Hi, I’m Cory and I’m a PC.

At least I have been all my life. Lately that has not been so much a decision but the only option that was financially viable. Allow me to explain.

Last Christmas my wife and I decided we needed a computer at home. I had been doing most of my prep work at school and she felt a little isolated with no email and/or Facebook. So we started looking at various options.

I have become interested in producing videos recently after watching both Brittown and Choppertown and speaking with Kyle Randall who produces and host Wilderness Journal for PBS. Side note: Kyle has an amazing life story; if you ever get the opportunity to hear him speak take it!

I asked Kyle what program they use to produce the Wilderness Journal. I also asked James Ford who teaches a multimedia class through CCRESA and runs a video production business called Great Lakes Digital Video what program he suggested. Both told me they use Final Cut Pro from Apple. I really wanted to be able to produce quality video dealing with traditional hot rods and kustoms that was suitable for use in schools or with kids of any age but that still appealed to adults.

Combine that desire with the, literally, days I spent removing an LOP infection from my parents computer after my little brother downloaded Windows Live Messenger and you can understand why I really wanted a MAC. The one thing holding my wife and I back was the price. I could not rationalize spending almost twice as much on a Mac so, dude, we bought a Dell.

The computer required a bunch of software updates when we connected it to the internet as well as activating the McAfee security suite. It came with a cool Bluetooth mouse and keyboard that worked great, except for the right arrow key which would sometimes not work or stick on causing you to scroll through all the dropdown menus at warp speed. Also, occasionally you would have to resynchronize the mouse and the keyboard. One time the mouse and the keyboard stop working so I had to run the store and pickup a cheap USB mouse to get the system working.

Then my wife got tired of the right arrow button sticking so she called Dell tech support in India. The guy she spoke with had no idea what to do and was apparently just using a flow chart that he really could not understand. By the time he was done “helping” the mouse was not working and the little Bluetooth light on the keyboard had turned purple. After I went to the store and bought a new keyboard I was able to find out that particular problem was known as The Purple Light of Death and seems to mean the end of the line for the keyboard.

We spent almost a grand on a nice Studio Dell and I still had to go out and spend $35.00 on a mouse and a keyboard. Add that to the massive amount of extra stuff slowing down any new Dell and the constant threat of a nasty virus and it is easy to see why I am questioning the schools’ choice of staying all PC.

I did some searching and found that Mac is at roughly 10% of the market share and it is growing. Our students are bound to come across an Apple at some point, whether it is a job or college. Should we start to buy a few Macs when we replace some of the old PCs? Does your school have any Apples? If we did invest in Macs could we save money with fewer tech employees? What do you think?

Software

First off: I can’t seem to leave comments on others blogs while using Firefox. Is anybody else running into this?
I have been using Firefox for years because it is supposed to be a more secure program than IE and, in my opinion, is much more customizable and user friendly. Over the years I have found a few things that will only work in IE, like streaming movies from NetFlix, but I don’t believe I have had this happen before. I guess I’ll have to go back, find the posts I was reading, and rewrite my comments. It’s not like I have anything else to do. Oh wait…

Secondly: My school switched to OpenOffice this year as our Microsoft Office contract runs out at the end of the year. OpenOffice is a free, open source program similar to Microsoft Office, but obviously much less expensive. I have not had much experience on OpenOffice as I have, to this point, had little reason to use it. I’ve always used Microsoft and will probably continue to use it at home. I guess this just means more problems converting what I do at home to usable stuff at school. I know that things are supposed to transfer over but I’ve had different experiences.
My big question with OpenOffice is where is it used? Shouldn’t we be preparing our students for the software that they are going to see in college and the workplace?

I’ll write up a lesson plan in OpenOffice this week and let you know how it goes.

Murphy’s Laws of Technology

Last Friday I had my first of two observations for the year. I hate being observed. It is like being under a microscope, I feel like every move I make is being checked against the texts from my education cohorts! The worst part is, no matter how well I prepare the tables can change at any minute and could be forced to adapt to a situation I had no idea was coming. If a student throws up his breakfast or throws a fit I can’t just bust out Agent Michael Scarn and order people to do what I say. And That’s too bad.

So I was giving a PowerPoint (power point, power point….. power point) on airbags (actually it is the lesson plan I made for this class). I found had two good clips of airbags being deployed in slow motion, one of the driver’s side and one of the passenger’s side. They were saved on my computer at work, so I put them on a thumb drive, took them home and used them in the PowerPoint. They worked when I put them on my computer and assembled the presentation. They worked when I ran the PowerPoint from the flash drive.

However, when I got to school in front of twenty nine students and my principle they did not work. Not at all. I tried clicking them with the mouse, I tried right clicking, and I tried the space bar. Nothing worked. Thus, I was forced to describe what happened in the clips. I’m sure it was riveting.

The big finish to my airbag presentation was supposed to be taking the class outside, principal in tow, setting an airbag off. I had a Suzuki airbag hooked up and waiting and two more in reserve in case the first one failed. And fail it did. So I hooked up the backup. Nothing. Surely, the third would not fail as well. It did, and stop calling me Shirley.

Thankfully the principal had left after the first back up failed to deploy. I took the kids back into the classroom and had two of my advanced students remove the driver’s side airbag from a Saturn that had been donated the year before. At the end of class I hooked the Saturn’s airbag up and it went off on the first try. Good ole GM.

The Great Satan or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Message Board

The internet service provider for my school district, St. Johns, is MMNET based in Ithaca, Michigan. MMNET uses the SmartFilter filtering software to block out sites on its list of inappropriate websites. SmartFilter is sort of a digital Gestapo that does much more than just block porn and bomb building websites.

According to its website, SmartFilter allows management or a tech department to:

Quickly understand how your organization is using the web and then drill down to identify trends, isolate problems, document inappropriate web activity, and tailor your filter settings to effectively enforce your web-usage policies

I understand that there is a need in a school setting to block some material, but the monitoring “advantages” of SmartFilter is a little too Big Brother for me.

That being said, I have a couple of problems with sites or categories that the SmartFilter administrators at MMNET have chosen to block.

The first example is the “Risqué Business” section of the urban myth website Snopes (which according to several pronunciation websites is pronounced like “nope” :-). Why would MMNET not want students to know whether or not Coke and Aspirin is an effective spermicide? (it’s not) The website has good information from reliable sources. Why prevent students from accessing this information? I don’t get it.

The second big issue with SmartFilter, or rather MMNET who administers it, is the way it indiscriminately blocks message boards. If you are not familiar with the term, message boards are websites, or sections of websites, set up so people with common interests can ask questions, share stores, trade or sell goods, etcetera. They can be extremely helpful, especially if you have a very specific question or just want to learn more about an out of the ordinary subject.

Let’s say you are an auto shop teacher (like me) at a high school that uses MMNET as an ISP (like mine does) and you want to know what cheap tools at Harbor Freight will hold up daily use and abuse. You could check out the Garage Journal message board and search “The Harbor Freight PASS/FAIL Thread...” The problem is you can’t, because the entire website is blocked.

Maybe you are a theater teacher who is putting on a production of a play set in the mid 1940’s and you want the costumes to be as historically accurate as possible. Would the men’s hats have a three and a half inch brim or a one inch brim? You should check out The Fedora Lounge, a message board that specializes in period clothing. Unfortunately, you can’t because The Fedora Lounge is also blocked by MMNET. (If you were still wondering, three to three and a half inches would be correct for the mid 1940’s)

In addition to randomly blocked message boards MMNET uses SmartFilter to block Yahoo Answers. So if I Google “how do you bypass the security module on a 1997 Saturn SL1” and someone has asked the exact same question on Yahoo Answers and received an answer I can’t see it.

I understand that there are legitimate reasons to block websites. I would not want my students stumbling across the NAMBLA (an organization that encourages homosexual pedophilia) message board, but why block an entire board that focuses on 1980’s Pontiac Firebirds? The current system needs a complete overhaul; either a new way to identify inappropriate websites (multiple instances of questionable words for example) or the entire list of inaccessible websites needs to be reevaluated and revised.

WorkKeys and KeyTrain

KeyTrain is an online program designed to help students prepare for the WorkKeys portion of the ACT test. There is a per-student charge for the program, which is paid for by our local Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA). KeyTrain focuses on several areas that students will be tested on during the Michigan Merit Exam (MME).

These areas include but are not limited to:

Reading for Information

Applied Mathematics

Locating Information

Introduction to Applied Technology

Applied Technology - Electricity

Applied Technology - Fluid Dynamics

Applied Technology - Mechanics

Applied Technology - Thermodynamics

Business Writing

Listening

Observation

Teamwork

Writing

Beginning Language

Beginning Mathematics

We focus on Applied Mathematics first and then Reading for Information and Locating Information. Not only are we better preparing or students for the work force we are including more math in the program which allows us to qualify for the Forth Year Contextual Math Credit under the MMC.

After three years of using KeyTrain with my vocational students, I am quite happy with the program. There is, however, one problem that falls more into the operation or interface area than into the actual subject matter.

In the Reading for Information section students are asked to identify specific information in a sentence or paragraph. During the practice portion they can click as much as they want until they find the correct answer. I have had several students who would rather click every word in a longer paragraph than actually read the paragraph and answer the question. This means they can complete an entire section, up to the quiz, without becoming any better prepared for the test. In my opinion this could be rectified by changing the method of selecting an answer from click until right to type the word into an answer box and then check it.