These are my notes from the MinistrySafe online training video for churches. This is a required training program our church has paid for all adult volunteers who work with children and youth to complete. My wife saw these trainers (who are lawyers in the Dallas area) present in person and helped bring this training program
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In September 2011, I had a wonderful opportunity to spend most of the day with Bob Sprankle at Wells Elementary School in Wells, Maine. The day had an auspicious start at the Maine Diner in Wells. If you ever have a chance to eat there, don’t miss it! Thanks to David Warlick and the New
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(cross-posted from balancedfiltering.org) Update 11/16: Note the original title of this article has been changed, my intent in writing this is not to personally attack the reporter who wrote the article, but rather call attention to these issues which desperately need clarifying in our communities. Update 11/17: After reaching out to the newspaper reporter via
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I spent four or five hours today helping a local non-profit group in Oklahoma City get access restored to their WordPress website. The site was hacked by a group apparently from Turkey. They were not able to login to the administrative “dashboard” of their WordPress site. Instead of a login screen, the following message in
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Cross-posted from Balanced Filtering in Schools. eSchoolNews’ August 17, 2011 article, “ACLU sues Missouri school district over internet filtering,” provides details about a new lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Camdenton R-III School District in central Missouri. The lawsuit is part of the ACLU’s “Don’t Filter Me” campaign. Camdenton Schools are
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“Dad, I just learned about this great website for playing games and meeting friends! Can I join it?” My eleven year old daughter asked me this question a couple of weeks ago about the website Spark City, which is part of the larger website AllGirlsArcade.com. I told her I would check it out and decide
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These are the presentation slides I’ll be using in Monday’s presentation, “Smart Networks,” at the the 14th Annual August Institute, “Technology Runs Through It” conference at the University of Montana in Missoula. The official conference “blurb” for this session is: Strategies to support a web-based learning environment such as filtering, infrastructure, bandwidth and safety issues.
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Following today’s fortuitous find of an Apple Airport Extreme Router for $40 at a local pawn shop, I needed to configure it for home content filtering as well as videoconferencing. After resetting the router to factory defaults, I turned it on (after power cycling my cable modem) and configured it to create a wireless network
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Socioclean is a web application (currently free) which will scan all your Facebook tagged photos and public status/wall posts for anything which might be inappropiate and therefore damaging to your professional digital footprint. I was quite surprised my Facebook page initially earned a “C” on the site, but I got my grade changed to an
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The 4 minute video segment, “Smartphone pictures pose privacy risks” by NBC news in November 2010 highlights the risks posed by photo geotagging and social networking sites. Unfortunately, like some other mainstream media press reports on social media, the implications of the segment are irresponsibly portrayed in an extreme, out-of-balance matter. The reporters imply posting
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While numerous websites are available today which can be used to share educational content with students, parents and others, it is VERY important to be aware of advertising and the specific types of advertising which websites utilize. This post provides a case in point. I’ve experimented with the free webservice Wirenode.com to create a “mobile
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Did you watch the Super Bowl on television last night and see the Bridgestone “Reply All” commercial? David Zax’ article on February 3rd for FastCompany, “Super Bowl Ad Stories: How a Real “Reply-All” Faux Pas Yielded Comedy Gold” tipped me off this would be one to watch. The video is about an oh-so-easy to do
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Will Richardson shared numerous thought provoking ideas as well as article and book recommendations in his presentation in Amarillo today, “Learning in a Networked World: For Our Students and For Ourselves.” One of the standouts which I read after his presentation, waiting here in the Amarillo airport for my flight home, is Steven Johnson’s May
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I’m presenting a morning session with Karen Montgomery on Monday in Amarillo, Texas, on “Social Media Guidelines for Schools” for the “Teaching the 21st Century Student” conference. We are going to use several stories and case studies in the presentation to encourage discussion about the issues social media raises for educators as well as students.
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I nominated myself this evening for TEDxOKC, which is scheduled for April 8, 2010, in Oklahoma City. The nomination form requires three video links and a short paragraph. I used the following: Why All Learners Need Laptops NOW! View more webinars from Wesley Fryer. Reinventing Education for the 21st Century (Designing School 2.0) View more
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Yesterday at the 2010 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, my 10 year old daughter and I shared a breakout session titled, “When Student Published Videos Go Viral: Lessons Learned.” In our discussions we focused on four different viral videos which can be considered case studies for student media publishing: Jessi Slaughter (Jessica
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These are my notes from Alice Barr’s breakout session, “Digital Citizenship for our Schools” at the the 2010 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, NH on 30 Nov 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Track conference conversations using the Twitter hash tag #cmtc10. Alice is the Instructional Technology Integrator at Yarmouth High
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Google web products have become essential to the ways I process and share information. Thanks to tweets from ALA_TechSource and B Ahrens today I learned about the Google Dashboard. It provides not only an overview of the different Google services utilized and connected to a particular Google Account, but also enables privacy and sharing options
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This may be the most important post you’ll read on my blog from a personal, digital security standpoint. If you use ANY website today which requires a login but does NOT use a “persistent https” secure connection thereafter, you’re at MAJOR risk of having your account(s) hacked if you use open, wifi hotspots in coffee
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There were lots of interesting announcements during Apple’s special event today in Cupertino. Among those I’ve seen so far reading coverage by Ars Technica is this: In its newest iteration, iMovie ’11 is gaining a few features, some lifted from past versions of iPhoto. Apple has added a face-identifying feature to iMovie, similar to iPhoto’s
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