NetHappenings Newsletter

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NHN: 1/18/05 NETHAPPENINGS NEWSLETTER #11

NEW THIS WEEK for
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/NHnewsletter.html>
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Dear Readers,

Welcome to the Net Happenings Newsletter, launched by the Educational CyberPlayGround, this newsletter features a new format with the emphasis on both news and resources. Karen Ellis* Founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround invites others to help sponsor the Net Happenings Newsletter which is published to all members of the NetHappenings Mailing List.

Written by Classroom Teacher Alan Haskvitz

1997 National Teacher's Hall of Fame
All USA Today First Team Teacher
1994 National Middle Level Teacher of the Year (NCSS)

[w] http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Ringleaders/al.html


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IN THIS ISSUE
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IN THE NEWS
Crime against teachers
Military Recruiting on campus
ADHD drugs study
Rich Parents abandon school districts
ABC's pick people the year
Album of the Year and it's impact on technology
Technology + Society predictions of the year
Recent Microsoft Service Pack 2 Patches
New Source to search Google privately
How to avoid DRM spyware
Hacker software will protect everybody

INTERESTING SITES
Nation master
Investors Supporting Spyware
Subscription logins and passwords for use
Ebooks for disabled users
Sign up for the national do-not-call list
Gifted resources
Conferences

QUOTES

FACTOIDS

SITES YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED

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IN THE NEWS
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Underpaid, and now this.
Violent Crimes Against Students Decrease: But not Crimes Against Teachers.
Statistics indicate that crime is down, but the report found that from 1998 through 2002 teachers were the victims of an annual average of 233,900 crimes at school, more than 90,000 of them violent. That translates to an annual rate of 51 crimes per 1,000 teachers. The report shows that urban
teachers are more than twice as likely to be victims of violent crimes than those in suburban or rural school districts and that male teachers are attacked more often than female teachers. Some insurance companies are now offering coverage. <http://www.horacemann.com/html/disability/darp.html>
<http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2004/11/30/violent_crime
_in_schools_drops_by_50_percent_since_early_1990s/>

Republican military recruiting law invalid according to courts Universities may bar military recruiters from their campuses without risking the loss of federal money, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled recently.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/education/29cnd-recruit.html>

This decision was in reaction to the Republican backed law that would force universities to make a decision between losing federal funds if they refused.
<http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/03/23/University/U.House.Bill.May.Give.Military.Recruiters.Campus.Access-638866.shtml>

ADHD Drug Used As Study Helper
Adderall, a medication normally used to treat attention deficit disorder
(ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Adderall is the
amphetamine most widely prescribed to treat ADD/ADHD. As with other
amphetamines, regular users of Adderall can soon become dependent on it to get through the day. Dubbed "kiddie coke," Adderall is being used - and abused - by increasing numbers of high school and college students on campuses across the United States.
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1130/p11s02-legn.html?s=hns>

"In Fremont, Calif., immigrant students are earning top grades, and their
affluent parents are threatening to create their own school in order to keep
standards high. Hear NPR's Claudio Sanchez." click and listen
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4190129>

ABC News named bloggers as 2004's people of the year.
Their reasoning? Bloggers influenced the year in politics and news.
Bloggers unseated Trent Lott in 2002, they fact checked
Dan Rather and they provided first hand accounts of the tsunami.
What is Blogging, explained.
<http://george.hotelling.net/90percent/whats_the_deal/>

Grey Album is Album of the Year 2004
The Grey Album Danger Mouse Jay-Z, meet the Beatles:
Because of current copyright law, the Grey Album is illegal.
The best album of the year is illegal because of copyright law.
You are not allowed to buy a copy of the best album of the
year because of copyright law. Is copyright law promoting art?
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/musiclaw3.html

In all, 1,286 internet experts looked at the future
impact of the internet and assessed predictions
about how technology and society will unfold.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/trends.html

Microsoft Patches Flaw in Service Pack 2
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1504-2005Jan11.html>
Microsoft Corp. issued a trio of software updates to fix
security holes in computers powered by its Windows operating system,
including one flaw that hackers are using to infiltrate PCs equipped
with a massive security upgrade the company released just five months
ago. Download http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

An open source Google - without the ads
Daniel Brandt has released the source code for his "Google scraper"
a server that uses Google's minimal 'ie' interface to provide users
with ad-free searches http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/open_source_google_scraper

Hackers Use DRM To Plant Massive Amounts Of Spyware
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=5770051
Hackers are turning digital rights management features of Microsoft's
Windows Media Player against users by fooling them into downloading massive amounts of spyware, adware, and viruses.

Think Like a Hacker By Deb Radcliff Network Life, 01/09/05
Think Like a Hacker
Last week, I interviewed a hacker named Geoff Shivley, whose
experiences remind me of the hackers I encountered while researching
the infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick for a best-selling book. Like other
hackers I know, Shivley started young, in middle school. And he began
with phones payphones, specifically--which he switched on and off and
made ring with musical tones to impress his friends. This, ahem,
skill, is called "phreaking."

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INTERESTING SITES
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Nation Master: Let's students compare countries like no other and is great for bar bets.This is the best geography site on the web for statistics to compare countries. NationMaster has this and more: Most Murderous (Columbia, South Africa, Jamaica) , Most Militaristic (Israel, Singapore, United States), Most Taxed (Vatican City, Falkland Islands, Monaco), Longest Living ( Andorra, Macau, San Marino) , and much more. Should be easy to motivate students with this type of data.
http://www.nationmaster.com/

Investors Supporting Spyware
<http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/investors/>
Products considered spyware, due to tracking and/or collection of sensitive information (often, lists of web sites users visit) either without any notice and consent at all, or without meaningful, clear notice yielding informed consent; and they have received major financial investments.

Ebooks for disabled users with visual impairments who can use a service like TumbleBooks Readables
http:www.tumblebooks.com to increase font size and those with mobility impairments who can use an arrow or another key to turn pages when turning pages on a physical book would be impossible.

Gov Track http://www.govtrack.us/
Want to know the status of a bill on the floor of Congress, who misses the most votes, or who gets the most bills
passed? GovTrack.us is like School House Rock on steroids for adults (oh, and children). Govtrack.us uses the Technorati API to show what bloggers are saying about bills as they work their way through Congress.

National Do Not Call List Sign Up Website
<http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html>

Teaching the gifted learner
<http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/gifted.html>

Conferences for all subject areas
You can even sign up for notification by subject and country.
http://www.conferencealerts.com/

Music conferences
<http://www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/Conferences/>

Technology conferences
<http://www.imd.macewan.ca/imd/content.php?contentid=26>

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QUOTES
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A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others. ~Author Unknown

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. ~Karl Menninger

"Those people who don't drink and don't smoke and eat all the right foods...they don't live any longer; it just seems a helluva lot longer."
~ Joseph Jackson Willett, 95

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FACTOIDS
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Approximately one-third of the nation's teachers leave the profession during their first three years of teaching, and almost half leave within five years.

96% of Americans believe it is important that public school teachers be licensed in the subject areas in which they teach.

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SITES YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED
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University Handbooks from most everywhere
<http://www.campus-adr.org/Staff_Admin_Building/searchpolicies.html>

Car Reviews from a Family Viewpoint
<http://www.motorists.org/new/carreviews/index.html>

Bug Me Not
A link to a large number of subscription logins
and passwords for use at the free websites
of newpapers that require users to subscribe.
It's http://www.bugmenot.com/
There's also a Firefox extension for it that's very nice:
http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.php



Thanks for reading,

Al
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Ringleaders/al.html>

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