I’ve received a couple questions lately about keeping kids safe online. We see news reports all the time about the danger of social networking sites, and the problems with posting personal information online, and the number of children who have been exposed to inappropriate material online. Today, I’m starting a series of blog posts about cybersafety to take a fairly comprehensive view of the issue … Continue reading Protecting Kids Online 1: How Big is the Problem?

Once upon a time, there was a voice in the darkness. The voice spoke, and her words were truth. The truth enlightened the huddled masses, who were huddled because they were cold. The heat was lower and the lights dimmer than normal because there was an energy crisis. As they sat on carpet squares in the overcrowded room, they absorbed her truth. Never end a … Continue reading Truth

It’s been an RSS day. It started last night, actually, when I was trying to figure out how to get an RSS feed of an entire Google Reader account into a Protopage (still haven’t figured that one out). Then, there was the challenge of helping my wife get an RSS feed of her Twitter messages on her blog. This morning, two colleagues and I were … Continue reading Burying the Feed

The Brecksville-Broadview Heights Schools now have an email subscription service for content posted on the district and school web sites. Parents, community members, and others interested in the schools may subscribe using the “Email Subscription” link on the district’s web site. When signing up, subscribers decide which categories of information they want to receive, and how often they would like updates. For example, a parent … Continue reading Email Subscription Service

It’s been a rather busy couple days on the Ohio Technology Coordinator Listserv as the state’s tech coordinators have debated various strategies around Microsoft Vista. While there’s certainly no consensus, there do seem to be three schools of thought among those who are entrenched Windows users: Keep using XP: Windows XP does everything we need it to do. Vista doesn’t offer any compelling reasons to … Continue reading OS Dilemma

I ran across this video yesterday. It was created by the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University. Led by Dr. Michael Wesch, this team of cultural anthropology undergraduates is exploring the impact of digital technology on human interaction and human interaction on digital technology. http://www.teachertube.com/skin-p/mediaplayer.swf College students are finding that sitting in a huge lecture hall writing while some professor drones on for … Continue reading A Vision of Students Today

Earlier this week, I was asked to respond to an inquiry from one of our high school students. He’s writing an article for the school paper about technology in the schools, and he had several questions about how technology has changed society and school since the start of the millennium. Because this was an inquiry about the high school, my remarks are more 9-12 focused … Continue reading An Encounter with an Interviewer

EarthCast 2008 is a  webcast taking place on April 22, 2008. It started at midnight GMT, and continues for 24 hours. This is a continuous, day-long conversation about the Earth and taking care of it. Matt Montagne has spearheaded this effort, with a great deal of support from Doug Symington, Jose Rodriguez, and others in the EdTech community. Jason Robershaw created an outstanding promo explaining … Continue reading EarthCast 2008 Continues

We can’t keep up. We can’t know about everything. Just because something’s famous, even in the relatively small world of education and technology, that doesn’t mean I have ever heard of it. Sure, I know about Creative Commons. If you license your work with a CC license, you allow others to use it, with some limitations. You can require attribution. You can specify that derivatives … Continue reading Mayer and Bettle

One of the interesting things to come out in the Beta Survey was a shift in how teachers are using technology and a shift in the availability of technology to students. Teachers reported that they’re spending more time on Internet-based activities, both to provide instruction and to use as a research tool. The most-often-used technologies are now Internet for Instruction, Internet for Research, Word Processing, … Continue reading Same Money, More Computers

World Have Your Say is a call-in radio program. There’s nothing special about that. Nearly every station on the AM dial has one. The hosts talk about current events, and people can call in to give their opinions. WHYS, though, takes the idea of talk radio several steps further. First of all, it’s a global show. Originating in London, it actively seeks participation from the … Continue reading World Have Your Say

Over the last couple days, we’ve had a discussion in my department over Microsoft Office versions. We’re trying to build an image to run on old computers. We want the performance to be as good as possible, even though it’s going to be running on 6-7 year old computers with limited processing power and memory. Dan used the excellent nLite Windows Installation Customizer to weed … Continue reading In Search of Simplicity