Out with the old and in with the new...

Late last year, our friends Buddy and Debbie, decided to build a new house. There was one small problem. They already had a house on the property. The solution was simple. Tear down the old and build the new.

Here's video of the old house being torn down,



and here's a slide show of the progress of the new house week by week, starting today and working back to January 15.

Al Capone and Internet Safety

I'm sure you are all aware of the suicide of 13 year-old Megan Meier, a St. Louis teen who thought she was talking to a 16 year-old boy who was actually an adult neighbor.

Today, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles announced a four count indictment against, Lori Drew, the adult accused of being instrumental in Megan's death.

I think this is an extremely interesting case for many reasons. If you look closer at the indictment, you realize that there were no cyberbullying or harassment laws in place that could be used to get justice in this case. The US Attorney had to get creative and took a page from the Al Capone prosecution book. While there were laws against what Capone was doing, no one could get the goods on him for murder or other heinous crimes. However, they were able to put him away for tax evasion.

What has happened in the Megan Meier case is that the US Attorney has applied laws that are typically aimed at hackers and used the MySpace Terms of Service as a key portion of the issue. I am sure that this will catch the attention of the ACLU and EEF and you will be hearing charges that this prosecution is too broad and may be leading us down a slippery slope.

I seriously doubt that anyone will be prosecuted for minor violations of TOS as they might suggest. The US Attorney took great pains to emphasize that the decision here was made on the merits of this particular case. It was the death allegedly as a result of the actions of an adult online. That indeed is a serious case and anyone thinking that the US Attorney would be going after someone for anything minor is either delusional or paranoid.

Cudos to the US Attorney for seeking justice for Megan.

Can I Get a Doctor Here!

Ok, it's time for some no BS talk. I'll begin by making it clear

that the opinion about the state or educational technology and

Internet safety education are my opinions and not necessarily those

of WiredSafety.

Thirty-eight years ago I was a new teacher sitting in classroom with fifteen other new teachers. The then Superintendent of Rockaway Schools, Bob Linette, was conducting the class and asked us one by one what we thought of the American educational system. One by one each person sung the praises of our system. I was the last to reply and when he asked me, I said it stunk. The silence and looks on the faces of the other fourteen people said volumes.

Without pausing, he asked me to explain. I asked him and the group what part of their day was the math part, what part was the science part, what part was the social studies part? I said we were supposed to be teaching kids about life and how to success. I failed to see how this achieved that goal. I felt that school should be more like life, that kids should be solving real world problem and doing real world work. When I was done, he just said, "You're absolutely right."

Those three words set the course of my career and from that day on, I never looked back. Ever since then I've been trying to get schools to change the way they deliver instruction. It's thirty-eight years later and things have changed very little. Yes, technology is now in the picture, but technology implementation without changing how we deliver instruction is not going to work. In many ways technology has worsened the situation. There was already disconnect between curriculum and the skills that the 20th and 21st century required. With kids knowing more about technology than the teachers, the gap became a chasm.

As a result, the state of educational technology infusion in this country is a shambles. I'm not talking about the cables, routers, and computers. They are nothing to brag about, but compared to the hardware, the effective implementation of technology is in such a state that if it was in an episode of M.A.S.H., it would be on a gurney, with Hawkey and BJ doing everything they can do to keep it alive as it was heading for the operating room.

Lack of visionary leadership, lack of technical support, lack of professional development, budget constraints, NCLB, pressure to perform on high stakes tests that measure all the wrong things, and other mandates that hamstring teachers, make them little more than paper shufflers and test tutors. Yes, there are pockets of excellence. There are exemplary schools and programs, and there success stories, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

I've spent the last ten years of my life trying to make a difference in this arena. Now I've retired from that life and have perhaps jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I'm attempting to develop Internet safety instruction that schools can use.

If you believe what I say about the state of educational technology in this country, then it isn't a stretch to realize that the state of Internet safety education is in worse shape. If teachers don't have the time or expertise to implement effective use of technology in the core curriculum, expecting them to implement Internet Safety instruction is total folly. It's like strapping a couch to the back of a sprinter and asking him to run a marathon.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm an optimistic masochist or because I graduated from Rube Goldberg High School and McGuyver High School, but I liked the challenge. Two years ago I started a program that I felt dealt with both problems at the same time. I coined the phrase

and began my program of CyberSafety through Information Literacy. It was a series of lessons that could serve both as professional development for teachers and Internet safety instruction for students. The lessons are aligned to the National EducationTechnology Standards and other core curriculum standards. Instead of being add-on curriculum, it could be integrated into the existing curriculum in a number of ways.

Inexperienced teachers could run the Flash based lessons and let me provide the instruction. Because the software allows teachers to control all phases of the presentation, including sound and sequence, as inexperienced teacher became more comfortable with the material,

they could make it their own by substituting their narrative for my audio tack and by selecting what to present and when to present it.

Now I think it's time to take the next logical step. We at WiredSafety have found that two of the most effective tools for getting teens to listen to our message is to have it delivered by other teens and to have the message wrapped around real stories about real people and real events. Our Teenangels have stories of their own that they relate. You can find out more about them by visiting Teenangels.org.

We at WiredSafety have stories activities and suggestions that we relate to parents, teachers, and teens in our presentations. Some of those stories are already contained in my CyberSafety through Information Literacy lessons. Over the coming weeks and months, I'm going to begin extracting those stories, add new ones, offer short suggested actions and activities, and create a library of 5-10 minute learning objects that teachers and parents can use whenever they have

time or whenever they see a teachable moment.

I'll blog about them here and post them on the WiredSafety site. As they begin appearing, I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions.

Maybe together we can help Hawkeye and BJ get a patient off the critical list.

Move Over Bob Vila

In 9th grade, my favorite class was wood shop, but I was in the college track and there would be no way for me to pursue my interest in high school. I often said that if I hadn't gone to college, wood working would have been my path of choice.

Well now that I am retired, that path is open to me. For the past 40 years, I have had to made do with the basics. I had a decent collection of hand tools, a power drill, circular saw, table saw, but that was about it. If I had a job to do, I used what I had, borrowed, or rented, but now it's time to get the right tools for the jos which I'll write about in an upcoming post

Between garage sales, Craig's list, Amazon.com, VermontAmerican.com, Home Depot, and Lowes I've added a 9" band saw, a table sander, a full set of cordless hand tools, a router and router table, a Dremel with assorted bits, a drill press, router table and plunge router attachment, and an Arrow ET200 electric brad nail gun. I'll talk about my projects in another post.

Literally every one of the tools paid for itself after the first or second use, including the nail gun, but the nail gun was the only tool that turned out to be a huge disappointment.

It jammed once or twice and I always had to finish the last quarter inch of the nail with a hammer, but hey what do I know. I never used a nail gun before and figured since it's electric rather than the professional air compressor type, that's not unusual. It was still a hundred times better than driving them in by hand.

Two days ago, I was using it to build some storage bins. About a dozen brads into the project a spark few out of the top and the gun died. I took it back yesterday and exchanged it. A half dozen nails later, the new one broke.

What's going on here. I told Jill and being the ever practical shopper that she is, she suggested that I check it out on the Internet to see what the story was. I found 30 reviews on Amazon and 24 of them were negative, with 21 of the 24 gaving it one star. I have never seen a product that badly reviewed.

So it was back to Home Depot to get the right tool for the job. It was the $59 Arrow vs the $189 Porter Cable air compressor and brad gun combination. I wondered how much difference the extra $130 would make. After using it, I would guess it made at least $200 worth of difference. Aside from the nail gun, there are loads of other uses for the air compressor.

I spent another $15 and got the tire inflation kit. Hey and if I get a tire changing machine and lug wrench gun I can complete with Mr. Goodwrench. Hmmmmmm... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in need of some sort of intervention.

Honey Bees and Haliburton

According to Science & Spirit magazine, Scientist at Los Alamos Labs have confirmed that ordinary honey bees can sniff out explosives even in amounts as minute as a few parts per trillion. This poises them to be right on the front line in the fight against terrorism.

Bees are strapped to small boards and exposed to the scent of explosives. They are then rewarded with honey and water. Very quickly, like Pavalov's dogs, they learn to associate the smell with the reward and stick out their tongues whenever they smell explosives.

Scientists explain the the bees are comfortable in their holder and are unharmed. When they finish their tour of duty, they are returned to the hive where they live out the rest of their lives.

The article doesn't go into any detail about how the bees will be trained and deployed in greater numbers, but based on past history, I've provided a little speculation.

The fact that the research was done at Los Alamos leads me to believe the government will give lucrative no bid contracts to Blackwater for training the bees. There will be major costs associated with fitting them with proper uniforms and I shutter to see the invoices for the honey and water used in the training. It has to be at least $1500 a gallon.

Of course, not all bees are patriotic and some might resist the training efforts. However, the boards to which they are attached will be specially designed to flip over easily. Since the bees are already strapped to boards and it is a simple matter to turn them over and then utilize the water meant for the sugar as incentive to cooperate.

It may not be long before bees organize when they realize what it happening and rather than sticking their tongues out when they smell explosives, they may stick them out at random times in order to confuse and taunt their trainers.

Returning to the hive after their tour of duty is not necessarily in the cards. With the high cost of training, it is likely that their tours will be extended two or three times and large numbers of bees may never make it back at all and others may elect to become private contractors, thus giving rise to another industry; the manufacture and sale of stylish sun glasses for their multi-faceted eyes.

Net Nutrality and Me

There has been a lot of discussion on the IP mailing list about Comcast allegedly improperly throttling back some user accounts who have been using bit torrent and peer to peer technologies to transfer large or multiple files. Comcast denies they are doing that but critics are not convinced.

Up until this week, I was taking a neutral stance on the issue, but something happened to me personally to tip the scales.

I've had intermittent problems with FTP over the year, but usually it's something that resolves itself in a few hours or over night, but this week was different. All of a sudden it was if I had turned on a water hose and then someone put their foot on it. A packet would go out and then my connection would be at a stand still. Eventually another packet would go and on it went. The net result was either a failed upload or an upload that made me year for the good old days of two hundred baud acoustic couplers.

I endured this for three days thinking it would clear up. Finally, I called tech support. Unfortunately they didn't have any appointments for six more days. I made my appointment. I waited a few more hours and then called again to see if perhaps there was a cancellation and I could get an earlier service call.

This time I explained that I was creating a course for a major university and my tutorial files had to get uploaded. Lo and behold, I was in luck. The very next day, there was not just one opening. I had my choice of visits, 9-11, 11-1, 1-3, or 3-5. Gee, what an amazing coincidence.

I chose the 9-11 slot. As I sit here writing, it is 10:00 and I have yet to see a tech. I am willing to bet that I will not see one today. Do you know why? It's because amazingly, my FTP speed is now at over 1 Mbps.

So what happened? Well here's one possibility. The tutorials I was uploaded were created with software that adds mp3 files for each slide. As a result, in a period of a few days, I had uploaded hundreds of mp3 files that were incorporated into the tutorials. Could it be that these mp3 files tripped some sort of alarm that resulted in my account being throttled? Could it be that when I called and explained that I was not some teeny-bopper pirating music that they took the foot off the garden hose? I have no way of knowing, but it is certainly a coincidence.

I'll watch for a repair man. If he comes, we'll chat and I'll add a follow up to this entry. Anyone want to make book on whether there is a follow up?

That's Why They Have Email Verification

The subject line was "Welcome to MySpace" and the message began:
Hi Andrea -- Thanks for joining MySpace!
Here's your account info for logging in:
E-mail: AWOLINSKY_@_COMCAST.NET
Password: *******

It went on to provide a link for me to confirm the email address and open the account. I'd better make sure that I don't click the confirmation link or whoever set up the account is in business.

Ok, that's one of my email addresses, but my name isn't Andrea and I didn't open a MySpace account. What's going on? Is someone impersonating me? No, they're using my address and a different name. That's why the confirmation email came to my address. Lemme see what's going on here. I think I'll log in with the information provided in the confirmation message.

After I login, I go directly to the profile the person set up. Andrea says she's a 27 year old female from Cambridge, MA and that's all she has, but that's more than enough.

BTW - I've changed Andrea's name and location for obvious privacy reasons.

I'm going to assume that Andrea just made a typo on her email address. If her last name wasn't Wolinsky, I would have just gone to the account and canceled it and let her figure out what was going wrong, but I couldn't do that to someone with such a regal last name. :-)

With the little information she left, in about a minute, in a single search I was able to determine that she lived with her parents. I had their names, address, ages, and her phone number. A phone call and an email straightened thing out, but it just goes to show how things can go south in a serious way with the unintentional sharing of information.

In the end, no harm was done, everyone had a good chuckle, and I have another anecdote to tell in my presentations.