Taste of Tech

For the last 20 years, I’ve had this love-hate relationship with computer programming. I took a high school programming course at the suggestion of a math teacher, and found that I enjoyed it and was relatively good at it. I liked the idea of controlling the machine — deciding what I want it to do, and giving it the commands to do it. I was the puppeteer. I was pulling the strings.

This led to taking a structured programming class as an elective my first year in college, which led to my adding “computer science education” as a major.

Unfortunately, at that time, nobody really had any idea what a computer science education major should know, so they basically just told me to get a minor in systems analysis. I took data structures. That was kind of fun. I learned about stacks and queues and linked lists and trees and all sorts of things I don’t understand anymore. I learned Cobol (why?) and Fortran (why?) before finding out that I had inadvertently skipped the first class and had to go back and learn BASIC. Then it was on to IBM mainframe assembly language.

None of this had any real relevance in the world of education. No schools had IBM mainframes. I might get to teach a little BASIC and Pascal. If I was really fortunate, I could teach C (which, oddly, was about the only language that wasn’t required). The college of education predicted that we were going to leave the university and get jobs teaching high school computer science, where we’d be using the only computers schools had available — the Apple IIe. So in our methods courses, we learned 6502 Assembler, how to build analog-to-digital converts to interface with the Apple II, and how to program in LOGO. (The programming part of LOGO, not just the turtle graphics stuff).

By the end of all this, I had had enough of programming. I got a job teaching middle school computer applications. I was teaching students to use productivity applications. The closest I got to programming was writing spreadsheet formulas. Two years later I switched jobs, and inherited another middle school course that had previously been a programming class. “Irrelevant,” I declared. “The kids don’t need to know this stuff.” I taught productivity tools, some Internet basics, and the concept of hypermedia. The closest I got to programming was teaching them HTML from scratch. Now that I look back on it, I’m amazed at what those kids could do, simply because they didn’t know it was supposed to be hard.

I eventually did get a job teaching high school programming. I taught Visual Basic for two years. I always felt it was an awkward language, and that it doesn’t serve the students very well. I’ve been disappointed twice that they’ve kept the same language in place when revising the courses of study. While I can’t say I didn’t like teaching programming, I also wasn’t too sad when my duties shifted into other directions.

I’ve always advocated for teaching kids to use technology to be productive in non-technical ways. Use email and the Internet as communication tools. Use word processors to make your writing better, to simplify editing, and to make professional-looking documents. Use spreadsheets to organize data, answer “what-if” questions, and draw conclusions based on the numbers. Use presentation tools to augment the message you’re delivering in the presentation. There have been many variations on this theme, but I’ve never strongly advocated for learning about the machine for its own sake. So I’ve never really pushed programming.

Apparently, I’m not alone. According to Carnegie Mellon University, the number of computer science majors declined by more than 60% between 2000 and 20004. In the same time period, the number of females majoring in computer science declined by 80%. Some point to the lack of emphasis on the more technical side of computing as a major contributor to this decline. People like me are de-emphasizing how computers work in favor of an emphasis on how we work with computers.

Two recent projects are aiming to change this. Scratch is a programming environment designed for 8- to 16-year-old students by the MIT Media Lab. In it, kids combine graphics, pictures, video, and audio in new, innovative ways. At the same time, they can snap programming blocks together to control how the elements are displayed, or how the computer user can interact with them. Windows and Mac versions of the free program are available on the project web site. There are also lots of teacher resources and an envrionment for students to share their creations.

For older students, Carnegie Mellon has developed the Alice environment. It can be used to create 3-D animated worlds, with characters that move around and interact. It’s a great way to tell a story, create an interactive game, or make a video to share online. It’s targeted especially toward the middle school and high school crowd, with an emphasis on attracting girls. Like Scratch, it’s easy to use, allowing you to drag and drop the various elements to determine how they interact on the screen.

The thing that’s striking about both of these tools is that they’re teaching programming while doing other things. They’re teaching kids to be good problem solvers, innovative thinkers, and collaborators. That’s meeting half of the 21st Century Skills. If they happen to learn a little programming while they’re at it, and maybe decide that they like telling machines what to do, so much the better.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a closer look at both of these tools.

My brother and I had walkie-talkies when we were kids. I think we got them for Christmas one year. They were red, ran on 9-volt batteries, and had ridiculously long antennas. We used them constantly until the batteries died. Then, they fell into disuse (we never seemed to have a battery surplus). In the half-dozen years that followed, occasionally one would be discovered, and a new battery installed. The trouble was that we never seemed to be able to find both walkie-talkies at the same time. Since the range was pathetically short, about all we could do with one of them was listen to static. So it would go back in the toy box. A few months later, the other one would show up, but by that time the first one was lost. We never seemed to get both working at the same time after that first Christmas.

Years later, when I signed up for my first email account, I didn’t really have a good idea of what I was going to do with it. In truth, I just needed an account on the university’s mainframe so I could participate in some online forums. I didn’t even know I had an email account until several weeks later.

The new account, and the discovery of what it could do, weren’t much help to me. I didn’t know anyone else who had an email address, so there wasn’t anyone to write to. Eventually, I met some other people on campus who had email accounts, so I started writing to them. It was a year or more before I started emailing people who lived more than half a mile away.

Last week, I spent some time with a group of teachers in a class on developing personal learning networks. We focused on collaborative tools and technologies, like social bookmarking, Internet telephony, video conferencing, and shared online productivity tools. I talked a lot about my network. I’ve met a lot of smart people who have similar interests and goals, and I can rely on them to help when I’m in a pinch. As we went through the various tools, I tried to describe how I use that tool to interact with my network. I’ve certainly learned more from my network over the last two years than I ever learned in a college classroom.

The teachers liked the tools, and immediately starting thinking of ways to use them in their classes. That’s great. I expected them to do that. But they were less keen on the idea of a professional learning network. Sure, they can share their bookmarks with other Delicious users. But no one they know uses Delicious. It’s great that they can use Skype to conference with other second grade teachers, but they don’t know any other second grade teachers who use Skype. They only have one walkie-talkie. There’s no one to talk to.

The solution — I think — is blogging. Nearly everyone I interact with online in a professional way is someone I met through blogging. When I started writing a blog, I wrote it for my district staff. Most of them don’t read it. I think it was a year or more before anyone read my blog who doesn’t live in my house. At the same time, though, I started reading other blogs. I commented on those, and contributed to some conversations. Occasionally, I’ve posted on things people are interested in, and I’ve received some comments on this blog. That’s how I started building connections.

The same could be said for other “pull” technologies. I’ve met some people by listening to their podcasts (most notably those crazy people at EdTechTalk). I’ve found some new friends through Twitter, too, mostly by looking at who the people I’m following are following. Take recommendations from people you trust and respect.

It’s hard to get traction. It’s hard to see how interactive technologies work when you don’t have anyone to interact with. If you work at it, you’ll develop your own network. It starts with a lot of reading and a little writing. But if your network is as good as mine is, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

This week, we’re offering two professional development classes on using technology in the classroom. In the first class, we’re covering a series of interactive web tools including Protopage, Blogging, Podcasting, Wikis, and Moodle.

Because he introduces this better than anyone else in our district, we convinced middle school teacher Joe Zenir to introduce this for us. Here’s the video of his presentation:

On Tuesday, June 4, the EdTech Posse will be joining the Women of Web 2.0 in their weekly webcast at 9:00 PM EDT. The show will include a game show component, where the two teams will compete against each other to will fabulous prizes, which mostly consist of just bragging rights.

You can help by submitting game show questions. All of the items in the form below are optional, but we won’t be using any questions that don’t have answers

Hopefully by this point, you’ve put the cybersafety issue into perspective, implemented some basic measures to protect your kids online, and used resources to help teach kids how to protect themselves. Now it’s time to talk about filtering Internet access.

Conceptually, web filters are very simple. When using a filtered computer, requests for web pages, pictures, and other resources are first sent to the filter. Based on keywords, databases of allowed or blocked sites, and other factors, the filter determines if access to the resource should be allowed. If it is, the filter allows the computer to access it. If it isn’t, the filter blocks access to it.

It’s important to know that all filters have limitations, and some of them are pretty significant. With thousands of web pages being added, removed, and modified on a daily basis, it is impossible for any database to keep up with the ever-changing list of sites that should be blocked based on a certain set of criteria. It is also much more difficult to filter multimedia (pictures, audio, video) than it is to filter text. Text can easily be compared with certain blocked words to determine the nature of the content. It’s a lot more difficult for a computer to tell if the people in that picture have clothes on.

This problem is complicated by the increasing interactivity of the web. As more and more sites allow viewers to contribute their own content, they lose some of the control of those sites. It’s possible, for example, for someone to post inappropriate content in a comment on a CNN.com news story. That doesn’t necessarily mean Internet filters should block CNN.

It is also worth noting that a determined person can nearly always circumvent the filter entirely. Because students read this blog, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but if you can get a web request to go directly to the Internet, rather than through the filter, you can access anything you want.

The final caveat, before we start talking about filtering solutions, is to note that many web filters are just that — WEB filters. They may not filter content in email, instant messages, or other types of Internet activity.

With all of that said, there are two basic types of filters available. The more complex of these is installed on a server. Computers on the network are configured (or forced) to access the web through this server. This has the major advantage that the computers being filtered are not running the filtering software. This makes it much more difficult (though not impossible) to disable or circumnavigate the filter. Because this requires a local network, server, and (maybe) packet routing and filtering, we’re going to assume that this is beyond the scope of most home users.

The other type of web filter uses software or a software configuration on the computer itself. While this has the disadvantage of being defeated by those being filtered if they can change the settings or uninstall the software, it is a much more manageable solution for most parents.

Filters
All right. Enough with the caveats and provisos. Where are the filters, already? Here are some free ones that come pretty highly recommended. The descriptions are paraphrased from the web sites for the software:

K-9 Web Protection: This software prevents the computer user from viewing Web sites that contain unwanted content. It can block more than 55 different categories of content, including pornography, hate speech and sites that promote violence or permit gambling. It’s free for home use.

Naomi: Naomi is a free internet filtering program intended for families. It is able to constantly monitor all internet connections, protecting children from inappropriate online material. Naomi examines in real-time all the data being transmitted and received through any internet application - such as web browers, chat programs, and news readers.

OpenDNS Adult Site Blocking: Adult site blocking is a free service that lets you block adult websites on your network. The software uses site categories compiled by St. Bernard Software, who have human-reviewed tens of millions of domains, to make sure you get the most comprehensive, easy-to-use adult site blocking service ever.

X3Watch: Rather than blocking access to inappropriate sites, this software simply logs the access, and emails those logs to a person you specify. It’s used more to monitor access than control it. The free version contains the basic features, and there’s also an advanced version available for a fee.

I haven’t actually used any of these products, but from what I’ve read, they seem to be the best of the free products. If I were setting up filtering in my home, I would start with one of these.