"Lock Down" Your Computer Lab

2008-07-26T15:17:45Z

While at Summer Conference this year, I was surprised to hear quite a few of my colleagues asking for advice on how to lock down their labs to prevent students from doing some of the things they shouldn't be doing.

While I work in a large school system, locking down the labs is not a problem that I have. In some cases I actually have to be a little creative in finding ways to work with the security and procedures that my school system has put in place. But, while surfing around today, I found a really nice "Cookbook" ...

CTE Summer Conference

2008-07-26T15:03:32Z

Just got back from Summer Conference and had a few minutes to sit down and compose my thoughts. IMHO, every teacher should go to some type of professional conference at least once a year.

To me, this is a perfect opportunity to learn new things, and possibly contribute some of your own ideas as well. My opinion of a successful conference is any time that I can walk away from one of these events with more new ideas. I would have to say that this year's conference was definitely a success.

Picked up some interesting tips about

Put An RSS Reader In Your Website

2008-07-14T05:33:38Z

As a school webmaster with ~~a limited~~ no budget, I sometimes have to be creative when building my school site. I purposely look for FOSS projects when thinking of my site. I've used Joomla! to build the site, supplemented it with VTCalendar, and even used MagpieRSS to help me include headlines from the sports scheduling service that my athletic director uses.

Using Magpie took a steep learning curve, and I would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone who didn't have a pretty good understanding of HTML and PHP. But, enter Google... Google has done ...

Free Moodle classrooms!

2008-06-06T06:03:03Z

As the resident "QTL Moodle Dude" I am often asked about if a teacher can use the QTLMoodle site for their "other" courses. Unfortunately, my answer to that question is "no". Hey, I understand, I LOVE Moodle and use it for all of my classes. However, I also understand that my QTL friends don't have the resources to support other classes. In addition, some teachers at my school aren't fortunate enough to be involved in any of the QTL Programs. So, I did a little research for a ...

Using VMware to teach Operating Systems

2007-03-28T18:03:00Z

I'll admit it, I'm not normal. My classes are pretty high on the geek level, but, there are just some things that are really, really cool. You see, I love VMware Server. I used it way back when on my Red Hat 9 laptop, and I think I've loaded it on just about every Linux machine I've used ever since.

About a year ago, VMware made their server free to the public, and that, my friend, was all I needed. Now the joys of virtualization were no longer relegated to my own desktops, I could share this with ...

How to turn an eBook into a Website - Updated

2008-07-12T10:20:41Z

I'm teaching a class the other day and I realize that I need my students to read a passage from an old eBook I've got... the book is way out of print and I really only wanted them to look at a page or two. At first I just printed the pages I wanted using PDFCreator. Then I'm looking over the book later and realizing that I'd like for them to see a couple of other sections, and wouldn't it be nice for students to be able to look at the Glossary?

Converting test questions with HTML symbols into Moodle

2007-03-24T22:44:27Z

My latest "little" project (Thanks Todd Thibault & David Barbour) has been an effort to convert existing SkillsUSA tests into Moodle categories. It turns out NC SkillsUSA is interested in using online testing in their upcoming state competition so, David asked Todd & I to create a Moodle Server.....

Essential Software for Windows Computers

2008-07-13T14:41:11Z

I originally started this post at SeedWiki a year or so ago, but, I discovered today how unreliable it can be to depend on someone else to host your thoughts. So, below is the same information, that I now control...

Every semester I have a discussion on Computer Ethics and the like.... This discussion always ends to the questions of how can I NOT use illegal software when I need it. This page has developed from those discussions and is included here for my own documentation. Like it, love it, or leave it... the choice is yours....

Let me show you how... with a Wink!

2006-08-02T14:13:45Z

During a recent workshop with QTL, Barry Cochran was demonstrating Camtasia Studio. While the presentation was very interesting and Camtasia does a great job of making really cool demo videos the $299 price tag hit me hard.

Yes, I know... Barry was giving away free copies thanks to the fine people at TechSmith. And yes, they do offer free trial versions. But, hey I'm all about the free stuff and I wasn't lucky enough to get a free copy.

Well, a little investigation at I want a Freeware Utility to ... 450+ common problems solved helped me to find Wink....

Portable Storage - The Easy (Cheap) Way

2006-07-22T13:48:53Z

I teach technology, so, my needs may be a little different than your own. However, there are a lot of times when my students or myself need to transfer files. Now, sometimes a flash drive is quite sufficient for moving around documents, pictures, etc. However, in my courses we sometimes move around ISOs or we backup entire directories full of files. After a certain size flash drives get really expensive.

So, my solution is simple.... I often get computer "leftovers" either PCs that don't work or are just too old to use. I usually just buy several inexpensive external drive enclosures and rip the hard drive out of these dinosaurs! Sometimes the drive sizes are pretty small, but hey, I'm not buying the drive....

Cool mySQLdatabase import tool: BigDump

2006-07-19T13:38:26Z

Okay, so maybe everyone else has heard of this, but, it saved my sanity this week.

The Centers for Quality Teaching and Learning has been having some problems with their Moodle Site recently, so, we thought we might investigate whether or not it's our hosting company (have a sneaking suspicion it is). The long and short of it is that we've set up a site at another host and it was decided that I'd move Moodle over and give it a try.

Moving Moodle was relatively easy, except for the database. This hosting company doesn't give command line access, and phpMyAdmin was really not liking the 27 MB database I was trying to get it to import.

Enter BigDump....

How to enable The Uniform Server for public access

2006-07-19T13:40:36Z

In a previous post (actually hosted on another site) I described how to Install Moodle In The Uniform Server. Since then I've had several requests on how to open up UniServer so that it can be accessed by any computer on the LAN.

I'm about to do a presentation on "Classroom Management & Communications Using Moodle" at the CTE Summer Conference, so, I thought it would be appropriate to finally write a quick howto on the steps I took to get this to work.

Open up htaccess
Uniform Server disables external access by default, fortunately rendering this problem is really easy. All you ...

PowerPoint to SWF with OpenOffice.org

2006-07-31T14:34:23Z

Let's admit it, PowerPoint has taken over the teaching profession. Many of us live by the PowerPoints we create one year then modify for the next year and so on. I'll admit I still dig up PowerPoints I created years ago and redo them for my current classes. My recent push in the past few years has been to move towards a digital classroom.

I use Moodle in my classroom as a portal for my students to view and turn in all of my assignments. Because of this web based format (and my classroom web page) I've discovered that ...

The Biotech Game of Life

2006-07-19T15:11:57Z

Biotechnology has become a big topic in NC. When they opened KHS a couple of years ago, biotechnology was one of the original topics that the school is supposed to focus on. We've even started a bioscience academy.

Part of the NC Fundamentals of Technology curriculum discusses Biotechnology, so, after a bit of digging and a lot of ~~slave~~, er, student labor. {Special thanks to the student media assistants and my own classes for preparing the gameboards and paper money that I needed to do this.} I used the Biotech Game of Life from The Science Creative Quarterly to discuss and ...

Free Web Host with PHP and MySQL

2006-07-19T15:13:11Z

A lot of my students are interested in web development. Many of them are working on gaming clan sites, personal blogs, etc. I've come to the opinion that building a site out of pure html is almost a moot point anymore.

Most of my students ask about providing forums, member profiles, file uploads, etc. All of these can be done with html, I'm sure, but, the learning curve is steep. I'm all about making things easier while still learning the basics of how to be a website admin. So, my advice would be to use some type of content management system (CMS)....

How to create a crossword puzzle

2006-07-19T15:14:37Z

One of the common things that ALL teachers do is teach vocabulary. Whether teaching math, dance, or technology all of us have some new terms that we want students to remember. Crosswords are a fun, easy way to handle this...

I think the first crossword puzzle I created for my class was done at DiscoverySchool's Puzzlemaker. A good tool, yes, but extremely awkward and very unreliable. DiscoverySchool has changed little since I first used it years ago, but, I recall how much "fun" it was to create the crossword in it's user interface, then paste the image it produced into MS Word along with the clues. If you're happy with DiscoverySchool hopefully, I may be able to show you a couple of programs that may work even better for you. If not, well at least you'll see a couple of alternatives.....

They're baaaaack....

2006-05-26T16:37:00Z

Sad to say that it takes me a month to get back to this... due to a lot of just overwhelming deadlines and just plain uselessness I haven't updated in quite a while. I'll try to be better!! :$ ...

Step Saver - ProxyPal

2006-07-19T15:22:05Z

My county requires that each PC that hits the school network must be configured to use a proxy server to access the Internet. Makes perfect sense to me, and I have no problems with this at school. The problem comes from those teachers who are assigned laptops.

When a teacher has a high speed connection and hooks up at home, then they have to disable the proxy. It takes about seven steps to switch back and forth. ProxyPal from bartdart makes a one-click solution.

bartdart also has a lot of other really cool freeware utilities. I highly recommend

ScrubXP to clear temp files,

histories, cookies, etc.

Spyware prevention & removal - Windows Defender

2006-04-20T21:47:46Z

One of the problems that schools (and average users too) have is spyware (malware) infestation. I was talking a little with some of my colleagues and had to keep recommending Windows Defender for any machine running Windows XP or Windows 2000. Instructions on how to Download and install Windows Defender (Beta 2) can be found here.I've already discussed Windows Defender and other alternatives in my Essential Software for Windows Computers but I thought it was worth mentioning separately. ...

Internet Safety

2006-07-19T15:24:24Z

Today was our county Tech Contacts meeting - a good time was had by all. Imagine if you can a gathering of practically all of the geeks, um.. tech contacts from one school system. It's always good to sit down and swap stories and ideas. We also come together to discuss and listen to the latest county policies. Okay, so the last part isn't all that much fun, but necessary.

The second half of the meeting is a presentation on some particular topic that we are encouraged to bring back to our individual schools. Today's discussion was on Internet Safety. ...

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