Learning Aloud

Commodity Devices?

grabe — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:09:16 +0000

Microsoft recently announced their tablet would be donated to 10,000 educators attending this year’s ISTE conference and the device would now be sold for $200 in the education market. You wonder whether this is a way to get rid of inventory that will not sell, a clever long-term marketing strategy, or both. Anyway, these announcements [...]

Something you know and something you have

grabe — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:13:21 +0000

Data protection is obviously a very important issue and companies that encourage us to use their services to store our data must take security seriously. Two-factor authentication has been developed to offer greater security. I have heard two factor authentication described as something you own and something you know. Cute and easy to remember, but [...]

Can Google Tell the Difference

grabe — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:23:46 +0000

I find the data generated by my web site to be very interesting. Big time web players study such data carefully in order to optimize their web business. I study such data because I am curious. I have noticed a specific down turn in traffic lately. One factor that seems to have changed is the [...]

Don’t delete Reeder (or other readers that rely on Reader) quite yet

grabe — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:48:09 +0000

Earlier this Spring we learned that Google planned to abandon Reader (the RSS reader) and many of us wanting to be proactive began looking for alternatives. While some believe social (Twitter, Google+) has replaced the practice of following multiple information sources (mostly blogs) searching for enlightenment, I still invest time in specific individuals I think [...]

Would more tech at home improve the academic performance of low SES students?

grabe — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:34:57 +0000

If you follow edtech blog or twitter feeds, you likely encountered the description of a recently released study concluding that providing computers to low income middle school students (mostly) did nothing to improve their academic performance. I first encountered the description of this study on TechCrunch. This study has not been published, but has been [...]

Unwanted public(ity)

grabe — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:33:57 +0000

I have encountered a privacy issue with Google hangouts that it seems Google has not considered. I am teaching a small graduate class and we are using Google hangouts. The quality of hangouts is better than the service purchased by the university and easy to use as well. Because I meet with these online students [...]

The web we lost

grabe — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:15:07 +0000

After completing my previous post, I have continued to explore this topic and have encountered other very similar concerns (some more focused and eloquently presented). Here is a two part series from Anil Dash (ThinkUp) This isn’t our web today. We’ve lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we’ve abandoned core [...]

Tug of war – Convenience vs. Losing Control

grabe — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:11:18 +0000

Tug of war – Convenience or Losing Control – A comment on the brief history and the future direction of the Internet Alternate title: Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) (Cinderella) Sometimes, if you says enough stuff, you end up contradicting yourself. I find myself in this quandary. When writing for educators, I [...]

WordPress Vulnerability – A suggestion

grabe — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:48:47 +0000

Several posts have indicated that WordPress blogs are being hacked. The approach involves a process of guessing (via a program) at passwords. Since this approach likely takes many attempts, a practical and easy to implement defense is to install the plugin “Limit login attempts.” Just search for this plugin. The plugin provides some useful info. [...]

Document Processing

grabe — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:53:07 +0000

Document manager (reference manager) I am an academic. That means, in part, that I read for a living. This is not the type of reading you do to put yourself to sleep, but the type of reading you do so you know how things are done or what is presently the best information in a [...]