Learning Aloud

I tend to think other people are paranoid – other people dream up conspiracies. This is the way I react to the idea that we are losing our privacy and that others are methodically gathering information about us and using this information to manipulate or take advantage of us.

I am starting to wonder if I should rethink my position on the privacy issue. I have been getting a lot of emails offering me access to Viagra lately. Why this product? If the evil marketers wanted to target me, why don’t I receive solicitations for Lipitor, Zocor, or Pravachol – I do have cholesterol issues. I have this mental image of a giant database somewhere and the one product or service listed in my personal record is Viagra.

So – here is some advice to all spammers. Diversify your offerings a bit and be a little less obvious. We 50+ year old males are very sensitive.

CNN reports that a new Department of Education study indicates that the popularity of online learning is growing.

Bruce Johnson offers a article on Cameras (video) in the classroom through techlearning. A good review with some useful links.

It appears that “the official” HyperStudio site is back. However, I still can’t locate SiteCentral. It does appears there is no new activity associated with these products.

Cindy and I explore many online sites as part of our work. At some point we began to accumulate what we felt were useful links into a database and to offer online access to any interested viewer.

Collections of web addresses are problematic in that some sites are abandoned and some locations change. Most page authors offer redirects when they move their sites, but if you don’t visit the redirect page within a reasonable amount of time, the redirect page is removed and it may seem that the site has been abandoned. I know of no easy way to check links collected within a database (help me with this if methods are available) so over the past few weeks I have been trying every link by hand. I started with about 610 links and ended up with about 575. These data probably say something about how much change occurs on the web within a year.

Anyway, feel free to visit the newly updated site.

A recent Michican State University study concludes that “Internet use has no negative effect on users’ social involvement or psychological well-being, and it increases children’s grade point averages and standardized test scores.” The study is based on the homeNetToo projects and targets low income families.

Government officials are concerned that a massive Internet attack exploiting Windows vulnerabilities is near.