[ED-TECH] Fun Friday #15 - Handout

At Fun Friday #15 we talked about Good Guide (product ratings based on health, safety, and community), Magic/Replace (a web based editing service for tables such as spreadsheets) and Prezi (a new media type of presentation tool that lives on the web). If you are interested in URLs or screen images for these, download the handout.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/iac-production/attachments/31/Fun_Friday_15_handout.pdf

Bill Vilberg

[ED-TECH] CaneID passwords

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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You should change you CaneID password, if you haven't in the last six months. In the fine print, below, you will find (1) a way of generating easy to remember and hard to guess passwords and (2) some suggestions that might help you remember your passwords.

THE DETAILS
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When was the last time you changed your CaneID password? That is the password that you use to connect to MyUM, among other things. If you haven't done it in the last six months, why not take a moment and do it now? A policy is about to be implemented requiring that this password be changed regularly. If you change it now, you won't have to change it again this summer, when they notify people with "stale" passwords.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A GOOD PASSWORD?

A good password is easy to remember and hard to guess. To make it hard to guess it should be long(ish) and consist of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters. Here is an example of a good password: "Iw2bSOCf67-71." (The first character is a capital i, not a lower-case L.) This password is longish, and would be very hard to guess. It looks like random gibberish. BUT IT IS VERY EASY TO REMEMBER, since it comes from the sentence, "I went to beautiful St. Olaf College from 1967-71." As long as I remember the sentence, I can quickly and easily type in the password. You can do this with any sentence, but it is useful to have numbers in it somewhere. For example, "My two wonderful children are named John and Marion." would become "M2wcanJaM." This password has upper-case letters, lower-case letters, a number, and a punctuation symbol. It looks like gibberish but is easy to generate any time I need to use it.

A SECRET ABOUT PASSWORDS

Since you may type in your password a lot, make it something positive. Note that I included "beautiful" in the first password and "wonderful" in the second password. Every time I type in these passwords, I will reinforce my positive feelings. What I say I think. What I think I act upon. So make your sentence positive and your password can help you be a better person. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

WRITING IT DOWN

Most security instructions admonish you to NEVER write down your password. I ALWAYS write down my password, especially when I first create it. That is when I am most likely to forget it, since I have to unlearn the old one, which causes interference with recalling the new one. But I only write down the sentence, somewhere innocuous, not the actual password. Someone would have to find my sentence and then figure out how to turn it into my password. Since I write down LOTS of sentences and notes, I feel comfortable with this. If you don't feel comfortable writing down your password, another strategy is to log out and back in a number of times immediately after changing a password. That will begin to teach your fingers how to type the new password and help extinguish the old password.

STORE YOUR PASSWORDS ON YOUR COMPUTER

If you are like me, you have LOTS of passwords. If you don't have lots of passwords, you probably use the same password over and over, something you know you should not do. I store my passwords on my computer, encrypted with a strong password, such as those described above. I use a commercial program, but there is a free program called KeePass (http://keypass.info) for Windows that has gotten strong recommendations. You might want to give that a try. It can even enter your passwords for you on login pages on the web, so it makes it easy to use strong passwords, that are unique for each account, and change them often.

I personally use 1Password on my Mac and iPhone to keep track of my passwords and my software keys and such. I used RoboForm on my PC before I switched to a Mac. KeePass was not available back then.

DISCLAIMER
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These suggestions are for your personal use. If you are told to do things differently by someone with authority, do it the way you are told by that person.

Bill Vilberg

[ED-TECH] Fun Friday - July

Some of you may have noticed that there was no Fun Friday event in June. June was so fun, I just couldn't indicate that one Friday was better than any other.

But there WILL be a Fun Friday in July. So, register now, by going to http://www.miami.edu/iac and clicking on the "Events" menu item, for Fun Friday #15, July 24, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (or later).

Take an enjoyable lunchtime break with technology. This is an informal demonstration of interesting web sites, hardware, and software.

POSSIBLE DEMONSTRATIONS

1. MultiURL.com - Web site groupings
2. Sequoia and GrandPerspective - HD space visualizer
3. MyDropBox.com - Backup and access
4. prezi.com - Zooming presentations

There is no more free lunch at Fun Fridays, but you are welcome to bring your own lunch and eat it during the presentation.

The demonstration will be over around 1:00 PM, but the discussion is welcome to continue as long as people want to stay around.

When Friday July 24, 2009 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Where Richter Library 305
Seats Available 15

With only 15 seats available, sign up NOW if you want to attend. Go to http://www.miami.edu/iac and click on the "Events" menu item.

Bill Vilberg

[ED-TECH] Survey on education for sustainable development

Greetings ...

A survey on education for sustainable development, test version 1.5, is
online. The objective is to gather an inventory of critical issues that
frequently emerge in sustainable development. Many issues that emerge
from the interaction between social, economic, environmental, and other
factors are already included, but there are many more to be identified.

This is the link:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cnoyc2ZKeF9RSDFiQkw2eTZzdGszMGc6MA..

If you want to take a look at the database:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rz2sfJx_QH1bBL6y6stk30g&output=html

For more background info on this project:
http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv05n06page1.html

Please forward this message to others who might be interested.

Thanks,
Luis

Luis T. Gutierrez, PhD
Editor, PelicanWeb Journal of Sustainable Development
http://pelicanweb.org
pelican@pelicanweb.org

[ED-TECH] Advisement/registration system ideas

Ed-Tech members,

I was asked to generate ideas for an improved advisement/registration system. The vision is to create something as useful as Amazon.com. If Amazon can keep track of what I have ordered and make recommendations based on my viewing and order history, shouldn't the system students use to build a schedule be able to do some things like that, too? This has really been fun, so far, and I have enjoyed talking with people about various features or capabilities they would like to see.

If you would like to be part of this process, please let me know. I am using a service called e-tipi, and I will be happy to invite you to join the group so we can add ideas, comment on ideas, vote for ideas, and come up with an amazing system, at least on paper.

If you REPLY to this e-mail, please change the address to bill.vilberg@miami.edu so everyone doesn't see all the volunteers. I don't want to flood mailboxes with "Add me, too" messages.

Bill Vilberg