Tech Tips for the Week of December 14 - Go Phish, bighugelabs.com, easybib.com

Unlike the narrower focus of the last two instalments of Tech Tips, this week's topics are, admittedly, somewhat random.  We'll begin with some advice on keeping your identity safe on the Internet, move on to show you how your students can create quite professional-looking publications in a matter of minutes, and end with a quick way to create bibliography entries.  But first ...

A Follow-up:  Another way to expand students' borders

After last weeks Tech Tips, Jenn Foley of Shaunavon High emailed me to suggest another organization worthy of your consideration and contributions.  Right to Play is a not-for-profit organization which seeks to encourage sport and play in developing countries by providing equipment, organization and positive role models to children.  Here is Jenn's suggestion on a way to incorporate this into the Wellness curriculum:

"The Right To Play Organization http://www.righttoplay.com  can be an amazing tool for connecting Personal, Community and Global wellness in our Wellness 10 Curriculum. Sometimes it can be tough to concretely address the Global Wellness concept, but depending on how the class decides to get involved, it can link all three levels of wellness.

Our Wellness 10 classes share the recycling duties with our SRC. They are put into squads and we do it once a week, alternating months with SRC. Their personal wellness benefits from "giving to and for others". This contributes to the wellness of our class community as well as our school community. The money raised over the year is donated to the Right To Play Organization which does amazing things to rehabilitate child soldiers, educate about HIV, teaching kids how to interact with their enemies and giving girls the same oppotunities to play as the boys...all done through play and physical activity while raising cultural and global wellness for our kids."

Thanks, Jenn, for that suggestion.

By the way, feel free to email me at any time with suggestions for inclusion in Tech Tips.  We are always looking for ideas.

Go Phish - A Cautionary Tale

Christmas may be a season of giving, but for most of us - other than your Aunt Mabel, who is knitting you lumpy socks as I write this - the season of giving translates into the season of consumerism.  Over the past decade, more and more people are avoiding the hectic scramble of shopping malls by turning to the stay-at-home convenience of online shopping.  There is an undeniable appeal in being able to check things off your Christmas list while sitting in your pyjamas and sipping your morning coffee.

With this increase in online economic activity comes an increased need to be vigilant in keeping your online identity safe.  Let me punctuate that with a personal story which, while it may embarrass me, may also help others to understand the necessity of practising good Internet safety.

The other night, I received a message in my inbox which purported to be from Facebook.  (Essentially: Do I know you?  I didn't). Of course, spam is not a rare commodity on Facebook, so I wasn't surprised by this, but, in a rush to block the person who had sent the message, I clicked on the link in the email and "logged in."

Bam!  I was immediately re-directed to another web site.  (Several expletives deleted here.)  I'd just fallen victim to phishing.  And I ought to know better.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, phishing is an attempt, thought deception, to persuade a person to voluntarily provide sensitive personal information which may then be used for illegal or immoral purposes.  In most cases, it takes the form of an email from ___________ (Paypal, Ebay, your bank, ... fill in the blank) saying that your account may have been compromised, and would you please click on the link included in the email and log in to confirm that everything is OK.  If you examine the link carefully, you will notice that, in fact, it does not point to the site in question.  If you choose to click on the link, you will be taken to a site which has been deliberately designed to look exactly like the login screen for ___________ (fill in the blank).  However, if you take the time to examine the address in the address bar of your browser, you will notice that it may have the site name somewhere in the address (eg. http://letuscamyou.co.uk/royalbank.com/splash.html) but its not the actual domain name (the part after http:// and before the first slash).  As a general rule, financial organizations do not communicate by email, so, if you have any doubt about such an email - and you should - always ignore the link in the email and visit the site by typing in the address yourself or using your usual bookmark/favourite, then log in and check things out.

My moment of colossal stupidity was followed by a mad scramble to quickly log in to Facebook for real and change my password before someone hi-jacked my account and posted ads for a colon cleanser.  My next step should have been to visit all the web sites on which I use the same username/password combination and change my password there as well.  But I didn't. It was late, and I went to bed instead.  That was my second colossally stupid mistake.

The result?  I awoke yesterday morning to a raft of emails reporting all sorts of purchasing activity on my PayPal account.  Apparently, in my sleep, I had ordered various clothing items and a PS3 and had them shipped to Israel.  The good news is that PayPal, like most major credit cards, has filters to detect this kind of suspicious activity and had locked out my account.  Within half an hour, I had all my money back.  But I learned, or re-learned, a number of valuable lessons:

• Avoid using the same password on too many sites.  This is difficult because we end up with so many Internet logins that few humans can actually keep track of a separate password for each site without writing them down (which carries its own set of problems).  Nevertheless, you should try to differentiate passwords at the very least.  Use a unique password for each of your banking and financial sites.  In that way, if one account is compromised, not all your accounts are at risk.
• Change your passwords with some regularity.  I would suggest at least once every six months.
• Never click on a link within a email that takes you to a login page unless it's an email you've been expecting.  Even in that case, take the time to examine the address/URL to confirm that the link has taken you to the correct site.
• Don't rely on technology to do jobs that your brain should do.  In my case, my vigilance was compromised by the knowledge that Gmail (the email system I use) does a very good job of detecting phishing scams and most often disables links in emails it believes are suspicious.

Finally, don't mistake my purpose here.  I'm in no way suggesting that you shouldn't engage in Internet commerce.  Keep in mind that my situation had very little to do with online shopping.  Despite this episode, I still did eighty percent of my Christmas shopping online this year.  If I feel the need for more dodging and jostling in my life, I can always join a recreational rugby league; I don't need to go to the mall.  But, just as you would keep an eye on what that surly cashier at the gas station does with your credit card, you should be equally vigilant in keeping your online identity secure. 

Online Desktop Publishing with bighugelabs.com

I'm always a fan of technology that simplifies a task(s), and very few web sites do that better than bighugelabs.com.  Bighugelabs is a collection of tools which take a photograph and transform it into something that looks remarkably professional for the minimal time and effort invested.  Within minutes students can successfully create their own:

• motivational poster
• magazine cover
• trading card
• movie poster
• CD cover
• billboard
• pop-art lithograph (using the Warholizer)
• photo mosaic
• calendar
• photo cube
• ID Badge

And many more.  Many of these are projects which teachers and student might otherwise tackle in Microsoft Publisher, but they would first need considerably more training to accomplish the same results.  In fairness to Publisher, however, it would provide much more precise control, and, the end product could be of much higher quality, presuming the user had sufficient skill.

In bighugelabs, the process for most projects is remarkably similar - and simple.

1. The user selects a photo or photos she wishes to use as the basis of the project.  This can be either a local file or an online photo on Flickr or Facebook.
2. She completes a form in which she specifies any text to be included (captions, headlines, ...)
3. Often she will also be given the opportunity to change certain design elements (borders, colours, ...) although this is optional.
4. She then clicks on Create and the site generates the end product (a JPG image) from her input.
5. At that point, she can save and/or print the file.

In the free version of bighugelabs (the only one I'm suggesting here) the end product is an 800 x 640 pixel image; not exactly high resolution, but acceptable when printed to letter-size paper.

Here are just a few ideas of curriculum applications for this technology:

• Trading cards of characters from a literature selection the students are studying in ELA
• Self-concept motivational posters, billboards or magazine covers for Health
• A photo collage or photo cube of pictures from their community (Grade 3 SS)
• Have students imagine that a book they are reading was turned into a movie and have them create a movie poster with themselves as the stars.
• Use the motivational poster app to create safety posters (home, fire, Internet, lab, shop, Home Ec lab...)

I'm sure that teachers will think of many more.  If you do choose to use bighugelabs.com, please email me and let me know how you used it.

Creating a Bibliography or Works Cited Page, the Easy Way

Teachers who teach their students how to properly format a Works Cited page know that, no matter which citation stylesheet they ask their students to use (MLA, APA, ...) the expectations are constantly evolving.  This evolution is an attempt to streamline the citation process itself, and is also meant to accommodate an ever-increasing list of media formats (video, web pages, online new, blogs, ...).

If you ask your students to use the MLA stylesheet, you may wish to point them to easybib.com.  Easybib allows students to enter the information for each citation.  It then formats the citations appropriately and assembles them into a list which can be copied and pasted into their own document.

Before my inbox fills with emails complaining that this is "doing the work for the students," let's consider what's important in the citation process.  In my not-so-humble opinion, here's what students need to know about citations:

• That they have a responsibility to cite sources
• That, depending on the nature of the subject, they may need to use a particular citation method (MLA, APA, ...), and finally
  
• They need to know how to find the proper way to comply with the citation scheme they have chosen or that they have been asked to use.

Easybib.com fits the bill for the third necessity quite nicely.  Keep in mind that the citation formatting that I may have memorized ten - or even five - years ago is most likely out of date and useless to me today; therefore, it's not all that helpful that I know how to format a citation; what's important is that I know how to find out about citation formatting.

For those who use APA formatting or who would prefer a less "canned" approach to MLA formatting, I would recommend Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab).  Its up-to-date style guides simplify the explanations of formatting requirements enough that students can digest them:

• The OWL MLA Style Guide
• The OWL APA Style Guide

The OWL site has many other resources suitable for high school writers, but this Tech Tip has probably visited enough topics for one week.

Enjoy a well-deserved Christmas break.

Until next week ...