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Category Archives: General

Unwanted public(ity)

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 [...]

Posted 18 May 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

The web we lost

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 [...]

Posted 08 May 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) °

Tug of war – Convenience vs. Losing Control

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 [...]

Posted 05 May 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) °

WordPress Vulnerability – A suggestion

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. [...]

Posted 13 April 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Web of Things

The Web of things is an abstract and futuristic concept. We have experience with desktop computers, cell phones and maybe even printers, but beyond that the concept gets a little bit weird. We know it is supposedly coming, but we are not certain when it will arrive or what it will look like when it [...]

Posted 30 March 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) °

The money does matter

One of my initial reactions to MOOCs was based on personal experience as the instructor of large courses and administrator of a department with many large courses.  It was like something was obvious to me but not others. Do people assume this is our preferred method of instruction? Finally, I have encountered someone with a [...]

Posted 12 March 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) °

The learn to program campagin

  Hmm..    There has been long been an educational interest in programming. Clearly, coding can be a vocational skill. If there has been a unique component to my professional skill set, it has been that I can write the code to create online learning environments and collect data on how the environments are used. [...]

Posted 27 February 2013 † grabe § ‡ Comments (0) °