U.S. Needs More Cyber Security Training and Education

Richard Marshall, director of global cyber-security management at the Department of Homeland Security made some interesting comments yesterday at the FOSE government IT show in Washington, DC. FOSE is a conference focused on cyber-security issues facing the public sector and what it means for protection against threats, cloud computing and new open government directives.

Here's a few quotes Marshall made at the conference taken from a post over at esecurityplanet.com

Working in concert with the government, the private sector has made significant strides in improving software security and ferreting out vulnerabilities in the supply chain, but the flow of cyber-security experts graduating from the nation's universities with advanced degrees remains anemic.

One of the most important steps policymakers can take is to nourish the education and training of a new crop of security expert.

No matter how successful we are in those two elements, we are going to fail if we don't invest more money, time, attention and rewards to educate the workforce. That's our legacy-to-be.

"The IT industry provides a one trillion -- with a 'T' -- dollar contribution to the U.S. gross domestic product. If you're looking for a metric for cyber-security, money is a good metric.

And my favorite quote from the piece which I'll probably catch some flack for posting:

Look at all the great football and basketball programs. They're all on scholarships. They're not playing for fun -- they're playing for money. We need to do the same thing with our computer science students.

Nicely said.

Apple iPad First Impression Podcast

Last week Steve Jobs and Apple announced the iPad. Jobs and Apple say the tablet-style iPad computer represents a whole new category of consumer electronic devices. On Sunday we recorded a 36 minute and 40 second podcast where Mike Qaissaunee gives his first impressions and we discussed some of the technical specifications of the iPad. Here's a list of some of the questions Mike answers:

Size - How big is the iPad?
What about the hardware? Some people are referring to this thing as a big iPhone or iPod Touch?
What about the screen?
What about capacity?
Does the iPad have senors like the iPhone?
What about wireless?
What about other carriers?
Bluetooth?
What about GPS?
Battery Life?
What about the processor?
What about the software?
What about what's missing?
So, what do you think - is this going to go down in history as a revolutionary device?

Podcast

To access Mike Q and my 36 minute and 40 second podcast titled Apple iPad First Impression Podcast, click here.

Listen to it directly in your web browser by clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can subscribe to our podcasts by clicking here.

What's DNS And Why is Google Doing It?

Yesterday, Google announced a public Domain Name Service (DNS) resolver called Google Public DNS. What's DNS? You may not be familar it but it is something you use every time you use the Internet. I like to describe DNS as a telephone book look-up service (sort of like directory service) provided typically by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Here's an example of how it works.

At home, my ISP is Comcast and I pay them every month for Internet access. I get a broadband connection (cable modem), an Internet Protocol (IP) address (think of an IP address like a telephone number - it uniquely identifies you on the web and allows you to send and receive information), a gateway connection to the World Wide Web and access to Comcast DNS servers. All pieces are important in my every day use of the web:

• If I don't have a physical connection I can't access the web.
• If I don't have an IP address I can't access the web.
• If I don't have a connection (or gateway) into the World Wide Web I can't access any content outside of my own home network.
• If I don't have DNS I can't use names or URLs to access web content.

Let's take a closer look at how DNS works. Let's say I launch my web browser and in the address bar type the URL (or name) of our Center website www.ictcenter.org. How does the site end up appearing on my screen? Our www.ictcenter.org URL is registered which means we've paid a sponsoring registrar (in our case it is godaddy.com) to create a domain name registration record. Included in the record is our URL (www.ictcenter.org) and the IP address of the server our website is loaded at. This URL and IP address information gets distributed across the World Wide Web to DNS servers. Now, when I'm home on my Comcast connection and I type www.ictcenter.org in my browser address bar, here's what happens:

A query is made from my computer to the Comcast DNS server my connection is assigned to. The DNS server looks up the IP address of the server hosting www.ictcenter.org and that IP address is returned to my browser. My browser is directed to the IP address and it accesses the server, pulling down the site content. On an average day a user will access DNS servers hundreds of times, all transparently. It's a service that makes the web a lot more convenient - users only need to remember domain names and not much harder to remember IP addresses.

So, what is Google doing? Basically they are offering a competing DNS service. Users can access Google servers for DNS information and bypass ISP DNS servers if they want. It's free from Google and there are instructions on how to make the DNS server swap on the Google Code Blog.

So, why is Google launching this service? According to their announcement page it's to make make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable. Now, in the past ISPs have had some major DNS server meltdown problems. In defense of the ISPs things have gotten a lot better over the past few years.

Sounds great another option and maybe even a backup. Now - is bypassing ISP DNS servers something new? Not really - there are other competing DNS options similar to what Google is doing - on of the more popular ones is OpenDNS.

What's the deal here - If I'm an ISP and Google (or someone else) wants to handle DNS for my customers it sounds pretty good. I don't have to worry about maintaining DNS server hardware and keeping them updated - Google can do it for me.

But - is it really a pretty good deal for the ISPs? No - not really.

Why? Have you ever typed in an incorrect or non-existent URL? A year or so ago you would likely get some kind of server not found message in your browser. Today, depending on your ISP, you may get something called DNS redirection advertising and end up seeing a bunch of linked ads. These ads provide a new revenue stream to the ISPs so most of them are doing it. As an example, try clicking this non-existent URL www.vojrrtjbfb.com Most ISPs and OpenDNS will end up taking you to a page of linked ads.

Now to be fair to the ISPs - with Comcast it's real easy to opt-out of redirection advertising by logging in to your customer portal and clicking a single option to immediately turn it off. Most ISPs do provide a similar opt-out option.

Will Google (fundamentally an ad company) eventually turn bad typing skills into revenue with their Publc DNS service? Maybe and maybe not. It will be interesting to watch.

Digital Youth Research: Living and Learning with New Media

A couple weeks ago the latest study from Digital Youth Research titled Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project was released. The study is the result of a three-year year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As part of the study, research on how kids use digital media in their everyday lives was done at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley. Over a three-year period, researchers interviewed more than 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observation.

If you’ve been around young people recently the results should be no big surprise to you - here’s a quote from the study:

They found that social network and video-sharing sites, online games, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. The research shows that today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.

There are a couple of major study findings:

Youth use online media to extend friendships and interests.

Kids are using online networks to extend the friendships that they navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religious organizations, sports, and other local activities. They can be “always on,” in constant contact with their friends through private communications like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways through social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online.

In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social behavior. By exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and media literacy.

The report implications, along with how we can take advantage of them in our classrooms, are very interesting. They include:

Adults should facilitate young people’s engagement with digital media.

Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technical skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society. Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning.

Given the diversity of digital media, it is problematic to develop a standardized set of benchmarks against which to measure young people’s technical and new media literacy.

Friendship-driven and interest-driven online participation have very different kinds of social connotations. For example, whereas friendship-driven activities center upon peer culture, adult participation is more welcomed in the latter more “geeky” forms of learning. In addition, the content, behavior, and skills that youth value are highly variable depending on with which social groups they associate.

In interest-driven participation, adults have an important role to play.

Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults. Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers.

To stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions need to keep pace with the rapid changes introduced by digital media.

Youths’ participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education.

The authors ask the following questions:

What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks?

What would it mean to reach beyond traditional education and civic institutions and enlist the help of others in young people’s learning?

And finally:

Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, they question what it would mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally.

Let’s say you are a novice and want to give this stuff a try. People often ask me where to start. Here’s my short answer:

1. Sign up for Facebook at www.facebook.com - it’s free.
   
2. Once you sign up search for people you know – it’s easy and you will find some. Old college roommates, professors, childhood friends, etc. You will likely also find most of your students.
   
3. Select some of the people you find and request their friendship in Facebook. Be sure to selec some experience users. Request my friendship if you want - just search my email address: gordonfsnyder@gmail.com
   
4. Watch what your Facebook friends do. Facebook is a great content aggregator . You’ll see things like embedded YouTube videos, Twitter posts, blog entries, pictures, etc. Be sure to check your page at least once a day to start with.
   
5. Build your Facebook page and start aggregating your own content – watch and learn from your Facebook friends.
   

If you are an educator, the study results are a must read. Powerful stuff that we can all take advantage of – inside and outside the classroom. Here’s how you can access the study results:

Two page summary linked here.

Study white paper linked here.

In addition a book based on the study is forthcoming from MIT Press titled Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. You can get more information on the book here.

What Information Technology Services Do College Students Want?

The EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECARS) has an excellent research study out titled The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008. ECARS mission is to foster better decision making by conducting and disseminating research and analysis about the role and implications of information technology in higher education. ECAR systematically addresses many of the challenges brought more sharply into focus by information technologies (IT).

Here's the study abstract:

This 2008 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study is based on quantitative data from a spring 2008 survey of 27,317 freshmen and seniors at 90 four-year institutions and eight two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 75 students at four institutions; and analysis of qualitative data from 5,877 written responses to open-ended questions. In addition to studying student ownership, experience, behaviors, preferences, and skills with respect to information technologies, the 2008 study also includes a special focus on student participation in social networking sites.

Key findings in the study focus on:

• Mobility: Laptops and Internet-Capable Cell Phones
• Computer and Internet Activities
• IT Skills and Internet Literacy
• IT in Courses
• Instructor Use of IT in Courses
• The Impact of IT in Courses
• The Digital Divide
• Social Networking Sites

The study does an excellent job describing how students are using information technology and more importantly what student information technology expectations are. Here's a few highlights I've summarized from the study:

• Students expect IT services to be available when they need them.
• Students actively use multiple modes of IT to communicate, socialize and stay connected with others.
• Students perceive themselves as net savvy and choose mobile technologies and the use of visual media.
• Students take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to express themselves in various ways on the Internet.
• Students prefer learning environments where IT services are balanced with other learning activities including face-to-face interactivity with faculty and other students in the classroom.

I mark this one as a must read if you are involved in any way with higher ed instruction. ECARS has an excellent site dedicated to the study linked here.

Green IT: The Next Big Thing

Wikipedia defines Green Computing as the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently. Modern IT systems rely upon a complicated mix of people, networks and hardware; as such, a green computing initiative must be systemic in nature, and address increasingly sophisticated problems. Elements of such as solution may comprise items such as end user satisfaction, management restructuring, regulatory compliance, disposal of electronic waste, telecommuting, virtualization of server resources, energy use, thin client solutions, and return on investment (ROI).

On Friday (November 14, 2008) I attended a Green IT (Information Technology) Summit in Plano, Texas. The Summit was held as part of the North Texas Regional Community College Technology Forum and was hosted by Collin College and the National Science Foundation funded Convergence Technology Center (CTC). The CTC is headquartered at Collin College in Frisco, Texas and has worked since 2004 to meet the growing regional need for skilled specialists in the area of convergence technology. The Center has done considerable work in the areas of curriculum development, professional development for high school and community college faculty, outreach to under-served populations, and mentoring colleges in the rapidly developing convergence technology field.

The CTC is currently expanding on this work to include “Green IT" and is developing online/hybrid curriculum, methods for under-represented polulation recruitment and retention, and the scaling of a Mentored College program to broaden the dissemination of convergence related degrees and certificates to an increased number of colleges around the country.

CTCpartners include El Centro College (El Centro), Dallas County Community College District; and the University of North Texas, Denton. In addition to its partners, the CTC is mentoring City College of San Francisco (CA), Orange Coast College (CA), Guilford Technical Community College (NC), Ohlone College (CA), Santa Ana College (CA) and Fox Valley Technical College (WI). Mentoring work has included:

• Helping to build and refine advisory councils
  
• Validating IT and IT related regional skills
  
• Creating certificates and degrees using CTC defined curriculum as basis for new courses, and
  
• Creating and implementing CT certificates
  

The Green IT Summit included a panel of IT industry executives discussing what Green IT is, what the workforce needs are and why it is so important. Technical sessions were focused on delivering distance education using new tools (Second Life, You Tube, Podcasting and other Web 2.0 based technologies) that our younger digital native students expect to find in modern classrooms.

EDS Fellow Charles E. Bess gave an excellent presentation at the conference titled The Greening of IT. Charles discussed where he and other EDS Fellows see Green IT going. To give you a taste - here's a piece from a seven part Green IT series on the EDS Next Big Thing Blog:

Economics are starting to play a major role, with the soaring costs of energy, penalties for e-waste, carbon credit trading and fiscal reporting moving these items on to the board agendas. Societal and environmental concerns are getting more media attention, and consumers are "voting with their wallets" to pay premiums for green products and
services. Political and legal issues are driving politicians and regulators to enact legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set standards for IT equipment. Technology is also driving the demand for more and more information accessible through an exploding number of end user devices which creates increased demand for direct and indirect (e.g. battery chargers) energy consumption.

This past year I've had the opportunity to visit a number of colleges and have been encouraged by the numbers of science and math focused students that are interested specifically in Environmental Technology and Engineering. When I ask these students why they are so interested the answer (it's obvious if you have had the chance to talk with a high school student recently) is commonly centered around their desire to "fix" things like global warming, energy consumption and pollution. Green IT has not hit most of their radar screens yet but it will.

If you are at an academic institution looking to re-invigorate your IT and IT related programs, Green IT is something you should consider. The Convergence Technology Center is currently accepting applications from institutions that wish to become a mentored college. Ann Beheler, Helen Sullivan and Ann Blackman are doing excellent work and this is a great way to get started. You can get more information on the mentor program by clicking here.

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You can see pictures I took at the Green IT Summit last Friday on my flickr page.

A Conversation with Pierre Thiry and James Jones from MPICT

The Mid-Pacific Information and Communications Technologies (MPICT) Center is a recently funded National Science Foundation (NSF) – Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Regional Center hosted by City College of San Francisco (CCSF). MPICT's mission is to coordinate, promote and improve the quality and availability of ICT education in a region consisting of Northern California, Northern Nevada, Southern Oregon, Hawaii and the Pacific Territories. Current Regional Partners include: Ohlone College , Santa Rosa Junior College , Cabrillo College and Foothill College.

We've had a great relationship with Pierre, James and CCSF and were fortunate to get them on camera to talk about MPICT at the 2008 SAME-TEC Conference.

MPICT is off to a great start under the leadership and direction of Pierre and James. Contact them for more information at www.mpict.org

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We have several interviews from SAME-TEC posted and you can get them different ways:

YouTube: Watch our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCtrTelecomTech

Streaming and Downloading: View streaming videos and download content using your web browser at: http://nctt.org/podcast

iTunes: If you have iTunes installed you can watch and listen to this one, watch and listen to others, and subscribe to our video and audio podcasts by following this link.

We're planning and looking forward to next years conference. Watch here, our center websites and SAME-TEC.ORG for 2009 Conference information and updates.

A Little Bit of a Blogging Sabbatical This Week

I did it last year here around this time also….. A number of our partners have proposals going in to the National Science Foundation and it is time for us to dig in and help out. Proposals are due on October 16 so I will be taking a little break here.

I want to thank all of you that read my blog and I look forward to lots of posting after the 16th..... to those that are preparing and submitting proposals - good luck!

A Great 2008 NCTT Winter Conference!

We held our National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) Conference at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA this past Friday and Saturday. At the conference we had 28 different presenters with sessions ranging in topic from Virtual Worlds to Internet2.

It's always great to get together with our partners, see old friends and make new ones. The quality of the presentations was just incredible. I feel so fortunate to know and associate with such a strong group of dedicated faculty and administrators.

I photo blogged the sessions and the conference using my iPhone and Tumblr which was an interesting experience that I'll write about later this week. You can see the photos if you scroll down the left hand column of this blog page and you can also find them at http://gsnyder.tumblr.com.

One of my favorite photos is of Professor Bill Saichek from Orange Coast College in the WiFi Finder t-shirt he won in the end of conference raffle - I've included it here. We not only learned a lot of new things, we also had a lot of fun - always a great combination!

I want to thank Dr Ann Beheler, the Convergence Technology Center at Collin County Community College and Orange Coast College for hosting, helping set up and coordinating this incredible conference.

Mark your calendars for July 28-29 in Austin, Texas for our summer conference. Details to follow and email me at gordonfsnyder@gmail.com if you are interested in presenting or attending.

I'll get back on a regular blogging schedule now that the holidays and our winter conference are over.

Getting Ourselves in Sync

A couple of days ago eWeek.com put up an interesting piece titled Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World. Here's a summary quote from the piece written by Darryl K. Taft:

"In short, many people on both sides of the equation—teachers as well as potential employers—say the educational system is not doing enough to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of IT, and that entering the work force often is as much of an educational experience as is college, particularly for programmers".

Ari Zilka, chief technology officer at Terracotta, in San Francisco, is also quoted in the piece, saying he understands the skills gap after having worked his way in the high-tech industry, while attending the University of California, Berkeley. According to Zilka:

"I found that UC Berkeley had an excellent curriculum but not only was my schooling lagging behind work, it became very hard to even go to school because work had me learning the concepts and their applicability and nuances that teachers didn't even seem to know."

The eWeek piece goes on:

"Zilka noted that many of the new hires he's seen during his career continue to echo the same sentiments as he did".

"Some of the things the school didn't teach Zilka and many who are now entering the work force include issues around communication, development skills, and business and product design.

On the communication front, Zilka said, "Presentation skills are critical, and selling and influencing peers is critical."

"Some of the development skills that schools might emphasize more include design patterns, coding style and practices, scalability and performance tuning, and a focus on the entire software development lifecycle, Zilka said. He noted that things like quality assurance, unit testing, and stage and release are not usually taught".

The piece continues with more comments on the skills gap from faculty at Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon and Monroe College. Most are in agreement and generally comment that programs are changing to close the gap.

Chris Stephenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, in New York, has an excellent quote:

".....but what is really exciting is that I have seen more and more educators (both at the K-12 level and the university level) willing to make these skills part of their curriculum."

Stephenson goes on, believing that subjects like Computer Science should no longer be taught as an "isolated discipline":

"There is little effort made to address issues such as effective team work, project planning and time management, and conflict resolution let alone helping students gain the cultural competencies and effective communication skills that are the key to success in a global economy,"

"Also, not enough effort has been made to show students how computing connects to problem solving in the real world,"

"The good news, however, is that an increasing number of educators are building these skills into the classroom experience. Teachers now have students work in teams on real world projects where the failure to plan together, work together, and communicate effectively are a big part of the evaluation that the students receive."

I'll finish the quotes with one that I feel really hits the need/gap on the head from Rawn Shah, IBM developerWorks Community Programs Manager:

"....software development is becoming much more of a group activity, and there is a lot of sophistication to that in the industry that isn't being replicated in a smaller closed environment like a college," Shah said. "Very often, they simply can't because of the time limitations of the semester-based programs."

If you are an academic - are your students working in teams? Can they communicate effectively with their teams? Are they learning relevant information? Are they ready when they graduate for work? Are there things that you are teaching that are out of date? Are there other courses in your curriculum that could be replaced with more relevant ones? How often do you make revisions to your curriculum? How do you know what you should be teaching?

If you are a business person - how can you help? What can you do to make a difference - to assure graduates you are hiring are properly prepared?

We ask ourselves these kinds of questions daily at our National Science Foundation funded National Center for Telecommunications Technologies - if you would like to learn more feel free to drop me an email at gsnyder@stcc.edu


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Read Show Notes and listen to Mike Q and my latest Podcast titled Enterprise 2.0 linked here.
Podcasts also free on iTunes.
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Innovative Faculty and the Dyson AirBlade

A couple of weeks ago I was in Providence, RI visiting my daughter. We ended up going over to the Providence Place Mall for lunch and then we spent some time walking around the mall. We spent considerable time in both the Apple store and the Sony Style store, as we always do, playing around with as much as we could get our hands on. The piece of technology that impressed me the most on this day (I had already spent a couple of hours with the iPhone on a previous visit) was actually in the Men's Room.

You may or may not be familiar with Dyson - a UK company started by James Dyson to make bag-less vacuum cleaners. In the 1970's James did a lot of vacuuming and found himself constantly emptying the bag on his Hoover Junior to maintain a high level of suction. Frustrated with the performance of bag vacuum cleaners, he became obsessed with developing a new vacuum cleaner that would not clog up and brainstormed the use of cyclonic separation. After 5 years and 5,127 prototypes his pink (yes pink!) G-Force vacuum cleaner was born - the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. Incredible design and wonderful product but without a manufacturer or distributor in the UK. Not one to give up, James started his own manufacturing company and started selling the product via catalog sales in Japan. Well it took off there winning the Japanese 1991 International Design Fair prize. Fast forward to today - James and his research team have developed products that have achieved sales of over $10 billion worldwide.

Let's get back to that Men's Room in Providence - attached to the wall were a couple of shiny new Dyson AirBlades. The AirBlade is a hand dryer that is unlike any air hand dryer you have ever seen. Hand dryers in rest rooms have always given me the creeps. Perhaps it's my Microbiology undergrad background - I've always seen them as a great way to spread germs around. Think about it - and the next time you are in a rest room read the instructions on the traditional blower models. They tell you to first shake the excess water off your hands (!) and then blow the rest of the water off your hands with warm air. Makes sense right - let's shake and then blow germ aerosols (bacteria, mold and viruses) at a nice warm temperature around the rest room............ How long can you hold your breath?

Well Dyson has come up with something a little different - here's a video to give you an idea if you have not seen one.


400 mph room temperature air scraping the water off your hands with the water passing through a HEPA filter that remove 99.9% of bacteria and mold from the washroom air it sucks in - in 10 seconds. Sounds a little far fetched right? I can give a testimonial - it works extremely well - fast, cost efficient and hygienic just as the Dyson website claims. You need to try one of these things out!

Dyson is one of those innovators with different ideas - you can bet people laughed at him with his vacuum cleaners - some are probably getting a chuckle right now over these hand dryers. I also bet the ones who are chuckling have never tried one.

Why am I writing about this stuff ? This summer I've been around the country giving presentations on new technology and its use in the classroom. Combined audience over 1000 people. In my travels I've met some faculty with amazing drive, ideas and ambition that lack one critical piece for success in the classroom - administrative support. So many incredible people who are not being encouraged or supported by their fellow faculty, Dept Chairs, Deans, VP's, etc.

On the flip side I've met just as many faculty who are supported and encouraged by their administration and yes - actually implementing some incredible work. You can pick the lucky ones right out - new laptops and smiling faces:)

If you are in an administrative position perhaps you've been on the fence about things like blogs, wikis, podcasts, video, etc. Maybe you have not taken the time to learn about these things. Maybe you've even flat out told your faculty no. Times are rapidly changing and this stuff is not going away. It's time to start encouraging and rewarding your motivated and innovative faculty.

If you are faculty in a position where you are not being supported stay motivated, keep plugging away and keep your options open like Dyson.

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Note: If you are viewing at www.nctt.org/blog go to ictcenter.blogspot.com to see the video version of this blog.

Blogging from The NCTT Summer Conference - Day 1

We're into Day 1 of our summer conference and it has started out extremely well. We're running it this year at the Verizon Conference Center in Marlborough, MA. At the conference we have attendees representing 23 individual states and Canada. This morning Karl Kapp kicked us off with an excellent presentation based on his latest book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning. To the right is a picture of Karl during his presentation.

This is from Karl's website:

Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning is an innovative book that provides practical and original solutions to the impending boomer/gamer knowledge and skills transfer gap. The book outlines how gamer values such as the use of cheat codes, the love of gadgets, the need to play games, and the desire to be constantly connected can be used as methods for moving information from the heads of the boomers to the fingertips and gadgets of the gamers. As organizations begin to think strategically about how to attract, retain, and train new talent, this book will be an invaluable resource.

In his presentation Karl challenged the common belief that gamer habits can have a negative effect in our classrooms and workplaces and suggested many ways their expertise can be used to enhance the learning and work experience.

After Karl we followed with a couple of great presentations from Vince Dinoto from Jefferson Community and Technical College in Kentucky and Terry Bartelt from Fox Valley Technical College.

Terry did a great presentation on his Multimedia Learning Object NSF Project and is shown presenting to the left. Terry and Fox Valley Technical College have developed over 200 learning objects on electronics technology topics. Learning objects are animated multimedia instruments presented on a computer, and are accessible at no charge on the internet. Through an NSF grant, over 300 more of them will be created for automation, robotics, mechanics, fluid power and process control.

Vince did and excellent presentation on Internet GIS. The presentation explored both web-based and data driven Internet GIS. In addition the concept of server based GIS was discussed.

Later we had Devin McLaughlin from Apple do a two part session on Virtualization for the Macintosh. Devin and the group explored the options for running multiple operating systems on Apple Macintosh Intel Computers. Over a year ago Apple started shipping Apple Macintosh Computers with Intel chips. This has made running the Mac OS and Windows on the same machine a reality. Participants learned about the options for running both environments on the Mac and how to easily deploy these machines.

After lunch Pierre Thiry from City College of San Francisco and Steven Barndollar from Juniper Networks discussed the Juniper University Center program. In January City College became the first Juniper Networks University Center in the United States and has been piloting the two courses: Operating Juniper Routers in the Enterprise and Advanced Juniper Routers in the Enterprise this past Spring. The presentation focused on a description of the curriculum, equipment and training needed to implement this pilot project and on the lessons learned in this first year implementation.

In addition NCTT CoPI Jim Downing presented on Fiber Optics, the Physical Layer, and the Classroom. Jim's presentation looked at the connection between fiber-optics (at the physical layer) and the next few layers in the OSI model. Beginning with the differences and similarities between basic media (copper, fiber, wireless) connections, the presentation showed the importance of understanding the differences and realizing how technically vast the physical layer is. Highlights included teaching decibels using a systems approach, defining the important differences between media, and explaining the layer 1-2-3 connections.

Peter Saflund from The Saflund Institute, Steven Budd from Springfield Technical Community College and Laura Qaissaunee from Brookdale Community College ran their extremely popular Steps to Successful ATE Proposal Preparation two part workshop once again. These sessions are always a crowd favorite with attendees learning critical steps in successful ATE proposal preparation with practice critical review of proposal segments and practice writing for clarity for successful review.

Robert Mortenson from The University of Nebraska at Omaha, Dennis Kirlin from the Midwest Center for Information Technology and Jeanne L. Surface from the AIM Institute discussed Mapping Research Evidence to Investigative Questions in their session. Their presentation described the results of a National Science Foundation funded ATE Center's efforts to respond to using "Key Questions of Interest" in the evaluative process. It provided a description of the processes used and the logic model developed to respond to a change in the NSF's evaluation paradigm.

Paula Velluto from Bunker Hill Community College then demonstated her Computer Forensics In a Box. This presentation frocused on crime and evidence gathered from an ensuing investigation that needs analysis. Participants observed the crime, reviewed the evidence, determined the connections, and reported back on their findings. CFATE(an NSF ATE Project) in a Box is a recruitment activity that is used for High School and Middle School students to introduce them to the field of Computer Forensics.

Next, Joseph T. Nairn and Mark Indelicato from Rochester Institute of Technology presented on the Avenues to Further Education program at RIT.

A national leader in engineering technology education, Rochester Institute of Technology provides many opportunities for students coming out of two year programs looking to further their education at the bachelor's or master's level. Joe and Mark discussed the portfolio of telecom-related certificates and degrees that accommodate community college graduates with the flexibility to earn a degree online from RIT.

We finished Day 1 with a cocktail hour sponsored by Juniper Networks - thanks Juniper!

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Note: As more pictures become available I'll be updating this post! Also, if you are reading at www.nctt.org/blog, you may not be able to see the pictures. To see the pictures go directly to http://ictcenter.blogspot.com