This year, the cloud brought us something we didn’t even know we were craving: a digital storage locker.
Think back to high school, when you stuffed that metal locker with books, homework projects, photos of friends, and maybe records or CDs.
But that music and everything else existed in only one physical place — you couldn’t really drag that locker around. If you forgot to get something and went home for the day — well, you were out of luck.
But now, the old “I left it in my locker” excuse just won’t work anymore.
“If I store my information online in one of these clouds,” says Forrester Research senior analyst Frank Gillett, “it’s as if I have a magic courier that will run and retrieve stuff from my locker and retrieve it for me, instantly.”
This makes me wonder if students who grow up with the cloud will forget more and more of their physical work at home or in their locker. Will they expect seamless access to their content from our classrooms? One things for sure, it’s still going to be a while before students will be able to upload their coat and boots to the cloud.
In a 2011 telephone survey, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 30 percent of teenagers who were regularly online had shared a password with a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend.
Sure it’s a symbol of trust, but we don’t need much of an imagination to see how this can go horribly wrong.
Zappos, the Amazon-owned shoe and apparel retailer, said late Sunday that more than 24 million of its customer accounts had been compromised.
This week I received an email from Zappos, my favorite online shoe store:
We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on Zappos.com, including one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password).
Scary stuff. Now hackers can use a network of computers to crack these passwords and try to login to my other accounts (like Gmail, Facebook, or worse) using the same password.
However, there are ways we can protect ourselves.
First, do not use the same password for every account you use. If one password is compromised, then every account using that password will be compromised. To prevent this, create unique passwords for your accounts. Don’t worry. You don’t have to remember hundreds of passwords. Just invent a pattern for creating passwords that is based on the account you are entering.
Here is an example.
Example Pattern: 56$$-FooD-$$65
(Food = the first four letters of a food that relates to the account I’m entering)
Example password: 56$$-OraN-$$65
(This might be my password for Yahoo. Since Yahoo ends in “o” I chose the first four letters of a food that starts with “o” to take the place of FooD)
Another example password: 56$$-EggP-$$65
(This might be my password for Google. Google ends in “e” and “e” is for eggplant.)
The trick is to make a pattern that is personal to only you.
The second thing you can do is use a strong password. I suggest using a password that is easy to remember but hard for a computer (even a supercomputer) to crack. Consider creating passwords using a password haystack. Please take a few minutes to watch this video to see how (and why) to use password haystacks. Then visit this site to create your first haystack.
People create programs to hack our accounts for a reason. There is money to made from stolen information. This has happen before and it will happen again. Be safe now. Fix your passwords today.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is great. However, some of us have lots of our work living in the Windows environment. To help us out, many apps have been created for the Apple tablet to help us out.
I'm a PC
Below are three free apps that try to bring a few more windows to the iPad.
PocketCloud – Pocket Cloud lets you access your work or home Windows PC via Remote Desktop. There are several other apps in the Apps Store that offer this functionality but for a fee. When you need to get to your computer using only an iPad, PocketCloud does the job nicely in a touch environment
CloudOn – CloudOn is an interesting new app that allows you access to the files in your DropBox account so you can edit them in a virtual version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. The service was simple to set up but I did find editing documents to have a bit of lag.
OnLive Desktop – The OnLive Desktop app takes virtual computing a step farther for iPad users by giving you an entire Windows desktop (Start menu and all) to play with. OnLive Desktop gave me the smoothest transition back to the Windows world. Creating an account (and waiting for it to activate) took longer than I expected but it came with 2GB of free storage for all my Windows files. Editing documents in MS Office was much smoother than CloudOn and I found this app to be a great way to show off PowerPoint presentations.
I should be clear about one thing. None of the apps above will replace your Windows PC. You won’t have an iPad that runs Windows too. The apps above are close but some things are are just not the same in a touch environment. If you’re an iPad user who also runs Windows, all three apps above are worth taking a look at but don’t throw out your PC just yet.
QR codes have been turning up everywhere from the billboard at the bus stop to the back of the ketchup bottle at your favorite restaurant. These blocky little squares are beefed up barcodes that anyone with a smartphone can scan.
QR codes are great for passing long URLs to your students’ devices. I think they work best when you want to conceal information for a period of time while the students try to solve a problem you have given them. For example, let students scan the QR code for a hint on a difficult problem or create a guess and check bulletin board to review a recent lesson.
Scan and find your science teacher
However, are they always worth the time? QR codes are not as quick as they’re name (quick response) makes them sound. They are not worth the time for short messages that your students could probably type in faster than scanning. They are especially slow if your students do not already have the app required to read the codes installed on their device. You risk losing your lesson tinkering with technology for technology sake.
McKee Floyd, director of brand development for Sweetgreen, said it best when he spoke with NPR:
The issue I have with QR codes is that marketing is a little bit like telling a joke, and the longer the joke, the better the punch line has to be — and [using] QR code is a really long joke
I think the same is true in the classroom. If you’re going to use QR codes with students, make sure your punch line is worth it.
The post includes a video touting new 3D technology that will change your classroom forever. The video claims that 3D technology is the interactive tool that will improve behavior, increase attention, raise test scores, gets students working together, and create their love for learning.
What did I see? Dark classrooms full of students watching a teacher lecture.
They could be sleeping behind those dark glasses.
The video references student engagement seven times but if recall and remembering are your evidence for engagement, why even bother integrating new technology? We can do that with any old chalkboard, worksheet, or textbook.
Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month—and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).
The complaint goes something like this, “Walk into any classroom and it will look a lot like it did 75 years ago.” What does that mean? Bridges look a lot like they did 75 years ago too. The comment is getting as old as the photos of single room classroom critics show while they make it.
Today I gave a presentation at the WSST conference on cheating in the classroom. Below are the quotes, articles, videos, and books I shared.
Looking for a place to start? I highly recommend this book:
Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do
Much of today’s talk came from this book. For example, here are a few quotes from the book that caught my eye:
Persistent student cheating may corrupt a child’s character and lead to a devaluing of trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and honesty as fundamentals in a just society.
[cheating in school] may form a habit that persists and transitions into an adult’s work and life habits
RSS - Posts
Recent Comments