Stuff about using computers to help people teach and learn better.

Software

Why We Teach

Posted Wed, 2009-03-18 06:45 by pfaffman

I have been thinking lately about how it is that it's very hard to recruit people to be teachers, scientists, and especially science teachers. When I talked to one of the most intelligent kids I taught some years after he graduated from college he explained that there was no reason to go into a technical field, there was no money in it. What did he do? Traded derivatives on Wall Street.

Yesterday I got a friend request from a student I taught in my first job (from 1987-1990). Here's what he wrote on my wall:

why shouldn't i seek you out? i graduated with a computer science degree. your classes at "perk" were awesome. to this day i will never forget you retrieving info from a hard drive. i wanted to know that stuff!!! unfortunately, i was a u.s. history major in college - then i switched to computers. i went on to graphics and finally got to edit corporate videos on an avid for a fortune 500 company. thank you for waking my mind up to that field! take care -

So it seems that something I did helped someone turn out OK. I'm not quite sure how these two stories are connected, besides they're both people that I taught. I guess it's good to know that when I was flying blind as a new teacher establishing a computer program where none had existed (something that I'm not sure I'd do again) I did some stuff right. I'm glad that Chris learned enough about computers to make it a career, I'm still worried, though, how our country is going to again convince people like Nimrod that contributing to knowledge and making stuff is a better career choice than manipulating numbers to "make" money and destroy our economy.

Bibus and OpenOffice.org Looks like Endnote to me

Posted Fri, 2007-06-01 15:37 by pfaffman

A student wanted a Linux laptop so that he could run Bibus, a F/OSS reference management tool that talks to OpenOffice.org. It's not part of Ubuntu, but there's a Debian version, so it installs with a couple of clicks. It took me a minute to figure out how to insert citations, but I did. It looks pretty easy. And it created what appears to be a correctly formatted bibliography. I can't get the BibTeX import to work (I keep my stuff in BibTeX), and the export that JabRef did of my database (of some 2000+ references) didn't seem to include the journals. This may still be a decent tool for me when I'm forced to create word processing documents, and it's likely a worthwhile tool for you if you don't already have 2000 items in a database using another tool that you really, really like.

Portable Apps

Posted Thu, 2007-02-15 18:50 by pfaffman
The FreeSMUG peoplenow have portable apps. See portableapps.com for Portable apps for Windows.

Web-based software changing academic computing

Posted Tue, 2006-10-24 16:58 by pfaffman
eSchool News has an article called A paradigm shift for school software?I told you so.

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient

Posted Wed, 2006-10-04 13:48 by pfaffman

I just stumbled on this piece about how word processors are stupid tools. I agree wholeheartedly. I have been saying this for years. Most people don't know that there is a way to produce text OTHER than a word processor.

Linux in Indiana Schools

Posted Wed, 2006-09-27 15:12 by pfaffman

A couple places have stories about Indiana moving not only to OSS applications, but even to Linux. That's crazy. See School CIO and this piece. I mostly added this because some time ago I posted something about Linux in Indian schools and when I saw it just now I thought it was a typo.

Far Manager

Posted Wed, 2006-09-27 14:53 by pfaffman
It's not OSS, but Far Manager purports to be a way to keep sets of files in multiple locations synchronized. The WinSCP site claims that it's "shareware." I don't see that they're charging for it, but I don't see that source code is available, either. If I used Windows and hadn't figured out how to make rsync work, I'd definitely give this a shot. Oh, someone has made a newer, and presumable better packaging rsync for windows called cwRsync. I'd check that out too.

How Do You People Use Word Processors?

Posted Wed, 2006-09-27 14:10 by pfaffman

So I'm writing this chapter for a handbook. The editor sends back a draft using MS Word's "Track changes" and "comments" features. "Dandy," I think, "this should be a good way to see what he wants." Read on to find out that the process required two operating systems to accept the suggested changes to be able to actually start work the substantive stuff.

Webliographer Has Arrived

Posted Fri, 2006-06-02 16:42 by pfaffman
Webliographer is, to the best of my knowledge, the first web-based application for managing and sharing bookmarks. The first usable version was in use in October of 1998. It replaced my home page, which consisted primarily as a set of categorized links. I was especially proud of the fact that it tracked the use of URLs, so when you clicked on a link a counter was updated in the database and links that got more hits were promoted to the front page of Webliographer's display. Though I used, and still use, Webliographer primarily for my own purposes an individual, my target audience for Webliographer was primarily teachers who wanted kids to use the web in their classrooms.