Passwords - Remembered but Hard to Guess

In todays world we have to have passwords for everything and as teachers some of these passwords protect our gradebooks and sensitive student information.  So the question is how do you make a password that is so hard for someone else to guess but really easy for you to remember.

First here is a few simple tips on what passwords should have in them:

•  At least one uppercase letter and one lower case letter
• At least one number
• At least one symbol like @#%^&*
• Be at least 8-12 characters long
• Never use the same one twice

Now with all these rules you are probbly saying there is no way I will remember a oassword such as ""T0o1n2y3"" but if you look closely it is really not that hard of a password to remember.   Today's most popular passwords are 123456, password, or for teachers the name of the school.  

So back to the question how do you create a password that is so hard to guess but easy to rememeber?  If you look back at the password I created it is my name with numbers after each letter and quotes around it.  The trick is to not remember the password but to remember a rule and make the rule work so that every place you need to create a password can have a different one.

Here are a few simple examples to get you thinking the right way:

•  Use the sites name broken up by your favorite number then use quotes around it - "T7o7n7y7s7"
• If it is a secrect question never use the real answer use parts of the question and something else you will remember.

If you notice nothing here is hard to remember and it will make your passwords so hard to guess you will be more secure.

Steve Gibson founder of Gibson Research Corporation and host of Security Weekly on the TwiT network has a great site designed to help you see how secure your passwords are.  It is called a Password Haystack because it is like hiding your password(needle) in a huge haystack.

Create a password and then pop it in Steve Gibson's site and see how great your new rule will be in protecting yourself online.

ABC News Link

This is a great video where Steve Gibson talks about his password haystack and explains why complex passwords are not always more secure.

Uses of Twitter for a Teacher

The more I use Twitter the more I come to realize the potential it has more everyone.  Now I know what you are thinking Twitter is for people to say what they are having for lunch or to share this cool picture of their cat doing something stupid, well yes some people use it that way but that is not the best use of Twitter and you do not have to follow them so you will not see it.  Twitter can become a great source of information about anything you are interested in and it also can be used to crowd source ideas and questions.

Here are a few ways that I am using Twitter:

1. I follow about 70 teachers and educators around the world that have interesting things to discuss and share.  This allows me to keep on the pulse of technology in the classroom and gives me great ideas for these tech tips.  You can find teachers to follow at http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/w/page/22554534/FrontPage
2. I regularly look at three hash tag feeds.  They are #EdChat, #EdTech, and #MathChat.  These are hash tags that anyone can use to share information about these topics.  This gives me access to the world that I am not following but are still talking about things I am interested in.  You can find hash tags you want to follow at http://www.cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html
3. I also participate weekly in twitter discussions.  #EdChat has their discussions on Tuesdays at noon EST and 7pm EST every week.  Each week has different topics that are discussed and it gives you access to what other people are thinking and also gives you the ability to share your views with the rest of the world.
4. Last week I introduced one of the twitter papers (http://paper.li) and this is a great way to catch up on things you might have missed because Twitter never stops flowing.
5. I use a program called TweetDeck (http://www.TweetDeck.com) to make looking at Twitter manageable since it gives me columns of information.

I hope that you take the plunge and look at twitter as a professional resource tool.  Honestly I find it more useful than any PD that I have gone to because it is teachers helping teachers.

Cellphones as a Classroom Responder

Cellphones they are everywhere and almost all of our students have them and use them to text every day.  So how can we start to use this to our advantage?  Well one of the options is using a service called PollEverywhere.  Have you ever seen on TV or in a print advertisement a number that asks you to text a certain code to?  Well they are becoming the easiest and fastest way to get feedback from people all over the world.  Now as teachers or presenters we are only looking for feedback from our audience and this is where http://www.polleverywhere.com/ comes in to help us.

This site lets you set up an instant poll for free for up to 30 participants.  This allows you to get instant feedback in your classroom just like using responders but instead using the technology our students have.  The other advantage of using this technology is you do not need a smartphone to use it any phone with a text messaging plan can participate.

I created this quick poll in less than 1 min on their site.  It gives you the number to Text to and the code you need to put in for each of the options.  If you pay for the service you can customize the codes they will send in but for free it is a nice little option to use quickly during a presentation for feedback.

RCampus - Online Rubric Creator

Today in education rubrics are one of the most important tools teachers have to grade assignments.  With data collection rules and authentic assessments rubrics allow teachers to grade assignments easily and transparently.  They also give the students the information they need to succeed at the assignment.  No longer do they need to ask themselves what the teacher wants the rubric tells them.

Rcampus (http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm) is a website that teachers create rubrics on.  This site has thousands of rubrics that are created by teachers all over the world.  Just a quick search can give you access to these rubrics

For example a search for a writing assignment rubric gave me this one (http://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=X3X3X8&sp=yes).  You can use this rubric as is or you can create an account and edit it to make it your own.

If you create an account you can also make rubrics from scratch and share them with the world.

Another advantage of making your rubrics online with this site or others like it is you can embed your rubric on your personal website or share the link with your students so they can access it online without having to print out copies for everyone.

Blekko.com What is it? and How can it help me in my classroom?

We have all used search engines before such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing however all these sites search the entire internet and sometimes you want to limit your search.  As teachers if we want to limit our students to searching a few sites for information we have a few options currently.  First we can set up a bookmark list on sites like Delicio.us or Diingo.  Another option is to use Google search by adding in a specific site name to the search box and only searching that one site.  Now we have another option that I think will really change how we set up research for our students.

Blekko.com (I agree not the best name) is a new search engine that allows something called slashtag searches.  What this does is take your search not to the entire internet but allows you to search a list of sites that you have set up ahead of time.

So the next time you want to do a research project with your students and do not want them to use everything on the web set it up like this

1)    Login to Blekko

2)   Create a new slashtag with the name of your class and assignment

3)   Have your students go to Blekko.com and search for the topic they are researching and have them add your slashtag to the end.

When they do this they will get the links to your sites first with the information they are searching for and below it they will get stuff from the regular web if they cannot find anything from your links.