Bill MacKenty

Technology strengthens, deepens, and broadens our learning...

As Christmas approaches, I am traveling to Poland with my wonderful wife.  During this time, I’ll be completely off the grid. No cell phone, email, web access and barely any TV.

If I wanted to, I could - buy a cell phone, visit an internet cafe, and stay in touch. However, I have come to deeply value this time; there is something so refreshing about being still, quiet and alone from the interweb.

See you all in 2 weeks. 

Internet and computer safety often focuses on the risk of meeting a stranger online and being physically attacked. There is no doubt this danger exists, and our children need to be very careful about the sort of information they put online. The most important rules of internet safety must always be: don’t talk to strangers and don’t put highly personal information about yourself online.  A helpful reader has added that stranger abductions are quite rare, more often children voluntarily agree to meet some stranger somewhere. This also must be pushed into the mind of our kids - Never, ever agree to meet someone you met online. It’s just not safe.

While being attacked is the most serious threat online, our teenagers also face:

reputation harm
identity theft
and
online bullying

Here is a list of topics you could discuss with your students in an effort to support them being safe online.

1) What happens online, stays online, for a long time. sometimes it is difficult to erase a comment, picture, or forum post. Are you putting stuff online you would be embarrassed about 5 years from now? Are you writing anything that might reflect poorly on your character?

2) Some online social-networking sites such as myspace aren’t easy to secure - personal details and photographs are readily available for anyone to see. Do you have a myspace page? Mind if we take a look at it together? Is there anything online that could be used to identify you to strangers?

3) Our teenagers have a hard time understanding that something they put online can be visible to anyone anywhere. Let’s google your name and see what pops up. Who do you think looks at this information? How would you feel if a complete stranger looked at this information/image?

4) A special word about facebook. Facebook is a social-networking site like myspace with a very important difference; it’s invitation only. This means only people who a student knows are accepted as a “facebook friend”. However, there are “groups” in facebook which may have people a student does not know. Teens should be careful about what they write on facebook, and what they include on their facebook profile. Facebook users have a wall, which they can use to send messages back and forth. Let me see your facebook page. who are your facebook friends? do you belong to any facebook groups? Who last wrote on your wall?

5) The internet has opened up a new avenue for airing frustrations and arguments with peers. These arguments can often turn ugly, and teens can be harassed or bullied online. It’s important to talk about online bullying as you would talk about bullying in school; forthright and clear. Have you ever felt bullied online? How do you respond to online harassment? You know you can always talk to me about this stuff, right?

Here are some specific steps you could take with your students to help encourage safe computer use:

1) Put computers in public places (not in a bedroom)
2) Adopt an open door policy for discussing computer habits
3) Look for furtive gestures. If your teen quickly closes, moves or minimizes a window, ask them to show you what they are doing.

And finally, some common sense:

This internet thing is new for many parents. I think we need to teach our kids how to live in a digital world safely. I recommend against completely shutting off the internet or computers, and instead, take an active role in your child’s internet and computer use. Part of being a parent is being nosey. Talk with your teenager about computers and internet safety. 

Standardization

Today I overheard a conversation about standardization it went something like this:

A: you know, many schools are standardizing.
B: well, it only makes sense - standardized technology is easy to manage, and support
A: yup
B: yup

As I listened to this, a familiar feeling emerged; discomfort and the sense there was something “not-quite-right” about this line of thinking.

In short, I think we can standardize choice. Offer a standard linux machine, a standard windows box and a standard OS X machine.

In a well-managed network, we try to consolidate as much as we can (LDAP, DHCP, DNS, etc...) Especially LDAP, which almost any modern operating system can connect to, offers ubiquitous user and home directory management.

The problem I have with standardization is the subtle, chilling effect on innovation, curiosity and freedom of choice. Do we teach all our students exactly the same? Of course not, we account for different learning styles. When everything is the same, we encounter a style of thinking that wants all the kids to be in the same box, the same row, the same tests.

Being careful of extreme thinking here, we must strike a balance between good IT management, and good educational practice. We must not design our IT management around what works best for a manager, but what works best for our teachers. I also call this “whose side of the desk are you looking from?”.

We can get into proper support later.

This is the second in a series of blog posts which focus on eve-online. The last question I focused on was could eve-online be educational?  The answer: maybe, but probably not.

Now I’d like to focus on casual gaming (also see here for casual game).  The question: can eve online be played casually?

Eve is, of course, a MMORPG. These games have traditionally catered to hardcore gamers, and demand from players a large investment in time.  That is, the longer you play, the more quickly you ascend and become more “powerful” in the game world. Some games become quite difficult for new gamers as the older, more powerful players have a monopoly on the best items, skills, and power (this is actually a criticism of Eve which I do not agree with). Another common experience of MMORPG’s is the “really fun” stuff is reserved for the more seasoned players (who are often pushing on the limits of the game world!). Adding to this interesting situation is the idea of guilds (or companies) in eve-speak. any missions in Ev simply cannot be won playing solo - it must be a team effort; this adds to the time sink that eve can become (although this is mitigated by Eve’s single-server solution).

The question is then, can I play Eve for a hour a day, or maybe an hour every 2 days, and still have fun?

My answer is yes. Eve is absolutely playable as a casual game, a few hours a week, and remains a fun, dynamic game. Among the more interesting aspects of Eve’s “casuability” are:

1) The skill system, which moves in real-time; it doesn’t matter if I am logged in or not, my avatar continues to gain in skills and “place” in the game. This is especially important as playing more doesn’t make your skills progress any faster.
2) The PvE game in Eve is rich. There are hundreds of agent missions, where I can login, take a mission, go have fun, and then logoff. The missions are cumulative; the more I do, the more I “stand” in an organization.
3) Eve is a single-sharded game. This means the game isn’t segmented into separate servers. Instead, the game is one giant virtual world; there is always someone on to help, or play with.
4) The storyline is not one. There aren’t epic quests one must complete; Eve is more of a sandbox which is fun to play in - you can really do your own thing (mine, produce stuff, fight, etc...)
5) Moving isn’t slow - jumping from one system to another system is pretty fast, so if I want to meet some friends, I can do so without having to wait for a long time.
6) For me, Eve works brilliantly on OS X, so I can play at home for an hour or so, and still have time for fun, exercise, and life.

There is huge PvP aspect of Eve, but I haven’t played it. My sense is it doesn’t lend itself to casual gaming (since the other people who play PvP seem to play in groups!).

I think Eve is a great game, and is quite enjoyable as a casual experience. When starting Eve for the first time, I suggest setting aside 2 full hours to fully play the tutorial (it’s good, and it is supposed to get better with a new release).