#Android Apps on My Phone 2012 (Updated 1/2/12)

Samsung Galaxy blows Motorola Cliq out of the water 😉

Two days ago, grateful that the AT&T merger with T-Mobile had been de-railed (yay!!), I renewed my mobile phone contract, abandoning my Motorola Cliq for the Samsung Galaxy, a wonderful phone that easily plays video, audio, has ample storage, and, well, blows my Motorola Cliq out of the water.

Since I haven’t updated my list of favorite apps in awhile–it was fruitless to do so on the Cliq since the phone just couldn’t handle it–I thought I’d revisit my original list of Android Apps.

You can check the original list here, and here’s my new list of currently “Great” (I notice I used that word quite a bit below) installed, no cost apps for 2012…what do you have installed on your’s?


Update 01/1/2012: I’ve added recommendations from Scott Laleman and Rusty Meyners! Those are highlighted! Check ’em out!

Communication/Social Networking

1. GO SMS Pro – This is my new preferred SMS message application. Works great and is preferred over old favorites (Handcent and ChompSMS). Combine it with SMS Backup+ to backup all your text messages to Gmail.
2. GoogleTranslate – Speak into your phone and have another language come out…nifty!
3. Social Networking
1. Buffer – Want to tweet at work but worried your boss is tracking the time of your tweets? Use this app to tweet/share info to, scheduling when items appear via Twitter. Nice!
2. Facebook – Facebook access….
3. Google+ – Let’s you access G+…what else?
4. Plurka – A plurker? This is the best app.
5. Twitter – I tried most of the Twitter apps (e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetcast, Tweetdeck) and kept coming back to simple Twitter app.
4. Opera Mini – Great, fast browser.
5. Skype – VOIP application…pretty obvious.
6. TouchDown (Android 2.0) (Pro License) – Looking for MS Exchange ActiveSync support so you can check your work email? This is the only program that will get the job done.

Cloud Storage

• Dropbox (SugarSync is great, too)

eBook/Reading

1. B&N Nook – An eReader for your Nook books, but also will read ePub books you sideload into the MyDocuments folder on your phone…that eliminates the need for FBReader.
2. FBReader – If you’re reading ePub documents, as well as others, FBReader is the program for you. It also gives you access to online libraries of free ePub books, and is well worth the download.

Fitness and Food

1. MyFitnessPal – Love this app that helps you track how much you eat per day (calories-exercise).
2. Push Ups – Want to get up to a daily count of push-ups? This will help you get there!
3. Squats – 
4. UrbanSpoon – Helps you find restaurants to eat at!

Planning to try out a few others on this list but haven’t had time yet.


Image Capture/Editing/Annotation

1. RetroCamera – Apply vintage effects to photos you take. Thanks to Scott Laleman for this recommendation! He writes: “Check out the following posts for examples: http://namelal.posterous.com/la-gloria-pearl-brewery-and-the-museum-extens and http://namelal.posterous.com/day-trip-luling-texas-and-palmetto-state-park “
2. Skitch – Great image annotation tool.

Media (Audio/Video)

1. Flixster’s Movies – Find out what the movie times are at the local theatre…this app looks them up based on your location.
2. Netflix – Watch Netflix videos on your phone…nifty!
3. Pandora – Stream music
4. tinyPlayer – A great no frills audio player…point it at a directory on your phone and it starts working.
5. Tone Picker – Lets you select any audio file as a notification, ringtone sound
6. TuneIn Radio – Listen to any radio station, anywhere.

Money-Saver

• GasBuddy – Find cheap gas.
• Ledgerist – Helps you track expenses and more.

Productivity

1. Astrid To-Do List/task-manager – Enables you to modify to-do/task lists via the web and those sync to your phone.
2. Evernote – Great note-taking, audio note-taking app.
3. GoogleDocs for Android – View/edit GDocs on the go.
4. gUnit Converter – Convert from one form of measurement (kilos, miles, kilometers) to another.

Security/Privacy/Password

• History Eraser – Wipe out browser cache, search history, and other stuff with this.
• KeePassDroid – Access your KeepassX files with this on your Android phone. Must have for security on the go.

Widgets or Helpful Android Apps

1. ApnSwitch – Turns off your 3G to conserve battery
2. Barcode Scanner – Scan in those QR Codes!
3. Battery Defender – Shows you your battery status and works actively to save “juice.” To be honest, I’m surprised at how well this app does its job! Fantastic!
4. ClockworkMod Tether is a completely free wired tether app for unrooted Android phones.
5. Easy Uninstaller – batch uninstall–more than one at a time–of apps.
6. OI File Manager –  free open source File Manager (e.g. Files is also available on your phone).
7. OI Flashlight – no frills flashlight. 
8. ShareMyApps – Let’s you create a backup list of installed Apps on your phone so you can share with others…that’s how I made this list!
9. Where’s My Droid? – Helps you find your phone when it’s on silent and you don’t know where it is.
10. WiFi File Explorer – Stream content off your phone via your comptuer (e.g. listen to music, access files on your phone from your computer without a cable)
11. Wifi Mode Widget – Turn WiFi on or off, although it’s superfluous given that you can just do this via the Notifications bar. Still, some may prefer to use this widget instead of the other approach.

Recommendations from Rusty Meyners:

1. WiFi Analyzer has been the most valuable techie tool for me and co-workers.
2. Google Goggles, if you haven’t tried it, besides scanning codes also attempts to identify images.
3. eduPort distinuishes itself among Khan Academy apps in that it conveniently caches videos for offline use AND accesses numerous other video collections such as TED Talks.
4. C:Geo for geocaching is open source and last I checked is considered superior to the $10 “official” app.
5. Remote RDP Lite is best free remote desktop client I’ve found for Windows RDP.
6. Remote VNC w/Ad for VNC client – haven’t used much but assume it a good choice because same developer as Remote RDP Lite.
7. Sky Drive Browser – yea, this is at least 3rd choice for cloud repository but 25 (T W E N T Y – F I V E) GIGS speaks for itself.
8. Amazon Appstore along with something like My Daily Free Amazon App for daily notification of the free app for that day, since the Appstore has no way to sort or search for it. Soon enough this will get you free access to the $15 premium office suites such as:
9. – Office Suite Pro seems (but haven’t compared lately) to have best Google Docs integration AND editing tools though..
10. – Docs to Go also has good GDocs integration (also Dropbox & Boxnet) and editing tools look effective, if less intuitively accessible.
11. – Quickoffice Pro beats them all for cloud integration with about every repository out there including Evernote but not SkyDrive.
12. – – – Also – Even if you don’t install it, once you “Save” a free App of the Day, you have free access to it anytime later on any device.
13. HeyTell for push-to-talk or walkie-talkie style voice messaging.
14. Join.me Viewer for on-the-fly remote desktop support. If you haven’t tried this free web-based service, you should. Maybe not unique but simple interface and easiest to remember.
15. WordPress
16. TCEA 2012
17. avast Mobile Security is brand new and I’m currently trying it but Lookout Mobile Security has been the established favorite.

Apps that Cost Money

1. App Protector Pro ($1.50) – Protect any app…privacy protection.
2. CameraWiFi LiveStream ($.99) – Stream video over the web from your phone.
3. CamScanner Pro – Scan documents using your phone.
4. EasyTether – Connect your computer to your phone for Internet access in a pinch! This is worth the investment.
5. Swarm Torrent Client ($4.99) – Need to download something but can’t because torrent downloads–even legitimate ones–are blocked on the network you’re using (e.g. work)? Use this and get the torrent download via your phone.

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Bare Learning

Image Excerpt from Source: http://goo.gl/7Uzri

Having just begun my journey to get “healthier,” I found Doug Noon’s (Borderland) account of his preparing for a marathon, and his subsequent comparison to commercialization of curriculum powerful and moving. I started reading about his getting ready to run a marathon and finished with a different realization altogether.

Tests, in and of themselves, don’t call people to their best efforts. Real teaching has to begin with the intentions of the learner, not the teacher, and certainly not the administrator or the policy maker. The more I work in the shadow of the standards movement, the less I want to listen to anyone but the kids, themselves, for guidance about what they really need to learn. What good is an education if, in the bargain, we all lose sight of who and what we really are? (Source: Hitting the Wall, Doug Noon, Borderlands)

If we had a back to basics movement, would that include getting back to what kids think they need to learn?

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Stalled on Launch – An Unbalanced Force

In previous blog entries, I mused about the realizations that low-hanging fruit–such as building a PLN, blogging, social bookmarking, wikifying your learning–aren’t enough to change an organization. An object at rest, goes the Law, tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force, right? 

Would you agree that most schools are “at rest” in terms of remaining within the firm embrace of the status quo? That status quo involves people doing what they are told, following an agreed upon set of standards and curriculum. It would be unreasonable to change that…some would say only the unbalanced, crazy people would urge technology integration into this picture of static imperfection.

For example, if you want to spend instructional time to do blogging and collaborative document editing/creation activities, connect with K-12 and/or adult learners through social media, you have to set aside the following:

1. The push to better implement standardized curriculum.
2. Constant measurement of what teachers are doing to ensure they are teaching the curriculum.
3. Measurement of how close students are achieving the curriculum objectives.
4. The stigma that time spent on anything that detracts from items 1-3 is superfluous waste of time, effort and resources.

Achieving escape velocity–moving beyond the status quo–has to be more than just replacing what you’ve been doing. The divide between what edtech-powered educators (the unbalanced force) would do and what the ignorant educators–those that have their nose to the grindstone doing what the federal and state government curriculum documents require for successful assessment–continues to widen, a fact Doug Johnson highlights:

I’m always struck by the disconnect between what I encounter at any tech conference and what seems to be happening in the rest of mainstream education. The big themes this year at “It’s Personal” were implementing cloud-computing to facilitate collaborative learning, using technology to encourage creativity, establishing a BYOD program to improve access to classroom technology and taking advantage of the inherent engagement that technology contributes to the learning process. The big (tech) themes in mainstream education seem to be using technology for testing, for data mining, and for remediation/programmed instruction/intervention. It’s the “learning how to problem-solve” vs. “how to get the right answer on the test” philosophies: the first at the conference, the second in practice.

The reality, of course, is that what’s pushed on edtech blogs is just that–a fanciful tale of change, an inconvenient narrative that challenges the story we are being told to believe in K-12 public schools. Controlling the public narrative of schools, crafting it, is critical, integral to our success. Regrettably, there’s too much money flowing out of schools–a.k.a. cash cow.

Not sure you believe? Take a look at how many external programs your District has invested in and who brought them in. Often, these “proven” programs involve implementing curriculum and practices developed external to schools but that take precedence over the work of individual teachers or teacher collectives. The EdTech movement has its own version of the stories…you probably already have accepted a set of beliefs that perpetuates the status quo, even while believing you’re being revolutionary or subversive.

For example, if you believe the iPad–which provides instant-on access to mobile technology-based learning opportunities in a beautiful package–is the solution, you’ve bought into Apple’s vision of education, which involves every student carrying their device. The same might be said of Google and their Chromebook. In its time, the Palm handheld was the device to have and put in children’s hands. Is this how precious taxpayer funds should be spent? As a taxpayer in my school district, did I really want to see $$$ that should be spent on students flowing OUT of the District to a technology vendor?

Or, take a step back….

On November 13, 2011, Ali Carr-Chellman (@aac3 on Twitter) shared an important and courageous message at TEDxPSU. Her 13.5 minute message was titled, “A Closer Look at Cyber Charter Schools.” Among other things, Ali challenges us to question the growing nexus between non-profit “cyber charter schools” and for-profit curriculum companies. As we continue hear different voices with different agendas champion both charter schools as well as online educational options, Ali’s message is vital…The purchase of commercial curriculum resources by schools isn’t anything new, but the “gold rush” which Ali describes for cyber schools and online curriculum IS. The questions she raises about public funds, public schools, and the ways limited tax dollars are (in some cases) now supporting single-curriculum vendor cyber charter schools are challenging. 

(Source: The Dangerous Nexus of Cyber-Charter Schools & For-Profit Curriculum Companies, Wes Fryer, SpeedofCreativity.org)

Everyone is in the make your own version of what reality is in schools, especially bloggers. The main difference if you follow the money, it doesn’t necessarily lead back to education bloggers (except for the businesses that have successfully jumped into blogging). That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? There is no absolute truth or vision of what constitutes “the public good”…it’s all relative to who’s making money. 

Looking forward, I have lots of questions floating around in my mind. How can public schools serve “the public good?” Is the public good something that we can achieve by pushing technology into schools and getting tech to serve as a catalyst for change?

Nade Conference 2011; Stephen Downes: We don’t need no educator (Part 1) from NADE_NFF on Vimeo.

In the past, I was fond of quotes like this one which represented a version of the school story I was comfortable with:

Ask not what computers can do with students, but rather, what students can do with computers.

For me, this made sense. Students using the technology to create, to do stuff. But this vision falls short in a time when the desire isn’t for students to just create and do by themselves. In truth, for many edubloggers, the vision is for them to create and do with others. For traditional schools, it’s simply to achieve curriculum objectives better, and teachers continue to be highly problematic dispensers of information simply because their thinking gets in the way of their “automaticity.”

We could revise my favorite quote to read in this way:

Ask not how technology can assess students, but rather, how learners can learn independent of formal schooling.

Or…

Ask not what schools can do with students, but rather, what students with tech-based networks can learn without schools.

After all, isn’t that what building a PLN is all about? Being able to learn outside the organization without formal approval? 

There are many unbalanced forces in play. What forces would you apply to achieve escape velocity and launch your campus?

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Doug Johnson’s "The Classroom Teacher’s Survival Guide to Technology"

Pre-Order this Title – Due Out end of February, 2012

Check out Doug “Blue Skunk” Johnson’s new book and pre-order it! Please note that I received an advanced peek at the manuscript.

A comprehensive guide for integrating educational technology in the K-12 classroomThis is a must-have resource for all K-12 teachers and administrators who want to really make the best use of available technologies. Written by Doug Johnson, an expert in educational technology, The Classroom Teacher’s Technology Survival Guide is replete with practical tips teachers can easily use to engage their students and make their classrooms places where both students and teachers will enjoy learning.

• Covers the most up-to-date technologies and how they can best be used in the classroom

• Includes advice on upgrading time-tested educational strategies using technology

• Talks about managing “disruptive technologies” in the classroom

• Includes a wealth of illustrative examples, helpful suggestions, and practical tips

This timely book provides a commonsense approach to choosing and using educational technology to enhance learning.

Source: http://www.plurk.com/m/p/f5nif7

Here are some items I wrote as “ADVANCE PRAISE” for Doug’s The Classroom Teacher’s Survival Guide to Technology…I had fun writing these one morning after reading the book. May the Blue Skunk forgive me…yellow-highlighted items are the ones I particularly enjoyed! 


8->

“Wondering whether new, emerging technologies will drown you in a mudslide of confusion? Don’t despair, Doug Johnson’s embrace of technology will remind you of grandpa’s hug of a 5-year old clad in mud and leaves – warmly conditional, and life-saving.”

“Read Doug Johnson yet? If you haven’t, this book ensures you will find a balanced approach to implementing powerful technologies in your classroom.”

“The practical suggestions offered in this book provide insightful and essential resources for blending technology into your every day classroom work.”

“Re-title this book–The Book of Wisdom: A balanced guide to classroom technology integration by folksy, easy to read, veteran educator, Doug Johnson.”

“Disruptive technologies, productivity tools, cloud computing–the 21st Century is rife with acronyms and gordian knots. With insight as keen as a butter knife, Doug Johnson tucks understanding into classroom corners like icing a mudpie on a summer afternoon.”

(hehe)

“Disruptive technologies, productivity tools, cloud computing–the 21st Century is rife with acronyms and gordian knots. Doug Johnson’s keen insight cuts through the essence of what classroom teachers–and their principals–need to know to make learning happen.”

“A veteran educator, speaker, parent and grandparent, Doug Johnson brings years of experience in growing and learning to topics and teachers grasping for meaning, like pink lady’s slippers reaching for the sun after the snow.”

“A very helpful book to keep up with the rapidly diversifying technology-based education tools available to schools and classroom teachers.”

“A fastidiously researched text, a must-read for pre-service teachers hoping to make sense of schools, technology and the linchpin role they play as nurturers of the morning–our children’s teachers. Start your journey towards the dawn now by buying this book!”

“I dwelt in sorrow in the dark and grey, then Doug Johnson’s book lit up the sky like a comet falling fey. My spirits uplifted, I rose to grasp the fallen light and began to set things right.”

;->

“I heartily endorse this Survival Guide, replete with Doug Johnson’s wisdom and experience. I strongly recommend it to all who have run afoul of Maxwell’s Demon as they sought to enliven their classroom with new, hot technologies.”

“I heartily endorse this Survival Guide, replete with Doug Johnson’s wisdom and experience. I strongly recommend it to all who have run afoul of technology as they sought to make learning POP! with hot, engaging, alluring technologies.”

“A delightfully insightful book guaranteed to bring smiles to your face as you learn how to marshal new technologies for use with your students.”

“Technologies that personally empower you, writes Doug Johnson, are the ones to share with your students. This book will help you find those passionate uses of technology; it certainly stoked my fires!”

“This book looks beyond traditional approaches to technology in the classroom, to the essence of what really enhances learning in K-12 learners and their teachers. A must read in these tough times of arid spirits and limited imagination.”

“I found the Survival Guide to be really informative and entertaining. By reading this book, teachers will learn how to be better teachers who use technology.”

“This book offers educators a practical guide to dissolving misconceptions about the use of technology in teaching and learning situations.”

“Are you a doubting Thomas about technology’s use in schools today? Doug Johnson’s no-nonsense approach will make you wonder why you didn’t keep asking ‘Why?’ to ‘Why not?’ and move beyond your doubt. I know I did!”

Note: I wrote all the advance praise for Doug’s book on a lark. Thanks to Doug for being a good sport about it!

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Hunter-Gatherers – Metaphor for Surviving a Mobile Education

Source: http://goo.gl/TFRh4

In considering the Top 5 Trends in EdTech, I found this particular perspective engaging – The Rise of Mobile and the Return of Neolithic-Style Hunter gatherers.

It makes some fascinating points, featured briefly here but worth clicking through to read the rest:

• Partake of All Screens, Loyal to None
• Every Hunter for Himself
• The Relentless Toolmakers
• The Earth is Flat
• Freedom over Security
• Gathering of the Tribes
• The Improvisation of the Hunt

You can guess at the thrust of the article through this brief listing of section titles, so I encourage you to read the original.

Simply, what are the implications for school IT departments?

In a word? Extinction. Still, what fun!

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Reaching Escape Velocity – Digital Leadership

Source: http://goo.gl/R44hO

“ Great trials seem to be a necessary preparation for great duties. ”
— James Thomson

Skimming my twitter feed–marking items as favorites that I need to revisit later, if time allows–every morning with my Android phone has become one of those habits. One of those habits you’re not sure is good or bad, only that you’ve done it. It’s like other bad habits I’d like to shed, such as:

1. Eating some of my daughter’s sugar cookies–she’s turning into an excellent baker–with a glass of milk two hours before bed-time.
2. Going back to sleep during the work week instead of jumping up and jogging for 30 minutes.
3. Waiting until the smoke detectors start beeping before replacing the batteries.

You know, those are habits I’d like to shed. Habits I’ve picked up that I’m not sure about include:

1. Reading my Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, News RSS feeds before getting up out of bed in the morning, along with checking the weather. Somehow, I feel that this has replaced reading the newspaper, sipping coffee, watching the morning news.
2. Methodically wiping the free space on work machines after working with confidential data, as well as safeguarding it.
3. Making time to reflect on blog entries, narrowing the scope of the blogs I read, so I don’t suffer from information overload. This might also be called “pruning” the RSS feed, or to use a library term, “weeding.”

One of the items that popped up today included the blog entry, You Cannot Afford Not to become a Digital Leader! The telling quote from my perspective includes the following:

Digital tools are are available to bring you the latest news and trends, cut down on desk time, and keep you connected to your staff and administrative teams.  You can have a tool that brings you the latest education news right on your desktop, customized with just the content you want (try Google Reader).  You can have educators all over the world sending you ideas and resources directly to you on your computer or phone (try Twitter).  You can collaborate with staff and teams virtually without having to physically meet (try Skype, Google Docs, or Google +).  Evaluations and data about observations can be collected, stored and distributed digitally by using a smartphone, iPad, or laptop and a form created in Google Docs.

This is great advice for new folks, especially administrators who have yet to take a sip from the firehose. It opens up a world of ideas and information.

But how do we move beyond this advice to the next level? As a veteran blogger and administrator, I ask myself, How can I help others in leadership positions–not just admins, of course–get to the next level?

Some might point out that production is the next level. The stages might be as simple as this:

1. Telegathering (to remix Dr. Judi Harris’ term) information and connecting with others.
2. Connecting with others in real time.
3. Creating content (e.g. blogs/wikis/videos/podcasts) and sharing it online.

As great as these steps/stages are, what’s the effect on the school organization? I get the idea of super-heated particles caught in an inflexible system, bouncing around trying to escape but firmly fixed in place by an obsolete system.

How can we reach escape velocity (to really mix terms up)?

In physics, escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy plus the gravitational potential energy of an object is zero ^{[nb 1]}. It is the speed needed to “break free” from a gravitational field without further propulsion.

When I started this blog entry, I imagined that active learning in a hyper-connected virtual polity was no different than what Connected Principals’ Dave Meister proposed in his You Cannot Afford Not to become a Digital Leader! 

Active learning is a process whereby students engage in activities, such as reading, writing, discussion, or problem solving that promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of class content. Cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and the use of case methods and simulations are some approaches that promote active learning.  (Source: Teaching Strategies)

If active learning and digital leadership are equal–and the conflation is inaccurate, IMHO–then haven’t we done a dis-service to leadership?

Where has this blog entry gone wrong?

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MyNotes – Stretching Your Technology Dollar

Source: http://goo.gl/fA1Fe

Doug Johnson has some great advice in this ASCD published article. The question is, will CTO/CIO leaders be smart enough to follow it? 


My favorite pieces of advice:

1. Budgets ought to be a subset of a larger technology plan that’s tied directly to district and school goals.
2. Not purchasing more technology than a school can regularly maintain, upgrade, and replace.
3. Purchase the right tool for the right job.
4. take a serious look at some high-quality software that’s now available at no cost, such as open source.
5. Stop supporting obsolete technologies, such as desktop, rather than web-based, software
6. If serious, formal training isn’t part of your technology budget, don’t worry much about the rest of it.

I wish we’d spend a bit more time reflecting on the idea of “purchasing the right tool for the right job.” For many of us, it means purchasing the least expensive technology that will get the job done…this philosophy played out in obtaining thin client labs for school libraries where students simply needed access to the Internet, a few desktop apps (not so much anymore) and that was it.


That perspective has changed, though. Instead of purchasing the right tool for the job, it’s about purchasing the COOLEST tool for the job (e.g. Android tablet, iPad, iPod Touch). You can track the evolution of what’s cool simply by making a list of who gets what technology by when in a school district.


Figuring out who gets what technology by when provides some critical insights into who you believe the school culture REALLY believes ought to be served, where the money will be spent, and how fast that money needs to be spent to achieve cool technology.


If your school district has already deployed iPod Touch, iPads, ask some tough questions:

1. Who got the technology? Did they really need it, or would have older technologies they had done the job as well?
2. What technology did they get? Did they get the latest iOS device just as it came out even and how did the usage align with district goals?
3. When did that technology get purchased and deployed?

I recently had the chance to explore this briefly in a Plurk’d conversation, where folks responded to this question I posed:

Why do iPad advocates buy an iPad ($500), external peripherals like keybrd (>$50) to give the iPad netbook functionality?

The underlying question is, why do we spend so much money on technologies that don’t quite “fit” what we want them to do? Some of the responses were fascinating to me, such as:

• I avoided the keyboard purchase by justifying that if I need to type that bad I can use my full laptop.
• I use mine in my classroom as a doc camera, interactive whiteboard/slate, etc. I’m not sure I would own one if I wasn’t in educ.
• has there ever been a more polarizing device than the iPad? Truly, it is like any other tool. When used for the right purpose, it shines.
• This is an interesting discussion. I have 6 laptops and 8 iPads in my classroom. I am frequently frustrated by the limitations of the iPads
• So many things I like to do with kids, Vokis, Glogster, BitStrips, cannot be done on the iPad, but my principal is big fan so all our money is going towards the iPads. As my laptops die, I guess my projects will too. It’s so short sighted.

That’s not to say iPads are bad or evil, but the comments–both the positive and negative–reflect a fundamental failure about how technology finds its way into schools today.


Doug’s article hints at some powerful thinking and reflection that needs to go on in schools. Failure to do the math, to stretch the technology dollar says something about your organization. And, is that the message you want to send to the Community responsible for making budgeting decisions through the legislative process?






MyNotes:

Educational Leadership:The Resourceful School:Stretching Your Technology Dollar

• Stretching Your Technology Dollar – Doug Johnson
• As district budgets shrink, technology departments will most certainly be affected. Here are 10 strategies to help you make the most of your technology dollar.
• 1. Use effective budgeting techniques.
• Budgets ought to be a subset of a larger technology plan that’s tied directly to district and school goals.
• do zero-based budgeting every year. This means starting from scratch and itemizing every technology expense that the district needs to cover in the coming school year.
• Include
• stakeholder input.
• Did expending funds in this way have the anticipated result?
• Take advantage of the (buying) power of groups.
• A sustainable technology practice means
• Not purchasing more technology than a school can regularly maintain, upgrade, and replace.
• Rotating the technology. Let’s give almost everyone a new computer for the price of a single computer lab.
• Purchase the right tool for the right job.
• To prevent overbuying, I consider these questions:
• Is this a job for technology at all?
• What exactly will users do with the equipment?
• Where will the machine be used?
• Will a reconditioned machine serve as well as a new one?
• Could families rather than the school provide this item?
• Take advantage of free software.
• take a serious look at some high-quality software that’s now available at no cost. There are basically three types of no-cost software:
• Open-source software uses code that the creator has placed in the public domain and that a large body of users then rewrites and extends. The Linux operating system is probably the most famous open-source product available.
• Minimally featured versions of commercial products are made available by a producer who then hopes that features or capacity available only in the purchased version will sell the software. Animoto and Dropbox work this way.
• Web-based software applications that derive revenue from advertising are growing in popularity. Yahoo mail uses this economic model.
• Head to the cloud.
• Tools such as Google Apps for Education often have a surprisingly full feature set and are compatible with commercial programs.
• I estimate that by using Google Apps for Education, our district of 7,300 students and 3,000 computers saves about $200,000 a year in hardware, software, storage, printing, and support costs.
• Enforce standardization through single-point purchasing.
• I’ve yet to see one activity, one teaching style, or even one type of schooling that works for everyone.
• The only way to create such standardization is by having an enforced policy that states that all technology purchases need to be made through a single department.
• Maximize your E-Rate funding.
• Use an E-Rate consultant.
• Work with regional telecommunication consortiums.
• Save everything.
• Take the process seriously.
• Lobby your U.S. representative and senators.
• Stop supporting obsolete technologies.
• You should also be phasing out these obsolescent technologies:
• desktop, rather than web-based, software
• Provide sufficient training.
• Technology training has three simple but important components. Every device, application, and system needs to come with instructions on Why it’s useful. How to use it. How to use it to support teaching and learning. If serious, formal training isn’t part of your technology budget, don’t worry much about the rest of it. The shiny things won’t get used well anyway.
• Doug Johnson is director of media and technology at Mankato Area Public Schools, Mankato, Minnesota.

Walk Facing the Sun – Top 5 Positive Trends for EdTech

Source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3012/2655616509_0690240170.jpg

Look skyward, face the sun. Those words represent the hope of a better tomorrow, a hope of heaven, a future undiscovered and unmarred by yesterday’s troubles. They are words of wisdom whispered in a poem by Kahlil Gibran, a reminder that our shadows–our troubles–often have a source beyond our limited vision.

Upon a June day the grass said to the shadow of an elm tree, “You move to right and left over-often, and you disturb my peace.”
And the shadow answered and said, “Not I, not I. Look skyward. There is a tree that moves in the wind to the east and to the west, between the sun and the earth.”
And the grass looked up, and for the first time beheld the tree. And it said in its heart, “Why, behold, there is a larger grass than myself.”
And the grass was silent.

Look skyward. Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, first made me aware of shadows and how we see them negatively. 

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?  

They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? 

I invoke Kahlil Gibran’s wisdom when considering the Top 10 Bad Trends in EdTech 2011 (Tim Holt), 12 Signs Your Tech Leadership is Obsolescent (Doug Johnson). Here’s a quick, combined list in no particular order (I encourage you to read each of the blog entries to get the details):

1. Elimination of education technology funding / Your district’s tech budget does not include funds for staff development.
2. Using Educational Technology Only for Remediation 
3. BYOT: Bring Your Own Technology / Your school does not have a wireless network connection to the Internet for students to use and bans the use of personally-owned devices.
4. The Business-ification of Education
5. Narrowing Curriculum that Squeezes out Ed Tech / Your tech director does not have a means of coordinating his/her department’s efforts with those of the office of curriculum and instruction, district and building administration, staff development, assessment, public relations, and special education. 
6. Ed tech Gurus not Offering Solutions
7. Textbooks Printed on Paper/ Classes Based on Textbooks
8. No Common Technology Standard / Your district does not have a K-12 articulated information/technology literacy skills curriculum.
9. Unrealistic Filtering in Schools/ Your school still blocks all social networking sites and Web 2.0 tools. 
10. Education IT Departments Stuck in 1990’s
11. Your district still uses school-based Exchange or Groupwise servers for e-mail.
12. Your district does not use an advisory committee to form technology policies and priorities. 
13. Your tech director doesn’t attend technology conferences and only reads technology journals.
14. Your tech director can’t define 21st century skills, inquiry/project-based learning, or differentiated instruction.
15. Your school is not taking full advantage of its library media programs or librarians in technology implementations.
16. Your technology program brags about the 5% of the teachers who use technology well instead of the 100% who use it well.
17. Your tech director doesn’t have his or her own PLN.

Wow, 17 bad trends or practices. If we made this into a checklist

The flip side of the top, shall we say, shadowy–trends in EdTech Leadership consist of what? And, would flipping these trends around get us the results we want? What ARE the results we want in K-12 schools through the use of technology? While we could all cite some set of standards (e.g. ISTE NETS-S,NETS-T, NETS for leaders, CoSN CTO Essential Skills Framework, iNACOL Standards), what is ONE sentence that you would write that would summarize what you want to see in schools?

And, if flipping the “bad” or obsolete trends around isn’t the right approach, we do need to ask “What happens when we walk facing the sun?” What trends might arise then?

To be honest, this would make a great panel conversation. There are so many great things happening already that these trends are no longer fiction or idealized “new stories.” The only question is, what would the top 5 positive trends for EdTech be in YOUR teaching, learning and leading situation?

I’m tempted to share my list. Resisting….

Source: Teacher Reboot Camp

of course, Doug Johnson has some suggestions….

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Skeleton Writing – Recommendation Letters

Source: http://goo.gl/VmWh4

Update: If you enjoyed this entry, you might also like this one – Writing an Application Letter

Every few weeks, a colleague will send me a heart-felt email, tweet or Facebook message. The message, simple and evocative, goes like this:

I’m desperately unhappy in my current position. Would you write me a letter of recommendation?

I empathize with this type of request. As a writer, crafting a letter of recommendation that speaks powerfully to an individual’s strengths can serve as a source of creative rejuvenation. When that letter helps a prospective employer make a life-altering decision, both my colleague and I acknowledge that contribution.

If you’ve had to write a letter of recommendation for a colleague, then you know the challenges involved. It must be articulate, quickly unearth the treasure that the prospective employer can seize and spend to the benefit of the organization, as well as provide subtle direction on the best uses of a person’s skills. Writing such a letter can be difficult. 

In this blog entry, you’ll find a simple formula I follow. I came upon it after writing letters for friends and colleagues, not to mention the occasional, “Will you write yourself a letter of recommendation so that I have something to start with?” (which irked me at the start of my career but now makes me chuckle, much the same way I’d ask a mechanic how to go about improving the rough sound my truck’s motor makes).

My basic formula, or skeleton frame, tries to be as simple to follow as possible. It looks like this:

#1 Highlight Top 3 Qualities of the Candidate

Paragraph 1 – Offer thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts about the candidate (whose name I place) and their qualifications for the position. Here’s how it plays out over several actual letters of recommendation, real names of persons and organizations replaced to protect the innocent…you may notice the beginning of the pattern, the focus on the qualities that will be elaborated on in the letter of recommendation:

1. It is my pleasure to recommend [PERSON’S NAME] for the [name of position] position she has applied for. As a Texas technology director active in state and national organizations, I  have had the opportunity to meet many outstanding educational technologists. Time and again, [PERSON’S NAME] stands head-n-shoulders above the rest.[PERSON’S NAME] ’s incisive  leadership, vision for the future, and extraordinary managerial and organizational skills have been of great benefit to the districts she has served. 
2. Thank you for taking the time to review this letter of recommendation for job candidate, [PERSON’S NAME] . As her supervisor in the [ORGANIZATION NAME], I have had the opportunity to witness [PERSON’S NAME] ‘s performance, character and creativity first-hand. Please allow me a few moments to elaborate with three specific examples that illustrate her qualities. Should you need me to elaborate on any of these, or others, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone or email at “mguhlin@gmail.com.”
3. Thank you for your inquiry regarding [PERSON’S NAME], candidate for the position of Director of Technology for [ORGANIZATION NAME]. Over the last 15 years, I have had the opportunity to observe [PERSON’S NAME] in a variety of roles. In each, he has consistently demonstrated enthusiasm, expertise, loyalty, and commitment to the mission of the organization, as well as, to those he serves. While each of these could be enumerated at greater length, I hope you will allow me to provide brief examples of each.

As you can see from the brief examples above, it’s important to quickly lay out the qualities that one will elaborate on in the rest of the letter. Once you have selected the 3 qualities–and the stories that illustrate each–you are set to go!

#2 Give ’em the story-rich details.

Paragraph 2 – 4 : These paragraphs usually involve more detail about a particular quality. I like to keep the paragraphs as to the point as possible, but I confess to a certain desire to flowery language in each. The examples shown below all come from letters that helped candidates get interviewed, and, I hope, hired.

1. Quality: Enthusiasm. [PERSON’S NAME]’s enthusiasm is legendary, and when you hire him, you hire an individual who will give his all to accomplish the mission. His work in [ORGANIZATION NAME], his efforts on behalf of the PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION over the years prove his enthusiasm. Would that I had several of [PERSON’S NAME] to liberally sprinkle through my campuses and district offices. If his enthusiasm were the sole benefit, you could hire him and be content in your decision. [PERSON’S NAME]’s efforts, however, bespeak of a principled life that inspire others around him. As Gandhi shared, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” [PERSON’S NAME] embodies the truth of that advice in the service of our children, staff, and community without reservation.
2. Quality: Commitment to High Performance. When  [PERSON’S NAME] joined the[ORGANIZATION NAME], we were woefully understaffed and several projects had fallen behind after several months. A testament to her commitment to high quality performance, she immediately took upon herself responsibility for ensuring the projects were brought up to date. This was particularly true with her work with the [NAME OF PROGRAM], a district initiative. [PERSON’S NAME] was quick to apply her experience and instructional facilitator to enhance communications, creating print and online newsletters that involved blending in video. She took it upon herself to make extensive revisions to the web site, creating an interactive, professional learning center online using course management system (e.g. Moodle). This involved long hours on her part,  all of which  [PERSON’S NAME] took upon herself without reservation. Her performance in this area was without peer and helped the [ORGANIZATION NAME] achieve critical deadlines. 
3. Quality: Vision. …I also had the opportunity to co-facilitate sessions with [PERSON’S NAME], listening to her detail what her vision of what technology-enhanced teaching and learning environments could be for districts and campuses.Teachers flocked to [PERSON’S NAME]’s vision because it did not diminish their role, but rather, made them essential. [PERSON’S NAME]’s approach to teaching, learning and leadership empowers teachers and administrators to be leaders in educational technology, powering engines of ingenuity and innovation in schools. As my co-learner in several conference sessions, I have found [PERSON’S NAME] to be erudite, reflective and unafraid in scaffolding growth.
4. Qualities: High performing team player, creativity, and self-starter. As a high-performing, team player, [PERSON’S NAME] also had ample opportunity to demonstrate her creativity. Each of the team members had a specific talent, however, [PERSON’S NAME]’s creative approach to project management enhanced the work of others she partnered with. Her attention to detail, her connections with others outside of the District enabled her to creatively frame problems and solve them. For example, she identified a clear need for Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) training for schools. To meet the need of other teachers, she developed a data-gathering instrument, collected data from district stakeholders, created a proposal, and planned professional learning opportunities. She also became SMARTboard certified, although she is also adept at other IWBs (e.g. Promethean ActivBoard and Polyvision). 

There are various ways to transition from one paragraph to another. I encourage you to keep it simple. I regret I can’t provide a complete letter of recommendation here for review, only allowing you to see excerpts from several. Still, remember to illustrate with a real story one of the qualities you introduced in your initial paragraph.

#3 Point out what the organization will lose without this person.

Final paragraph – In this final paragraph, you want to bring it all home again.

1. [PERSON’S NAME]’s grounded vision, incisive leadership, ability to engage others with an infectious, inclusive enthusiasm will serve [ORGANIZATION NAME] well.  Her ability to coach others, manage various programs, overcome technical challenges that manifest in the course of implementing free, open source solutions in K-12 and adult learning environments…these are the attributes that [PERSON’S NAME] can bring to your organization. As you consider other applicants, ask yourself what your commitment is to the dream, then, hire [PERSON’S NAME] for the job before you waste any more money, and you will find out what lies at the other end of the techni-color rainbow. 
2. [PERSON’S NAME]  is a rising star and any organization would be foolish to pass her over during an interview or selection process. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
3. Though these few words can do little to describe [PERSON’S NAME] ‘s potential contribution to your organization, you might measure your gain by the canyon deep gap her departure to your organization means to the [YOUR ORGANIZATION].
4.  [PERSON’S NAME]’s leadership in those early years in [ORGANIZATION #1], his empowerment of teachers and administrators during his time at [ORGANIZATION #2], [ORGANIZATION #3], and, most importantly, [YOUR ORGANIZATION], his management of a variety of complex programs, his ability to coach others and enable them to achieve more than they ever dreamed. . .these are the attributes that [PERSON’S NAME] can bring to your organization. 

And, that’s pretty much it. I can honestly say that the excerpts above come from letters of recommendation for candidates who were hired at campus, district level leadership positions. Was it my writing that did the trick? Probably not but the letters may have helped get that candidate in the door for an interview.

I hope sharing this “skeleton” of how to approach a letter of recommendation is helpful to others who may find themselves in a similar position as me. Perhaps, it will encourage others more adept at writing these letters than I to share their distinctive approach so that all of us may benefit.

For those looking for more advice, you might read this blog entry at Conversation Agent.

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Thrills and Chills – TCEA 2012 #Moodle Academy

Wondering what sessions are being offered at the TCEA 2012 Moodle Academy? The answer is…available online! Thanks to Ken Task for his hard work in putting resources online in advance of the conference!

Here are some of the sessions I’m planning on attending, and, if permission is granted, podcasting them:

Moodlers in the Making…Our Approach for Training Teachers
Donna Owen, Round Rock ISD
Meet the challenge of training your teachers to use Moodle. We will share “mistakes made and lessons learned” to help you establish or improve your own Moodle professional development model.

How to Flip a Classroom for Free with Moodle and Web 2.0 Tools
Jody Rentfro, Lewisville ISD
Use Moodle to easily move from a traditional instructional environment to a flipped classroom where students are engaged 24/7 with collaborative and differentiated activities.

PODCAST PERMISSION GRANTED? YES

M&Ms (Moodle and Mobiles)
Kristy Vincent, Bastrop ISD
Moodle is melting in the hands of aspiring students simply because courses aren’t being designed with mobiles in mind. Come savor some tips for making your courses mobile ready.

There are a few sessions I would love to attend but they take place at the same time I’m offering my session…I welcome feedback on how to make my workshop materials more accessible for you!

Thrills and Chills – How to Transition from Moodle 1.9.x to Moodle 2.x
Miguel Guhlin, MoodleMayhem.org
In a few short months, anyone using Moodle 1.9.x. will face a startling truth–official support for Moodle 1.9.x. will end. Are you ready to make the transition from Moodle 1.9.x to Moodle 2.x? This session will model the steps you will need to take.

Of course, you’ll find copies of my tutorials and Moodle coverage here and at MoodleMayhem.org. 

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Are You Ready for BYOD?

Source: http://goo.gl/jWcZM

Really, the question, “Are you ready?” applies to more than just BYOD, right? While equity is often cited as one reason to eschew BYOD, the real reason reflects a far more sinister intent on behalf of school district administration–the desire to make their jobs easier. Imagine yourself a school district admin. The onslaught of external forces seeking access to your users’ data results in daily conversations with less tech-savvy, albeit powerful organization leaders who ask a simple question:

If XYZ school district are doing [NAME OF PROGRAM GOES HERE], why can’t we?

The implication is simple–if that organization can implement this successfully, why aren’t you–or your department dependent on your placement in the hierarchy–up to the job?

Often, however, IT is told or tempted to get involved in every technology, which is a Sisyphean task it can’t afford. IT must step back, first to understand what technologies users are owning and to determine where which really need IT involvement. 

What technologies precisely are those in the empowered employees’ quiver? There are five: mobile devices, cloud computing services, social technology, exploratory analytics, and specialty apps (that is, apps for the user’s specific job, from presentation software to engineering calculators). (Source: Hands-Off IT)

It’s amazing that school districts continue to implement practices that shield them from getting things done. One of my measures for new projects is, “Is the only reason I don’t want to do this the fact that I don’t want to do this?” If so, then it’s time for serious introspection. The easiest solution to that kind of problem is, “What’s best for the people in the organization?”

In essence, that is the best question to ask. What’s best for the organization, which is always the people that are served, the people who serve, certainly provides a great measuring stick. Doug Johnson, responding to a meme I began some time ago, wrote the following:

One of the ironies of being in a “positional” leadership role – a director, a manager, a supervisor – is that one quickly finds out how little power one actually has. Ordering a thing to be done or a philosophy to be believed is usually about as productive as ordering a two-year-old to eat his peas – you might eventually get the peas in the kid, but the mess will be so bad, you’ll wonder why you started the process. Even “positional” leaders soon find they can lead best by example, with humility, and with common sense.

If the answer to a positional leader is, We can’t get it done because we lack the capacity to do it, that’s a fixable problem. But if the problem to adopting BYOD or any new technology (e.g. iPads for students, GoogleApps for Education, MS LIVE@EDU) involves a fundamental unwillingness of the people to move beyond their comfort zone, tasked with learning something new and let go of the old, then there’s a simple question to ask. Seth Godin put it quite well in this blog entry:

If your organization is both pessimistic and operationally focused, then every new idea is a threat. It represents more work, something that could go wrong, a chance for disaster. People work to protect against the downside, to insulate against the market, to be sure that they won’t get blamed for anything that challenges the system. In organizations like this, a new idea has to be proven to be better than the current status quo in all situations before it gets launched.

Is the positional leader in your organization asking that question? If not, it’s your responsibility.

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5 Encryption Tips for School Administrators (Updated 1/1/2012)

Need to protect confidential information–student data, staff appraisals, etc.–that you may carry around with you or that are on your laptop/netbook? Then you need to pay attention to these 5 simple tips…school administrators deal with an inordinate amount of confidential data. Given that, why not take advantage of encryption software that makes it easy to keep yourself and your children out of the evening news?

To avoid data breaches, follow these tips:

1. Never put un-encrypted data on a USB flash drive or laptop. If you must travel with confidential data, then encrypt it using the easiest of tools first. Use AES Crypt–works on Windows, Mac and Linux–to encrypt individual files.
2. Never leave un-encrypted data available on your school desktop/laptop computer, even if it never goes anywhere. Often, individuals have tons of data available in their workplace but neglect to encrypt it because, well, it’s “protected” simply by virtue of being located at work. That’s no protection. For that reason, if you have large numbers of files, take advantage of a TrueCrypt.org container that can house all your files and folders, protecting them against prying eyes. Or, you can “zip them” and use AES Crypt to encrypt the zipped file.
3. Never email un-encrypted confidential files to yourself assuming that the files will be safe because you are using https:  school district/organization email.  Instead, use AES Crypt to secure your work prior to transferring it anywhere. If you’re sending encrypted data to another person, don’t email them the top secret password you’ve created. Instead, consider calling them and providing it to them over the phone. You can also take advantage of 7zip compression software to securely “zip” files and encrypt them. Mac users will want to check out Keka, a wonderfully 7zip tool for Macintosh.
4. Never assume because you’ve “trashed” or “deleted” a file that it’s really gone from your computer and/or your mobile phone, USB flash drive, or whatever device. To ensure the device is clean–so that someone armed with a tool like Recuva can’t resurrect the files–, take advantage of easy to use tools like Eraser, CCleaner or BleachBit. All 3 programs can be scheduled to regularly wipe the “free space” that remains after you delete files/folders on your computer. With Eraser, though, you can shred files at the moment of destruction. Note that AxCrypt also provides this functionality of shredding and deleting files via right-click when you want them gone, but you’ll still want a tool like BleachBit or CCleaner to regularly wipe (Permanently remove) files in free space.
5. Never send a computer off for disposal whose hard drive has not been wiped. Although you would hope that such a job might be handled by your District’s IT department, I’d recommend you have someone do this before the computer leaves campus. While you could take a variety of steps to shred and delete content on a hard drive, if you leave a computer hard drive intact when disposing it, you risk some data being found. Use DBAN to wipe the hard drive.

Since being a principal can often mean constant change and movement–you know, being re-assigned to a new campus at the whim of higher-ups, although principals embrace such changes with admirable equanimity–make sure you store your data securely. This includes emails locked in MS Outlook PST files, Thunderbird mboxes, and Gmail (how many admins email their “backup” documentation to themselves in the cloud?). For such massive storage needs, definitely consider TrueCrypt volumes. They are easier than you might imagine and work on any operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Are these tips too hard to implement? Too easy? To painstaking? Securing confidential data is part of digital citizenship….

HOW TO INSTALL AESCRYPT ON WINDOWS COMPUTERS
Installing this program is quick and there are easy-to-understand tutorials online:

1) Download the AESCrypt for Windows Program

2) Double-click on the installation file. There’s a tutorial to help you.

3) To encrypt files, right-click on the file you want to work with:

Encrypt

4) To decrypt files, right click on the file you want to work with:

Decrypt

Note that you can email encrypted files to others, save them on an external USB drive, etc. You will need to install AESCrypt on the Windows computer before you can decrypt an encrypted file on that particular computer.

Are you a Mac user? You’ll want to follow my instructions in this blog entry since it will require some work in the Terminal to use AESCrypt…still, it is a cross-platform solution.

Linux? No problem! You’ll want to follow my instructions in this blog entry

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Twig in the Wind

Source: http://www.usb-flashdrive.com/us/wooden/twig-drive

When 8 years old, I awoke next morning after a storm. Branches and twigs lay everywhere on the canvas of concrete that formed part of the civilized backyard at the San Carlos (Panama) beach. The twigs had been set there by a callous wind who had ripped them from nearby trees, uprooting them–and the massive trees that spawned them. Often, the pace of change today leaves me cast aside and tired, like a twig blown in by the wind, discarded, half on, half off the path. So much to learn, so the illusion of no-time, the desperation that one is not enough. 

Those are feelings–along with exhiliration, enthusiasm, wonder–as one stands in the global flow of ideas, information at the intersection of social media tools, right? At least, they are for me.

With those amorphous feelings clouding my vision, like a haze of harried hornets, I found these excerpts from “Scaling John Seely Brown” worth reflecting on, and, being grateful for:

Why I would also love to “Scale John Seely Brown” is because, like the best thinkers of our moment, he knows that learning is a continuum and that any institution, from the preschool to the stock exchange, that forgets its learning mission is going to founder.  In times of tremendous change, any system that closes itself off from learning will experience an inevitable entropy, and, eventually, devolution and extinction.  That is as true for our institutions of formal education as it is for those workplaces that foolishly try to cling to the past, that put their hands over their ears, trying, collectively, to shut out the siren voices of change…
“Scaling JSB” means staying fresh to new ideas, and doing so without the usual drags on the new: nostalgia or utopianism.  It means being willing to understand we live in a world that changes fast but, since we are all changing together and since we are all interconnected, well, we can handle it….
Finding ways to collaborate iteratively, as a process and not a product, more as a Twitter stream than as a source code, is the trick.  Emphasizing the small and the doable, rather than the gigantic and the idealistic, is probably the best way to embrace differences with imagination, creativity, innovation, a sense of realism but also a sense of play.  Besides, if you start small, you can always scale up.

Aside from the buds of excitement, have you ever stopped to reflect on the other changes a fast-changing world brings?

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Transferring Books to #iPad 2 @jrlallo

Joseph Lallo’s series comes in 3 books…I can already recommend the free first book!

Wondering how to easily transfer books to your iPad without iTunes? One of my primary objections to Apple devices is how they “lock” you into their products. While the use of such products–iTunes is one example–by computer neophytes limits their level of frustration (and, those of you struggling with Ubuntu’s forced use of Unity desktop, you know the feeling, too), it is a pain for those a bit more tech-savvy.

So, as I embark on a multi-week exploration of the iPad, since I’ve been devouring books non-stop since I picked up the original Barnes and Noble Nook, I thought I’d throw some of the books I’m planning to read. The two titles include Joseph Lallo’s The Book of Deacon (which is an engaging tale that had me reading from the moment I downloaded it from Smashwords for free, although it’s also a free title you can get via Amazon for your Kindle) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (available through ePubBooks.com for free).

Lallo’s The Book of Deacon (BTW, catch Joseph Lallo on Twitter at @jrlallo and Facebook) is obviously a teaser, the first in a series. You get the first one free but pay for the other two at wonderfully low prices. Based on what I’ve read so far, only about 40 pages, I’ve already decided to invest in the other two books!

The problem at hand, though, is how to get this wonderful content–whether Lallo’s or Doyle’s–onto an iPad? One could use iTunes, but what if you don’t have your computer handy?

One approach–although not the only one, I’m sure–is to upload both books to a cloud storage area, such as Dropbox.com or Box.net, then access that cloud storage area from the iPad. 

Having signed up during Box.net’s 50 gig giveaway via a mobile device, and already overcrowded on my Dropbox.com account where I share workshop/conference handouts with the world (I probably need to switch that over to Box.net), I uploaded the two files and then accessed them on the iPad.

BTW, pressing Sleep/Wake and HOME buttons simultaneously will take a screenshot. Sigh, too bad I’m not that coordinated! 🙂

In the top right-hand corner of the window after I downloaded the content, there’s a button you can tap on that will allow you to select “OPEN IN…” (or PRINT) and then shows you various possibilities. On mine, it shows the following:

• iBooks
• Stanza
• Evernote
• Dropbox

Obviously, the first two choices are the best. That’s pretty much the process. Of course, I was hoping for a process as easy as loading books on Nook and Kindle…just copy them onto the device via the USB cable.

Aside from iTunes, how would you have gotten your ePub book onto your iPad2 ? Here’s another approach–using BlueFire Reader–to try.

Update: Allanah King shares this perspective in the comments:

I found it easy to just upload the ePub we had made using Pages or Word and put it on a wiki that the kids have easy access to. When you click on it it asks you what do you want to open it with- I choose iBooks and it sweetly goes there! 

There are a lot of wikis available that will allow you anywhere from 10 to 100 megs of space. I still favor putting ePubs on Dropbox or Box.net for easy sharing, but I wonder if there are any limits…however, if you’re sharing student-created ePubs, then hosting them on cloud storage, and linking to them from a wiki/blog should alleviate the wiki storage space limitations. Of course, if you’re hosting your own wiki solution, then space may not be an issue at all!

In the meantime, I’m off to read The Book of Deacon in anticipation of the 2nd book in the series, The Great Convergence:

View other art

Disclaimer: No ePubs had their DRM stripped or injured during the making of this blog entry.

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Moodle at TCEA 2012

http://www.tcea2012.org/2012/public/default.html

Here’s a list of confirmed presentations–that I know about!–about Moodle at the TCEA 2012 State Conference! I hope you’ll drop in and have fun moodle-in’!

You can find the links online at http://moodlemayhem.org in the CONFERENCES section. If you are presenting on Moodle at TCEA 2012 and you are not listed in the presentations below, I hope you’ll consider sending me your information so I can add it (or grant you access to the MM wiki so you can do it!):

• Session Facilitator – Diana Benner (diana.benner@gmail.com; Twitter: diben)
1. Be the Moodle Admin! This is a session being co-facilitated with Miguel Guhlin.
   When: Wednesday, February 8th from 1:30 to 4:30
   

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• Session Facilitator – Miguel Guhlin (mguhlin@gmail.com; Twitter: mguhlin)

1. Thrills and Chills – How to Transition from Moodle 1.9.x to Moodle 2.x 
   When: Monday, February 6, 2012 from 1:30 to 2:30 PM
   

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2. Be the Moodle Admin! This is a session being co-facilitated with Diana Benner.
   When: Wednesday, February 8th from 1:30 to 4:30 PM
   

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3. Energize – A Moodle Server on a Laptop! This is a session Miguel Guhlin was asked to fill in for someone since they weren’t going to be available. When: Thursday, February 9, 2012; 8:00 to 11:00 AM.

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Jogging through Discretionary Effort

Source: http://goo.gl/yBdBU

When people do what they love to do–or, when you do what you love–the work is it’s own reward. When that work turns into using work discretionary effort–those moments between formal assignments or project work when staff work on new, different stuff–to find new ways of innovating, you know people are really moving forward. 

My introduction to the term “discretionary effort” came through Crucial Conversations which I’m listening to:

Discretionary effort is a silver bullet and often an underutilized asset. Those who learn how to tap discretionary effort achieve a strategic competitive advantage.

In a work situation, encouraging people to enjoy their work–rather than just work for the paycheck, or as I heard one boss over the years call it, “the little slip of paper at the end of the month” as staff morale plummeted–yields greater returns in productivity and innovation over time. I can easily think of several strategic advantages that I’ve achieved as a result of how I’ve spent my discretionary effort, giving me an edge when involved in collaborative problem-solving. And, this reminds me of Google’s story:

Google allows its employees to use up to 20 percent of their work week at Google to pursue special projects. That means for every standard work week, employees can take a full day to work on a project unrelated to their normal workload. Google claims that many of their products in Google Labs started out as pet projects in the 20 percent time program. (Source: How Stuff Works)

For example, as someone who wants to encourage online learning, I spend my discretionary effort reading about online learning tools, trying to figure out better ways to enhance that kind of work in my own environment. Even though employees may encounter obstacles, the obstacles add to the sense of adventure and excitement. Some times, those obstacles arise unexpectedly and can tap into what you learned while expending discretionary effort!

A few weeks ago, I spent time at home playing around with a project, learned some new skills. The purpose for my learning that skill was a personal project that had NOTHING to do with work. In fact, I was just curious about accomplishing a tedious task in a faster, simpler way. 

The week after learning that new skill–with no intent of ever using it at work–a problem arose that required the use of that new skill. My ability to solve the problem involved applying what I’d learned at home on my personal project to a work project. That problem not only saved me time and effort at work–allowing me to focus my time on other projects–but increased productivity and responsiveness to others in my workplace. Wow, that’s the kind of cross-over skill-building I like to see!

The desire to innovate flows from your enthusiasm and how you allocate your discretionary effort. If I hated what I was doing, I wouldn’t bother to learn how to make it better. If I worked only for a paycheck or waited to be told what to do, I wouldn’t be curious to find a better way. That insight also factors in at home, whether it’s technology or something as mundane (and, I find more joy in cooking, washing, than the activity I’m going to share about next–jogging).

In the past, a lot of my personal discretionary effort–as opposed to professional–has been spent exploring work-related passions. 

Over the last year, my focus for what I do during my discretionary time has changed. That’s impacted how much time I’ve taken to share what I’m learning as my time gets more segmented. As you might imagine, some of my new activities have been “time-sinks.” My new activities include the following:

1. Exercising – More on this below.
2. Setting up linux servers or studying how to do it for Moodle deployments. More on this in a last 5 blog entry.
3. Reading fiction – More on this in a last 5 blog entry.

In this blog entry, I’m going to share what I’ve learned about Exercising, being pretty ignorant about it since I’ve not spent much time studying it or participating. Fortunately, while health is a general motivator, I don’t have a particular threat (e.g. diabetes, heart) forcing me to move. That’s been great on the one hand since I feel like I’m getting ahead, but on the other hand, not great because I feel this kind of exercise is “optional.” 

After a year and a half of exercising daily for an hour, I find that my day is incomplete if I haven’t spent an hour doing something active. Thank goodness for the force of habit…I get the same feeling about blogging!

Two summers ago, I found myself losing weight and toning muscle as I swam from one side of the pool to another. This past summer, I continued taking advantage of the pool membership, swimming 40-50 laps per swim session. When winter began, I found myself trodding on a treadmill, burning about 300-400 calories per session. Time spent on swimming and/or treadmill? About an hour. 

(Image Source: Bellicon, http://goo.gl/Op0Et)

Then, the treadmill–which had been a secondhand gift from a relative and lasted for a year of daily use–broke and fixing it was outside my budget. Fortunately, I re-discovered the mini-trampoline, hiding in a dusty corner of the master bedroom. I had begun jogging in place on it, but didn’t really believe that it would have any effect. Yet after a conversation with my wife, who insisted it was a serious way to burn calories, I decided to research it a bit. Wow, fascinating information on the subject:

Running in place actually burns more calories than traditional running, according to caloriesperhour.com. The same 150-pound person who burns 544 calories by jogging in place for an hour would burn only 476 calories on a moderate hour-long run. 

Some people like to jog on a small trampoline (called a rebounder) because it is easier on the joints. According to caloriesperhour.com, a 150-pound person who jogs on a trampoline for an hour would burn about 300 calories an hour.
Read more: Calories Burned by Jogging in Place | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5445353_calories-burned-jogging-place.html#ixzz1cPCn2KCj

What?!? I was shocked that I could burn more calories jogging on a mini-trampoline in my house–while watching TV–than somebody jogging outside in the Texas weather!  I decided to verify and do the math, and sure enough, the Calories Burned Activity Calculator confirmed it. Of course, you can also do this with a simple proportion–which is one of the many valuable concepts that actually stuck to my brain in math class–like the one shown below that allows you to “solve for x”:

So, you can imagine my evenings now as I jog in place on the mini-trampoline (which, by the way, cost less than $50 on Amazon.com…I actually picked mine up for $20 at a garage sale years ago). You can find videos on using a mini-trampoline on YouTube, although one look at those, and I was thoroughly frightened away at the level of activity!!

Other colleagues have suggested using hula hoops, and I hadn’t considered that:

Here’s a link on hooping.  And…. yes guys hoop too!http://www.hoopcircle.com/HoopCircle/Why_Hoop.html
Baxter is awesomehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOr44yCCl4whttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkjnrvMD0pk

I still have a lot to learn about keeping fit, and I see the next big hurdle as building–or maintaining–muscle as I get older. Another positive is that my children have both started to pick up exercising as a daily activity…a great college going-away present for my children might very well be a mini-trampoline!

When I started down the road of spending my discretionary effort on exercise, I never imagined it would be as rewarding as it has been. When I reflect on exercise throughout my early years, I’m not surprised that I was turned off to it. Exercise was always someone else’s idea…at school, it was the coach’s idea to have us run around the track. The only time I remember exercise as something enjoyable was when I’d jog or bike around the Canal Zone (“Los Rios” neighborhood) in Panama looking for my errant beagle.

The lesson? I had to have a purpose I had chosen. It’s a simple lesson that drives what I do at home and work. How about you?

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Growth Across the Continuum

Source: http://inventionmachine.com/Portals/56687/images/CollaboratingProblemSolving.png

What’s your leadership style? Whether you work as an administrator or a team member–not that those are mutually exclusive–one style that many of us are familiar with is serving as a guide on the side, a consultative leadership role that involves a bit of friendly coaching. This coaching involves sharing ideas and information in a non-threatening way, enabling one person to share their expertise with someone even though the mentor has no specific authority.

In my role at an education service center, the apt description of “counsellor to kings” fit for many of us. We were trustworthy, dependable because we were perceived to not be enmeshed in the tangled weaves of school district or school politics. Sometimes, our role involved being cast as disinterested parties seeking to bring about change on behalf of an organization whose second-in-commands had gone astray.

“We are the best friend money can buy,” shared one colleague to me as we walked into a school district caught me off-guard. A youngster (29) at the time, I simply hadn’t thought of it that way. Her perspective on the consultative role may have been a bit jaded, but her observation rang true. The power of blogging and other communication tools that allow us to share even when we’re not specifically paid to do so.

As I reflect on what I’ve written so far, I realize it has less to do with leadership style–how a leader leads–and more in how a leader perceives others who offer advice on how to proceed…more like an information/wisdom consultant.

If I define leadership styles as this web site by the same name does, I find myself gravitating towards a particular approach. The diagram below–also from the same site as above– provides an interesting continuum:

As I reflect on my own leadership practices, I have moved steadily from an autocratic style to a more delegative style. The reason for starting out autocratic is that I began my career–hoping not to sound boastful here–as a high performing individual. I was seldom called upon to work collaboratively with others, but rather, to solve problems as an individual. Even in group settings with other high performing individuals, teaming to solve problems was a matter of finding the best idea and implementing it.

This came to mind as I listened to Crucial Conversations audio this morning. In school, we are conditioned to strive for the approval of one person–the teacher. When we raise our hands, we hope that no one will get to share the right answer before we do…and, even better than that is that everyone else shares THEIR answer but it is wrong. The feeling of triumph is all the sweeter when, after everyone who has been called on is wrong, we share our answer and it is THE ONE.

What an insightful perspective offered up in Crucial Conversations. Combine that expectation with always having the right answer and being responsible for a team, and you have a tension-filled experience when you are in a leadership position. At least, I did. Over time, though, I realized that more participative/delegative styles yielded better results…and I didn’t have to be right all the time! What a blessing!

As a consultant for a business, I’ve had to relearn what my role should be as a team member rather than a leader facilitating decision-making. To be honest, I’ve found the role of team member in an autocratic style environment to be quite…relaxing, even as I miss the opportunity for more collaborative conversations that result in team solution planning and implementation.

For many teachers, this role of “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it!” is second-nature. However, that’s not the role teachers need to play anymore, is it? How can we better scaffold teachers–and their administrators–growth across the continuum?

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Engaging Fiction Series for Teens and Adults

Get more wallpapers at http://www.rangersapprentice.com/downloads/

Finding good stuff to read after consuming countless hordes of zombie, end of the world apocalyptic tales wasn’t too difficult. Still, the stories I stumbled upon were stunning in how quickly they captured my interest, even though I felt they were written for teens and young adults.

The two series include the following:

• Chris Bradford’s Young Samurai series
• John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series

Let me start with the last series first, since it has had me enthralled for about 7 books now, I can honestly say I’ve seldom been captivated with such a simple, straightforward “never-ending” story featuring a wide range of characters. From Wikipedia:

Ranger’s Apprentice is a series of fantasy novels written by Australian author John Flanagan. The first novel in the series, titled The Ruins of Gorlan, was released in Australia on 1 November 2004 and in the United States on 16 June 2005. As of 2011 all eleven books have been released in Australia and New Zealand, with other countries following behind. The series follows the adventures of Will, an orphan who is taken as an apprentice Ranger, as he strives to keep the Kingdom of Araluen safe from invaders, traitors, and threats. He is joined on his adventures by his mentor Halt and his best friend Horace. Author John Flanagan has stated that he will be writing a total of 12 books for the series, and is currently working on a new series in the same world, but with new characters and taking place in Skandia, called Brotherband.

if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget(‘7b61c08a-f31f-46ab-9287-2de58d8b5e04’); Get the <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/rangers-apprentice”>Ranger’s Apprentice series</a> widget and many other <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com/”>great free widgets</a> at <a href=”http://www.widgetbox.com”>Widgetbox</a>! Not seeing a widget? (<a href=”http://support.widgetbox.com/”>More info</a>)

I’ve always been a sucker for Robin Hood, sword-n-sorcery kinds of books, and though Ranger’s Apprentice is low on the sorcery stuff, it’s definitely engaging in the other! When I googled Ranger’s Apprentice, I was also pleased to find a web site with an interactive game (sure to capture my middle schooler’s attention), as well as downloadable wallpapers and Teachers’ Guide!

I heartily recommend the entire series! Often, the quality of stories diminishes as you move through a series. I am in the grips of Flanagan’s books well into the seventh book so far, and I’m looking forward to the books I have yet to read.

Source: http://www.youngsamurai.com/

The other series of books that have caught my attention include the Young Samurai series. To be honest, the first book in the series tapped into my fascination with James Clavell’s Shogun, which you may recall features a ship’s pilot navigating the secret route to “the Japans,” a route strictly kept secret by the Spanish and Portuguese. The making of Shogun into a mini-series featuring Richard Chamberlain caught my attention when a youngster, and Young Samurai has similar beginnings.

Instead of working from the perspective of a grown man serving as a pilot on a ship bound for Japan, the story unfolds from the point of view of a the son of a pilot. As events unfold, the boy is stranded in Japan and adopted by a powerful samurai, who treats him as his own son. It’s a great story and I recommend it. For me, though, it’s not at the level of Ranger’s Apprentice, but if you enjoyed Shogun or the idea of samurai and Japanese culture (lite), then you’ll find pleasure in this series.

Since my children and I share books, they are undoubtedly tired of listening to me encourage them to read these two series.

So, for those of you wondering why I haven’t been blogging as much, now you know. Too many awesome authors out there NOT writing about school reform.

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Setting Up #UbuntuLinux Server for #Moodle

Source: http://blogs.babycenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/crawling-baby_191.jpg

(note, this is NOT me in the picture above)

One of my proudest moments–in server setup–involved setting up an UbuntuLinux server to host Moodle. Of course, I often feel late to the party when I get excited about learning how to do this. Still, it is an accomplishment I’m proud of for now…the same way a child is when it learns how to crawl. What’s funny is that I’d asked a colleague for some help, and he was kind enough to say, I’m waiting for you to figure it out, Miguel, then write it up in your blog. Well, here you go.

Although I’d done this in simulation, setting up a “production” site for a company was certainly a fun challenge where “failure was not an option.”

Of course, I spent ample time researching the Moodle.org site, as well as visiting other sites, to develop the notes below. 

Source: http://cloud.ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ServerUBUNTU.png

Below are my rough notes on the process–completed successfully with UbuntuServer 11:

Step 1 – Install the Software You Need
At the command line/terminal, type the following…be ready to write down/remember any usernames and passwords that you are asked to create through the next two steps.

sudo apt-get install tasksel

Per Ubuntu web site, Tasksel is a Debian/Ubuntu tool that installs multiple related packages as a co-ordinated “task” onto your system. We will use that to install Apache/MySQL server:

Step 2 – Install Apache/MySQL

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Once this step is complete, you should be able to go to http://localhost and see a message saying something along the lines of “It Works!” etc. You will get some errors if you don’t take the next step:

a) Edit the httpd.conf file

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf 

This will create a blank file to which you can paste the following into the body:

ServerName localhost

b) Restart the web server with the command below:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Note that you can stop the server with this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

…or “start” it by replacing the word “stop” in the command above.

Step 3 – Install PHP and Other Needed Extensions
Below are steps that you will need to take (there might be some slight overlap) to setup PHP and other needed components for Moodle. You will want to take each line one by one (although you can also combine them as you see fit):

sudo apt-get install php5
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get install php5-curl curl  php5-xmlrpc php5-gd php5-intl

sudo apt-get install unzip zip aspell-en aspell-fr aspell-de aspell-es
sudo apt-get install php5-ldap php5-odbc

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-ruby libapache2-mod-python php5 php5-common php5-dev php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-ming php5-mysql php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl

Step 4 – Install AntiVirus

sudo apt-get install clamav-base clamav-freshclam clamav

This will install antivirus tools on the server.

Step 5 – Edit the PHP.ini file

nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Note that you can replace the word “nano” with your text editor of choice, such as vim or leafpad or gedit (the latter two can only be used in a GUI environment, while vim and nano can be used at the command line in text-only environment).

You will want to make–at minimum–the following adjustments:

display_errors = Off

display_startup_errors = Off

register_globals = Off

post_max_size = 2000M

mysql.connect_timeout = -1

max_execution_time = 5000

max_input_time = 5000

memory_limit = 2000M

file_uploads = On

upload_max_filesize = 2000M

At this point, you will want to restart the server with the following command and begin the process of copying Moodle to the appropriate location, probably /var/www/moodledirectory.

Step 6 – Installing Moodle
To install Moodle, you will need to do some command line magic with MySQL and copying-n-pasting stuff. Below are my rough notes on the subject:

a) Create MySQL database and a MySQL user @ localhost that will be used during Moodle install configuration

#mysql -u root -pcreate database sandbox default character set utf8;
grant all privileges on sandbox.* to ‘moodleuser‘@’localhost’ identified by ‘yourpassword‘;
flush privileges;
quit

Note that “sandbox” , “moodleuser” could be replaced to be anything else. You can create additional users and assign them rights:

mysql> CREATE USER ‘mguhlin’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘PASSWORD’;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO ‘mguhlin’@’localhost’ WITH GRANT OPTION;

In the scenario above, a user “mguhlin” is being created.

b) Create Moodledata folder
You will need to create a MoodleData directory. Here’s the command to do it:

sudo mkdir /var/moodledata

Since I like to put all my Moodle instances’ MoodleData folders as subdirectories of MoodleData, I would create new subdirectories in the following way:

sudo mkdir /var/moodledata/sandbox

If I needed to assign write access, I would probably do something like the following:

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/moodledata

c) Download the Moodle installation file
From the command line, you can download the Moodle installation file. For example:

wget “http://download.moodle.org/download.php/stable22/moodle-latest-22.zip”

should enable you to download the Moodle file. Once downloaded, you can unzip the file in this way:

unzip moodle-latest-22.zip

By the way, if the wget command pulls up a blank file (not one that is 30-40 megs in size), you may want to get the direct link for the Moodle install file download (click on the regular link and then before it starts to download, copy-n-paste the link for “direct link”). I sometimes use a URL shortener (goo.gl) to get a shorter link to work with if I have to type, rather than copy-n-paste, the link into the Terminal window.


d) Create folder where Moodle PHP files will be stored.
To create the folder where you will store the Moodle PHP files–these are the files you extracted after downloading and unzipping the file from above. You can create the folder with this command:

sudo mkdir /var/www/sandbox

where sandbox is the name of the proposed Moodle instance.

Then copy the contents of your downloaded, unzipped Moodle install file with this command:

sudo cp -rv /home/yourusername/moodle/* /var/www/sandbox/

e) Begin the web-based install process
Go to your web browser and type in the URL of the server, or, if on your own computer, type

http://localhost/sandbox

You should see the start of the Moodle installation. Follow the steps suggested. After you’ve installed Moodle, you should see everything pop up as normal.

Step 7 – Cron Job Setup
Your Moodle will need to occasionally run cron jobs. Why is the cron job important? 

Cron assists some of Moodle’s modules to perform tasks on a scheduled basis. For example, the cron process might tell Moodle to check all discussion forums so it can mail out copies of new posts to people who have subscribed to that forum. The primary Moodle script that does all this is located in the admin directory, and is called cron.php. However, it can not tell itself to run, so you need to set up a mechanism where this script is run regularly (eg every five or ten minutes). This provides a “heartbeat” so that the script can perform functions at periods defined by each module.
Read Cron – MoodleDocs

You can edit the cron job in the following way:

env EDITOR=nano crontab -e

Paste in a modified line of instructions for every Moodle instance you have running on the server:

*/10 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null “http://localhost/sandbox/admin/cron.php”

Note that this line of instruction will run the cron job every 10 minutes. There are other ways of accomplishing this task, so be open to the possibilities!

To edit cron jobs, go to /etc/cron.weekly, /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.monthly. For example:

cd /etc/cron.weekly

Optional Step A – OPENSSH

If you want to have a secure (SSL) installation of Moodle–which may result in a performane hit–or simply do SSL for your Moodle logins, you will need to take the following step BEFORE (although I did it after as long as you are comfortable moving (mv) files and folders around) your start installing Moodle. Please note that I found this tutorial helpful for moving beyond this point.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server unattended-upgrades 

These steps are relevant and I encourage you to follow this tutorial in two parts:

• Setting Up SSL: Ubuntu and Apache 2
• Creating Certificate Authorities and self-signed SSL certificates

I’m grateful to the author of the tutorials above that helped me get this!!

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Quick Notes on #Moodle on #Windows Install

Source: http://goo.gl/qi3cE

A colleague of mine–working in a new position–was recently called upon to setup a Moodle to facilitate professional learning. Although I shared my videos and a comprehensive 86 page tutorial I’d developed earlier, she asked for a brief outline of the experience, as well as a video.

I also recently spent time setting up an UbuntuLinux server for Moodle and will share those notes in a subsequent blog entry.

View the 24 minute video (FLV)

Below is that outline:

Step 1 – Get the Software You Need

• Chrome browser – http://google.com/chrome
• XAMPP (Apache, MySQL, PHP and Filezilla FTP Server) – http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
• PS Pad text editor – http://www.pspad.com/en/download.php
• phpMyAdmin – http://goo.gl/rbskS
• Moodle 2.2 – http://download.moodle.org/

Step 2 – Install Software in this Order

1. Chrome browser
2. PS Pad text editor
3. XAMPP – install onto D:\ if on a server or C:\ if it’s your laptop or desktop computer. If in a server environment, check with your server admin for specific drive to install to. Start the Control Panel, which should put an orange box on your screen.

Step 3 – Create Shortcuts and Necessary Folders

1. Go to the hard drive (C: or D:) that you installed XAMPP on, and make a shortcut on the Desktop for the htdocs folder
2. Create a folder called mdata at the same level as htdocs (not inside it)
3. Unzip the Moodle 2.1.3 zip file you downloaded in Step 1 and drag the Moodle folder–you can rename this to anything, such as “sandbox”–into the htdocs folder.
4. In the mdata folder, create a folder that has the same name as your Moodle folder (e.g. “sandbox”)

Step 4 – Modify PHP.INI File

1. To modify the php.ini file, you will need to go to the XAMPP folder and then find the file.
2. Open the file with PS PAD (although most text editors will do the job), and make the following changes:
   • display_errors = Off
   • display_startup_errors = Off
   • register_globals = Off
   • post_max_size = 2000M
   • mysql.connect_timeout = -1
   • max_execution_time = 5000
   • max_input_time = 5000
   • memory_limit = 2000M
   • file_uploads = On
   • upload_max_filesize = 2000M
3. Save your changes to the php.ini file.
4. One possible problem that may arise is that phpMyAdmin comes up in Dutch/German. To address that, edit the config.inc.php file in the phpMyAdmin directory and paste in:
   $cfg[‘Lang’]     = ‘en-utf-8’; 
   to ensure it always loads in English. 

Step 5 – Start Using the XAMPP Control Panel

1. Activate Apache by clicking the START button
2. Activate MySQL by clicking the START button
3. Start up Chrome browser and navigate to http://localhost on your computer. This should bring up the XAMPP language selection page. Choose English or your preferred language.

Step 6 – Working with MySQL

1. Database creation
   1. While viewing the XAMPP page, click on phpmyadmin in the menu and then create a new database that will be used to house your Moodle content. For the purposes of this handout, let’s call the database “sandbox”
   2. When you create the database, make sure to choose “utf8_general_ci” collation since that is required by Moodle.
   3. After creating the database, you should now see the database name “sandbox” down the left-hand side of the screen inphpmyadmin.
2. Localhost User
   1. You will want to create a user that interacts only with the Moodle database. This username and the assigned password will ONLY have localhost access to the server. Localhost access means anyone not accessing the server–as if they were sitting in front of it–would have access to the server. This prevents unauthorized use of over the Internet or the local area network of the user.
   2. Go to Privileges in phpmyadmin and create a user called “sandboxer” with the password of “Sandbox123%” without quotes. Be sure to GRANT ALL privileges.

Step 7 – Installing Moodle

1. Are you ready to install Moodle? You should now have 4 pieces of information:
   • The name of the Moodle database – sandbox
   • The name of the MySQL user allowed to access sandbox database – sandboxer
   • The password of the MySQL user – Sandbox123%
   • The location of the Moodledata folder – C:\xampp\mdata\sandbox(Note: If you are installing on a real server, change the “C:\” to reflect the drive where you installed XAMPP)
2. Go to your web browser and type in the URL of the server, or, if on your own computer, type http://localhost/sandbox
3. You should see the start of the Moodle installation. Follow the steps suggested.
4. After you’ve installed Moodle, you should see everything pop up as normal.

Step 8 – Securing XAMPP

1. XAMPP installation is not secure as it is so you need to secure it. One of the ways to accomplish this is to follow the Security instructions available online at http://goo.gl/UJwD
2. Go to http://localhost/security
3. After taking these steps, remove the index.php file and the contents of the htdocs folder EXCEPT for the newly createdsandbox folder. Note: This will remove your access to phpmyadmin. We will install it in a moment.

Step 9 – Installing PHPMyAdmin (latest version you downloaded earlier)

1. When you emptied out the contents of the htdocs folder–except sandbox–you removed the link to phpmyadmin, which allows you to interact with MySQL databases.
2. Make a folder called “myadmin” without quotes.
3. Unzip the contents of the phpmyadmin.zip file you downloaded in Step 1 into the myadmin folder. Make sure you do NOT have a folder path that looks like this: C:\xampp\htdocs\myadmin\phpmyadmin since that will cause problems. Instead, when you look at myadmin you should see a list of files.
4. Go to C:\xampp\phpmyadmin and copy the config.inc.php and paste it into C:\xampp\htdocs\myadmin\
5. Test that it’s working by going to http://localhost/myadmin
6. If successful, you should see a login screen for phpmyadmin

Step 10 – Take a Break

If you would have done this differently, please share YOUR process.

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Arista Transcoder – Convert from DVD to WebM Video Format

Interested in ripping unencrypted DVDs? Linux-focused Arista Transcoder takes an approach worth noting:

One of the neat conversions that Arista Transcoder is able to do is to go straight from DVD to WebM, as well as iPod/iPhone/Android video formats! Here’s a nice article on other video converters.

You can install Arista Transcoder via the command line on UbuntuLinux with this command:

sudo apt-get install arista

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Ubiquitous Data Breaches – #NASA and #Tricare #SAIC

Update 01/3/2012: I now recommend the free, open source AESCrypt in lieu of AxCrypt as a simple, easy to use cross-platform encryption tool. Find out more here.

Source: http://linkbuilding.net/files/2010/08/cyber-crime.jpg

Whether it’s your 17 year old daughter or 83 year old mother, their identity being stolen has been made a whole lot easier by two organizations we have to trust–NASA and TRICARE. Two “data breaches” for personal information have me very concerned. As father and son, I’m cast in the role of tracking the usage of multiple identity theft monitoring technologies. Whether it’s the Teacher Retirement System, the Texas Comptroller, a school district, NASA, or SAIC, we’re finding ourselves having to better manage participation in identity theft programs.

Concerned parents may well advise their college kids to stay out of dark corners, lock their doors at night, and travel in groups. While these measures might help prevent college students from getting robbed in conventional ways, they cannot protect them from one of the worst kinds of theft imaginable: having their identities stolen and used to defraud others.

Source: The College Students’ Guide to Identity Theft 

Here are two recent data breaches, one in November and another in December 2011, that I’m having to deal with. EMBRACE ENCRYPTION. If you need a tutorial, let me know and I’ll be happy to do an Encryption for Educators session for your employees.

Image Source: Romanian Hacker Arrested NASA Breach, Security News Daily

NASA DATA BREACH
Do a google search on NASA Data Breach, and you’ll get a few answers, but no mention of this one (per my search) that arrived in my mailbox recently:

This letter is to inform you about the unintentional loss of personally identifiable information that was submitted by you and your child as part of registration with NASA’s Texas High School Aerospace Scholars and Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars (WISH) projects. 

An electronic copy of your information was stored on a flash drive by an employee of a NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) grantee. On August 12, 2011, the flash drive was identified as missing after an aerospace scholar’s event at the NASA JSC Gilruth Facility. The personally identifiable information on the flash drive included only names, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses and students’ dates of birth. No other personally identifaible information was on the flash drive. No information is available about the current whereabouts of the flash drive but to date there is no evidence to suggest there has been any attempt to misuse you or your child’s personal information. 

Because the flash drive included your child’s date of birth, as a precaution for you and your child, JSC has contracted with Identity Force to provide you (the adult/guardian) with three bureau credit report monitoring services and your minor/child with identity monitoring services for one year. These services will be provided to you free of charge to help protect you and your child’s identity.

No where in the text is there an apology that my daughter’s information has been shared with the world at large. No where is there mention of disciplinary action taken against the employee who left UNENCRYPTED data on a flash drive. If employees of the NASA JSC Gilruth Facility embraced encryption protocols, they wouldn’t even had to report this to us because the data would have been inaccessible. 

And, if confidential data is on flash drives, just because you delete the files doesn’t mean they are gone…I hope they are wiping these flash drives appropriately.

These past two years have been rife with data breaches–which involves employees of organizations foolishly making UNENCRYPTED confidential, also known as personally identifiable information, data available to the world. Let’s do a quick review of recent data confidentiality goofs:

• Teacher Retirement System in Texas
• Texas educators data no longer confidential

Source: SAIC web site...their solution may be proven but at least one employee was not.

TRICARE DATA BREACH VIA SAIC
Update: This affected 4.9 million people!!!

And, let’s not forget this one from TRICARE via the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) that my 83-year old mother received:

This letter is to notify you of the loss of your personally identifiable and protected health information, and Science Applications International Corporations’s (SAIC) offer to you of free credit monitoring and restoration services for the period of one year. 

SAIC is a government contractor supporting the TRICARE Management Activity (TMA). On September 14, 2011, a SAIC employee reported that computer backup tapes containing your information were stolen from his vehicle in San Antonio, Texas. Backing up your information to these tapes and transporting them for storage in a remote location is a routine procedure to save important data and is a specific contract requirement for SAIC. Upon discovery of the theft, we promptly notified law enforcement and designated government agencies. 

The information contained on the tapes may include names, Social Security Numbers, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, appointment information, diagnoses, treatment information, laboratory tests, radiology results, prescriptions, provider names, provider location and other patient data, but does not include any financial data, such as credit card or bank account information. 

The chance that your information could be obtained from these tapes is low since accessing, viewing and using the data requires specific hardware and software. We engaged law enforcement to attempt to recover the stolen backup tapes. 

At this time, we have no evidence to indicate the data on the backup tapes has been accessed, viewed or used by others in any way. However, we know how concerned you may be and to assist you, SAIC is providing you with a free, one-year membership in Kroll Inc’s ID TheftSmart service.

As you might suppose, keeping track of all the protection services my mother, my daughter, my wife and I are enrolled in due to data breaches by is getting longer and longer. What’s up with that? How hard is it to automate tape backups so that they are encrypted (link shows you how)?

This blog entry was mentioned at the Military Medical Digest –  http://www.tricare/mil/eenews

Also, in the highlighted section of SAIC’s letter, you’ll notice that their disaster recovery approach involves physically transporting tapes. Those tapes should NOT be moved unless encrypted. Better yet, why not take advantage of Secure FTP to transfer files from one server to another?

LESSONS LEARNED

We have little recourse except to rely on these organizations (e.g. NASA, SAIC, TRICARE) for the services they provide. I can only pray that they will be more diligent in the future in protecting precious information for my entire family.

For now, I’m keeping track of all the information in a GPG encrypted KeepassX file inside of a Truecrypt volume. Sigh. It doesn’t matter, right? My information–and my family’s–is already out there through no fault of my own.

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Nanobots Unite! #cancer

Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bIMaFvXEm3Y/TAN7WYT0DzI/AAAAAAAAAA4/ OjxepgaKfFw/s1600/Main+pic.jpg

To be honest, I’m not sure if cancer-treating nanosystem is the same as nanobots, but hey, I’m glad someone knows what’s going on…like this seventeen year old, Angela Zhang!

Should we be preparing kids to be college ready or encouraging them to do things like this 17 year old young lady?

At the age of 17 I was paying attention in college, but still enjoying the student life as much as studying towards my career goals. What I wasn’t doing was working at the cutting edge of cancer treatment and developing a potential cure. 

Angela Zhang is, and she’s just been awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project was entitled “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.” 

Her creation is being heralded as a “Swiss army knife of cancer treatment.” Zhang managed to develop a nanoparticle that can be delivered to the site of a tumor through the drug salinomycin. (Source: Geek.com)

Although people are different, could we “reverse engineer” Zhang’s education and efforts and see what that involved?

Gotta love innovative spirit…this picture, having nothing to do with cancer treatment, may answer the question of what we’re to do with some environmental problems like water bottles. Thanks to Arvind for sharing:

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The Road from Banned to BYOD @atpe #byod @paulrwood @woscholar @neisd

http://atpe.org/Resources/ATPENewsWinter/default.aspx

Mandy Curtis, author of ATPE’s News‘ TechSupport column, recently sent me an article that he authored. The theme of the ATPE News in this issue is Reflections on the New Normal: Education in the Age of Budget Cuts.

You can read the rest of the article online at 

http://atpe.org/Resources/ATPENewsWinter/default.aspx

Below is one of the several quotes from me that Mandy was kind enough to share with the ATPE audience:

“At a time when shrinking school budgets mean that schools will never achieve one-to-one [See Tech Term, below], the resourceful approach involves asking kids to bring their home devices into schools,” wrote ed tech blogger Miguel Guhlin in September. Guhlin is a director of instructional technology services for an urban Texas school district. “As a parent of two children who have their own inexpensive netbooks … I know that these devices grant them MORE access to technology than what they have at school.” (Read Guhlin’s full post on BYOD at www.mguhlin.org/2011/09/byotbyod-dealingwith-fallout-paulrwood.html.)

My thanks to Mandy, ATPE, and all the others who contributed by their actions in school districts to the content of the original blog entry!!

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Converting MP4 to xbox360-friendly AVI Video

How do I convert MP4 encoded videos to a Xbox360-friendly AVI video format? Even though there are a million video converters out there that can get the job done–the easiest way is to just use Format Factory (http://formatoz.com), a free Windows video converter–I want to do the job on my UbuntuLinux computer (actually, Lubuntu).

Some suggestions that I’m getting ready to try but haven’t gotten around to include:

APPROACH #1:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec ac3 -ar 48000 -ab 192k -ac 6 -sameq -aspect 16:9 output.avi

Source: Ubuntu Forums

APPROACH #2:

For first pass run this one:

1	mencoder -noskip "BBC-Planets_7.avi" -o "BBC-Planets_7_1.wmv" -of lavf -lavfopts format=asf -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=wmv2:vbitrate=5000:vpass=1 -passlogfile "libvcodecstats.txt" -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=wmav2

For second pass run this one:

1	mencoder -noskip "BBC-Planets_7.avi" -o "BBC-Planets_7_1.wmv" -of lavf -lavfopts format=asf -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=wmv2:vpass=2 -passlogfile "libvcodecstats.txt" -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=wmav2

Source: http://edens-gate.com/blog/2008/07/13/convert-video-for-xbox-360/

Will either of these approaches work? Neither one did for me. Both failed. Note that one uses ffmpeg while the other relies on mencoder. 

Another possibility is to try WinFF.

Update: Wait, WinFF DID work on converting the AVI, but not sure if it converted to Xbox friendly AVI. I will test that and post here.

Sigh. So much for UbuntuLinux for converting videos to Xbox friendly format!!! 8->

Ideas? Suggestions?

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Exhilarating Experience – Upgrading to Moodle 2.2

If you missed the announcement, no problem, you can catch it here–Moodle 2.2 is available! The upgrade from Moodle 2.1 to 2.2 didn’t take all that long. The process was also straightforward (at least, the way I do it…I know others have different approaches). Before I go much further, I want to be up front and say “I’m not an expert” and I’m learning this as I go. That said, it has worked for me and I’m open to new and better approaches.

1) On RedHat Linux server, but this will work on UbuntuLinux since I’ve tried it out there, too, you can start in this way:

~$ sudo su

~$ rm -rf $(ls -d –file-type /var/www/html/moodle_directory/* | grep -v config.php)

This first puts you in admin mode, then removes all files in the Moodle directory except the all important config.php file. You essentially have an empty directory except for the config.php file.

2) Copy the Moodle 2.2 php files to the moodle_directory:

~$ cp -rv /home/mguhlin/moodle22/* /var/www/html/moodle_directory/

Before taking Step 2, if you have any custom blocks, mods, themes, it would be a good idea to plug them in the right places. I keep copies elsewhere so I can easily copy them over in one fell swoop. To be honest, I haven’t settled on my favorite mods in Moodle 2.x yet (aside from Book and Certificate).

3) Go to the Notifications page of your Moodle site

http://webserver/moodle_directory/admin

I wish I knew if there was a way to do the upgrade process via the command line rather than the notifications page on the web. Something I need to do more research on!

An alternate way of automating all this, especially if you have multiple instances of Moodle running is to setup a bash script (which I’m still a newbie at making)…copy-n-paste, customize and save as “upgrademoodle.sh” then execute it with sudo sh ./upgrademoodle.sh

#!/bin/bash

echo “Starting Moodle instance upgrade….”

rm -rf $(ls -d –file-type /var/www/html/moodle_directory/* | grep -v config.php) 

cp -rv /home/mguhlin/moodle22/* /var/www/html/moodle_directory/

rm -rf $(ls -d –file-type /var/www/html/moodle_directory2/* | grep -v config.php) 

cp -rv /home/mguhlin/moodle22/* /var/www/html/moodle_directory2/

echo “Halfway through….”

rm -rf $(ls -d –file-type /var/www/html/moodle_directory3/* | grep -v config.php) 

cp -rv /home/mguhlin/moodle22/* /var/www/html/moodle_directory3/

echo “Upgrade Complete”

Does it work? Yes…I did 14 Moodle instances quicker than you could blink with this approach. Of course, you want to make sure that Moodle22 directory has everything you want in it before you start. This approach can also work on Mac Snow Leopard servers.

Doing things via the command line has been an exhilarating experience…and things move faster at the command line (which keeps you alert!).

Image source

Terminal. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/64/224740842_e84f7e6346_m.jpg

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Light and Easy – Linux on the Desktop

Gartner, Inc. predicts that more than 50% of organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs. And for the projected 80% of users who skipped Vista, the road from XP to Windows 7 isn’t going to easy.* Add to that tight purse strings and delayed PC refresh cycles, and the reality is that organizations simply need to get more from their existing assets. Clearly the time to start a Windows 7 migration is now! Still, there’s no time to evaluate, implement and learn complex, costly tools to do so. Source: An email sent to me advertising something

Today, I had the chance to boot a desktop Dell Optiplex (forget the number) and, sure enough, the thing ran like a zombie missing a foot. The machine which was running some version of Windows XP left me wondering, “Why, oh why, are we still investing time and effort on Windows operating systems when they make a machine run so slow as time goes by?” 

Frustrated with the slow speed of the machine, I whipped out a handy 4-gig USB flash drive with Lubuntu 11.10 on it, and in a few, the old Dell Optiplex was running FAST, accessing the web, the cloud, Evernote, a remote server via ssh, playing audio in the background. As I watched others struggle with their desktops for the same reason, I had to smile.

When I consider the suggestions drawn from the Gartner report quoted at the top of this blog entry, the reality is that organizations need to get more from their existing assets! And the best way to accomplish that is to load an unobtrusive GNU/Linux distribution (OS) that will get out of people’s way, maximize the available power of the computer.

Have you tried Lubuntu, Peppermint Two, or any other similar Linux that lets you access the cloud fast?

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MyNotes – There’s Arsenic in Your Kids’ Apple Juice

Source: https://mguhlin.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/poison.jpg

At the kitchen table a few mornings ago, my daughter was swigging arsenic-laced apple juice (Mott’s). “Can’t I have just ONE more glass of apple juice?” She was a bit skeptical. 

Various brands of apple juice and apple sauce were tested and unfortunately one sample of Mott’s Apple Juice registered 55 parts per billion of arsenic. To put this into perspective, 55 parts per billion is more than five times the level of arsenic that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows in drinking water. (Source)

“Did you know,” I asked her–as she sipped her Mott’s apple juice–after reading this article, “what the main problem with arsenic is, aside from the fact that in larger quantities, it can kill you?”


“What?” she responded. “Decreased intellectual ability.” 


“Ok,” replied my honor student ranked 5 in her class. “I’m done.”


Whether this kind of reaction is warranted, it’s amazing that poisons like arsenic can find their way into juices children drink and nothing is said about it to the general public. I don’t know about you, but the feeling I get is that the conversation at the FDA went a little like this:

“Should we share that there’s more arsenic in children’s apple juice than water?”
“No, let’s not start a panic. We’ll just tell the companies what the problem is and then they can quietly remove it.”
“Don’t you think ‘the people’ should know?”
“Yes, but since arsenic hasn’t caused any serious problems–no one’s died choking on their arsenic apple juice this morning, have they?!? [laugh]–it can wait a bit longer.”

Sigh. Isn’t a little arsenic in your diet good for the liver? Maybe we should be giving cloves of garlic to our children along with their apple juice.


Should we be worried about arsenic in our juice? I don’t know, honestly, as I stand here throwing out apple juice boxes. Ah well. Better safe than sorry, right?


Quotes:

There’s Arsenic in Your Kids’ Apple Juice | Mother Jones

• There’s Arsenic in Your Kids’ Apple Juice —By Tom Philpott| Wed Nov. 30, 2011 11:08 AM PST
• The FDA currently does not regulate arsenic levels in fruit juices, CR reports. But for bottled and tap water, the agency enforces a standard of no more than 10 parts per billion of arsenic.
• Samples were drawn from juice in both concentrate and ready-to-drink forms, including juice boxes. All of the samples contained discernible arsenic samples; nine of them, or 10 percent of the total, were found to have arsenic levels that exceeded the drinking-water limit of 10 parts per billion. The samples were also tested for lead—and 25 percent showed levels higher than the FDA’s lead standard for bottled water, which is 5 ppb. 
• “most” of the arsenic it found in juices was of the toxic inorganic variety. And while in an online Q&A about apple juice and arsenic, the FDA calls organic arsenic “essentially harmless,” it adds a few paragraphs later that “some scientific studies have shown that two forms of organic arsenic found in apple juice could also be harmful, and because of this, the FDA counts these two forms of organic arsenic in with the overall content for inorganic arsenic.”
• the FDA is in fact “seriously considering” setting limits on the amount of arsenic it will allow in juice and is “collecting all relevant information to evaluate and determine an appropriate level.”
• And steady exposure to low levels of arsenic is linked to reduced intellectual capacity. Consumer Reports points to a 2004 study by Columbia University researchers showing decreased intellectual function in children exposed to drinking water with arsenic levels above 5 ppb as well as a 2011 study by Texas researchers finding that low-level arsenic exposure is “significantly related to poorer scores in language, visuospatial skills, and executive functioning” and “poorer scores in global cognition, processing speed, and immediate memory.”
• “Recent studies have shown that early childhood exposure to arsenic carries the most serious long term risk,” researcher  Joshua Hamilton of the Marine Biological Laboratory told Consumer Reports. “So even though reducing arsenic exposure is important for everyone, we need to pay special attention to protecting pregnant moms, babies, and young kids.”
• The brands that fared worst (again, I should stress the caveat about sample size) were Walgreens grape juice, Welch’s grape juice, Walmart’s Great Value apple juice, and Mott’s apple juice in juice boxes. Samples of the two organic brands in the test, Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value organic apple juice and Gerber Organic apple juice, had arsenic content of around 7 parts per billion (Whole Foods) and 5 parts per billion (Gerber)—well above Consumer Union’s desired threshold, but below the FDA’s drinking-water standard.
• Tom Philpott is the food and ag blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Get Tom Philpott’s RSS feed.

Learn Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.

When my Dad passed away on October 7, 2006, a big part of what was lost included his experience, the stories that only he could tell with such enthusiasm and humor. Those stories are, for the most part, gone. I remember them, but not how to tell them in a way that reverberated in the same way.

One consequence of the loss of his experience also involved losing access to a precious resource. Like any young man (or middle-aged one as my teenager is apt to point out), one’s father is a source of wisdom about a life question. Often, that wisdom came in the form of practical advice or reframing a situation so that the question became less about what others would do, but how I would find a way ahead amidst uncertain conditions.

This morning, I found myself at Home Depot, buying one of those snake like slinky coils (“a flex hose”) to conduct the hot air from the back of my clothes dryer to the hole in the wall. I’d had an off and on struggle with the darn thing, trying to get it to stay on. It was one of those situations I gladly would have called my Dad for. In some ways, I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been a homeowner for some time now…why didn’t I know the best way to attach that silvery hose to the back of the dryer so it would stay put?

Fortunately, the Home Depot folks helped me out…I bothered the greeter, the two ladies in the kitchen cabinet area, and finally, the man who put the right equipment in my hands that will get the job done (I haven’t tried it yet…I want to reflect a bit longer on what needs to be done).

Afterwards, my wife asked, “Why didn’t you google it?” as we drove through the windy wet misty that made going outside such an unpleasant chore. “You know,” I replied, “I don’t know.” Why hadn’t I availed myself of the most powerful tool available, the pooled knowledge of humanity online?

Bloggers, podcasters, search engines and digital content creators of all types of have made it possible  for us to learn virtually anything we want to even if we don’t have the money. If you want to learn anything chances are there is somebody creating content about the subject and sharing it with the world at no cost.

Source:  5 Ways to Give Yourself an Education that Kicks the Crap Out of the One You Got in School 

These resources would have been helpful and alleviated some of my frustration:

1. http://www.ehow.com/how_4785099_install-clothes-dryer-vent-flap.html
2. http://www.ehow.com/how_7927947_vent-clothes-dryer-inside.html
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yQXmq_BdUY&feature=related

Dad probably would have helped me do the work described in the resources. In his absence, I’m grateful for those who have taken the time to prepare these resources for me!

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Co-Learning Revolution – Wake Up, Sleepwalkers!

Read David Moody’s book, Autumn (and sequels!)

Having caught up on sleep, settled important matters (finished reading a series of books I’ve been taking forever to work my way through, even as I enjoy every moment), I have to confess a bit of disappointment in the current realm of “ed reform” talk. The disappointment arises more from my own sense of failure as a change agent. In the end, the “man in the mirror” wakes up one day and realizes, “Well, YOU know how to use these awesome tools but transforming the organizations that impact students is a job for consultants.” You know what I mean, right? We bring in high-priced consultants to give the talk but when that consultant leaves, the change that appeared so possible in the intimate darkness of the conference hall has evaporated.

Have you heard talks based on the perspectives cited in the paragraph below? More importantly, how many tweets have you read that fall into the categories outlined?

…there are many who tote that the education system of today is deeply and seriously flawed, and we need to completely throw it out and start from scratch — brand new and shiny…with Technology!  For this reason, technology can get put at the front of this movement of people going for change, both by those in favour of the change, and by those not in favour of the change.  For instance, those wanting change will say things like “Today’s kids need to learn the technologies they will work on when they grow up!” and “Technology today can revolutionize the way we teach!”.  On the other hand, those who don’t want change can also put Technology use at the forefront suggesting things such as “Trying to put Technology into education is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole: it just doesn’t work”, or “Just because it’s the fad today, don’t ruin our schools by changing the curriculum around it!”.

Source: Robert Talbert, Technology for Education

Wonderful conversations are happening all around us, and our PLNs connect us to those…but there are entire populations of educators who have missed it completely. Are we, as professional learning facilitators, simply awakening a generation of sleepwalkers (must resist Walking Dead reference) who happen to serve as administrators, teachers? I so often feel these folks are just going through the motions, asleep to the powerful potential of the network. Let’s identify our tweets ahead of time…

1. Education system is flawed, throw it out, and start from scratch.
2. Implement new technology approach that changes everything.
3. Focus on the important stuff (curriculum-driven) and leave technology out of it (it’s a distraction).

The insight that keeps on coming up in conversations filtered via Twitter, etc. is the power of the PLN, how Twitter has changed our lives, etc. As I look around at the great hope of technologies in schools, a part of me asks, “Is this it?” You know, it’s like Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As It Gets. IS THIS as good as it gets in schools? 

A lot of what passes for revolutionary tweets are just pithy remarks that don’t amount to a hill of beans.  For example… recent conversations DO seem to be technology-centric. 

• Change is all about the technologies we advocate for rather than what we can accomplish with them.
• What we can accomplish is so powerfully different and commonplace–yeah, big deal…so what if you can Skype someone around the world?–that we have to do it with the most expensive and flamboyant way (e.g. let me do that on my $500 iPad with FaceTime instead of my <=$200 netbook with built-in webcam and Skype).
• Schools are increasingly irrelevant as they seek to restricts students to technology tools that have grown obsolete in the face of mobile devices (e.g. iPads).
• Schools are under attack, but many are more worried about acquiring the latest gadget (e.g. Kindle Fire vs iPad vs Xoon) that will give them independence from school technologies that are invariably locked down and overly-monitored and controlled.

If you’ve monitored much of the tweets going by, they include #pencilchat, #football, or these crazy remarks that have no basis in reality. Enough already. Far more exciting are events that focus less on the glitz and glamour of new tech and more on how to enjoy the flow:

El Paso – Learning online, reducing paper and making learning interactive; Those are the goals of local teachers who got together Saturday to learn about technology.
They want to incorporate computers, iPads, and Google Apps in their classrooms. That’s why they held an “Ed-Camp” at the E.P.I.S.D. Center for Career and Technology Education.
“technology, you have to be at the forefront with that because it changes so rapidly and your students come in knowing more than you do practically as a teacher. So, just the fact that you have to be open minded, not be afraid to use technology, and let some of your students guide some of the learning,” Instructional Technology Specialist Kathrin Salazar said. (Read Source)

Let’s review Kathrin’s points: Open-minded. Unafraid of technology use and be a co-learner. 

Co-learning is a philosophy of teaching that I first stumbled upon in 1996 when reading Frank Smith’s book Joining the Literacy Club.  I really enjoyed the concept of co-learning, especially how it changes the role sets of teachers and students from dispensers and receptacles of knowledge to joint sojourners on the quest for knowledge, understanding, and dare I say wisdom.   

Positioning oneself as a co- learner when teaching requires much unlearning of cultural conditioning because it challenges the traditional authoritative, dominant and subordinate role sets in schooling environments and the unequal power relationships in wider spheres of our world- – including economic structures.   

In its ideal form, co- learning: acts toward student empowerment; it dismantles asymmetrical power relationships in the classroom; it builds a more genuine “community of practice”; and co- learning moves students and teachers toward dynamic and participatory engagement in creating a peaceful and sustainable world.  Ideal?  Yes.  Possible? Potentially, but dependent.  Dependent on our desire and willingness to reflect on our own teaching to try to align our classroom roles, relationships and environments more with a co-learning philosophy.

Source: Empowerment Pedagogy-Co-Learning and Teaching by Edward J. Brantmeier 

Are we co-learners as leaders, as teachers, as students? Isn’t it time we took this “old” idea and embraced it?

It’s time for teachers to snap the measuring stick in school administrators hands.  The stick that measures the cadence of a million walkers, marching to the same song – “Teach this way. Teach this, learn that, measure it ad nauseum.” It’s not that these approaches are wrong, but that they keep the power of learning firmly in the hands of the superintendent of schools…and if technology powered revolution is anything, it is a tool to disempower central authority.

(Image Source: http://slices-of-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/sleep-walking-bloopers.jpg)

Would it be hubris to say that to bring about technology revolution, one need simply allow technologies to proliferate in society, to advocate for responsible use in all situations, and then allow the change to happen. Certainly, they are dropping in cost. Over the last 20 years, I’ve had a chance to play a variety of roles in edtech adoption. Some mornings, I wake up and hold these truths to be self-evident, or, at least until I eat breakfast:

1. School leadership seldom “get new technologies” because they threaten the status quo, placing them in potentially precarious situations that leave them with few measures of control.
2. Society’s adoption of technologies invariably finds its way into the lives of students, teachers, parents and community, and the change just happens.
3. If you want to really be about a learning revolution, then one way to go about it is to ask questions that get people thinking of what life could be like WITH the technology that is blocked, to share stories of how it’s being used elsewhere, and then step back….

But then, maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe, I’ve grown frustrated with attempts to bring about large scale change to organizations, preferring instead to preach change and seek out organizations that recognize what’s needed rather than reform those that may never “see the light.”

Some point out that the iPad is a revolutionary device. I suppose it is. But I think this device has more potential to reach those poor kids in public schools, to fundamentally transform how we approach computing…not as a device for reform, revolution, a tool of the elite that must be provided to all, a tool that is locked down by the vendors to generate money, but a tool that empowers, that allows co-learning to take place in ways we never imagined…simply because it is free, open source.

The $25 computer – Raspberry Pi The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

Of course, I’m probably wrong. Most folks would rather buy an iPad than a $25 portable computer…because it’s all about mobile computing now, isn’t it?

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#Giveaway – Free #SnowFox Screen Recorder

There are lots of different screencapture/screencasting tools available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux! Some of the ones I’ve used recently include the following:

1) BB Flashback Recorder – This is a free program that allows you to record your screen for an unlimited amount of time depending on your hard drive space and then save the video/audio recording to FLV or AVI video formats. For example, I recently recorded a how-to install Moodle 2.1 using XAMPP on Windows, and BB Flashback Recorder did a wonderful job! This product works on Windows only.

2) Jing Project – Techsmith is a well-known name in this area, and Jing was one of the first tools I used to record short video recordings no longer than 5 minutes (a limit). You are, of course, encouraged to purchase the Camtasia Pro product that allows unlimited recording and allows for simple editing. This products works on Mac and Windows computers.

A new giveaway from SnowFox Software, running December 7-11, 2011 is for Screen Recorder. Here’s the announcement I received via email:

This is Jodie from SnowFox Software. Glad to cooperate with you again. We will give away SnowFox Screen Recorder from December 7th to December 11th, 2011. I think your reader may feel interested about this. So it’s appreciated if you could post this information on your website before hand.Free activate SnowFox Screen Recorder page, Duration: December. 7th, 2011 to December. 11th, 2011. 

For Facebook fans: http://www.facebook.com/snowfoxsoft?sk=app_213173445359798 

Website: http://www.snowfoxsoft.com/screen-recorder.htmlBTW, SnowFox software provides up to 60% OFF on Christmas big bundles: http://www.snowfoxsoft.com/special-offer/christmas-2011-60-percent-off.html

Give it a whirl for free. 

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Learning Roundup #moodle #pmwiki #wiki #ubuntulinux

Wow, it’s been a fun week so far! I’ve learned a lot and haven’t taken the time to write it down. So, allow me to quickly go over some problems and solutions suggested by colleagues:

#1 – Google to Moodle Single-Sign-On Integration

Source: http://keemanxp.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/image/moodle-google.jpg

Problem:

I have School A, who has Google accounts.
School A people want to connect to Moodle and use Single Sign On. That is, they login to the Moodle using their Google username and password.
Is that possible?
Another way to put it: Google users already exist and i want Moodle to check Google, as if it were LDAP Authentication, before creating the user in Moodle.

Solution:

While Moodle to Google Single Sign On (SSO) solution has been clearly charted, the reverse path didn’t appear to be. Thanks to Colin Matheson for answering this one via the MoodleMayhem email list! An excerpt from his response:

It looks like this thread
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=85188And this site linked in the thread
http://itvet.org/googaps/

I am now trying this solution out on Moodle 2.1. Cross your fingers with me and let’s hope.

By the way, here are some must-read resources for Moodle to Google SSO:

• Moodle-Google SSO – http://code.google.com/p/moodle-google/
• GoogleApps Integration – http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Google_Apps_Integration
• Forum Discussion – http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=117354
• Ben Wilkoff’s blog entry – http://learningischange.com/2009/02/25/the-killer-app-google-apps-and-moodle-integration/
• Rusty Meyner’s post – http://moodle.eustaceisd.net/mod/wiki/view.php?id=1101&page=Setup+Single+Sign-on+Integration+of+Google+Apps+for+Education+and+Moodle

#2 – Storage Solution since Joomla has Failed
A school organization I know has locked down their web server. The reason? Joomla 1.5, which they were running, is apparently easy to hack a la PHP injection, resulting in visitors being routed to web sites fraught with malware. To deal with the solution, the organization has “battened down the hatches” and locked everything on their Red Hat Linux server. What to do, though? Joomla web site maintainers for the organization–over 200–need some place to store their content. That left the organization without a solution for their over 200 site web maintainers to upload documents, images, etc. using the Joomla interface!

Since “fixing security holes” involved a complete lock-down, I suggested placing files on another server that was “secure” and giving people the ability to upload content there. They could always use the absolute link (URL) to the content (e.g. image, PDF) to access it and embed that URL in Joomla editor. Given that the alternative was spending a lot of money on Joomla consultants, they agreed.

At first, I thought I might use Moodle to get this done for them. I even went so far to set it up but the recent Moodle 1.9.5 security update on 11/28/2011 stopped the behavior that allowed for guest access to Files in a Moodle course. What a pain!

During lunch today, I remembered that PMWiki.org–a PHP only wiki, no MySQL needed–has a great self-hosted wiki solution that would work! I use PMWiki for Knowledge Management and other stuff, so I was kicking myself for not thinking about this before!

With the addition of a few add-ons to PMWiki, I had a simple solution that allowed end users to access a single page, upload their documents, images, whatever, but that they had to login to. It looks like this:

Reflecting on this solution, I’m reminded about how important it is to be aware of the capabilities of all the tools in your arsenal. . .implementing this solution–training the end users–was FAR easier than the Moodle solution I jumped to. And, Moodle was only arrived at extensive efforts at customizing SFTP settings.

Keep it simple. Wow.

#3 – Setting Up an UbuntuLinux Server for Production
What a thrill it’s been to set up an UbuntuLinux server for a company on my off-time. I’m still struggling through the process for SSL Certificates and Mail Server, but I’m pleased to report that the setup is working as expected (it was intended for Moodle 2.1 instance). Here are my evolving notes via Evernote (which has been an invaluable aid in keeping track of notes from different web sites); I’m updating them as I go through the process.

#4 – MoodleCourses from Utah
Jon Fila (MoodleShare.com) points to the following:

I know that some of you have been having trouble restoring backup copies from the OHSU. I have been in touch with one of their administrators and she has updated all of the backup copies. I can verify that they do work. I have uploaded and provided backups for all of their courses to http://courses.moodleshare.com

Great stuff, and thanks so much to Colin, Jon, and others who made me think!

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