Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 29, 2010 Deadline August Issue Back to School Computer Shopping Back-to-school sales used to mean new jeans, shoes, and school supplies. Now, along with binders and pencils, retailers discount computers as summer ends. Computer manufacturers have joined in with back-to-school promotions, making August and September great months to consider a new computer, especially for college students. When buying a computer for school, two common mistakes are bargain shopping and brand loyalty. There are instances when buying the cheapest possible computer makes sense. If the student only needs to type papers for class and perform some basic spreadsheet functions, then almost any computer is up to the tasks. Even the most affordable netbooks, at under $200, can surf the Web and run a good word processor. Considering the abuse portable computers take in college settings, I’m all for buying an affordable system. I’ve seen students knock computers off the...

In college, I wrote software documentation for mainframe users, which meant I had the opportunity to use text editors and word processors on a variety of computer platforms. I composed documentation on everything from glorified typewriters (DEC VT102 and IBM 3270 terminals) to slick WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") Apple Macs. I was probably not alone in being captivated by the Mac experience. Toss in PageMaker, a few fonts, and a LaserWriter for a complete desktop publishing system, and the Mac was hard to beat. Yet, I quickly realized that I wrote better on my MS-DOS 2.1 PC running WordPerfect 4.2 from floppy disks. How could this be? The Mac was easier to use and the papers I typed looked much better on paper. Why did I type so much more, and much better, on the PC? I didn't work on the Mac; I explored. I'd play with fonts, formatting options, and the nifty features of Word or PageMaker. I'd also play Crystal Quest, Lode Runner, and Dark Castle for ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 7, 2010 Deadline July Issue Personal Reflections on Education and Technology Technology has a way of becoming invisible in our lives, something we take for granted. The initial “Wow!” factor fades and we start to assume everyone has access. Yet, not every student has easy access to the Internet. Not every student has access to computers or typewriters to prepare papers for classes. My previous assumptions about technology in our schools have been proved incorrect, and that troubles me. A student with no word processing skills, who is unfamiliar with spreadsheets, and struggles with basic Internet research faces serious challenges in this labor market. For the last four years, I have been fortunate enough to visit states from coast to coast, meeting educational experts and civic leaders who are attempting to address many of the same problems we face in the Central Valley. My travels have taken me to places nationwide that are closing schools...

This weekend I installed WordPress on our personal server. The process took about two hours, including customization and tweaking beyond the basic installation. No great PHP or MySQL skills were required; as long as you know how to use the command prompts you can install WordPress. The modifications included adding Amazon code to the PHP-generated pages. This allows us to use Amazon links without long URLs. To do this, I had to copy code from our Amazon Associates account and paste it, formatted, into the PHP code. Not a challenge, thankfully. I also enabled two spam filters via the PHP code. What makes WordPress, Drupal, and Moodle popular is the ease with which these systems can be extended. Third parties have created numerous plug-ins, widgets, and themes for these three open source platforms. I could, rather easily, support a pretty large number of teachers and students using open source software (OSS) for Web applications. The price is ideal and the skills required are incre...