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On the Ohio Technology Coordinator’s listserv this question was posted:

We already had one case of student to teacher generated e-mail that originated on a student computer inside the school. The FIRST question I got as the Tech Director was ‘Why are you allowing students to send and receive email in school?’

And my question would be, “Why are you letting them use pencil and paper? They could be sending notes to other students or staff!”. For discipline we do not distinguish between computer generated or person generated correspondence. The punishment may change if it’s on the computer because they’d lose computer privileges due to the AUP.

You’re not going to be able to stop it. A student could simply fire up telnet and use your existing mail server to send email to whoever they want, saying anything they want.

No access to telnet on the machine? Then throw up a Java telnet client on any old web host and access it from there. Actually, if I wanted to get around a school’s filters, this is the route I’d probably go. Once I get SSH somewhere, I can get full access to the Internet, and it only requires port 80, a web browser, and Java. (This is what I use at places that have network access locked down. I open a SSH tunnel over port 443 to my home computer, and then have full access to anything on the Internet.)

Not only is email use part of the State of Ohio Technology Standards, it is our job as teachers to educate the students on the proper use of email. How to use it, what’s appropriate, etc. Part of the problem with the garbage that students send through email is that they’ve never seen anything else. It’s pretty foreign for them to see an email message with proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. (I hope I have everything correct in this post!

I bet you have students right now using a free email services, ssh tunnels, etc.

We like to think we have things locked down, but unless you’re working for the NSA, you do not have it locked down. Education of the students, punishment for inappropriate behavior is a good way to go. We as Technology Coordinators we have a habit of putting up technological road blocks instead of solving the real problems.

Thunderbird Email

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Classroom Management // 2 Comments »

Tags: Humor // Add Comment »

Although the built-in editor for Wordpress works pretty well, it still feels a little bit kludgy. If I’m on my MacBook I like to use Windows Live Writer or Textmate, but Windows Live Writer requires me to fire up VMware and Textmate seems to also be a little kludgy.

I’ve looked at the ScribeFire Firefox extension in the past, when it was Performancing, but the latest version seems to be almost perfect. What I’ve always wanted is to not only post drafts to my blog, but to also edit the drafts. The latest version of ScribeFire not only allows me to save my drafts, but I can then re-edit those drafts from ScribeFire or from Wordpress itself.

For pictures you can either select a picture on your computer and it will automatically upload it or you can do a Flickr search.

I will really be pushing it to my teachers as we increase our blogging use, and maybe put it on as a global extension on my next disk image for school.

Tags: Software // 2 Comments »

Encyclopedia Britannica, through their Encyclopedia Britannica Webshare program allows web publishers free online access to the encyclopedia and the ability to give their readers free access to an article in its entirety.

A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters, and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way to give your readers background of the topics you write about with links to complete Britannica articles.

I don’t see anything in the FAQ about limiting access to educational institutions, but they do check any who is applying to see if they really have a blog and publish regularly (left up to them whether you qualify).

This free access is in no doubt related to the popularity of Wikipedia (for every page view on EB online, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia). I applaud their effort to stay relevant and to offer this ability to Internet users.

And what a great motivational tool to get teachers blogging!

Tags: Online Tools // Add Comment »

photo credit: jigpuAfter I first read this story, I thought that it was a pretty cool:

When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Sherwood, Ark., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager.

Upon reflection I realized that this story is a big reason why IT departments are looked down upon as less than professional in organizations school districts today. For example, replace “network manager” with “1st grade teacher”. Would this student receive accolades or would the district be singled out as harming the educational experience of their first graders? What would fellow teachers think of an 11 year old attempting to do their job?

Unfortunately for IT people, if you’re doing your job well, it appears that you’re not doing anything at all. Everything just works and people question why you are getting paid.

Articles like the above do not help promote the professionalism of IT. Your boss, upon reading that article, could believe that they could just hire people off the streets and save money.

As IT professionals, we need to promote and market ourselves, separate the wheat from the chaff. Anyone can install an Internet appliance, but it takes a little more knowledge and experience to run the IT department of a school district.

P.S. I don’t want to belittle Jon Penn’s accomplishments, I wish I would’ve had the opportunity at his age.

Tags: Op Ed // Add Comment »

photo credit: TalkingTreeWhen troubleshooting email, it may be necessary to see what the email server is spitting out, just to make sure everything is working. The easiest way to do that is to use the telnet command. Telnet allows you to connect to various services on remote or local machines through the command line. Today we are going to be using it to send some email. You’ll first need to bring up the command-line on your respective operating system. First see if telnet is installed. Type:
telnet
And you should see something like this:

Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Client

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

Tags: 21st Century Skills, SYSK // 1 Comment »

I’m starting a new category, that goes along with my blog post Yes I will lead. The new category is called Skills You Should Know - SYSK. Little bits of information that through my experience aren’t something that you may not necessarily use every day, but may someday save you a ton of trouble.

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

Tags: RC Tips, SYSK, Software // Add Comment »

photo credit: swpermanAs we investigate ways to use mobile Internet devices in our classrooms, it hit me that they could be used as an interactive student response system (ISRS). Since current ISRSs are around $100 per person, why not invest in a more useful device such as the iPod Touch, Sony PSP, or Nintendo DS (with Opera)?

I found one company that already is thinking this way, Pocket Mobility with their Quizzler Pro product. Me on the other hand, loves the challenge of coding something up myself.

Has anyone worked with ISRSs? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Is this something I should look at as a summer project?

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Classroom Management, Hardware, Mobile Computing, Software // 3 Comments »

Scottish authorities have begun other trials of ‘More Brain Training with Dr Kawashima’ on the Nintendo DS in 16 schools:

A 20-minute burst of the ‘brain training’ exercises on Nintendo’s DS console at the start of the day apparently improves performance in maths tests by as much as 10 per cent, according to a Scottish study.

The results of the completed 10 week study certainly are fascinating:

In a maths test at the end of the trial, their performance improved by an average 10 per cent, and the time to complete the test also dropped from 17 minutes to 13 minutes and nine seconds.

Pretty impressive results, although I don’t know what game they’re talking about, unless it happens to be Brain Age 2. Checking Amazon UK shows a DS game called More Brain Traing, which may just be a relabel Brain Age 2. I guess I’ll have to do some more checking. What a solid return on your investment though. It would cost a class of 25 $3,750 to outfit the entire class with a DS. Throw in the DS Browser and you have even more ways to integrate it into your classroom.

How long until a company comes out with a mobile version of Brain Age 2 that you can play from any mobile computing device?

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Hardware, Mobile Computing // Add Comment »

photo credit: Erin NealeyDesire2Learn is reporting that the United States Patent & Trademark Office has overturned all 44 of Blackboard’s patent claims:

On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims. We caution that this is a NON-final action; both Blackboard and Desire2Learn will have an opportunity to comment before a final action will issue, and after that, the decision will be subject to appeals.

This is good news, especially not only for Desire2Learn, but also users of all online coursework delivery systems. Although I’m torn on the idea of software patents, the ones awarded to Blackboard in my opinion did not pass the obviousness test. Blackboard has gone on record that they were not going to go after open source implementations like Moodle, but I can’t help to think that just the idea that Blackboard could sue would put a damper on some new Moodle installations.

Tags: Legal // Add Comment »