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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 by Mr.Rcollins
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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 by Mr.Rcollins
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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 by Mr.Rcollins
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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 by Mr.Rcollins
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Will Richardson sums it up so eloquently for me:

…which is how in god’s name can we talk seriously about 21st Century skills for kids if we’re not talking 21st Century skills for educators first? The more I listened, the less I heard in terms of how we make the teaching profession as a whole even capable of teaching these “skills” to kids. Sure, there were mentions of upgrading teacher preparation programs and giving teachers additional time in the school day to collaborate, etc. But the URGENCY was all around the kids. Shouldn’t the URGENCY be all about the teachers right now?

I am absolutely shocked at the lack of technology use by teachers and technology coordinators. I’ve been to several technology coordinator meetings, there will usually be 30 or 40 tech coordinators in the room, and as I scan the audience, there are only a handful taking notes into their computer. Most are writing on yellow legal pads! Maybe I’m using technology for technology’s sake, but I respectfully disagree in this example. By putting my notes in electronic format I’m already going to be able to easily file and more importantly find this information at a later date.

This extends to the eTech Ohio Conference this past February. It seems that most teachers and technology staff, while promoting the virtues of technology integration, don’t use it themselves. When you start mentioning RSS, Twitter, Wikis, a lot don’t have any clue what you’re talking about. At least most know what blogging is now.

What’s the solution? Teachers need to be shown how, at the very least, technology can save them time. If technology can save a teacher 10 minutes a day, that 1,830 minutes of the course of the school year, or 30.5 hours. Even if they need a 4 hour training on how to save those ten minutes, they still come out ahead! I believe that once they see that the computer is supposed to save them time as opposed to taking more time, it will ease further staff development.

Technology Coordinators, you need to be guiding the administrators and teachers in your district. If you don’t use technology, then there is less incentive for anyone else to use it. Automate repetitive tasks. Use RSS. Setup a blog. Subscribe to a podcast.

You need to lead.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: 21stcentury skills, professional development

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Professional Development by Mr.Rcollins
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At the eTech Ohio Technology Conference this past February I presented on different ways a person can communicate. Some ways were very low tech (writing a letter, using the phone), and some ways very high tech (using Grand Central to control incoming calls, social networking with del.icio.us or Twitter). I’ve finally gotten around to tagging the sites in del.icio.us (thanks Alvin!). I used the tag etechohio08.
photo credit: steveyb

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Professional Development, Web 2.0, eTech Ohio Conference by Mr.Rcollins
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I’ve ordered three iPod Touches to be used in a trial at the high school, middle school, and elementary level. Stealing some ideas from John Schinker, I’m putting forth the following questions for the participants to answer:

Does this device work well enough to have a place in our schools?

How could this be used effectively with students?

What limitations are there that would affect its usefulness?

Are there solutions to overcome those limitations?

What technical hurdles would have to be overcome to make the use of these devices successful?

If we were to start using these computers, what could they replace? What could we buy fewer of to make this cost effective?

Are these durable enough for student use?

Is the iPod Touch too complicated / different / cumbersome / annoying to be used in this environment?

I’ve started to come up with some ideas on how they can be used. My main goal to start is to focus mainly on communication. I’ve setup the Prologue theme for Wordpress, and am currently recruiting teachers to try it out. I’ve also installed the Elgg.org Open Source social network software at the HS and am investigating ways that it can be used in the classroom.

What are some of the important aspects that you can see implementing with a 1-to-1 program?

p.s. I’m trying out publishing from Google Docs, let’s see how well that works!

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Hardware, Mobile Computing by Mr.Rcollins
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NYT Lesson Plan: Active Reading

In this lesson, students write encyclopedia articles focusing on topics in American history. They practice fact checking, assess their own ability to read actively and skeptically, and write memos that educate others on how to do so.

Tags: 21st Century Skills, Classroom Management, Language Arts by Mr.Rcollins
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