Tech News & Tips

Ok, so my blog writing is not very consistent. I should discipline myself to write on my blogs at least once a week ... I will try my best to start doing that.

I found an interesting article in one of my newsletters. HP has an article about the 10 emails you should never send.

Everyone seems to be talking and asking about Twitter. It's a rapidly, growing social network which asks the simple question "What are you doing?" What is Twitter? According to Wikipedia "Twitter is a free social-networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers)." Twitter is used by individuals that tweet about their daily lives as well as businesses that can post their latest news or link to their blogs. Who Twitters? Al Roker of NBC's Today Show (@alroker), David Gregory of Meet the Press (@davidgregory), Texas Tech University (@TexasTech) and millions more. Yes, I Twitter @textechgeek. Check out this latest phenomenon. Is it useful in education? Maybe. Is it useful in business? Maybe. Is it fun? Definitely.

Another new school year has started with out too many problems (if you don't count falling and breaking a bone in your hand a problem).

Here's a website created by a teacher in Georgia that has lots of links as well as templates to use some of the more popular game shows as teaching tools: www.murray.k12.ga.us/teacher/kara%20leonard/Mini%20T%27s/March%20Mini%20T-Games/Games.htm

Hope everyone has a wonderful school year.

As of noon yesterday, Firefox 3 was released for the general public (download it here - www.mozilla.com/en-US/).

Mozilla, the corporation that develops Firefox, has taken a huge leap in improving the memory usage by the browser, improving security issues including identifying phishing sites and malware sites. They also improved the address bar, making it easier to retrieve pages from history by just typing part of the url name or keywords from the pages.

Firefox 3 is a must have for browsing the Internet. Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 8 but it's not due to be out until sometime next year. Speaking of Microsoft, if you are running XP and have been thinking about installing service pack 3, be sure to do your research as there have been some issues with AMD processors and a security issue with Flash. If your computer has an Intel processor there aren't any problems but in my opinion, I haven't seen any improvement since installing SP3 on my computer at the office.

Hope everyone is having a good summer and I'll be posting more info soon. Thanks for dropping by.

Sorry it's been so long since I posted but since Spring Break it has been wild around here. LHS hosted the UIL Academic District Meet and the District Track Meet which made for a couple of very busy weeks (actually just a couple of days but .... ).

Came across an interesting article today regarding the shuttle Columbia that was destroyed upon re-entry over 5 years ago. A company that specializes in data recovery had been able to recover 99% of the data from one of the shuttle's hard drives. Here's the link: http://tiny.cc/Vc3XT

I hope as summer rolls around to post more frequently with tips, stories, reviews and other tech related issues. Thanks for dropping by!

It's nearly time for Spring Break. A time for students and teachers to refuel for the final 10 weeks of this school year. Baseball, softball, track, tennis, golf and UIL Academic activities are in full swing. For teachers and students, classroom time will be a precious commodity.

Teachers, here's a website where you might find some useful material including templates and tech tips: http://www.eduhound.com/cttarchives/030608ctt.cfm.

Here's a site that has lots of FREE templates: http://www.educatortemplates.com/.

I hope everyone has a restful and relaxing spring break and comes back ready for all the many things that will be going on from here till the end of school.

Just in case you haven't noticed, the calendar says March 2008! And for those not living in good old Lockney, March came in with bang this past weekend. Saturday was a normal, West Texas day, high in the upper 70s with a little wind (<30mph) BUT Sunday was a different story. It got to around 80 but about mid-afternoon, a front blew in with winds over 50mph and temperatures falling into the 40s. It continued blowing until well after midnight with gusts still over 50mph.

The purpose of this side road is to provide everyone with some useful websites now that the severe weather season is here. Of course the best source of information is the National Weather Service, for the Lubbock office goto http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lub/index.php (if you are not from the Lubbock area just enter your zip code in the Local Weather box and it will take you to the nearest NWS website). Another very useful site for storm prediction is the Storm Prediction Center at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/. Other informative sites about weather include www.intellicast.com and www.weather.com and don't forget your local TV stations' websites for up to date information.

By the way, don't forget that Daylight Saving Time starts at 2AM, Sunday March 9 -- Spring Forward!

As I come across news and information that I feel will be helpful to the staff, students and community of Lockney ISD, I will post it here. Content will vary between interesting sites for students or teachers to explore to helpful tips in combating viruses, malware or the normal quirks of technology. Email me at keaton.charles@lockney.isd.tenet.edu if you have questions, comments, websites or tech tips.