How has this course helped me?

My initial feelings about this class were pretty negative before the class even started. I'm thinking about the inner workings (something I knew nothing about) and dreading a heavy load of tech speak and lessons that won't help me in the classroom. I know this is unfair to have such a bad attitude before starting, but it was human nature.

I'm happy to say that today my attitude is experiencing a 180 degree shift. I'm pretty excited about what we've done. I have made some plans for the future with the information we've learned. The first concerns my computer at home. I have taken some advice from my readings and have located new and improved security software. I have even managed to find free software online that is highly rated, more thorough than what I was previously paying for, and easier to use. The cost has just been the icing on the cake.

The second project will come this summer. I plan on buying two rotated out computers from my district and I want to use them as labs. I'm going to try to run them off exclusively open source material. Operating system, security, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc... I also want to use them to play around with the insides and see if I can update them on my own for a reasonable cost in parts. I actually have a former student who is a computer whiz that has indicated he may have some spare parts he could give me to get started.

As far as my class, I think the lessons from Triumph of the Nerds apply the best. You never know what direction we are headed in and it is important to take any idea you get and run with it, because the ideas aren't necessarily what is important, but rather what you can do with them.

So as you can see I'm pretty excited, and I think this class was just what I needed at this point of the year.

Personal Computer Failure

The question for the week is security and what would I lose if my personal computer failed. For me, the biggest issue would be the music. I have tons of music on my computer that I've acquired over the years. This would be a tremendous hassle and expense to try and recover that I'm not exactly sure what I would do. The positive to this loss is that while it would be stressful it could be done.

On the other hand my wife would lose all her pictures. These pictures, unlike my music, can't be replaced. Whenever I suggest we delete some pictures that I feel are subpar or portray me in a less than flattering light, my wife will claim that I'm destroying her "memories". I try to explain memories are in her mind, and that these are pictures. She never seems to come around to my point of view. If these pictures/memories were lost my wife may totally lose it. I can only pray that the computer problem wouldn't be my fault as to make me the subject of her violent rage. The only way I could see these being recovered right now would be to have my family and friends travel all over the world and time to recreate as many of the shots that we could remember. Talk about expensive.

The good news is that we have recently purchased an external hard drive. It is my understanding (my wife is the system manager), that by occasionally updating our hard drive we are insulating ourselves against the major loss that we were vulnerable to prior to our purchase. I really hope she is right.

P.S. I may have exaggerated my wife's emotional state after a hypothetical data loss to help get a point across, she is really a very understanding woman whom I love very much.

Computing in the Clouds

Truth be told this class is running pretty close with some issues that we are currently discussing within our school. The first is the linux issue. We purchased last year some mini-laptops that are minimal in power, but are able to meet the needs of a middle school student, which is mostly to research and word process. The downside of these computers is that they run on linux and don't connect to our school network. This means no printing and no saving to student numbers. This has been fine with flash drives to move files when necessary. The reason this has come up is that with our district moving to gmail email service we are now going to have all our students using GoogleDocs for word processing, presentation needs. The fact that these computers aren't hooked up to our school server won't be an issue at all, in fact it is a benefit because there aren't any long waits to log in. The cloud is great for an institution like a school because we can save time, energy, money, labor etc... One of the other issues that we have talked about at our school is allowing students to bring in their own technology into the building and to help them learn how to use their technology effeciently and for the powers of good (learning). This is going to be a big hurdle to clear amongst the people in the building and I'm sure we'll experience some setbacks, but it is exciting to see our school and district try to keep pace with all the developments that are coming our way.