July 1, 2009 by Josh Nunn
Today we’re announcing that Google Message Security will be offered free to current and new eligible K12 Google Apps customers that opt-in to Google Message Security – powered by Postini – by July 2010. Google Message Security lets administrators limit messages based on who they’re from, who they’re going to, or the content they contain. Message rules can be applied to groups of users, making it easy to customise the scheme for different groups (for instance younger students, older students, and teachers). via Official Google Australia Blog.
There really are no excuses any more. Paying a truck load of money to some little company run by hillbillies to provide lousy support and a product that doesn’t work for no tangible benefit over a FREE set of tools that are world-class… We have to do better soon.
Categories: Thoughts on Education •
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October 5, 2008 by Josh Nunn
It seems to me that we (society/schools/the world) tend to rely on technology in two ways. The first is to rely on it to actually work — we expect our computers, email and Intranet page to be working first thing in the morning until 10 o’clock at night (or later). We expect it to work without glitch or bug or problem. Of course by ‘expect’ I really mean ‘cross our fingers and hope’. The way we work belies our hope — we back up, use save often and pray that nothing breaks when we try something new. Some of the more tech-savvy of us (or the more adventurous) quickly rely on technology more than we should. But when our USB device fails or our email service is down, we admit fault for expecting rather than hoping.
Then there is the other way we rely on technology. It began when we (and again I mean ‘we’ as a collective) first sat our kids in front of the television and went off to do our own thing. It has continued until today, but now includes DVD’s, video games, “the computer” and now the Internet. The reliance we have developed is more than just ‘expecting it to work’. We now expect it to fill a role it was never meant to fill, namely: taking over our children’s education and keeping them occupied. Technology-as-babysitter is giving technology far, far more credit than it deserves for being reliable. When our technology lets us down in so many other areas why do we continue to trust it with the minds of our children?
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Tags: School, technology, Thoughts on Education
Categories: Thoughts on Education •
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May 22, 2007 by Josh Nunn
Out with the Old
This intro is aimed at people who can use the Internet, and are comfortable using the last version of Microsoft’s Internet browser: Internet Explorer 6 (also known as IE6).
You may know, a browser is any program that allows you to view — or browse — web pages. Because Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, some of you probably know it only as “the Internet”. It looks like this:
and you usually start it with this icon:
In with IE7
Recently, Microsoft released an updated version of their Internet Explorer browser called Internet Explorer 7 (or IE7). It fixed a lot of problems that IE6 had, and looks a lot prettier. More than the superficial changes though, it adopted a lot of excellent little features that make Internet surfing safer and easier. It’s these changes that I’m going to explore in this article, so you can learn what makes IE7 different and get used to using it in your school or at home.
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Tags: internet, old dogs new tricks, software, Tech
Categories: Thoughts on Education •
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May 15, 2007 by Josh Nunn
They do what on the Internet?
I recently spoke to a staff member at one of my schools who in all respects is a lovely person, but who shocked me thoroughly when we started talking about ‘the Internet’. The topic somehow came to MySpace in particular, and in general the idea of putting personal stuff out there for all to see. Now this person has a child, and their opinion was that they would never let their child do anything online that might expose them to the dangers of the Internet. This sounds good and proper — but my shock was at what their idea of Internet danger extends to.
“Do you believe that some people use the Internet for banking!?!!”
they exclaimed.
As I was about to explain that actually the ‘net is getting very good at keeping everything you put out there safe I was forced to cut the conversation short to reset yet another password.
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Tags: blogging, internet, technology, Thoughts
Categories: Thoughts on Education •
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May 4, 2007 by Josh Nunn
Here’s an easy to use little app for both staff and students. It’s called Jump Knowledge (jkn for short) and it allows you to grab a copy of any webpage you’re reading and write whatever you want all over it (called annotating).
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Tags: software, Tech, tools for schools
Categories: Thoughts on Education •
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March 12, 2007 by Josh Nunn
This was my first thought when Al said he’d created an EduBlogs blog for me. I already blog infrequently on two of my own blogs, and it seems every website that ever tried to be ‘two point oh’ offers a free blog. I have an unused blogger account, a wordpress blog that I had to sign up for to use Akismet (an antispam plugin), and if I’d ever been suckered in to using MySpace, Facebook, or any other social site I’d be drowning in the guilt of too many unused blogs.
But I’m not going to feel guilty about this one. I recently made a vow to myself to do something creative daily, and one of the options I gave myself was to blog. Maybe it wont be here, but I should be blogging more regularly. About the same time, Al and a couple of other bloggers he linked to have been inspiring me to have a bit of a say about education. I hesitated because my perspective is not unique — there are hundreds of other IT people in the South Australian education system. I also hesitated because I fear that there is not much I can say that hasn’t been said already by people who can write betterer.
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Tags: personal, Tech
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