Day: November 17, 2019

My Week Ending 2019-11-17

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week.

  • I would agree with this completely. The only question I would have is how much overtime is OK and at what point does it become damaging?
  • I like reading stories like this to see where things stack up. The ultimate answer though lies in what your employer or company uses.
  • This big Canadian story this past week was about Don Cherry’s firing from Sportsnet. I read a lot; this was the first story.
  • This is a big case of bad news for Apple. OK, women, you need to stop supporting this company until it gets it right.
  • I feel badly that we didn’t learn the whole story about Alan Turing. Hey, we didn’t even teach the whole story. Probably because we didn’t know the whole story and the version that made textbooks was incomplete.
  • This should make sense to everyone. I can’t believe that it needs to be stated but if it saves a few people who use “1234567890” as their password, I guess it’s worthwhile.
  • This is great news if you’re looking for something new to listen to. Maybe something you haven’t listened to for a while?
  • At Phoenix last year, I shared one of these with a table of people I was having a drink with. They liked the feel, the details that went into design, trying to tear it, and then had to listen to my proud Canadian story.
  • I think we’ve all used the excuse that “when I close my classroom door” to indicate freedom. But, are we really free and left to solely use professional judgement?
  • Following the lead of Firefox, the Opera browser now gives you details about how you’re being tracked.
  • Another way that Google will make itself richer. I wonder how popular these bank accounts will actually be. I like my current bank.
  • I had to smile because I saw myself in all of the parking scenarios. How much longer before it becomes moot with Amazon home delivery?
  • So, here comes the first job action. They’ll be inside though; I won’t have to buy donuts to distribute on my morning dog walk … yet.
  • I’d be willing to bet that the general public has no idea. This article should be presented to everyone. And, maybe local newspapers and television could do some investigative reporting to find out what’s happening locally?

Blog Posts on doug … off the record

My daily contributions to this blog.

#FollowFriday – November 15, 2019

https://wke.lt/w/s/oItk1B

voicEd Radio

My on demand radio page can be found here.  

This week’s show – https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/this-week-in-ontario-edublogs-november-13/

Intro song:

Blog posts this week came from:

  • @dr_weston_Phd
  • @Ahpotts
  • @ColleenKR
  • @mme_aston
  • @callmemrmorris

Technology Troubleshooting

Somehow, my iPod had a trip through the new washing machine.

It came out looking pretty clean so I’m happy about that. It wouldn’t turn on which really didn’t come as a surprise. I was going to pitch it but then decided to try to charge it. That didn’t start out well and I probably would have normally unplugged it and threw it away.

But, I got distracted doing something else and came back to the computer about an hour later and the screen said that it was charging. Could this be true? I left it for a while until it said it was fully charged and then unplugged it. Pffft! It went dead.

And yet, if I leave it attached, I can still play music.

So, all is not lost.

Video of the Week

Tucker Carlson had no idea.

Photo of the Week

Every year about this time, we get a full moon that is nicely framed when looking east on Murray Street in Amherstburg. I should have moved a little further to the right.

If you look carefully, you’ll see my walking partner was not impressed with the view.

Thanks for reading. Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

If you find it anywhere else, it’s not original.

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Whatever happened to …

by dougpete, posted in Just Rambling

… databases?

A couple of things got me thinking about this recently. First, attending Peter Beens’ session at BIT reminded me that I haven’t created anything original on my computer of any sophistication recently. Secondly, I had coffee with a database administrator who was talking about his changing reality.

There was a time when his boss(es) would ask for reports from the databases that he manages. In his case, they are Oracle. These days, those requests are few and far between. Instead, they’re just asking for a spreadsheet export and they’d do the work themselves in Excel.

There was a time where I worked with pretty sophisticated databases (at least for my abilities). If your teeth are long enough in Ontario Education, you’ll remember the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner, the first Electronic Report Cards, and OSAPAC licensing versions of Filemaker Pro. I had a support person who was a genius working with this software as we always seemed to be doing mailing lists or managing large collections of data. As the webmaster for OSAPAC at the time, I taught myself how to work with Access and put the software and curriculum connections on line. Personally, I had a Webquest Locator where I made my collection available to others online. To be honest, I felt like I was just tipping my toes into the database water. I always felt more at home working with a spreadsheet. Does anyone remember Visicalc?

I can’t remember the last time I even worked explicitly with a database program. Yes, I have access to collections of data but I’m able to do whatever it is that I want in a spreadsheet program (LibreOffice or online with Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel).

And, we all work with databases regularly on the front end. We’re often just not exposed to what happens behind the scenes. We take a lot of things for granted. It just works – https://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/mysql/

For a Sunday, your thoughts.

  • are you a database programmer? If so, what sorts of things are you doing with your skills?
  • do you remember the Ontario Educational products listed above?
  • do you have access to a database program at your school?
  • are you proficient in a spreadsheet program? If so, which one?
  • does your spreadsheet program do what you need it to do? Do you have needs that go a bit further?
  • we talk about how we should be worried about our personal data collected online. Should we be teaching our students these skills?
  • are databases addressed in your curriculum? If so, where or how?
  • for the truly experienced, what are the file extensions for
    • Microsoft Access
    • Filemaker Pro
    • FoxPro
    • Oracle
    • SQL
    • or any of the others that you might know?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

This post originally appeared on

https://dougpete.wordpress.com

If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.

OTR Links 11/17/2019

by dougpete, posted in Links

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.