Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • 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! 🙂

    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

    []: 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!

  • Where’s the outrage?

    [Up Close & Personal (False Color)][]
    [Creative Commons License][] photo credit:
    jigpu    After 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.

    [Up Close & Personal (False Color)]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82805519@N00/2420556842/
    “Up Close & Personal (False Color)”
    [Creative Commons License]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
    “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License”

  • SYSK – Test your SMTP mail server with telnet

    Network packet trace of SMTP connection
    [Creative Commons License][] photo credit:
    TalkingTree    When 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: [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

    [Creative Commons License]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
    “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License”

  • Skills You Should Know (SYSK) – vi

    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
    \ – 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
    \ 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

  • Interactive response systems

    [Esperando a Missa começar][]
    [Creative Commons License][] photo credit:
    swperman    As 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? 🙂

    [Esperando a Missa começar]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/66012103@N00/2368050904/
    “Esperando a Missa começar”
    [Creative Commons License]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
    “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License”

  • Your assignment: 20 minutes on your DS before school

    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?

    [have begun other trials of ‘More Brain Training with Dr Kawashima’ on
    the Nintendo DS]: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3552834.ece

  • USPTO overturns Blackboard’s 44 patent claims

    [Courtroom Drama][]
    [Creative Commons License][] photo credit: Erin
    Nealey    Desire2Learn 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.

    [Courtroom Drama]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77421543@N00/2365885779/
    “Courtroom Drama”
    [Creative Commons License]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
    “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License”