Spreadsheets and Blankets

Blankets really don't have anything to do with this week's work or post but it made a good title. Excel was one of the first programs I began exploring when I started to really get into computers and was more or less responsible for me getting really, really into computers and programming. (See a post a few back where the whole story was told.)

Since that time I've used spreadsheets here and there for various tasks. Currently I use one for student transcripts with calculated GPAs and credits required for graduation. I keep some employee hours tallied on one. Nothing too fancy. I like to make things look nice and always enjoy a design challenge such as the transcript spreadsheet, fitting everything nicely on one page. If you look at my recipe spreadsheet you'll see what I mean about design and formatting.

Some of what I read about how my classmates use spreadsheets I would do in a database instead. I can just as easily create a database in MS Access for keeping track of, sorting and filtering information. I haven't found the time to learn to code in OpenOffice Base or Zoho Reports/Creator yet but learning Zoho coding is on my list of things to do some day. In my opinion, spreadsheets are best used for number crunching, graphing or testing out different scenarios. Long lists of information for analysis belong in a database. Short lists of read only information can be put in a document table where you will have more formatting options for presenting the information.

As for student use, If I were teaching I could think of lots of ways to use a spreadsheet, even ones that don't fit in my opinion of how to best use a spreadsheet. Online spreadsheets have enough features for students to learn how to use them. As with other online productivity software, the full feature set is still not there for power users.

For those of you wondering about spreadsheets for the younger grades, I suggest you check out OpenOffice for Kids. The whole OpenOffice suite has been reformatted into 3 levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, with the latter having all the normal toolbars and options and features available and visible. Choosing the Beginner user interface, kids are presented with a stripped down version of features and tools. The different interfaces apply to all of the office programs so that young beginners can focus on learning the basics without getting confused with the clutter of features and options.

Finding and Using Words

I've picked up a few tricks about  Internet searching, mostly that I'll probably be using the advanced Search capabilities more often. I compared my usual, Google, with Bing. Both give good but different results and each has it's own set of unique features making it a preference thing. I still haven't figured out how Bing is going to change my life and make decisions any easier like it does in the commercials. Maybe I'm not "connected" enough or maybe I'm not interested enough to really figure out how Bing can chose the right summer camp for my kids.

I tried looking at a bunch of "visual" search engines. Not including the ones that were for searching graphic images, I was not impressed with the eye candy they offered. Some give you a bunch of thumbnails in varying and dazzling presentation formats of the web pages that you must enlarge to see what's on it. Not very useful when reading the the two sentence summary included in standard search pages is much easier. Others offer a big shot of the web pages, again in super cool whiz bang style. Again, not very useful because you only see one result at a time. All of them are bandwidth hogs that need to load the result web pages first before any of the wow presentation methods will actually work and entertain you.

I was disappointed to see that Kartoo has changed it's format since I last visited it a couple of years ago. Search results were presented in a mind-map style layout with similar pages and thoughts categorized in different branches. Clicking on any of the subtopics would take you to a search for that. It was similar to Visual Thesaurus. Upon further reading I just found out that they closed in 2010. Looks like they are back up again but in the format they now have.Wikipedia says that the mind-map presentation they had was ahead of its time.

So, now that I've found my words I guess I have to process them. Without being redundant with my forum posts I'll try to say something new. Zoho Docs has more features than Google Docs but in order to collaborate and share, invitees must have an email address associated with a Zoho account. In Google, you can share and collaborate with anyone, privately or publicly as an open invitation to anyone on the net who knows or can find the document url.

Interestingly, I'm in my personal Google Docs site now and I'm trying to figure out why I have several of my classmates' shared work from previous classes listed. I don't remember giving out my personal Google name and I don't remember trying to connect any Docs between personal Google and Wolfmail. I do have my Wolfmail email pushed to my personal one?? Any thoughts?

Graphics and Text

I really love working with graphics and if I was going to do things over again I might go into graphic design. I have used and still use high end graphics programs, both vector (drawing with shapes and objects) and raster (painting, image/photo editing). For image editing there are a lot of good online applications available, some that are full featured and many that have a few unique tools for interesting effects. For my assignment, I looked for an online vector graphics editor and found that most are not yet ready for prime time. For now, I'll stick to locally installed applications for both types of graphic editing. Either the tools and features are not there or don't yet work well or the latency (lag time) makes it difficult to work with over the Internet, either because of a slower connection (or a  bottle-necking pipeline with 20 students all going crazy on the Internet at the same time) or older computers. Because Inkscape and Gimp among others are free, there is no reason schools cannot install these editing programs on student production computers.

The other side of online graphics are the cool, cute make a picture, story or video websites. I've played around with quite a few of these and know they can have a definite place in schools for the right purpose at the right time. Go for it and use them.One gripe I have with a lot of these websites is that they don't always give you a demo mode to try it out before you sign up. Another gripe is that some really cool create it sites have a lot of inappropriate content for school use/endorsement.

For my graphics assignment, I contrasted an old school text only classroom poster of classroom procedures with a graphic version.

Here is my presentation: Graphics Taiwan



Onto the text of our class. It's been a while since "I done book learning." Up till now, it's been easy for me to play with computer hardware and software and get the work done. Now I have to turn on my brain.

Oh..... the standards, and the documentation and the justification and the  .......


My experience in education has mostly been like this. I worked in a large private English language school in Taiwan for about 10 years. Great methodology, great resources, great freedom to do what works for you and your students. No standards to comply with. No governmental red tape. No hassles. The bottom line was this, we (meaning the company, the teachers and the students) were successful. Students learned to speak (and listen to, read and write) English. They kept coming back for more. The company was the largest adult English language school in Taiwan because we were good at what we did. My present experience is in a small private choice school where let's say, (at my particular school - not to say all choice schools are this way) things are a little looser than in a typical public school.

I do understand why we need to learn about and put into practice the ideas and concepts in the book but sometimes it just seems a little bit too much. I'd like a show of hands from those of you that teach and have the time to make the kinds of lesson plans we all see examples of. In writing and formatted: goals, objectives, justification, plan of attack, follow up,extensions, inclusions, standards addressed, assessment, evaluation - and then look back at it and think, what have I missed, how can I make it better?

I know we need to think this way. I just don't know what it's like in the real world  in public schools. I've never taught in one. Does anybody really do this?

Final Reflection: Computer Systems - How They Work

Looking back, I think I learned more in this course than I like to admit. Most of the topics were very familiar to me. Personally, I would have liked to learn more about networking because it is my weakest point in computer knowledge though I know networking is probably beyond the scope of this course and program.

The topic of security and disaster recovery made me think a little more about my personal computing and what I should do. I also learned a lot more about audio processing than I knew before. I wish I had time to get more into hobby recording and digital audio creation so I could use all the nice toys.

I was around when the first PC wars started but too young to pay real attention. I liked the video series a lot. Someday I'll probably be watching History Detectives on PBS and someone will have an old floppy disk that they claim was the first copy made of MS-DOS with Bill Gates' handwriting on the label. I'm sure it would be interesting if it happened.

Trying out some new OSs was fun. I actually tried about 10 or 12 different ones before I decided what to report on. I found a minimal variant of Ubuntu, JoliOS which manged to get the correct screen resolution for my monitor. It's really made for netbooks with a minimal installation and lightweight processing. I might try it out again and see if I can load it up with all the things I need and want for a desktop. I also tried without luck to install variants of BSD operating system. I'll be watching and playing around with the two I reported on, Sugar on a Stick, a desktop of the One Laptop Per Child Program and Haiku, a modern remake of BeOS operating system that is very quick but is still under development.

The part I'm going to like the least is the Building the Perfect Computer part. I settled for less than I desired with my new computer because the money wasn't there. Building my perfect system will just make me cry because It would be very nice to have the system I come up with.

It's been good working with my team, Rob Granger and Lawrence Mala, getting to know them a little better and I look forward to whenever we get new teams to get to know more of my classmates.

*******IDEA******* Here's an invite. I'll throw a BBQ sometime this summer on a Thursday and whoever is here we can do the class together, I've got WiFi and two computers we can sit around for class???

Personal Computer Disaster Recovery

In the past I think I've only lost one hard drive due to failure of either the drive or the motherboard. I lost a bunch of pictures and a lot of graphics that I had been working on at the time. I've gotten over it now. I think we all are so used to collecting things that it just makes sense to collect digital files as well. Sometimes it's ok to get rid of some baggage like when you move to a new place and discover how much junk you really have when you are packing.

Yes, I want to keep my computer safe and clean because it's a hassle if it gets messed up. On the other hand, it doesn't really bother me too much to set things up from the start because I've done the process so many times that it's not a big deal. I don't have a lot of personal files that I would categorize as super important. I can write a resume again. Lost photos? Oh well, it's not the end of the world. The file I'd miss most is probably my freaky named, super secretly hidden away file with various website account and password information. I haven't gotten around yet to investigate the best password solution.

Yes, I have a mediocre antivirus running on my Linux and there is no real time scanning but at this point in time, it's not a big threat. And when I get to it I want to centralize my files on the various computers around the house. Maybe then I will have a comprehensive back up plan. Right now, I'd have to attach my USB hard drive to each of my three computers (the iBook is dying and on its way out) and do individual back ups.

I may be a bit complacent because I've never had a personal computer hooked up to the internet running Windows. I practice safe surfing and downloading and the threat to Linux is still minimal. I'm glad to have Windows 7 running on the other half of my new computer so I can learn it and run a few things that I haven't configured yet in Linux, but all the constant security popups annoy me. I'll stick with my Linux 85% of the time and back to a Mac when I have too much spare money again.

Alternative OS for Me: Windows 7

    Personally, I've been a Mac and Linux user for the past few years and enjoy using both. Since my iBook is on it's way out and my Linux box is 9 years old, we decided it was time to get a new computer. Prices for a new 27" iMac with Core i7 and 8MB RAM were ok for us until an unexpected need for some of that money came along. Maybe next year...


    I ended up getting a Lenovo 23" multi-touch All-In-One Core i5 with 4 MB RAM for about half the cost. Along with it came Windows 7. The only Windows I am really familiar with is Win 2000. Just this year, I've got a couple of machines at work running XP so I'm getting used to that a little bit and I have never used Vista. So, I thought maybe it's time to become reacquainted with Windows again.

    Of course, the first thing I did was open up Internet Explorer and download Firefox and Chrome. I don't really know how safe IE is now but back in the time it was a security sieve so I'm just going on past experience and familiarity with my browser selection. Next was installing Spybot. Knowing about ClamAV, a free Linux antivirus, I did a search and installed Immunet which uses the ClamAV engine. More about Immunet in my Antivirus report.

    I'm learning more about what is needed for my security needs on this machine. Windows 7 has it's Security Center and then there's the free McAfee trial that keeps popping up. I guess the thing I need to get used to is all the different programs needed to keep you safe using Windows. Messages keep coming coming up every time I need to download and install something. IE made me very mad when trying to download and install Firefox. It kept asking me if I really wanted to trust Mozilla.

    I probably won't get the full Microsoft experience because I have no plans to get Microsoft Office. I'm happy with the open source OpenOffice and/or a new offshot LibreOffice. I probably won't purchase any software for my Windows unless I get too much free time and can learn to use a full Adobe Creative suite for web design, Flash programming and course content authoring. Otherwise, just about everything I need is available for free. If I have time to get really involved in a particular type of application I may find that I will need to purchase a commercial product because the open source alternatives aren't up to standard yet.

    I've been a pretty complacent Mac and Linux user with regards to security and have been running them without any protection other than safe habits and knowledge. I know I should/will be doing more. Thinking about security also makes me think about all my passwords. Do I want to set up master passwords for all my stuff? Is using a master password for all my login sites even safe?

    Though I'm learning about Windows 7, I still mostly boot my new machine into Linux. I repartitioned my c: drive and installed onto the new partition Linux Mint, which is a variation of Ubuntu Linux. I'm liking the look and feel of it better than Ubuntu but the core of how everything works is still Ubuntu so I don't have to learn anything new. I don't have the Lenovo touchscreen working yet in Linux because the hacks are too complicated right now. Sooner or later someone will come up with an easy solution and it doesn't really matter because the touch screen is pretty much of a novelty and not all that useful for production. Maybe I'll find a use for it while browsing if I spend enough time on the Windows half.

    Now, I'm trying to decide best how to network all my resources. I don't really have my own network but sponge off my brother's WiFi on the floor above me. I may be deciding to go with the Tonido Plug that I mentioned previously to create private cloud storage, accessible anywhere but locally available on your own network. I need to centralize my data because I'm starting to have files here, files there, files everywhere.

Computer History for Curtis Siegmann

    My first experience with computers was when I was in 7th or 8th grade(1973?). Our high school had a time share from the mainframe at Ripon College and the teletype machine was in a small room next to the math rooms at the school. My brother was in high school and used the computer with a class or a club. He often brought home long thin rolls of yellow punch tape with computer programs on them. I had fun playing with the rolls but didn't really think too much about the implications of computers in society at the time.

    When I got into high school it was mostly the math nerds/math club members who hung out in the computer room. It wasn't a place to go if you cared anything about your social status. In some math class in high school we had a little bit of experience with the computer for a couple of weeks. We mostly just played a few games that were already programmed or watched the teletype machine print out a picture of Snoopy with bitmapped X's and O's. The whole experience didn't affect me much and interacting with the printout of the teletype machine and writing then and saving programs on punch tape seemed very tedious to me.

    A few years later I learned how to program FORTRAN and later Pascal in university. I did poorly in the courses. The whole computer thing interested me somewhat but I didn't do well and often though it was way too much work, especially the time we had to do a program on punch cards (they were already legacy but our professor thought it a worthy task). I think back now on all the basic programming knowledge I actually did learn and it was to prove useful in the years to come. I actually liked Pascal programming language much better than the BASIC or FORTRAN at the time because Basic and FORTRAN were much more linear programming whereas Pascal was a lot more modular.

    Several years later during my student teaching, I taught word processing to middle school students in Madison, WI, in the district's first computer lab. Loaded each unit with DOS by 5 1/2"disk and then loaded WordStar on every unit by disk - every time! It was a good experience but I still wasn't really into computers. Everything was still too tedious.

    For the computer experience that had the greatest effect on me we need to fast forward to 1992. I was coming home (the first time) from teaching ESL in Taiwan for 2 years and few months before I left, I bought a notebook computer with Windows 3.1 loaded with Word, Excel and Corel Graphics applications. I had previously worked a little bit on some Apple computers but never really liked it for some reason. This time however, I became immersed in learning what I could do. Maybe it was because for the first time I had my own computer. Maybe it was the user interface?

    I really enjoyed playing around with Excel and was learning to write macros and make flat-file database forms. I also liked the Corel graphics, just playing around with it to see what I could do with it. My computer high was short lived because when I got back to Wisconsin, my notebook died and there wasn't anyone around (that I knew of) who could fix a Taiwan notebook.

    A few months later I applied for a job at a motorcycle repair company who wanted something done in Excel. I thought I could do it so I went in and bluffed my way through the interview. While there they said that they had changed their minds and wanted it done in MS Access database instead and asked if I could do that. I lied and said I could ( I had never even heard of Access). I went straight out and bought a book on Access and studied it thoroughly even though I didn't have a computer to work on. I was amazed at what Access could do. I never got a callback for the job but I was on my way to learning and becoming immersed in modern computing.

   A while later when I finally got my own computer to work on I started really learning Access as well as more Corel Graphics. I produced a fine database in Access for a home construction company I worked at as a general laborer. A few years later when I returned to Taiwan and was involved in a curriculum development project, I was the "tech guy" for the project and created a database to enter and store lesson plans and supplemental materials as well as writing many lesson plans and creating graphics for numerous others. My experience with computers at this school got me the position of Director of Online Education when the school decided to embark on entering the online education market. That's a story for later.

   Just about everything I know about computers I have mostly learned on my own (except for two programming courses I had way back), experimenting, tinkering, reading books and help files and searching the net. I believe the turning point in my computer history was my fascination with Excel on my first computer, lying about knowing Access and then actually learning how to use it. Since then my computer skills have helped me or advanced me in just about every position I have had.