This is a test, posting from my iPod Touch.
Author: ryan
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Would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet?
According to a recent study, [names really do make a difference][]:
> Parents are being warned to think long and hard when choosing names
> for their babies as research has discovered that girls who are given
> very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely
> to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has
> found.
>Fascinating research. They even examined twin girls and found that what
they were named could put them on two entirely different career paths.
Also, naming a child with a ‘lower-status’ name, spelled in an unusual
way or including punctuation, lowered exam scores by 3-5%.One more thing for new parents to worry about. đ
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Happy 35th Birthday Ethernet
[May 22, 1973: Enter Ethernet][]> 1973: Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center writes a
> memo outlining how to connect the think tank’s new personal computers
> to a shared printer. The memo puts forth the basic properties of —
> and names — ethernet.Looking at his diagram, he had the foresight to see networking not only
over a local area network, but also telephone lines and radio waves. -
Wiimote interactive whiteboard success
Since I am home this week, I decided to get caught up on some projects.
The big one was working on getting an [interactive whiteboard setup
going with a Nintendo Wiimote and an infrared pen][]. This morning, I
finally got my infrared pen working. What I did was bought a cheap LED
flashlight from Walmart and replaced one of the LEDs with an infrared
LED, the Radio Shack 276-143 to be exact.After checking that the pen worked, I downloaded the Wiimote
interactive whiteboard software and it worked! I’ll try to get some
pictures and a video up, but I don’t know if I’ll have time today.Next goal is to find some whiteboard software to use with it. For right
now I’m just using Inkscape.[interactive whiteboard setup going with a Nintendo Wiimote and an
infrared pen]: https://ryancollins.org/wp/2007/12/10/the-50-interactive-whiteboard/ -
Why do students need email?
[![][]][]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! đI 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
[
]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30735542@N00/215738569 -
End of year humor
[Exempt Those Exams!][] -
Maybe, finally, found the perfect blog editor
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. -
Free access to Encyclopedia Britannica articles
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!
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Where’s the outrage?
[
][]
[
][] 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.[
]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82805519@N00/2420556842/
“Up Close & Personal (False Color)”
[]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
“Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License” -
SYSK – Test your SMTP mail server with telnet
[][] 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 ClientEscape 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: [email protected]
Returns:
250 Ok
Who are you sending the mail to?
rcpt to: [email protected]
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[
]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
“Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License”