Tag Archives: Testing

Victoria Elementary School Rankings

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After hearing it discussed on CBC Radio yesterday, I spent some time looking at the Fraser Institute’s controversial “Report Card on British Columbia’s Elementary Schools 2010” primarily based on BC’s Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) Testing.

As to be expected, it looked like the Victoria public schools that did the best in 2010, and consistently over the last 5 years are in the “best” neighborhoods.

I’m encouraged that it looked to be fairly equal English and French immersion schools, as we don’t intend to go French immersion. We have heard that if enrolling English consider a full English school.

It’s kind of sad, but expected that our severely underfunded education system would be most successful were supplemented by parents, and where parents put more value on school excellence, and have the energy to be more active in their children’s educations.

I was disappointed, but not surprised that the closest school to our house, Cloverdale Traditional School did not do well. Although, surrounded by some nice neighborhoods, there are also commercial areas close by and (relatively) less expensive homes. I was hopefully that the focus on tradition of the school would give it a significant boost. The reported 49.4% ESL surprised me.

I’m looking forward to reviewing the 2011 reports for elementary and secondary that will come out next month. Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) will be doing a report for the Western Provinces for the first time this year, but only for secondary schools.

Big Brother Indoctrination at a School Near You

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Thankfully, not all schools:

Some educators have rejected [Turnitin] and other anti-cheating technologies on the grounds that they presume students are guilty, undermining the trust that instructors seek with students.

Washington & Lee University, for example, concluded several years ago that Turnitin was inconsistent with the school’s honor code, “which starts from a basis of trusting our students,” said Dawn Watkins, vice president for student affairs. “Services like Turnitin.com give the implication that we are anticipating our students will cheat.”

Trip Gabriel, “To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery, July 5, 2010″

Mac OS X Snow Leopard, a Major Bug Fix Release

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I’m looking forward to the release of the next version of Mac OS X, version 10.6 Snow Leopard this September. As a Software Quality Assurance (QA) practitioner, I find it particularly interesting that this major release is basically a bug fix release — “lots of refinements” and upgrades to the architecture.

The Apple press release from last June includes:

… Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. …

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”

Although QA people love this attention to what we are passionate about, conventional wisdom in the software world is that a major release with few new features is suicide, but there are factors working in Apple’s favor.

I don’t find the current version (no snow) Leopard v10.5 to be unstable or buggy, but I know other people have problems with it. There are a lot of user interface (UI) inconsistencies in Leopard among the various Apple applications. I’m interested to see if Snow Leopard sports a more consistent and usable experience.

Apple is selling this upgrade for only $29 US, when their major releases normally sell for $129 US. At $29 Apple customers won’t be looking for much to think they have got a good deal.

Apple’s main competitor Microsoft has created this opportunity. Microsoft Windows costs close to $300. And although Mac OS X only runs on Apple hardware, people’s frustration with Vista’s bugginess and instability has led people to specifically look for a computing experience that address this.

People are hopeful for Windows 7, but it won’t be available until at least a month after Snow Leopard ships. We can expect Windows 7 to have a lot of customer untested technology compared to Mac OS X which looks to be is a very incremental release.

Performance (and polish) is a feature. “Ultimately that feeling of control translates to happiness in everyone. In order to increase the happiness in the world, we all have to keep working on this. Ultimately that feeling of control translates to happiness in everyone. In order to increase the happiness in the world, we all have to keep working on this.”, my boss Matt Mullenweg, Velocity 09 Conference Presentation.

Because Apple builds both the software and the hardware, they can release their next generation of computers to immediately take advantage of the upgraded 64-bit stack, OpenCL for graphic card processing, and GCD multi-core processing throughout Mac OS X.

If Snow Leopard is well executed and well received, it will help people be more confident on computers and expect more from their software. It will be a good day for QA geeks.

Tech Frustration

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I’ve always been good at finding the cracks in things and breaking them wide open. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy testing software. I also have a high threshold for technology acting up and the disposition, skills, and resources (friends) to fix it, but lately I’ve been a little tech frustrated.

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My boxes don’t touch!

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Julia and I had a practical birth preparation course on Sunday with Victoria local yoga master, philosopher and former registered nurse, Helga Beer. It was awesome!

Julia and I haven’t attended her yogo classes for the last many months. I had forgotten how much I get out of her philosophy.

During the course she mentioned Mark Gungor’s Men’s Brain Women’s Brain:

I hadn’t heard of this video. It’s hilarious! It’s clear Mark has some insights into having a better marriage, “laugh your way to a better marriage” his site says.

The box theory of men’s brains resonated with me, and I have a particularly bad case of it. It relates to my expertise and career in software problem identification, analysis, and resolution. And a clear symptom is my repulsion when an email or forum discussion has multiple topics in it, or when the discussion travels onto a different issue.

Of course, I grin and bear it, because most of life doesn’t suit the clean, discrete presentation as a bug report. Life is dynamic and messy, but still my boxes definitely don’t touch. Julia you’re so generous in your love for me!