Trade as One

From our friends at Trade As One and the Advent Conspiracy, here is a great video about how we can shop better to change the world.



Great idea! If you must consume, please consume wisely.

The dangers of short URLs, and how to avoid them

I got a question like this a while back, and I think the question and answer are worth sharing. So here we go.

Q: I've been frustrated trying to use twitter here at school.  I'm getting some great resources from the people I follow, but when I click on the links, they are blocked with a "security.proxy" warning.  Is there a way to work around this?  Is this due to the abbreviated links? 

A: Yes, this is due to the shortened links. I often have the same frustration. Twitter has made services like bit.ly, tr.im, and tinyurl.com very popular. The URL shortening services are seen as proxy sites, and are a growing security risk. This is because you can't see what site you are really going to before you go there, so you can't make a smart decision about whether it's a safe site or not.

The solution:

http://longurl.org/

In the strange world of the Internet, the site above is meeting this need by expanding shortened URLs so you don't blindly follow a link that will install malware or something. So, although annoying, the solution is to resolve those shortened URLs using longurl.org and then deciding whether it's safe to go to them.

So even if you aren't blocked by a content filter, it's still a good idea to expand the URL before going to it.
If you are a visual learner, you can watch this neat video from Symantec.

What is "cheating?"

Cellphone Cheating in Schools

            This Kappan “Highlighted and Underlined” item quotes a Common Sense Media poll on the use of cell phone and the Internet by students:

-       Almost two-thirds of students with cell phones use them during school, regardless of school policies against such use.

-       Teens send an average of 440 text messages a week, of which 110 are sent by students while they are in the classroom.

-       48 percent of teens say they call or text friends to warn about pop quizzes.

-       52 percent admit to some form of cheating involving the Internet.

-       38 percent have copied material from a website and turned it in as their own work.

-       35 percent of teens with cell phones admit using them to find an answer to a test.

-       Of those who use their phones this way:

      26 percent say they store information on their phones for use during a test.

      25 percent text friends about answers during an exam.

      17 percent take pictures of a test to send to friends.

      20 percent use their phones to search the Internet during an exam.

-       76 percent of parents say they believe some type of cellphone cheating happens in their children’s school, but only 3 percent believe their own child has cheated using a cellphone.

“Using Technology to Cheat” in Phi Delta Kappan, October 2009 (Vol. 91, #2, p. 6)

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/hi-tech-cheating

My gut reaction is that if you are giving a test that has answers which can be looked up on the Internet, it's not a good test.

Why are you asking things that can be looked up? In the words of one student,

"The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer." (Source: http://students2oh.org/2008/01/22/21st-century-education/)

I know it's not completely that way- we can't be morons. But with all the research and buzz about individualized instruction and authentic assessment, I have a hard time imagining how a pop quiz can be justified as a 21st Century Skill. Except maybe as preparation for when you get pulled over for speeding.

Looking up an answer on the Internet isn't cheating- it's using available resources. Stealing somebody else's completed project is cheating.

The analogy that comes to mind (off the top of my head, so this may be lame) is doing taxes.

If we were to follow the classroom model of banning cell phones and apply that to an adult doing their taxes, we would put the person in a room, hand them a 1040, their W2, 1099s,  and their receipts, and tell them to fill it out accurately without reading the manual, consulting the Internet, using a calculator, calling the IRS, and definitely not asking anybody else for help. Cuz that would be cheating.

But we don't. We don't expect people to have studied and memorized the manual. We don't expect them to do arithmetic on scratch paper, and we don't expect them to do it all by themselves. Why not?

Because that isn't cheating on your taxes. That's using your available resources to get it right.

Cheating on your taxes is doing something illegal to steal money from the government.

Are You Literate?

Most of us would answer, "Of course I'm literate!" The other option, being illiterate, is certainly not appealing.

But when I read the new literacy standards as defined by the National Council of Teachers of English, I realize that it's not that easy of a question. The bar for literacy has been raised.

It's one thing to read the standards and think, "Yeah, those are good ideas." It's much more convicting when I actually ask myself, "Do I:

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology?
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally?
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes?
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information?
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts?
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments?"

It's much harder to say that I actually do these. Do you? Do you think these are valid expectations? Which do you find the hardest?