InfoTeacher

Farhad Manjoo, Slate’s technology writer, writes an article entitled, “Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes.”  Most of us have bad security habits (this is going to come back and bite many, many Americans in a bad way — possibly soon).  I’ve written earlier about the password keeper I use (which is always out of date on at least one password,  is often out of reach when I need it, and doesn’t serve me as quickly as I’d like — but in general does funtion ok). I use the same password for many apps/sites — which is ok for the less security necessary ones, but I confess less than secure behavior (better than most people I observe, however — except for some areas where I know I routinely follow clear no-no’s, but there are in areas where I choose my level of risk).

Back to the article — interesting trick. Create a sentence you’ll remember related to the site — make it a mnemnonic, tweak it, and you have a unique password that is untraceable, yet related to the specific site. This gets one past two cardinal security rules – (1) use a different password for each secure site; and (2) don’t use a dictionary word at all. For the third cardinal rule (use special characters and mix up numbers and capitals in random ways), that comes in the Teak it step, above.

I’ve read this somewhere before (though there is no reference to an earlier version on the magazine’s site!), and have one very important (non-school) password that I created with this same technique. I may expand my use of this. The sentence one creates just has to be something you relate to a site and can remember.  This also allows you to remember very long passwords which are much more secure than short ones (the level of security goes up exponentially after you get past 10 digits).

Bottom line — password security doesn’t have to be hard. Be systematic and follow true secure procedures. Using your memory is important, too.  Teachers often complain about having to remember so many, but in this day and age what profession wouldn’t have to remember several different passwords?

Next time I have a presentation of any kind, I’ll use Prezi.  It’s part Slide Show (without the slides if you can imagine), part Poster (electronic), part Graphic Organizer and Note Taking Machine all in one. That probably doesn’t really explain it, but I know that a Prezi presentaiton will get noticed.  I may be practicing something, and if I get that done, I’ll come back her and post a link.  Interesting tool. I would really like to find a way to use this with students.  A character development timeline sould really be interesting with this tool, though there are lots of possibilities.

Post Script- the day after I posted this, I go to a meeting. At the meeting Greg Wilborn talks to us about 21st Century Teaching. What does he use for his presentation? A Prezi.  It was mentioned by someone else in the group earlier, too. I’m going to have to stay up later to stay ahead of these guys and gals.

Check out Spreeder — “free online speed reading application.”

I’m not sure what it is, but there must be a way to use it (probably not with your Dylexia students; but then again maybe because they see only 1 word rather than lines and lines of words . . . . who knows?). Anyway, what a cool, creative site.  (Maybe in a staff training?).

I created a little flier to promote my role as a teacher.  Download and use it if you’re a technology teacher.

I’m seriously considering migrating this whole blog over to Google Blogger with an @Blotgspot address. I’ve tried embedding media in a way that was EASY over there, and just can’t seem to get it. I opened this when my district had all Blogger sites blocked — not true anymore. I use Google docs, Google calendar, Google Reader, Picasa by Google (why doesn’t that one follow the same naming pattern [i.e Google Picasa]) . . .

Why am I still here struggling with this inferior host?

Sure I would lose comments, but it’s not like I have a whole lot of commentators anyway.

Bloomberg News is reporting that Google is considering writing an Operating System to compete with Microsoft Windows.  Link here.  Very interesting.  It looks like they will start with an OS for low cost laptops — and see where the market takes them.

I, for one, think competition is always good. Competition makes public education better, too — but I realize that opens about 144 can of worms for many of my colleagues.

I upgraded to IE8 (actually, the upgrade is nested into the Windows Update, so if you click “Next” too quickly without paying attention, you upgrade to it without realizing it).  IE8 has a couple of new features — nothing that I would write home about; a private browsing feature, but if you really want privacy there’s been portable Firefox around for years). Looks and feels like IE7 (which I thought was a big improvement over 6).  I like IE8, and like to keep up with the security features they bring with updates.  Again, 7 was a giant leap forward, but 8 seems to be mostly cosmetic and hidden updates.

However (and there’s always a however in life), when I upgraded to IE8, I can’t get to this blog. I seem to be able to surf everywhere else fine – except here at Edublogs. My Blogspot blog is fine as well as all other (so far) secure pages. But when I come to this page, it freezes every time. Happened on both my desktop at home and my laptop. I was actually going to only upgrade on one computer and see, but I clicked “Next” too quickly on Windows Update, and both computers got IE8. I didn’t mind, until I went to write a post about finishing school. Both computers, newly upgraded to IE8 freeze. One runs Vista and one is XP — so it’s not the OS.  Well, …..

I’m writing this post in Firefox.  I’ve been wanting to jump on board and see about Firefox anyway, so this gave me the opportunity to try. I’ll be surfing with both browsers for a while and see what the differences are.  Want to see which one I like.  But, unless the BFG (per Roald Dahl’s book the BFG, I refer to Microsoft as the BFG) creates a patch for IE8, I’ll have to use Firefox for this blog.

I’ll get back to my post first semester of Leadership training post by end of day today.  Got a couple of other post ideas I’ve had to skip, too because I haven’t been able to get in for a few days.

Kathryn Greenhill from librariansmatter.com – a librarian from Australia posts this on Slide Share.  Really having trouble with the embed, so here is the link.  (I’m not that happy with WordPress’ format – chose it and Edublogs so my district wouldn’t block it; gotta say – Blogger is MUCH easier!!)

In my district, even those of us who TALK quite a bit about these technologies are not DOING them enough. Quite a few more as asking “why bother?” – this show says a lot about why we should bother, though it only touches the broad range of what’s new – no details. In the end, a push to at least try one. (I especially like slide 137 — “No offense, future man, but is everyone in your time retarded?”). Very creative, broad encompassing and interesting.
 

Our school board is considering closing schools. This is not unusual in our current climate. School boards all over the country are looking at numbers, tax bases, economic woes, and they are making hard choices. I talked to a friend of mine who teaches in Phoenix, and word is that they are looking at a large (shockingly large! It’s hard to believe the numbers he quoted me) reduction of their professional and paraprofessional staff.

The truth is, our board has put off making this decision for half a decade. We are an urban district (In a formerly large town which was, prior to that, a medium-sized town. It’s a town that still has a hard time thinking of itself as an urban). But the hard truth is white flight is occuring; families that move in who can afford it are moving to the more suburban school districts that surround our city. Even though we have one pocket of semi-suburban neighborhoods still within our district’s boundaries where we’ve build schools in the past two years to relieve overcrowding, most of the rest of the district is losing students. We have upwards of 4,000 fewer students now than we did a decade ago. We have a few half-empty schools and quite a few schools that are not half-empty, but are getting there quickly. Still, prior boards have avoided making the hard choices.  Here is an editorial from our local paper which speaks in favor of making these hard choices.  We’ve had public meetings and asked for information from groups of stakeholders, employee groups, parents, staff. They have enough information — really they have a ton of information. Here is another article about the information they have.  They started with some basic presuppositions, and a collection of data about school usage and programs in the various schools. All schools (not just those on the list) were asked to evaluate and list their own strengths and areas to improve. Then a consultant was brought in, and all of this information was tabulated in a plan that they took to employee groups, employee leaders, and to the public. They actually asked and solicited information, and they listened. The plan was changed and each change was posted (currently the district has Draft 18 on their site). At each public meeting they asked focus groups to record and give input about various options. Still, we have people crying that this decision is being made too fast.

The school board is caught between doing doing what is fiscally responsible and largely unpopular, and putting off the decision or doing some small measure that pretends to solve the problem.  It’s a tough position. I don’t envy the tough spot in which they sit. The problem with a true democracy is that people won’t make the tough decisions. Self interest gets in the way. That’s why our founding fathers made this country a democratically elected republic. That’s essentially what a school board is. A democratically elected republic presumes that those elected to the board will have the guts to make the hard and even unpopular choices.

I think we have a good board. Current information suggests that all but one member recognize the difficulty, and are willing do the tough but necessary job. I hope they make the hard choices. If they don’t make these choices, we will be talking about a fiscal crisis in a year or two. Decisions made in a crisis are not likely to be decisions that work to improve student achievement.

I have created a rubric that can be used for Podcasts of Digital Stories.  I think I am going to jump in head first with a class next week turning their stories into Podcasts. They already have the stories finished, and have created their own pictures, so some of what is in the rubric is a little obsolete. Hopefully they will still catch on as their stories are evaluated. This rubric will help them as they are evaluated on the technology/media side of things. Rubric was created with Rubistar Rubric Maker (they are great, and already have suggestions for categories for podcasts; this rubric was created the simple way — just using the suggested content of categores chosen from the pull down list).

I was going to upload an Excel Spreadsheet but can’t see how to attache a file (except video, audo, image etc), and I can’t even see how to paste a table in here (still figuring out Word Press after using Google Blogger for 2 years).  Email me if you would like to see it until I figure our how WordPress uploads Excel.

Tags: 21st Century Learning