We Have A Group

As I continue my descent to the dark side, I am setting up a group at Google Groups.

The new group is entitled MKSBahrain. I will be adding members as they come along. This site will be used to retire wikispaces which, as you know, I tried to retire last year. Due to popular request I created another space, but it has not seen much use.

This year, especially for those of you in grade 11, I will be making use of online materials and assignments. The group will be a big part of that.

Stay tuned for further updates.

Back in Business

Well, almost.

This is the new PC for our work. You can thank Mr. Bawanah for getting it up here. Of course it has evil windows xp installed on it. And, of course, it won't install the printer either so I have to get that done. But aside from that it is working. Hopefully by tomorrow everything will be running.

For those returning students and teachers, you know what you can do. For the noobz, you can use my office for (reasonably sized) print jobs and internet access. It also looks like I will be staying in Room 103 for the time being, so let's all work on making it a comfortable place to be.

I'm Starting a Contest

Didn't they do a great job of hanging it up. Why you can barely tell that there was anything there before it.


Can you figure out what the extra 'C' is for?

Use your imagination and come up with a creative answer. Post your submissions in the comments section for this blog entry. The person with the best response will receive kudos from Mr. Bailey and public applause from his/her classmates.

*As a side contest see if you can find any other new signs that are misspelled or misleading. So far I have noticed one other, but there may be more!

What's all the fuss about?

There seems to be a great deal of confusion about the first online assignment. So let me break it down into parts.

Joining the site. If you have ever signed up for an email account, you can do this. All you need to do is supply a name and an email address and you are done. Once you have been confirmed as a member then you will be able to add and make changes to the site. I know that you have to wait to be confirmed, but you have had a week to do this. Waiting until the last minute to get the work done never allows you the time required for sorting out any problems which arise.

Writing the assignment. If I had asked you to write the answers on paper you would have done it without any complaint. Two questions, both of which require answers that you make up yourself, is not a tough assignment. Not for IB anyway. Having to put this text online does not make the assignment itself any more difficult. Your answers will be the same regardless of how they are submitted. Perhaps the idea of commenting on your classmates made you nervous. This should be less difficult than the original writing, all you need to do is agree or disagree. You do this automatically when discussing your assignments outside of class. Critical analysis of written pieces is an essential skill for IB and this course.

Posting the assignment. As I demonstrated in class, your answers need to be posted as a reply to the original thread. If you post it in a separate thread you will not receive marks for the assignment. It is like turning in your homework to the wrong teacher. Scroll down to the bottom of the page write your answer and click 'Post'. Any problems experienced are on your end. I have been using this site for assignments like this for two years now without difficulty.

Why are you given an assignment like this in the first place?

Why submit it online and include responses?

At this point in your life you should possess the problem solving skills to work out the details of a new situation. Ignoring the problem doesn't work. Making excuses doesn't work either. Waiting until the last minute and hoping that someone does it for you will not make you successful in this class, in IB or in life.

This is the easy part of our course, the introduction. The real work begins this week and continues until May 2010. I hope you will be there for it.

Grade 11 has a lot to do

We have finished Ch 1 in pretty good time and next week we will begin Ch 2. Both Ch 2 and Ch 3 deal with hardware and relate to section 2.1.1 Systems Fundamentals in your syllabus. You can begin the review questions 2 - 10 for Ch 2 this weekend and they will be due on the 21st of September. We will cover both chapters together and take a combined exam over both of them.

You also have the online assignment that I discussed in class today. Remember to start this as soon as possible so that others can comment on your work. Remember to include reasons for your positions with supporting evidence. It is not enough just to have an opinion, you have to be able to defend that opinion. You have a week to get it all done, your answers and your responses, it will be due next Wednesday the 17th. I will be looking in to see how it is going.

Big Brother is watching you

I don't know if you will read 1984 for English A1, if you don't it is your loss.

In the first part of class we talked about MySpace, Facebook, Google et al and how they collect your data and what they do with it. Well there is a very good article at ABC News that covers just that thing. It even implies that the new Chrome browser might just be a tool for data collection.

Remember that in the digital world your data is immortal, and ownership of it is power, real power. These online companies are not giving their services away for free because they like you, they are doing it to get something of value from you, with or without your consent.

Read the article and think about all of the things you have searched for in the past, do you really want people at Google knowing about all of them and sharing this with others?

For all of you Facebook users

In today's class we read the New Atlantis article The Myth of Multitasking and looked at the negative impacts that can result from overloading ourselves with too much information. Beyond short term impacts like lost productivity and increased stress there were long term health effects including an involuntary rewiring of our brains.

Well, the New York times has followed up with another related article about the Facebook newsfeed feature and how it was initially unpopular but then became one of the most popular parts of the site. It all has to do with something called 'ambient awareness' which is similar to the 'acquired inattention' that our article in class mentioned. It is a way of getting constant updates about the people around you, digitally or otherwise. In other words it creates a constant flow of information. It also draws a very clear distinction between younger people like yourselves and those of my gnenration.

It brings us back to the point about our brains being wired differently because of what we are exposed to. Have you been made into a biologically and psychologically different kind of human because of too much input? I don't know but from my own experience it would seem so. More and more there are outside studies which confirm it.

Happy Birthday GNU!

The GNU opersting system is 25 years old today. For those of you who don't know, GNU is the kernel that forms the basis of Linux. If it wasn't for the efforts of Richard Stallman and a few others 25 years ago, we may not have Linux today.

You can watch the video at GNU.org which tells the story. You might also check out a video called Revolution OS. It gives an in depth look at the open source story from its origins to today.

Hello to the Juniors

Well, it was a good first class even with all of the moving around. Make sure that you get your schedules sorted by the end of this week.

You should go and buy the textbook as soon as possible as we will begin using it next week. In the meantime read this article at the New Atlantis. It is only a few pages so it shouldn't take too long. When you are reading it try and make notes for yourself highlighting what is important in the article as well as its main themes.

We will be going through this next class. C U then.