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Are proxies at home a good idea?

“Should I? Shouldn’t I”

These are the thoughts I have behind the idea of putting a proxy (physical equipment or a software program used to allow or block certain websites) into my home. On the one hand it seems like a great idea because the proxy is a safeguard for little ones which helps prevent them from stumbling upon unwanted adult websites. However, there are drawbacks. First, as adults, we are taking away the ability to our kids to make the right choice for themselves. Second, we may be kidding ourselves into thinking that we have battened down the hatches and secured the fort.

Older kids, and sometimes younger ones are figuring ways around proxies faster than we can implement them. Proxies including, the free OpenDNS, or inexpensive NetNanny, etc can soon be circumvented by the sly child.

My advice is to:

Talk with your son or daughter about the kinds of dangers and annoyances are on the internet. Sometimes pornography is the least of your worries. Cyber-bullying is becoming more of a concern with students online. Good ole Facebook is one of the prime playgrounds where this happening, but it could also be taking place in many of the other social networking sites, like Hi5, MySpace, Second Life or even Club Penguin, which is designed for younger ones.
Move the computer into family space like the kitchen or family room. Back in the days of one computer per household this was a more easy task to perform, but with the advent of one (sometimes more) laptops per member of the home, this can be a arduous task. As a parent, insist that your son or daughter work on their homework or play their games in the public space.
Be aware. Recognize that “Alt Tabbing” (Switching between programs with shortcut keys) is not a secret feature only your son or daughters knows. Be sly. Look at running programs in the task-bar. Look to see they aren’t running things in hidden mode. There are plenty of ways to play games inside of otherwise workhorse programs like Microsoft Word or Excel.
Join your son or daughter in their world, the cyber-world. Have them show you what they are doing and how they do it. Take a genuine interest in their MMORPGS, their social networking, their blogs, their shopping sites, their games, and anything else they will show you. They have so many things tricks up their sleeves, why not learn it from the horses mouth? Not only will you be more wise to them, but in allowing them to teach you, you may grow your relationship into another dimension.
Words of warning: Sure there are ways to key-log, track and block everything they do, but think to yourself:
Are you really helping them?
Are you invading privacy unnecessarily?
Would you read through their journal, if they kept one?
Would you want someone else doing this to you?
Embrace | Educate | Explore together

3 Comments

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on April 16, 2012 in Technology

Tags: Debate, Kids, Online, Parents, Safety

Do you use Facebook, Gmail AND Hotmail?

08 May

I bet you do. I bet you also use them similarly to how I use them. These days I use Facebook for daily communication, Gmail for important stuff and Hotmail or Yahoo for junk mail. Why is that?

Facebook has come out on top as the daily most used website. It’s due to feeds from friends, ease of use, and non-clunkiness. This is the place to be if you enjoy knowing what many of your friends are doing, most of the time. Because of this, you probably will write quick emails to them to comment about their activities.

Hotmail and Yahoo, however, may have been one of the first email clients you started using. You were probably not thinking too much about the silliness of your “handle” when you created the account. Therefore, you don’t share this information with people you want to think of you professionally. The account is still active and since you need a certain area to send email confirmations to this is your likely choice. Also, you remember the email password.

And then comes Gmail. It hasn’t been around as long as the former two and if you were born around the time I was (1976) or even sooner you started to think about how people are viewing you online. You needed to apply to a college, or job, or start a company and to do so you didn’t want somebody emailing you at fluffy123@hotmail.com or cheezeslick69@yahoo.com. It just didn’t cut it. You probably went out and tried to get a variation of your name – figure that, and now you have the third or fourth email account that you consider professional.

It could be the Outlook/Yahoo/Facebook combo, or the Webmail/Hotmail/LinkedIn combo, but when all is said and done, I bet you have something along these lines.

Whatever happened to the days before email? “Page me.” “Call me on my home (rotary) phone” I hardly remember them. Do you?

Hotmail’s new throw away Email accounts (headros.wordpress.com)

2 Comments

Posted by Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org on May 8, 2011 in Technology

Tags: Email, Email client, Facebook, Gmail, Google, Hotmail, Online, Social media, Technology, Yahoo

How did you hear that Osama was killed?

02 May

I bet that you heard that Osama Bin Laden was killed from a different source that how you heard that Princess Diana or JFK was killed?

The reason I bet this is because you heard the other two were killed on the TV, whereas the latest story you read through the news on the web, through Twitter or because of a post on Facebook.

Gosh, how things are changing.

In the future, be it five years, ten, twenty or more, how will we be viewing, reading, hearing and sensing the news? Media will continue to be more self-directed.

We have seen the advent of Sony, Samsung and Apple internet-TV, NetVibes, and iGoogle. RSS feeders have been around for a while, and then of course there is Tweetdeck to help manage Twitter Tweets. We are no long er passive readers and watchers. We want what we want, when we want it, how we want it and how much we want of it.

We don’t like to stop for commercials, so they better be built right in somewhere and if we really like something you can bet we are going to share, tweet, like, or stumble it. Our groups of friends and contacts are going to get to hear, watch and read what we did.

But it is going to get better with time. Media itself, along with the ads that we see are learning from us and then cater to us. Trends are amalgamating about things that we are doing. What then, are you doing to help with trending for yourself? How are you making your life easier? Are you still watching the TV or reading an actual newspaper for your information?

Think about it now. Act on it soon.

How and why do some things become viral?

01 May

I don’t know if these are the most inane, insane, funny, repetitive or just plain weird things that I have seen today, but they are viral:

and

How and why do some things become viral, whereas other, possibly much better videos don’t see the light of day? In order to do a small amount of research myself I played these videos for three classes of mine. As soon as I put them on, big…and I’m talking BIG… smiles came to most kids faces. Giggles and laughs broke out and after I had stopped playing the videos and discussions were had, I heard and saw some of my students looking the videos up themselves to play them over and over again.

I often play videos for my students. In fact, most of the videos, which you can witness for yourself in the “Videos” section of this site, have been shown and discussed at one time or another with students. However, the two that are embedded in this post seem to be the ones that elicit the largest “play again” response.

I asked my students why. Some of their answers were:

They are funny
They are cute
The first one reminds them of videos games
They are repetitive
They are fun to annoy other people with
They catch into your brain immediately
They are spoofs

I agreed with all of these answers. I thought about what age demographic these videos seem to be appealing to and assume that most people who are watching these are kids and teens. Let’s look at each video individually to see what commonalities they have.

The first video has a retro-feel that many adults might remember from their video game experiences [think: Pong, Atari, Coleco-Vision, Sega, Nintendo, Commodore 64 & Amiga] It might be exliciting memories with the play of a very repetitive song and some bright, pixelated graphics. It is repetitive, has good sound quality, is simple, but well-made and is repetitive.

The second video is also well-made. It is possibly a spoof – something that is intended to make fun of the original. It also seems like something we all could have done had we set our minds to it. It has mediocre to good looking people in the video. It mimics the style of music and videos of the same genre and the theme is something most people love – Friday!

Comparing the two, we see that both are well-made, repetitive, and give us something to talk about on a general level. They are both simple in form. They feel like something we could have done or made ourselves, but they are original. Both bring smiles to our faces because they are entertaining, light-hearted and have a tacit “like” factor. But how did they become viral?

Malcolm Gladwell examines the “critical mass of an idea” in his book The Tipping Point. Overall it’s an interesting explanation of how information moves through crowds and things go viral. There is much emphasis on influencers or super influencers in getting something to go viral; someone with a lot of reach or readers already can promote an idea and really enhance its chances of getting spread further. Bingo! The idea goes viral. No rocket science here – you are basically starting out very near critical mass already.

Does this mean that we need to be connected to a super influencer who can promote our product or idea? Maybe. But sometimes they can’t get it going either. If the idea is not good, then they may have problems as well. If they send out bad information about an idea or product then they lose credit and people will listen to them less. Patrick, of Very Involved writes:

You should not be writing an article [or making something] to just be helpful to the end user. It’s much more than that. You want your article or product to be one that your customers need to invest others attention in.
Your readers should feel like they have something to gain from passing along your article to their friends. They are your co-authors, reaping the benefits of your words, by being able to say, “I found that”.

Reexamining my two examples you might want to say, “I found that”. If at least for entertainment’s sake. However, as an educator, I want to be someone who is passing on valuable information. In order to do so I would read more about that idea of virility here: www.smartpassiveincome.com

Good luck. Think about what you’re making or continuing to make viral. Think about what others have made viral. Let’s get viral!