the rest of the story on another page by clicking on “Read the rest of this entry >>” links. 
 
I can understand the occasional use of this feature if you have an excessively long entry, or if you are posting “eye candy” that might be offensive to some readers.  But every post?  Annoying.
 
However, Bill is turning in some very interesting entries, as usual, so I can’t be too critical.  🙂

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Last trip to Ben Franklin

My wife and I visited the Ben Franklin store in the Heights yesterday for the last time.  It was a lot like going to a wake.  The body was still there, but the soul was gone.  We all shuffled by the empty shelves, remembering what was once there but is missing now.  There were times, for instance in the candy aisle, where you felt like the place almost looked lifelike.  But you were soon reminded that this store was never coming back. 
 
I chatted with Jerry Hoerr on my way out the door Saturday.  I told him how I wished someone could have taken over the store so he could still retire and not have to close the shop.  He said no one was interested in buying the store — too much competition from the big box stores.  He told me that sales had been flat the last 4 or 5 years and were even starting to dip now.  So, since he’s retirement age anyway, it’s better to get out now before he has to start putting money into it again. 
 
People sometimes ask me why I don’t shop at Wal-Mart.  My standard answer has been that Wal-Mart is evil (which it is).  But perhaps a better answer would be that I value people over money.  I value people like the Hoerrs, who were able to make a good living for many years by owning a little variety store.  Thanks to places like Wal-Mart, we don’t have that option today.  Anyone who knows anything about Wal-Mart knows that the way they keep their prices low is by paying poverty wages, maintaining a large part-time employee base to avoid paying benefits, and of course outsourcing its manufacturing and production to places like communist China where workers get paid pennies per hour.  So, people keep shopping there, not realizing (or perhaps not caring) that what they save in hard cash, they pay for through the loss of good-paying American jobs and the loss of competent personal service.
 
Others ask how I can possibly avoid foreign-made goods that exploit third-world labor.  The answer is that I can’t avoid them.  But I can avoid some of the worst perpetrators, and there’s no company worse than Wal-Mart in that department.  So, my boycott against Wal-Mart continues….

Kellar Branch

Pioneer appeals STB decision

Pioneer Industrial Railway (PIRY) has requested the Surface Transportation Board (STB) reopen/reconsider their recent ruling in the adverse discontinuance case that removed the short-line operator from the Kellar Branch line.  I doubt this will amount to much, as it seems unlikely to me that the STB would ever reconsider it, let alone reverse their decision.  But it does show that PIRY hasn’t given up on trying to keep rail service on the Kellar Branch line.
 
The text of their request was unavailable over the weekend, but will probably be posted on the STB site Monday.  Expect the Journal Star to have some article tomorrow or Tuesday saying that Pioneer broke its promise not to fight the STB’s decision.

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Thoughts on the Water Buyout

I have to admit that I’m cynical regarding the city’s ongoing quest to purchase the water company.  I know I shouldn’t be.  I should think the best of people.  And, in all honesty, I’m pretty trusting of the present council so far, as they seem to be more basic-services oriented. 
 
But the buyout is a 34-year deal.  I doubt any of these guys are going to be on the council 34 years from now, except maybe Sandberg.  And here’s what I’m afraid will happen:  any money the city makes as a result of the buyout will be used for “progressive” projects, like further remodeling of the civic center, building a history museum, expanding the zoo, etc., etc., etc., instead of improving our outdated infrastructure.  Then, when pipes break and the infrastructure needs to be updated, there won’t be any money left for that, so they’ll slap a special assessment on the adjacent property owners to fix up the city pipes, kinda like they do with sidewalks now. 
 
I also fear that whenever sales tax revenue is down or there is some budget shortfall, the city will raise water rates instead of taxes to plug the hole.  I mentioned this when commenting on Bill’s blog recently, but a good example of this was the so-called “garbage fee” that was passed not long ago.  Isn’t it ironic that they collect that “fee” on our water bills?  I think that’s a pretty good indication of what the city will do to our water bills if they own the water works. 
 
So, that being said, I would be willing to consider the water buyout if the city took steps to alleviate these concerns.  For instance, they could add conditions to their motion to purchase the water works.  One of the conditions would be to put a set amount of money toward infrastructure improvements that can only be used for that purpose — not repurposed for some “quality of life” project like building a trail through the middle of town (before you tell me they didn’t spend any money on that, I’ll remind you that they spent $175,000 to finish the spur from the west to make the trail conversion possible — same difference).  Of course, promises like that can easily be undone by future councils, so to really make it stick, they should require that the money can only be repurposed by a 3/4 vote of the council. 
 
There should also be some sort of oversight/safeguards regarding rate increases.  Perhaps they could appoint a water rate panel that has three citizens, two council people, and a representative of the company that would be managing the water works for the city.  Any rate increases would have to be approved by this panel, and their decisions would be binding. 
 
Maybe these suggestions are unworkable.  So be it.  But the city needs to come up with something to alleviate the fears of Peoria residents that council control of the water company will mean high water bills and nominal improvements in infrastructure.  If they made a good-faith effort to address these concerns, I think more Peorians would be in favor of the buyout.

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Note to Steve Tartar: Try 103.5

In Steve Tartar’s column in this morning’s Journal Star, he lists all the radio stations and formats, just in case you’re new in town, I guess.  He mentions his pet peeve with “103.3 WGLT” is, “Reception not great in Peoria.” 
 
Steve, try tuning into 103.5 (the actual Peoria frequency) and you’ll notice that it comes in great.