My Technology Addictions

I seem to have started a few posts saying I can’t believe it is ……. since I posted to my blog and here I go again. Wow haven’t done anything since December ‘07 . I came to have a look at the many many spam comments that have come into my blog and delete them, because of this I have set comments to approval before they are seen. Then I thought I would have a look at what new themes were available and selected one.

After doing this I thought I had better not be so slack and actually create a post so ……. here it is.

I have been so busy over the past term, I have taken on some extra work at TAFE and most of my classes have kids between 16 - 18 who would normally be in the school system but due to one thing or another school has not worked for them. In Western Australia we have a policy where students need to be in full time education or work until the end of the year they turn 17. So if school doesn’t fit they have come to TAFE. Having these kids for 13 hours over three days is full on and this combined with my software development business has not left me much time and as such almost all of my online activities have suffered, until now - school holidays the following images sums things up nicely especially with my recent train trips to Perth and my lack of internet access on my ancient nokia phone.

Geek and Poke Sounds of Silence

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Geek and Poke Twitter Abstinence Syndrome

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I have met some really great people on twitter and facebook and my friends and followers continue to grow. Having these online contacts is good especially when working from home as it stops me feeling isolated. So if you haven’t yet used twitter or facebook have a go and see what you think. As with most things on a computer if you have a use for it whether it is software, online communities or even surfing the internet you will pursue with it if not you may view these things as time wasters but you wont know unless you try them yourself. Anyway enough chat for one night and with lots more thoughts rattling around in my head I will be coming a back a bit more often, hopefully someone will still be reading this.

  Timely warning for students

Today my students received a timely warning on personal security on the internet. In class we have created Gmail accounts then gone onto create iGoogle personalised home pages. They have created del.icio.us accounts and signatures for the Gmail email accounts. One task required them to email all of their class mates and their lecturer (me) and send a link to their del.icio.us accounts. This was as way of all students getting each others contacts and del.icio.us links.

As always in these sort of classes I go over security, guarding your personal information on the internet, logging in and our procedures and student code of conduct and internet usage policies that they have all signed and agreed to at the beginning of term.

On Thursday several students and myself received an email full of swearing and sounding very upset at the rest of the students in the class from one of the other students. I spoke to this student to ask if they were having trouble with the other class mates? No and the student when shown the email knew nothing about it. On further investigation we found the student was not at TAFE on Thursday and when going through the history on the PC where the email originated we found that the browser automatically signed into his Gmail account. Now after this episode all the students in the class Sign in and Sign out of their Google accounts. Just because a browser is closed and internet connection is also closed does not mean your account is also closed especially if you have selected to ”Remember me on this computer” then someone else can come along and log into your accounts. Beware.

 Sign in & ALWAYS  Sign out

 

Yawn 6am get up for trip from Mandurah to Perth on a Saturday and first day of my holidays was hard to take but it proved well worth the hassle. After much trepidation about attending a new event where I only would know a couple of people I walked in the doors of Central TAFE to attend the 1st BarCampPerth on Saturday. I had recently become a Twitter convert or maybe addict just days before the BarCamp so was good to get the f2f experience with these people.

I Googled most of the names that kept appearing on the Wiki as presenters and read through their blogs to find who what etc about them, what I found before I went was that they all had far more experience in web than I did. Other than when I attended the MEDC in Melbourne this would have to be the best event I have attended, cant really call it a conference as it is classed as an unconference. It was well organised and thanks must go to Myles for all the great work and of course to Jordan for the constant supply of coffee. I have never met such a relaxed group of people willing to share and listen to others, no cliques here and because of all the wonderful sponsors it was free and Bronwen handed out free PerthNorg t-shirts.

     
mmmmm Coffee                           TShirts

 
   Food

Sue Waters started off with a session on MLearning and roped me in to do it with her but I just added a few side comments. As usual she did a excellent  presentation  and we had lots of group discussion about the issues that we are all faced with when trying to “engage not enrage” with these new technologies and ways of teaching.

   
                  Sue                                 Sue Presenting Me with PDA

Web 2 for n00bs (which is defiantly includes me) was presented by Constance and Kate and made the mud a little clearer for me.

I have had a small introduction to Second Life when I watch the SBS series on Future Focus and was interested to hear what Kathryn Greenhill had to say about its place in education.What’s the use of Second life in Education ? It is certainly a very controversial topic as to whether education has a place in the virtual world and the debate on this is sure to continue for a while. Kathryn summed it up well with her opening statement “I am really into Second Life, and I am going to explain why but I don?t necessarily expect you to share my excitement.?

Problems with the Mobile Web was presented by Nick Cowie and he had some interesting facts about the number of these devices being sold, in the classroom situation most students will own a mobile phone but some may still not have access to a computer at home. Developing web apps for mobile devices is a virtual minefield with so many different devices and OS and mobile browsers that are available and the speed that these devices are being released to the market is mind blowing. I have also come up against these issues developing applications for PDA’s but not to the same degree, think I will stick on my side of the fence and leave web development to these guys.

Then we had lunch…. Pizza Subs, Coke, Coffee and Redbull gave us all a chance to chat and spring back into action for the afternoon sessions. Me right down the back pizza and a chat with Nick Cowie.

All ready to go again and I went off to the presentation on Running successful industry projects with Software Engineering Students. by Tiang Cheng It was interesting to hear the Uni way of handling industry projects with their students. Our TAFE diploma students also have industry projects for their major assessment in the last semester of their study. Our industry clients end up with a finished product while the Uni seems to head towards proof of concept outcomes. Uni and TAFE both have different ways of operating but they are both engaging the students with industry in “real world” projects before they have finished their study. This is an essential part of their study as it brings home to them that this is where they have been heading all these years, there is a “real world” out there and if they think we are tough as lecturers wait until they are in the workplace. It also gives many of them a boost as they realise that they are capable of completing the projects and have come a long way since they walked through the doors to start their study.

The last presentation I attended was by Ruby On Rails by Matt Didcoe and Myles Eftos. Excellent presentation that outlined the strong and week point of using ROR. Before reading the Barcamp Wiki I had heard of ROR but not taken much interest, well that has definitely changed now. I have three weeks holidays now so this is something I will be getting into. Great job guys!!!

So summing in up one sentence says it all for me “When is the Next BarCamp guys?” Well Done by all

There are lots more photos from the day on Flickr

I even got my son Harri to come along for the day.

Backs of the Geek’s Harri Me and Sue

Yes I took the challenge to Go Without Google For a Day and survived to tell the tale. This is definitely a task to only undertake if you are not under pressure, meeting deadlines or very busy. You need time to learn your way around using the different search engines. I took the easy option and downloaded Alt Search Engines list of 100 alternative search engines and used their top recommendations.

First I tried Kartoo this was quiet fun as it displays your results as graphical pages on a map. You can move your cursor over the results and see where and how they may link to other pages. It also gives you a list of keywords that you can use to define your search. You can Select the language of your search but not specifically your country - No Australian specific search.

Next I tried Quintura well I must be thick or needed coffee but I got thoroughly confused and gave up. 50matches is a Social Powered Search and they “only crawl web sites that were bookmarked or voted for by people, in sites like del.icio.us, digg and reddit.” Well I hope they don’t crawl my del.icio.us account as I know how unorganised and very badly tagged my things. No hope from my account of finding what you may be looking for - enough said. I also gave BlogDigger a go but when the results show Adds by Google and the results are presented looking very much like Google I wonder what their search engine is powered by?

I found a PC Magazine article called 11 Ways to Search without Google and tried a couple of their suggestions. One was Cha Cha where my searches for things like “Compact Framework Programming”, “VB.Net PPC” and “Mobile Developers” turned up some different results to what I get from Google. They also suggested StumbleUpon but this required a download of their toolbar and that was a hassle. When I want to use a search engine I want it to be a quick and painless activity,I want information and I want it now. I don’t want the hassle of downloading something before I can even start!

So I tried several different search engines and found sites like downloadsquad that I hadn’t found before when using the same phrases on Google. I found it interesting to try different search engine and did find the information I was looking for in my searches, but also had to make a conscious effort not to use Google for finding information. I think that we have been using Google for so long now it has just become a way of life. I do find myself talking about “googling things” and have even said this to my students.

I may continue to use some of these alternatives if Google doesn’t return what I want and when helping my daughter with school projects, they may help to return different results to what her class mates or teachers will get!

BUT I use Google for so much more than just searches

• It is my customised home page
• At a glance I can read my horoscope
• It tells me the latest news
• I can time my work
• I can place sticky notes and reminders.
• I love the fact that I can read the latest feeds from blogs I have subscribed to without going to another page
• I can get my gmail easily
• I can search my del.icio.us account
• I can easily add new feeds
• I can search Wikipedia

And if I get sick of seeing all those things I can get rid of them or not sign in and then have a clean white fresh page that I can just use as a search engine.

So I have to now stand up and admit

I am a Googleholic and I don’t care

Today I visited my friend Sue’s blog and found her post Can you go without Google for a day? well someone had to take up the challenge so on Tuesday June 12th I will be Gooogleless. The idea behind this is to try using some of the many other search engines that are available. Alt Search Engines have a list of 100 alternative search engines that you can try.

So if I am still sane I will report back how it went. I did make it through you read more on this at

I am a Googleholic and  I don’t care!