Ryan Collins

šŸ•¹ļø Do Something Great! šŸ˜„

Author: ryan

  • A PirateBox to call my own

    In a couple of weeks I will be taking part in the Great Ohio Bike Adventure (GOBA), a week long bike ride through several towns in Ohio. As I was planning on how to power everything, somehow I was reminded of the PirateBox.

    A PirateBox is a self contained hotspot that runs a webserver, allowing anyone within range to connect to it and upload or download files. It also has a chat box on the front page for simple chatting needs and a simple image board. The PirateBox grew out of David Darts need to share files with his classes at NYU.

    I first stumbled upon the idea either from Alan Levine or Ars Technica and promptly forgot about it. With low cost computers easily accesible, I thought, why not make a PirateBox for GOBA and see what happens. As I was planning to order a Raspberry Pi (most PirateBoxes are made with a wireless router, but I like doing things the hardway) I was reminded of my Mini MK802 Android 4.0 that I already had. Here was a computer a little larger than a pack of gum with 1GB of RAM and wifi. I installed Debian on it (requires a network adapter since you have to use SSH to control it) and then used these directions to finish setting it up. On caveat, you have to apt-get install python since that isn’t in the Debian image.

    After a restart, it didn’t show up as a hotspot, so I started digging and came across these directions on setting up an access point on a Raspberry Pi. After I replaced the hostapd program with the one from the website and changed the /opt/piratebox/conf/hostapd.conf config file to match the directions, the PirateBox was in business. I also added a 16GB flash drive for shared file storage. It’s formatted FAT32 so I can easily update it from my computer.

    I’ve been carrying it around with me, although I don’t think anyone has connected to it that I hadn’t told yet. On my trip to Cedar Point I’ll be bringing it along to see what bored people standing in line will do with it. It currently has some creative commons works on it (Cory Doctorow book, some Jonathan Coulton songs) and I’ll need to load more before I go. One problem that I have with it is that as soon as I leave wifi, my iPhone latches onto the PirateBox and then nothing works. I end up turning off wifi for now, at least until I come up with a better idea. One other thing I need to do is come up with a better name. I can’t have PirateBox showing up in the wifi settings when I’m in the school.

    Now I’m brainstorming what else I can do with it. I have a 1GHz machine with 1GB of RAM (it’s only using 56MB of RAM) running in my pocket at all time. What neat things can I do with it?

  • Dictionary of numbers Chrome extension helps the understanding of large numbers

    Dictionary of Numbers is a neat extension for Google’s Chrome browser that gives you examples of large numbers in terms that could be easier to visualize. For example, it’s easier to visualize 100M as the height of the Statue of Liberty than just as 100M.



    via: Lifehacker

  • Scheduled posting with Pelican

    After my switch from WordPress to Pelican I realized that there was one feature that I really was missing, the ability to schedule posts in the future. When you have an itch, you scratch it. By using my Linux box at home (you could use an OS X machine also) and Dropbox, I can now schedule posts.

    Prequisites

    On my server I set up Dropbox. There is a script on the Dropbox site that allows you to set it up on headless servers (a server without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse). In my DropBox folder, I created a folder called ToPost.

    The script

    You’ll need to adjust the path to TOPOST and to the SITE.

    #!/bin/bash

TOPOST=~/Dropbox/Elements/RyanCollins.org/ToPost/*.markdown
SITE=~/Development/ryancollins.org

shopt -s nullglob

YEAR=`date +%Y`
NOW=`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"`

for file in ${TOPOST}
do
    DATELINE=`cat "${file}" | grep "^Date: "`
    if [[ ${DATELINE#* } < ${NOW} ]]; then
        mv "${file}" "${SITE}/content/${YEAR}"
        cd "${SITE}"
        make rsync_upload
    fi
done

    Scheduling

    At the command prompt, run crontab with the -e parameter so we can add a scheduled job:

    ryan@serverbot:~$ crontab -e

    and add a line to our script to run it every 15 minutes:

    */15    *   *   *   *    /home/ryan/Development/ryancollins.org/dbupdate.sh

  • Thursday 3 for May 16, 2013

    Forecast.io

    I read about Forecast on Macdrifter. This isn’t your everyday weather site. A couple of things make it unique. On the main website there is a time machine button, which allows you to look at what the weather was in the past. The other neat feature is that if you visit it from an iOS device, it asks you to install it as an HTML5 app. Nice, functional and free.

    IFTTT

    An oldie but a goodie, If This Then That – IFTTT lets you automate web services. For example, I use the Pocket read it later service. I also want to keep a copy of anything sent to Pocket just in case something happens to Pocket, so I have an IFTTT recipe that saves to Dropbox anything that I Pocket.

    f.lux – Better lighting… for your computer

    f.lux changes the whiteness of your computer after sunset, giving it a yellowish hue. This is more pleasing to the eye in the dark and could help you sleep. Availble for Mac, Windows, Linux and jailbroken iOS devices.

  • Ohio Goes Google conference notes #ohiogoesgoogle

    On Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending my first Ohio Goes Google Conference presented by ITIP Ohio. The sessions I attended were very informative, I picked up quite a few different tips and ideas. (I’ll emphasize my thoughts like this.)

    Keynote speaker – Jennie Magiera @msmagiera

    Google Moderator

    The Google Tool that nobody uses was big. Jennie Magiera talked it up, and then Sean Beavers led a session at lunch on it. Google Moderator allows for classroom participation in which the participants can post ideas and vote on these ideas.

    Slides

    • Thomas Edison, Elton John, Peter Jennings all dropped out of HS
    • Competitively College Ready
    • 7 out of 8, 72 out of 100 universities have gone Google
    • Docs story builder
    • Google Forms now has images, dates
    • youtube.com/mathademics
    • blog.mrmeyer.com

    Top five skills

    1. Critical Thinking
    2. Complex Problem Solving
    3. Judgment and Decision Making
    4. Active Listening
    5. Computers and electronics

    Resources

    • http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=209e48&t=209e48.40&f=209e48.6adb7c&o=30

    From Jennie: “Here is a copy of my keynote: (PDF) https://sites.google.com/site/Ā­magierapresentations/ohio-googĀ­le-keynote And more info at my Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/msmagiera”Ā­

    Jennie was a very engaging keynote speaker!

    Becoming a GMail Ninja – John Sowash

    Slides

    • bit.ly/sowash-PD
    • GTD
    • Inbox Zero
    • Priority Inbox
    • Canned responses
    • To do lists

    Resources

    Google Apps in the Office and Beyond – Wes Weaver – principal

    Slides

    • It’s about teaching and learning
      • Share resources
      • Best practices
      • Conference notes
      • Staff meeting accountability
    • Use Sheets to keep track of office tasks
      • students
      • budgets
    • Guidance Dept
    • Use Google Form for student sign off of forms
    • Track major initiatives
    • Calendars
    • E-mail
    • Forms
      • Self-assessment
      • Feedback & input

    Questions

    • Don’t you feel like you’re on a device all the time?
    • Is your secretary available?

    Wes had several examples of where his secretary took the initiative and created Google Sheets documents to make her job easier. Pretty impressive.

    Resources

    Lunch

    Speaker from Google

    I missed his name. šŸ™

    • How do we prepare students for a future we can’t see?
    • The web is changing how we learn

    Sean Beavers – Google Moderator

    Sean gave real world examples on how he had used Google Moderator in his classroom, along with a picture of him in shorts.

    Using Google Scripts to Automate Your Life – Jennifer Magiera

    • Doctopus
    • Goobric (Doctopus extension)
    • FormMule (Calendar merge)

    I had not used FormMule before, looks like it could be very handy. Especially for dealing with input into Google Forms.

    Resources

    A must have Google Chrome Extension!

    Changing Google from Bland to Beautiful – Eric Griffith

    • Use Google Drawings
    • Object based, objects can be linkable
    • Use the built in Web Clipboard to copy/paste multiple shapes
    • openclipart.org
    • softicons.com
    • Drag and drop between tabs in Chrome
    • Presentation will be available on YouTube through the Ohio Goes Google web page

    This was a very cool session. A lot of complaints I hear about Google Docs is that fact that it’s hard to lay things out in the document. By use Google Drawing objects, you can add pizzazz to those boring Google Docs documents.

  • HS student decides he’s had enough

    I’m not sure how to take this rant of Jeff Bliss, high school student:



    On one hand, this is obviously a student that values his education and is tired of doing worksheets. Could he have handled it better? Probably. In the follow up video it shows that he is thirsty for knowledge and wants something better for his life:



    It will be interesting to see how the school deals with the situation. What other ways could the student have expressed himself?

    (And just say no to vertical video!!!)

  • Good bye WordPress, hello Pelican

    This website has undergone various transformations over the last 10 years. Looking back at the first incarnations from 2003 shows a site that reminds me a lot of current day Facebook and Twitter. An example of my words of wisdom from 2003:

    And tonight marks the end of a great TV series that it seemed like nobody was watching. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends its seven season run with the episode “Chosen”.

    I feel that this series never got the recognition it deserved, with such great episodes like Hush and Once more with Feeling, the creator Joss Whedon was never afraid to totally change your perception of characters.

    At least Angel will be back this fall, and I’ve been buying the Buffy DVDs. The plan is to watch Season 2 this fall on Tuesday nights.

    (I now own the entire series of Buffy on DVD, just in case you were worried)

    In those days I was running Postnuke, and apparently by 2005 I had switched over to WordPress, which I had used up until last month. I have nothing against WordPress, and for a majority of users, WordPress is the way to go. For myself, I was getting tired of administrating the site more than writing and I wanted more speed without jumping through a bunch of hoops. So last month I switch to Pelican

    Pelican is a website generator written in Python. The difference between something like WordPress and Pelican is that WordPress parses each web page as a user views it while Pelican generates the site ahead of time as html pages that can be uploaded anywhere. This means I can host my website any place that supports static web pages. I’m currently using a virtual private service (VPS) to host my website. When I’m tired of administrating my VPS, I can easily switch to publishing on Amazon S3. Other options include the Public folder in Dropbox or in Google Drive.

    Another aspect of Pelican I really like is the ability to check my entire site into version control (git in my case). With version control, I can easily work on new branches of the site without disturbing the current site. And, if you’re bored, you can fork the repo of the site at Github.

    My comments were already switched over to Disqus, and I was able to mimic the same urls from WordPress in Pelican. This allowed me to use my Disqus comments as is.

    There are two pieces that I need to work on. One is to set up some way to schedule posts, and the other is a theme that’s not the default. Oh, I also need to go through all my old posts and fix the categories. WordPress allowed multiple categories per post, Pelican does not.

  • Linux for 1:1 instead of Chromebooks or iPads

    (This post is basically me thinking out loud…)

    Like many districts, my district is looking at devices for a 1:1
    program. The top three devices seem to be Chromebooks, iPads, Windows or
    OS X laptops. Costs are the main driving factor for a lot of districts,
    which basically means they are choosing between Chromebooks or iPads.
    While these devices have their uses, I’m wondering why we aren’t looking
    at Linux laptops (probably running Ubuntu). There are districts with
    districts with Linux laptops, with Ubermix being pretty prevalant.

    Ubermix has some neat features, the most important one is the ability
    for a student to re-set their laptop on their own with quick
    recovery    . In my mind, I’m thinking of extending this function along
    with what I’ve learned from my GozBrowserBox project. I would
    probably use the idea of Ubermix but with a straight Ubuntu install.

    Each laptop would be set up to use Puppet in a serverless manner for
    management and the student’s home folder would be synced to a Network
    Attached Storage device. The Puppet manifests would be synced and ran at
    startup, and the home folder syncing would happen only at log in and log
    off. Both of these to minimize any bandwidth issues. I haven’t quite
    figured out how to do user management. It could be done with Puppet for
    1:1 managed machines, and use our current directory for shared devices.

    This setup would be very, very powerful. Not only could they do
    everything a Chromebook could do, but they would give the students
    access to software that’s not available on the web. This is a very
    important consideration for students in 7th grade and lower, since most
    websites limit usage by those under the age of 13. Management becomes a
    non-issue with a quick recovery setup and Puppet.

    Cost per device would be between $300-$350 (without case). Comparable
    Chromebooks cost $280-$310 with Google Management, and the iPad mini
    starts at $329 (but can’t be used with the PARCC tests, so you really
    need to start at $399).

    What have I missed?

  • Re-purpose old machines as Chrome Browser boxes – Introducing the GozBrowserBox

    I’ve been going back and forth on when to formally announce the
    GozBrowserBox project. On one hand, I’m sure it’s ready to be used, but
    on the other hand, I’m afraid I forgot something! Anyway, without
    further ado…

    Introducing the GozBrowser Box

    GozBrowserBox
    is a set of scripts that will take an Ubuntu installation and set up a full
    screen browser box. It works very well
    with lower end machines and makes them more useful. There are three
    configurations:

    • Standalone: For Intel machines with at least 512MB of RAM, this
      configuration will set up the machine to launch Chrome full screen
      running on the local machine.
    • Browser server: For Intel machines with a couple GBs of RAM, this
      configuration sets up the machine like the standalone machine above,
      but also allows remote access for clients.
    • Browser client: For PowerPC machines (like eMacs, iBooks, etc) or
      Intel machines with at least 256MB of RAM (it may work with less, I
      haven’t had a chance to test it). This configuration requires some
      network configuration to resolve the machine name browser.

    All three configurations use Chrome to it’s fullest, including Flash and
    sound.

    INSTALLING GOZBROWSERBOX WILL TOTALLY WIPE OUT THE MACHINE IT IS BEING INSTALLED ON WITHOUT WARNING. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

    Check it out over on Github!

  • T3: Copyrights, bosses, and MOOCs

    Prince Georgeā€™s considers copyright policy that takes ownership of studentsā€™ work

    One of the main cornerstones of education is sharing. What one teacher
    or student creates is freely shared with others, for the benefits of the
    system. Unfortunately, Prince George is currently review a policy that
    would assign all work completed by teachers and students to the
    district. From what I understand about copyright, teacher work could
    conceivably fall under work for hire, which means the school district
    could assert this ownership. But should they? For students the legality
    is a bit murky. Since the students do not work for the district, it
    would be a stretch to believe that the district could assert copyright.

    Why ā€œBossesā€ are Poor Leaders

    Bosses are a dime a dozen. Leaders can be one in a million.

    Reminds me of another quote I’ve read:

    You do things for your boss because you have to, you do things for a
    leader because you want to.

    Coursera forced to call off a MOOC amid complaints about the course

    As MOOCs grow in popularity, there will be growing pains, and here is a
    story with 40,000 of them.

    Among the comments on blogs and Twitter: “Wowzers, 40,000 students
    signed up for #foemooc considering google spreadsheets limit of 50
    simultaneous editors … not a good choice!”