Source: 712educators.about.com

These past two or three weeks I have been consumed by fear, dread, anxiety, and various other traumatic emotions while I await my scores for NBPTS. Traditionally scores have been returned in November. Last year it was November 9th. I was hopeful that this year it might be early as well. No such luck. I am still waiting. *sigh*

Most years the scores are released the Friday before Thanksgiving. Candidates receive an email on Wednesday (two days ahead) and are notified that scores will be released on Friday. Today would be the day of the email if this becomes the case. No word yet. The waiting is terrible. Early on I was able to successfully dismiss it from my mind and not worry about it. However, the closer the time has come to the release dates, the less able I am to dismiss it. I am confident that the Lord knows my scores, and one way or the other it is for His best…BUT…I am only human (most of the time…only part time alien) and I am struggling to maintain focus. I have checked my email about every 3 minutes today, and I have logged into my profile on the NBPTS website about just as often hoping I might get an early start.

Please pray for me for patience (and passing too *wink, wink*) Rest assured if I hear soon, I will tell everyone I know (and probably several that I don’t).

Source: strwbrryfields4ever.blogspot.com

This is an 8 minute mp3 file.

You can read more about the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards here.

Source: wcpss.net

What I would like to see is my.gov, where I can go to get a snapshot view of government services I use or for which I am eligible. By way of comparison, consider banks, most of which now offer sophisticated web services that aggregate financial data from many sources (deposit accounts, credit cards, investments, mortgage, etc.) and display them on a financial dashboard.

What would a dashboard for government look like? It could include, among, other things:

* A summary of your current social security account, projected benefits, etc. (you get one of these in the mail each year, no reason the same data can’t be delivered via web)
* Your IRS account, including a summary of what’s been paid in, contact information for your account rep, links to online filing forms, etc.
* Stats about recent projects funded in your vicinity, so you can see how federal funds are being spent in your area.
* Stats such as treasury bond yields and a current balance sheet for the government as a whole.
* Votes by your elected officials in Congress, compared against other districts, averages, etc.
* White House decisions or court rulings
* Support for RSS and other push/alert mechanisms

The point is that given the right tools, you could build a portal that provides you with personalized information about government services you are enrolled in and mandates and rulings that affect you by pulling in data from various systems behind the scenes. It might start out with just a few pieces of info, but could be expanded over time. The key is personalization, with an emphasis on customer service, so users visit frequently.

In the long run, the goal should be to build something that is a cross between Amazon (for viewing and managing government services) and Google (for finding and managing information, such as funded projects in your district). Whether they be average citizens or those whose job it is to track the government, the idea is to build an interface that makes government more transparent and more like a vendor or service provider, rather than a faceless abyss for taxpayer dollars

This practice of aggregating information from many sources and providing tools for personalizing a site to meet individual needs is old hat for those of us in the web industry. The Obama administration would do well to commission people from companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and others to draw up wireframes of what my.gov could be, as well as a strategy for building a first-generation version of it. My guess is that, if allowed to experiment, a skunkworks team could build an impressive site in not much time. After all, Silicon Valley’s leading companies and sites were built using paltry amounts of money and on far more limited timeframes compared to federal projects (the Dept. of Homeland Security, for example).

The most important benefit of such a system, apart from improving accessibility and customer service, would be to recast the relationship between taxpayer and government. If the user can see direct relationships between taxes paid in, and services provided or benefits delivered to his or her community, it will become clear that government is not as wasteful as it may first seem, and that it does many things that most people are unaware of.

I think we’re entering a period of great change, one comparable to that of FDR. It would be a great thing if we could apply what we’ve learned from the past decade in web commerce to build similar interfaces for government services and statistics. The result for us as taxpayers — more transparency and better service — would be a win for everyone involved.

Source: gigaom.com

One of the people this administration plans to hire: a CTO to manage federal IT. The person selected will be the nation’s first chief technology officer.

The CTO position doesn’t sound exciting, based on the job description, which may well have been copied from an IT Management 101 textbook. It says the job of the CTO will be to lead IT initiatives at federal agencies and “ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.”

Paul Strassman, a former CIO at NASA and the Department of Defense’s director of defense information, said what the administration has to do first is define its management issues and information policy and then the technology will follow. “The question is, What are the objectives that [Obama] is trying to achieve?” Strassman said.

One thing that Obama does want is what has been called a Google-enabled government. That involves improving the transparency and access to the vast oceans of government data, in part, by moving the data into universally accessible formats. Many federal agencies have put data online but use different formats.

And who will be the CTO to lead this effort? The media rumor mill has cited just about every big name in tech, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who met with Obama today as a member of the new administration’s economic advisory team; Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy.

Among the people on the transition team helping Obama select a CTO is Sonal Shah, head of global development initiatives at Google, and Julius Genachowski, co-founder of LaunchBox Digital, a Washington-based firm that helps start-up businesses.

Whether someone on the level of Ballmer or Schmidt would give up their day jobs for the frustrations of dealing with federal agencies is doubtful.

The White House may control the IT budget, but the federal government agencies have their own CIOs, management, methods and turf. That limits the power of any federal CTO, said Dave Farber, a professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission.

“Government agencies can drag their feet when they are being pulled in directions they don’t want to go,” said Farber.

An example of how complicated relations with the White House can be: When Farber was at the FCC during the Clinton presidency, he said he was invited to a meeting with then Vice President Al Gore. FCC officials initially told Farber not to go, and “that the White House cannot tell you to show up there, and we’re an independent agency.” But when the message was addressed to him as a professor, Farber said the response from FCC higher-ups was, “Good — go, tell us what’s going on.”

A federal CTO will function more like a facilitator — someone who can set a general direction, said Farber. But it will be critical for the person in that position to have access to the president if he is to have real authority, he said. Obama’s appointment will also need a lot of technical credibility and have the ability to coordinate among agencies.

Coordinating and working with various semi-independent agencies is something Karen Evans, as well as her predecessors, has done. Evans, currently considered the de facto federal CIO, has an official title of administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology. She has used her role to push agencies to standardize, increase online capabilities and improve security. Sometimes that means striking at the right opportunity.

In 2007, the White House used the possibility that some agencies might move to Windows Vista to insist on standard security configurations for Vista and XP, and required that software vendors ensured that their products were shipped with those configurations. “If we don’t take and seize upon this opportunity to standardize, a thousand flowers will bloom, and we’ll be back to where we were,” said Evans in an earlier interview.

Source: computerworld.com

(L to R) Gigi Sohn, president, Public Knowledge; Jennifer Canty, CEO, Dyscern; Ben Scott, policy director, Free Press; Stephen J. Ezell, senior analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation; Harry Wingo, policy counsel, Google; Michael Oldak, senior director of state competitive and regulatory policies, Edison Electric Institute.

WASHINGTON — Google’s not just a technology company anymore.

The search giant that built its name and empire on a superior technical platform to help people retrieve information from the Web is wading deeper into the policy arena with each passing year.

With a new administration taking shape in Washington, D.C., Google is working to raise awareness of broadband deployment and energy reform.

During a policy debate that Google gathered at its D.C. outpost, experts and advocates alike argued that the incoming Obama administration and Congress can solve those twin challenges.

They’re not unrelated. Harry Wingo, Google’s policy counsel on energy issues, drew a parallel between the challenge the government faces today in crafting a policy to bring broadband to everyone, and that which faced Franklin Roosevelt 75 years ago, when many parts of the country were still without electricity.

Roosevelt’s solution was the rural electrification project, a New Deal initiative where the government partnered with private utilities to wire up the nation’s sparsely populated interior.

“Somebody had the vision to realize we want all Americans to have access to this,” Wingo said. “At the time it was electricity. But now there are complete overlaps between our quality of life and the impact that both the power system and the Internet have.”

But yesterday’s electrical grid isn’t sustainable to meet the energy challenges of the future, Wingo said, echoing a position Google CEO Eric Schmidt has advanced on many occasions.

Google’s push for a clean-energy overhaul became a formal company objective in October when its philanthropic arm Google.org announced its energy plan. It calls for significant reductions in carbon emissions and investment in alternative energy sources.

The transition to a so-called smart grid, an adaptive electrical infrastructure whose architecture would be modeled on that of the Internet, should develop apace with universal broadband deployment, the panelists asserted.

“I look at the changes for the electric industry similar to the changes that the Internet has brought to all of our lives,” said Michael Oldak, senior director of the Edison Electric Institute, an association of public electric companies. “Once we apply this technology to the electric grid and give customers the information and the tools to respond, we’re going to be able to meet our energy challenges much better in the future.”

A grid for every house?

The Internet-enabled smart grid that Oldak, Google and others envision would drive energy conservation with features like real-time metering, so customers could monitor how much electricity they use from day to day, rather than waiting for the monthly bill. The logic is simple: as consumers grow more aware of how much electricity is costing them, they will be more likely to modify their habits, saving both money and energy in the process.

Wingo calls it the “Prius effect.” An in-dash meter in the popular hybrid car displays mileage-per-gallon in real time, reminding a driver to ease up on the gas as he sees the rate drop.

“You don’t have that for your home,” he said. “Imagine if you went to the grocery store and you weren’t charged anything until the end of the month — your spending habits would be different.”

Another idea involves Internet-enabled smart appliances — like a networked toaster — that could modulate their energy usage to match the needs of the grid, powering down in times of peak consumption.

To the panelists, the convergence of broadband and energy usage is yet another sign that high-speed Internet service should be elevated to the level of a utility.

“It’s a necessity, not a luxury,” said Gigi Sohn, president of the media-reform group Public Knowledge.

“If we had the kind of adoption of water or electricity or gas heat that we have for broadband, it would be a national scandal,” she said. Looking beyond the energy grid, broadband evangelists see its potential for revolutionizing crucial areas like education and healthcare.

“There needs to be an attitude adjustment that broadband is critical to full participation in our society and its social and economic welfare,” Sohn added.

How the Obama administration moves forward with its plans to accelerate broadband deployment and adoption remains unclear. But the panelists were uniformly excited that the president-elect has signaled intentions to elevate technology as a priority, both through his policy agenda and his own use of the Internet throughout the campaign.

Among the proposals floated involve a reform of the Universal Service Fund, the government subsidy to deliver wireline phone service to poor and remote Americans. That fund, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, is a politically charged issue, and a frequent target of critics of government waste, so expanding it to include subsidies for broadband deployment would be a tough fight.

Obama has also called for a reexamination of how the nation’s wireless spectrum is allocated. Supporters say that reallocating vacant or underused spectrum to innovative new technologies could boost inexpensive broadband deployment. The FCC recently took a step in that direction with its vote to free the unused spectrum that sits between TV channels, known as white spaces, to enable a new class of wireless devices.

In the meantime, Google, which was one of the most ardent proponents of the white spaces issue, can look forward to a more favorable climate in the new administration. CEO Schmidt has been serving as an economic advisor to the president-elect, and Google.org’s Sonal Shah was yesterday named to the transition team’s technology policy advisory group.

On the energy front, environmental advocates will likely get s boost from a shuffle in the leadership of a key committee in the House of Representatives. In a contentious race, California Democrat Henry Waxman ousted John Dingell, D-Mich., from his chairmanship of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Waxman, an outspoken environmentalist, will head the committee overseeing legislation on issues such as climate change and clean energy.

His victory over Dingell, who has been seen as a long-time friend of the automobile industry, suggests that Obama will have a strong ally as he pushes forward his environmental agenda.

Source: internetnews.com

Fast Money’s Dylan Ratigan appeared Friday on The View to help answer some of these questions and more.

Dylan warned hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Joy Behar and guest host Rachael Ray that the economy was likely to “get so much worse than this, you have no idea”.

Ratigan explained the problem was due to an out-of-control money supply and easy-money credit environment that eventually just evaporated into next to nothing. As we wait for the effects of this to ripple throughout the entire system, he expects more job losses, less money, and a further drag on housing.

Host Joy Behar asked Dylan, “What’s wrong with putting that money back”?

Ratigan responded, “That money is gone. It has gone to money heaven”.

The lone piece of good news according to Dylan is that we have an opportunity to fix the problem going forward by demanding accountability of the government, bankers and those who make decisions and policies about our monetary supply.

His solution would be to demand a “Google for Government”. This entails contacting your elected representatives in the Congress and telling them “I want to know everything you are doing with my money”.

The onus is on the American people to demand this action and overwhelm our politicians to end the business of “keeping secrets and having no accountability”.

Dylan believes that this is a now or never opportunity, and getting “Google for Government” would create an access to information that would empower citizens to keep a watchdog eye on what our elected officials are doing with (or by laws and policies to affect) our money.

Source: cnbc.com

The report states that Chambers was arrested on Nov. 11 on suspicion of sexual assault and drug charges. He posted the $200,000 bail and has a court date set for Dec. 5.

Chambers joined the American Top Team shortly after training with the camp and winning a return fight at Total Fight Challenge on Sept. 20. Chambers trains as a Brown Belt under Eddie Bravo’s 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu in Hollywood, California.

Source: mmafighting.com

Los Angeles, CA (CNS) - Former “Human Weapon” host Jason Chambers has been arrested earlier this month for alleged rape.

The martial arts expert, 28, was busted on November 11 on suspicion of sexual assault and drug charges. TMZ reports that he may have used drugs to commit rape. He was released after posting the $200,000 bail.

Officials have yet to file charges. His court date has been set on December 5.

Chambers hosted the History Channel weekly series from July 2007 to its end in December 2007. He also appeared in episodes of “CSI: NY” and “Days of Our Lives.”

Source: allheadlinenews.com

As we first reported, Chambers was arrested November 11 for allegedly raping a woman. Cops also believed he used some sort of drug to allegedly commit the sexual assault.

The D.A.’s office tells us they rejected the case because of “insufficient evidence.”

Source: tmz.com