Teaching is to Emancipate

At last I have a GLOW login – ahead of the pack in Fife but not by far. Not all of the functionality is there yet but I am sure will be in place ready for the wider adoption anticipated by everyone.

We're getting there...

I am hearing some wonderful things about what’s coming in GLOW, not least a move away from the closed-door proprietary nonsense towards open standards – Andrew Brown knows that “secure” doesn’t mean “inpenetrable”. Good luck to him in evolving GLOW to its fullest potential.

Einstein said, “There are only two things that are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.” Easy to believe this when you read some of the tosh that arrives in your in-box, especially from those who are supposed to be in the know.

I can pleasantly report that today, I received a message from a technical support professional that lifted my spirits:

Hi All

Yet ANOTHER one from us technicians! Sorry

Could I please ask you all to CHECK ONLINE before you forward any email concerning virus alerts. Most of these are hoaxes and it’s really simple to do a Google search in order to check. (The latest one seeming to do the rounds is the Postcard from Hallmark one.)

Forwarding it ‘just in case’ isn’t harmless. We all spend time reading them, we all spend time deleting them, and some of us spend time researching whether or not they are real. Time is not free!

Internal Mail Servers also get slowed down and clogged up by these messages.

In addition, many of these ‘please forward to all your friends to warn them‘ messages carry trojans and trackers themselves. Each time you forward, you could be supplying spammers with your own address, and those of all your friends – then you wonder why you’re getting so much junk-mail?

 Do not assume that just because they’ve come from someone you trust that they are legitimate. ALWAYS check personally. They’ve probably done the same as you and just forwarded it to be helpful, not realising that they’re part of the problem, not the solution.

I’ll be happy to advise anyone who needs help on how to check if necessary because it’s not just a work issue, it can cause problems on our home computers too.

 

It’s been a busy October holiday. I’ve…

• been on a shopping trip to the Arndale and Trafford Centres in Manchester
• submitted a proposal to include mathematical modelling in the new Higher Physics course
• launched a number of new or relocated websites
• written new e-commerce code for a boat builder
• had a lot – a lot – of conversations with a number of people on some of the issues that concern me relating to assessment of Physics in Scotland
• launched the TeachingPhysics wiki for organising meetings
• started to put together the Teachmeet:Physics unconference in March
• done all of my ironing!
• caught up with a number of old friends
• watched several movies with popcorn and beverages
• moved this blog

I feel ready to return to work now: more informed, more prepared and more able.

Here’s a rough key to some of the technology in use in my physics teaching laboratory. It tells a story about what’s possible even on a tight budget. And with a good pal with connections.

• Projector screen. It’s a flat lump of MDF painted grey.
• Digital projector. Cost £350. Local authority installation add £750.
• Planner. Pencil and paper.
• Tablet, £20, paid for by probationer, nicked by PT. For evaluation, of course.
• Radio bit of RF Mouse, provides 99% of interactivity of IWB at £50 instead of 2 grand. Thank you, uncle Tom, for the loan!
• 12 watt Dolby 2.1 speakers for video, music, etc. £15 in Tesco. Mine.
• Rat. Ikea. Not a mouse.
• Coffee. Empty.

Not in view but still there somewhere:

• external drive (mine) containing science video network (thanks, Tom!)
• Web hosting for study support website (banned by Local Authority)
• Web hosting for other study support website (not noticed by Local Authority)
• Turning Point quiz system (thanks, Tom!)
• Remote camera used as cheap visualiser (thanks, Tom!)

Not in view, still looking for these:

• Enough textbooks
• Practical equipment for a practical subject
• Budget enough to do more than buy stationery

Picked this up from Lifehacker… a neat little toy to instantly add speech bubbles to your pictures. As if there wasn’t enough lame comedy on the web. Get it at kyolo.com.

Tonight’s BBC Panorama programme was not the forecast partisan ill-researched pap but rather a useful wake-up call to our childrens’ trusting and naive parents about the dangers of unmonitored activity by children and their predators using social networks like MSN, Bebo and so on.

A mother interviewed on the Panorama programme referred to “level 5″ images. The levels are used in determining severity in the courts for sentencing purposes and are based on the Copine scale.

The best advice from the programme, offered by a former paedophile, is to have the family computer in the lounge or a common area of the house and definitely not in the child’s bedroom.

I had a quiet Christmas courtesy of a couple of broken ribs and it seems medical incapacity is giving Adam Sutcliffe time to explore and develop his own Web 2.0 presence with some great tools and services. Yesterday, I picked up his use of Odiogo on his blog which is a service that converts your text blog entries into a podcast: I’ve added it to the sister blog to this one, over at http://mrhood.co.uk/pub if you want to try it out. Like Professor Hawking, we have to put up with the American accent but I’m impressed with the computer-generated diction overall.

Another brilliant service brings into sharp focus that publicly published means exactly that – if you publish on any of the major social media sites, then anybody can anonymously access that publication. Spokeo is such a service: all you need is the email address of a “friend” and this service will bring you whatever they publish on these sites, whenever it goes public. Adam is concerned that it bypasses the usual notification from services like Twitter but they claim to preserve the sources’ privacy settings.

Thanks for these, Adam, and I hope you get well soon – but not so soon to prevent you digging up some more of these little treasures.

I made this video from screen captures of some of my sites and with the help of the good people at animoto.com.

In 1977, I wrote my first computer program. After I left the Army, in 1982, I wrote my first program as a commercial programmer. On Friday, 16th August 1996, I wrote and published my first web site in preparation for launching my own software company. In 1999, I became one of the first Microsoft Certified Solution Developers in Europe. On October 20th, 2001, I bought my first web domain. Tuesday, 25 March 2003, I launched my first blog. Thursday, March 24th, 2005, now a qualified teacher, I launched my first education blog. Monday, April 17 2006, mrhood.co.uk was created. Just over a year later, as the site was receiving its first Digg-driven peak of over a million session visitors in one day, Fife Council filters blocked access to the site in schools.

We haven’t got to a satisfactory resolution yet but we are trying.