When Does Technology Integration Go Overboard?

Recently I was asked what tech literacy ment to me and how schools contribute to it. so i answered in a long comment, but when does tech integration with education get taken too far? Well recently one of my teachers decided to base the rest of the units for the year off of technology, so for each unit there are three assignments and three choices per assignment. One for tech literate people, one for artistic people and one for people who like to write. Don’t get me wrong I love it when teachers do this, but the time period to get these projects done is too short and the frequency between projects are pretty short as well. When this happens, getting sick of technology can get easy. All I’m saying is that if a teacher is going to assign a tech assignment, they should know the amount of time it takes to do (in this case a video) the project. Im not saying it can’t be done within this time frame, but juggling it between all the other classes that students have to take can be very frusterating.

Nikon’s Universcale

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while now.  Basically what Nikon has put together is a way to view the sizes of various material from a single neutron of an atom to the universe by showing these objects through a timeline and compares them…it gives a brief description of the object and how big it it compared to other objects…you can simply scroll through the objects or click a number in the timeline…I think this is a great way to teach children how small objects are or how big they are compared to another object…this timeline has pictures(figures) side by side…so it is easy to compare a planet to one another or an elephant to a flea.  Check it out!!

Nikon Universcale:

http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index.htm

The Internet Through Education

A recent study at the University of California proved that doing a simple internet search can speed up decision making and other brain functions, more so than reading a book.  Dr Gary Small, the directer of the memory and ageing research centre at the University of California said: “Young people are growing up immersed in this technology and their brains are more malleable, more plastic and changing than with older brains.” “The next generation, as (Charles) Darwin suggests, will adapt to this environment, Those who become really good at technology will have a survival advantage – they will have a higher level of economic success and their progeny will be better off.”

The rest of this article can be found here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3262597/Internet-speeds-up-decision-making-and-brain-function.html

15yr old accused with felony because schools lack of security

A 15 year old breached a shenendehowa districts system while in a computer class.  He gained access to 250 names of past and present transportation employees of the school system.  This boy used his STUDENT PASSWORD to view these employees social security numbers, driver’s license numbers and more.  At around 1 p.m. he sent an e-mail to the high school principle saying that he had accessed the database.  The principle contacted the police, who arrested the boy and charged him with computer identification info. and identity theft, which are all felonies.  This apparently happened when the district upgraded its computer system with the help of third party vendors as well as others said the superintendent.

I think that this isn’t the best thing to do about lousy protection on a system.  The boy could of handled it differently and told the principle first that he could access this personal information easily and then gone from there.  From the students point of view I think that he was trying to find a flaw in the system and tell them that they needed to patch it, but i do think that he shouldn’t of looked at the personal data.  From the administrators point of view I think that they took it a bit far…. depending on whether or not the boy was threatining to do something with this info.   First off being charged with 2 felonies as a 15 year old is a lot for just showing the district that they had MAJOR flaws in their computer security.  If the district took more time and money into the security aspect of installing a new system then maybe they wouldn’t of run into this issue in the first place…there has to be something said about this type of stuff….as technology advances children and the younger people in this world are going to be the ones knowing more about this kind of stuff than the older ones.  With that said…children and teens are going to be the ones finding more of the security flaws and regular flaws in systems server wide or home computer type of stuff…partially because they have more time to mess around with that type of stuff than adults do in some situations.

Missing 15year old because of Call Of Duty

13 days ago Brandon Crisp ran away from home after having an argument with his parents about his video game use and he hasnt been seen since.  The family already has put out a $25,000 reward for the find of their boy.  His parents say that Brandon had been using the game system (Xbox) to the point of addiction…especially the game “Call Of Duty 4.”  Microsoft has doubled the reward offer that the family has given to $50,000.

I think that video games can be more realistic than they are told to be, and the addiction to these games have can have scary endings to them…it shows that if you are getting someone a video game console that you should probably set some sort of limits to playing time and or what type of games you allow for your child or family member to get. Whether the console is online or not it can still be just as dangerous, if you don’t understand the consequences.

Learning Adobe Illistrator after Knowing Adobe Photoshop

Learning Illustrator after learning and being good at Photoshop is a tough because illustrator and photoshop are two completely different pieces of software and although they look the same as well as the tools do, they function in different way.  First off, Photoshop is a piece of software that rasterizes what ever you make with it, this means whatever you make in photoshop, each detail is turned into a pixel. Illustrator on the other hand is a vector arts software, this means that your art that is made in illustrator isn’t following pixels but mathematical equations that are called algorithms, so no matter how big you want to make the art you made in illustrator as long as its still an illustrator file, it can be made as big or as small as you want with out getting distorted or pixelated.  Now how to learn, when working in photoshop you think in terms of layers and the tools that you are using such as the paint tool paints and if you dont have a steady hand it wont be a straight line etc. In illustrator however, you have to think in terms of “paths” (that’s a tool in photoshop and in illustrator) and different points …that’s how you make your shapes in illustrator.  As well as paths there are an interesting set of brushes and the brush in illustrator will automatically straighten and if you click on a point it will continue the line no matter how many strokes.  One important thing to know is that what you are making in illustrator isn’t an image nor what you are seeing on the screen it is math and equations going on in the background…so the smudge tool doesn’t smudge it smudges lines.  What you make or are making in illustrator isn’t going to be drawings, its going to be lines that can be turned into a brush stroke, figure, letter etc. its just a matter of connecting the paths or lines to make a closed object…this post might be a bundle of words that make no sense because I may not be phrasing it correctly but once you read this and then mess around with illustrator it might make more sense then…if not do what makes most sense with you…for me its trial and error…try something and if it doesn’t work do something else.

Touchscreen Phones Without a Touchscreen?!?!?

According to Gizmodo, Microsoft has been working on a touchscreen that you don’t touch.  That’s right you don’t touch the screen at all, instead you put the phone down on a surface and you touch the surface as the screen…How? well apparently, there are IR sensors all around the device that sense the sides of the phone and track your gestures. read more in the link named “gizmodo” in the first sentence.

Desktop Backgrounds

I am starting to create some abstract or “creative” desktop backgrounds for 1280x1024pixel size monitors,  i will post a new post saying that the image is up and available for download and i will put a preview in the post and the images will be available to download towards the bottom right hand side of the screen in a flash embeded widget called “box” in this case the background image is called dbg1.png.  This is the first of many…and slowly but surely i will be posting more up here is the first one:

in the widget named “box” at the bottom/middle right hand side of the screen click on dbg1.png to download the image that you see below at its full size.

Angel Used As An Educational Tool (perspective from student)

Last Thursday I was absent from English class and I had gone up to the teacher on Tuesday and asked what the homework was because I knew I was going to miss the next class.  She said that we had this “mask” project due on Tuesday (that Monday was Columbus day) and we had 3 chapters to read over the long weekend.  I thought that was a little unfair, but I dealt with it and did the homework.  Next thing I know its Tuesday and I have all my English homework done (including the project) and I am hearing these rumors that the project was delayed to be due on Thursday.  I was frustrated at the lack of communication between the teacher and the students at that point, considering the teacher had a student go around to try and tell as many people in this class.  As that day goes on, English class comes around and I go up and ask the teacher if the rumors i was hearing were true.  In fact she said “yes, in fact they are.  I posted them on Angel.”  Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with finishing an assignment early, but that’s not the point I’m getting at here.  What I’m trying to say is, if you are absent and you asked what the homework is, you expect it to stay that way for when you get back and if the teacher isn’t posting to Angel consistently as it is in this case, how are you supposed to know when assignments are due.  This might be partially my fault for not checking Angel everyday, but the teacher should have said in the beginning of the year to check Angel everyday for updates and that even if you are absent you should check in case due dates are changed.  It isn’t correct to expect students to do this without being told to because at this point this is our second year of having Angel and the first year teachers are actually using it as a resource for students.  This a problem I have been running into a lot because I know that teachers are still trying to learn Angel as well as students, so I think it is better to take this as a learning experience and tell the teacher about the problem and try to solve it together.

A Little Something Called Desktoptopia

I recently came across a little preference pane application called Desktoptopia for Mac OS X and windows (beta) that gives you an option of changing your desktop background and the choice of having it change in minutes, seconds, or hours…in my case i have it set up for every 5 min.  The basic idea is that Desktoptopia changes the background on the computer from “feeds” you set up (it comes with defaults of 3d, abstract, architecture, films, games, graphic design, illustration, photography and typography). You can add more by entering a “feed url” or you can delete feeds as well.  When the background changes if you click on the desktoptopia icon in the menu-bar it will give you the ability to click “next background, previous background, pause, preferences, quit and it will give you the name of the picture and the authors website…one thing that I especially find fun is the ability to rate the backgrounds on a 5 star system…Desktoptopia also has multi-monitor support and the ability to have the same Desktop Background on both monitors or a different background on each.  I highly suggest getting this app, it not only gets creativity flowing, but gives you an excuse not to have the same background for months at a time, this way you don’t have to search for the backgrounds either!