Author: Chris

Teacher. Blogger. Podcaster. Asks way too many questions.
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Name that Network

By default, your computer’s drives usually have creative names like “My Computer” or “Macintosh HD”. Home wireless networks usually have equally uninteresting default names, like “linksys” or “netgear”, or that ultimate of all default SSID names, “default”. USB Memory sticks and portable USB drives often have even less interesting names, usually based on their brand, or a series of random characters.

Some people give their computing equipment names that make them a little more interesting, or at least a little more unique and personal. I’ve seen people use names of planets, Greek gods, fictional characters, and many other esoteric collections as the source of inspiration for the names of their networks and computing gear. I once worked as the network manager in a Catholic school where all the servers were named after saints. IT geeks often have an unusual sense of humour, and it commonly shows up in things like this.

As I was running some backups tonight on my two main home computers, my attention was drawn to the names I’ve given to my own machines, drives and home network over the last few years. There is a common, albeit fairly geeky, thread behind their names.

See if you guess where I got my inspiration from… if you think you know where these names come from, drop me a comment below.

My MacBook Pro’s hard drive is named Raskin and the backup drive is named Atkinson. My iMac’s hard drive is named Hertzfeld, and it has a backup drive named Engelbart and several terabytes of attached storage on drives named Wozniak and Tesler. Finally, my wifi network is named Espinosa.

If you can tell me what all these names have in common, without Googling them, then you are obviously pretty darn geeky yourself!

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You Don’t Have To Like It

I just read a post on a mailing list where the topic touched on teachers that struggle with technology.  The phrase that really got me going was something about making allowances for teachers who don’t like or understand technology (whether they are new grads or close to retirement) and how this is all a bit hard for them. This is something I feel really passionate about so I have to say it…

Technology in schools is NOT a new thing.

I just cannot accept excuses about technology being optional, whether it’s from someone who is new to teaching or others who are close to retirement. There are children in those classrooms every day who deserve the best education we can offer them, and it is completely unfair if that education is less than it should be because someone wants to pick and choose which aspects of their job they feel are important.  No child should have to put up with out of date learning experience just because their close-to-retirement teacher is “taxiing to the hangar”.

Computers started appearing in classrooms back when I was still at teachers college more than 25 years ago. There has been an expectation from EVERY school, school system and government policy that I’ve worked under in the past 20 years to embed and integrate technology into the education process.  Using technology in the learning process, and having some understanding of it and what it enables our students to do, is NOT something that was dreamed up in the last few months, or that appeared suddenly with the DER/BER/<insert acronomyn here>.

I’m so tired of having the integration of technology into learning overlooked because it’s “too hard”. As educators – actual professional educators, who actually go into classrooms every day and teach for a living – we do NOT have the luxury of choosing whether we should be integrating technology, or whether we want to learn more about it, or whether we think it’s relevant to the learning process.  It is, it’s part of the job and if people don’t think so, then they ought to be getting a copy of the Saturday paper and looking for a something else to do where they CAN be selective about what part of the job they are willing to take seriously without it impacting on our future generations.

Your government, your state, your diocese, your school system, your school, have all been mandating this technology integration requirement for at least 20 years that I’m aware of. Every school I’ve ever worked for has dedicated many hours and dollars to providing professional development, training, resources and equipment to make it happen.  The fact that we are STILL having this conversation about teaching professionals who are not up to speed with this stuff after all this time is downright embarrassing to the profession.

It makes me crazy when I hear people talking about using technology in the classroom as  being “hard”, as though it’s also optional.  Every job has hard bits, but if they are part of the job, you just learn to do them.

You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.

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The Cloud

He rolled his eyes and tried not to look distrustful. “I’m not sure about all this ‘cloud computing’ nonsense. It seems to me it’s just a passing fad and a huge security risk.  I’d never trust my important stuff there. I’d only put my files on my own computer. I like to know where they are so I can get to them when I need them.”

His friend responded with a wry grin. “Do you have a bank account?”, he asked.

The cloud sceptic replied, “Yes, of course I do.”

“Well… what do you think that is?   Do you think your pile of money is sitting in your very own little personal vault somewhere with your name on it?”, he smiled.

“No”, he continued, “your money is nothing more than a record in a computer database, a series of 0s and 1s kept on a server somewhere as a series of magnetic codes. You don’t know where your money is kept or what sort of machine it’s kept on, or who maintains it, or how often it’s backed up. You don’t know what operating system it uses or what type of database it is. You just know that when you go to the ATM, money comes out the slot. That’s all that matters. You don’t need to go to the same bank that you deposited at, and you don’t get back the exact same pieces of paper that you put into the account. All you know is that you put your stuff somewhere, and then you can access it from anywhere.”

That’s what the cloud is.