photo credit: davidsilver

This article started out as the top ten skills needed to use technology effectively, but as I wrote the list, I realized that technology shouldn’t be separated out. As we proclaim that technology is a tool, we also shouldn’t single it out when talking about what skills it takes to educate. The following list has a few items that are somewhat related to technology, the others are what I view as important skills any teacher needs to have if they want to succeed. Successful teachers will not find any surprises in this list.

1. mastery of your subject – If you don’t know your subject, your students will learn that rather quickly. You must know what you’re teaching, backwards and forwards. There are no shortcuts here. If you cannot answer a student’s question, use your searching skills to find the answer as quickly as possible.

2. classroom management – Whether it’s your morning math meeting or working in small groups, you will not have a successful class if you cannot manage it.

3. Your students don’t know as much as you think they do, and you know more then they think you do – There are a few phrases that have gained some popularity in the past couple of years that I disagree with. The impression that teachers are digital immigrants and students are digital natives is an incorrect assumption. Most students do not know as much as their teachers when it comes to using technology. And teachers do know more about technology then they realize. The personal computer is over 30 years old, for a majority of teachers this is longer then their teaching career. They’ve seen how technology has changed some classrooms, and can leverage that experience in their own classroom.

4. Ability to punt – Your day to day classroom will probably never work exactly as you pictured it in your mind, and your ability to punt and do something different is imperative. Supplies for a science experiment hasn’t arrived? Prepare to punt. Internet access down? Punt!

5. Keeping an open mind – “Those who say it can’t be done, are usually interrupted by someone doing it”

6. Understand cheap, fast or easy, pick any two – This is a phrase I use when talking to administrators when they wonder why something isn’t working the way they thought it should. The phrase basically means, you can only two out of the three items. For example, if you want it cheap and easy, it’s not going to be fast. Or if you want it fast and easy, it isn’t going to be cheap.

7. Know how to search – Learn the shortcuts for how to include and exclude search terms. Find out how to search for a particular filetype. If you need a presentation on the water cycle, learn how to search for one (with google use “filetype:ppt” as a search term).

8. Embracing life-long learning – Anything you learn today will be out of date before you retire. We don’t have to sharpen our quills anymore, or learn how to make dittos. Be prepared to learn every day.

9. Creating a personal learning network – Seek out like minded teachers as yourself. Email them, follow their blog, follow them on Twitter. Create your own blog and Twitter account. Learn to share.

10. Owning a home computer – I am totally surprised at the number of teachers that do not own a home computer. The new netbooks are priced at under $400 and desktops around the same price, so price isn’t much of an obstacle. If you can’t afford to buy, check out your local Freecycle or Craigslist for people looking at getting rid of older computers.

Anything I missed?

photo credit: TalkingTree

Escape Character is 'CTRL+]'

Microsoft Telnet>�
Or this:
telnet>
Since that works, type quit to exit telnet. Next, we need to open a connection to our mail server. We will need to know the name or ip address of the mail server:
telnet mail.example.com 25
(The 25 is the port number that SMTP runs on.) You should then get a response back from your mail server:

Trying 10.0.0.18...
Connected to mail.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.example.com ESMTP Postfix

The server is now waiting for a command. We need to say Hello. (* For the remaining examples I’m going to use the domain example.com. You’ll need to replace that with your local domain name. *)
helo example.com
Which returns:
250 mail.example.com
The mail server now needs to know who is sending the email:
mail from: myname@example.com
Returns:
250 Ok
Who are you sending the mail to?
rcpt to: recipient@example.com
Returns:
250 Ok
Now it is time to tell it the message:
data
Returns:
354 End data with .
Enter your message:

Subject: test message
This is a test message
.

To end the message, you need to put a period at the beginning of the line and hit the return key. Now your message is on its way!
Now type quit to exit
quit

Today’s topic is vi. Vi may be the only editor installed on a new unix based system, and a few commands will get you to the point where at least you can edit a few files before installing something a little more user friendly such as pico (or nano).

Vi has two modes, command and insertion. It was designed this way because sometimes the keyboard you would be using might not necessarily have all the keys we take for granted today, especially when it comes to the arrow keys. In command mode you can move the cursor around with the arrow keys or hjkl keys. To do an editing, you’ll need to switch to insertion mode. Vi defaults to command mode when it is started.

i – Switches to insertion mode
<ESC> – Switches to command mode

In a nutshell, you’ll start the editor with a file:

vi somefile

Once the file is open, you’ll press i to switch to insertion mode. Make the changes to your file. Press <ESC> to switch back to command mode. To exit you’ll press the following (these all start with the colon):

:wq – Write the file and then quit
:q! – Quit the file without saving the changes. A great way if you mess up and just want to not save your changes

These preceding commands should at least get you started. For more info, you may want to visit the following pages:
vi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vi Cheat Sheet
Mastering the VI editor