My Random Keys

Still making the effort to combat blog fade, I opened the door on FaceBook for suggested topics for this evening's post. Thanks to Steve for the highly motivating, "Do the benefits of pollen exceed its suckiness?" Let's just see if I can do that justice.

Well, to be scientific about it, I started with a Wikipedia search on what exactly is pollen. "Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes (sperm cells). ..When pollen lands on a compatible pistil of flowering plants, it germinates and produces a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule of a receptive ovary." Wikipedia is probably the best known example of a multi-user-collaboratively-edited website called a wiki. It's amazing that anyone can login in to a wikipedia account and freely edit the content.  During the London subway bombing some years back, wikipedia had a constantly updated story, including photos, within minutes.

However, sometimes, you don't quite understand what the pollen article in Wikipedia means when it shares, "In a process called microsporogenesis, four haploid microspores are produced from each diploid sporogenous cell (microsporocyte), after meiotic division." Honestly, I had to copy and paste since my ADD wouldn't let me past microsporoguinessbeer.  One site that helps with that is againbutslower.com . Paste any wikipedia article's URL into their site and it will reduce the article down to a much simpler to understand version. Great for elementary kids wanting to just get a basic concept.

You may find yourself jogging around Ladybird Lake or Camp Gesundheit and your jogging partner is sneezing up a storm. Sure, we need pollination to further grow our vegetation, feed our insects, regulate evolutionary plasticity (thanks again Wikipedia!), and keep allergy clinics in the black. But sharing that with your sneezing blister-mate may not be what he wants to hear. Perhaps quickly using your phone to email snapask.com could provide a distracting relief by requesting more facts from Wikipedia to be sent directly to your phone. Snapask.com lets you shoot keyword requests to them in an email, getting you an answer back in 30 seconds. Great for bar room bets!

Joggers can also rejoice, knowing pediaphon.org can provide an audible version of any Wikipedia article directly to your phone or iPad/Android device. Who wouldn't want the melodic tones of a Stephen Hawking-esq voice reading, "Dependence of the secondary sex ratio on the amount of fertilizing pollen was confirmed on four dioecious plant species from three families — Rumex acetosa (Polygonaceae), Melandrium album (Cariophyllaceae), Cannabis sativa and Humulus japonicus (Cannabinaceae)," from Wikipedia?

Well Steve and Shannon, to answer your question, Yes.  To learn more about why, you may just find a little website called Wikipedia helpful.  I know I did!

Wow, this was new to me.  I woke up this morning to a different kind of spam on one of my sites.

I'm used to moderating blogs and wikis that I leave open to the public so that students and parents can easily modify them.  I am also used to getting the notifications that say someone edited a page and I can scan and see if it's appropriate.

However, this morning, an edit was made that I couldn't find. I had to get all the way down to the source code to find that a link was added inside the html code. Looking at the page, you would never see the link to a 'toy' website. I'm sure just being on the page provides some beneficial monetary payoff for the spammer, but without auto-notification, I never would have known it was there.

So, let's review lessons learned about using an open wiki:
1) Yes, anybody can edit them.
2) We now know the edits can be made at the code level and not seen when browsing the page.
3) Teachers often turn of Notifications because of the constant email hassle. Without notifications, I would have missed this.
4) Remember that when posting warnings about web scams or spams, don't use the actual language used in the attack because then your webpage will be forever linked to that site.  ie: typing the name of the link or the specific kind of toys will get me listed in places I don't want to be listed. Screenshots, blanking l*tters out, and inferring about a site ('that site sounding like schmoogle') are nice strategies.
5) This wiki is over a year old. Your web presence lives on. You still have to monitor every site you create, even if no longer using it.
6) Lastly, when working with students, 'Open' is rarely best. Most blog and wiki engines out there have some form of moderation tools ready to be used. If nothing else, create a single login and password for all of your students to use. Nothing is fool proof (I guess except for paper/pencil), but moderation is very much worth the hassle when thinking in terms of working online with students.

Okay, off to ISTE10 pre-con with the Discovery Educator Network!!  Yee Haw!