You Know It’s Fall

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

football.JPGI think fall is the best time of year.  Spring may be when the flowers bloom and all the plants start to grow, but fall is when we humans start fresh.

School starts a new year and all the sports programs begin again.  I have always enjoyed football the most.  It starts in the summer heat and ends with games played in the snow.  Add to that the excitement of the marching bands and tail-gating.

There is always a game to go to around here.  My brothers coaches.  My nephews play.  My kids cheer and are in the band.

It could only get better if all the Buckeye games were available through my cable provider.

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School Tech Support Costs on the Rise

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Here is shocking story from eSchool News.  As if schools had anywhere to go but up.  It seems the trend is the same as I remember it years ago.  For many schools, total cost of ownership equals acquisition cost.

Now that core infrastructures require more personal attention (tech support), districts are cutting professional development and instructional applications to make ends meet.

Most districts in Ohio have between one and two support people.  When I have my students research the numbers they typically find each support person is responsible for 200 to 400 computers.  These computers run everything from Windows 9x to XP (maybe Vista in a few cases now), OS X and maybe even Linux.  Add the servers on top of that and maybe a district wide phone system or POS system in the cafeteria.

In Ohio we have experienced a funding drought from the state in the last few years.  Many districts have drastically reduced the hardware budget.  It would not surprise me if these shifts in the percentages (no dollar figures are given in this report) aren’t due to the fact that schools aren’t buying the hardware they were a few years ago.  I don’t see more people being hired.  I see fewer support people in schools now than I have at any time in the last ten years.

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Quick Web 2.0 Drawing Tool

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Best4c has a completely online drawing tool called NetMapApplication.  There are icons for flowcharts, floor plans and networks among others.  It’s mostly drag and drop.  All icons are re-sizable (they work like vector images).  All the objects have snap points.  If objects are connected, moving them will automatically adjust the connecting lines to the new locations.  Objects can be moved up or down in layers to place specific items on top of others (like my hardware on top of the wires).

This drawing took a minute or two.

networkdiagram.png

To save your work, you have to setup an account.  I don’t know if that costs money (it may).  I did a screen capture when I had what I needed and saved that to my own file.  It’s hard to beat when you need to sketch out a diagram of a some equipment or room.

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Flood Pictures

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

findlayflood2007.pngSomeone has put together a few hundred pictures of the August 2007 flood in Findlay.  You can click through them or watch them in a slide show.

http://sidelinephotos.phanfare.com/album/389129/535360#imageID=24612159

One section also has pictures taken from an airplane.

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Positive Online Profile – POP

Posted on August 28, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

I’m starting something new with my students this semester.   I’m calling it “POP” or Positive Online Profile.

Each student starts by making sure he/she does not have pictures or posts on the web that show conduct unbecoming of a teacher.  If possible, those items are purged.  With all the archiving out there, someone really looking for dirt may still find it, but it should be out of the popular search engines.

Then we build up all the things that are positive. 

1 – Blog about educational topics
2 – Flickr photos of educational projects
3 – YouTube videos of lessons taught
4 – Online digital portfolio

All these things will have the students’ real names.  The idea is to get positive educational information at the top of all the search engines.  The only way to do this is to create a lot of positive information.  To move this information to the top of the search engines, other people need to link to it.  This is the hardest, most drawn out part of the project.  It may take years to get close to the top of the search engines. 

The students will participate in larger educational social networks.  Any time they work on group projects, they will link to each other.  They will also work with faculty members to establish those links.  In four years, as the students graduate, we hope potential employers will not only find our students’ positive information online, but they will also see how the students fit into the educational community.

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