Passwords are Passe

Passwords have been a thing of the past for about two or three years now.  Taking their place are pass phrases.  These are sets of words that make sense to you but probably not to anyone else.  The reason for this change is that there are far too many hackers gaining entrance to personal and confidential sites with users simple passwords.  To see just how easy your password is to hack, use this neat website.  It gives you an idea of how long it would take an average program to figure out your password.

How Secure is Your Password

Are you a Ted Talk Fan

I recently read an article that identified the top five Ted Talks by kids, yup, even kids do Ted Talks.  I thought I would reproduce them here.  To make sure that I am transparent with the article, here is a link to the original article.  A big thank-you to the person who created this article.

Jacob Barnett - Forget What You Know

Britany Wenger - Create a Neural Network in your Bedroom

Thomas Suarez - iPhone Application Developer

Jack Andraka - My 3 cents on Cancer

Lauren Hodge, Shree Bose, Naomi Shah - Google Science Fair Winners

Now This is Where I Want to Work

I came across this video in a search for something else and was quite mesmerized by it.  If this is what the future holds, then I want to be a BIG part of this future.

Just Why is Blogging a Good Thing

This video is several  years old now but I think it still rings true with all the concepts and skills learned by blogging.  Some of Seth's connections to readership are very amusing.

WOW are things getting smaller and smaller

This is something new for your smartphone or smart devise.  About the size of a quarter but with the price tag of $20, a pledge on Indiegogo will get you one just about Christmas time.

Movies Should Have Popcorn with Them

Nice little web app that allows you to upload a video and then play around with it to add  content from the web.  Maps, links, blog posts and feeds, pictures and even other videos can now all be added in with this simple app.  Here is a simple tutorial;

Mozilla Popcorn Maker Tutorial

Here is a talk about Popcornmaker By a Mozilla exec.

Try it out first to see the power.

Everyone Should Learn a Little Programming

About a year or two ago, two prominent executives of large Silicon Valley firms suggested a need for everyone in school to learn some programming.  Programming involves creative thinking, mathematical operations in a real time format, ability to collaborate (since very little programming is done alone these days), and a wider range of brain based research ideas.

While this brought angst to some teachers, there are several platforms out there that can help with this idea.  One thing to remember, this does not need to be an in class project or idea.  It also works well with afterschool clubs or activities.

Most of the examples below involve a game format as this is the one that students are most familiar with and one that usually really interests them.  There are other formats as well.

 Google Blockly 

Scratch

Gamestar Mechanic

For pure programming there is PHP (Pre-Hypertext Processor) which is a web programming language, JAVA (Use it within Eclipse Environment for ease) and a host of other languages.