Bike-cam Videos

 Reposted from the Pedal to Peace blog

I took some experimental videos using the Nexus 7 strapped to my bike.
 A sort of "Go-DIY", you might call it. The foam bumper case was an ideal shock-absorbing mount.

At first I wanted to take time-lapse pictures, but I discovered that the stop-motion app on the tablet didn't have a timer setting. Rather, you have to press the preview each time you want to capture an image. I rode around testing that for a few seconds before abandoning the idea as too dangerous!

I have two videos below. For the first, the tablet was mounted more centrally, and the front brake cable spoils the view. It does, however, stop the auto-focus from going crazy, like it does in the second video.

The first video is on the way down from the first night's camp site, in Yamaguchi prefecture, and the second is coming down from the mountains at the start of the day we entered Nagasaki. 


Its hard to describe the satisfaction one experiences coasting down a hill which took great effort to pedal up. Its like a reward for all the hard work expended!

 

Lessons Learned on a Bicycle

 Reposted from the Pedal to Peace blog

I recently completed the cycle to Nagasaki, or more accurately half of it, since we teachers split cycling and driving each day. That's half of 450km in 5 days, which is not too bad at my age. Anyway, I trained seriously for the trip, and wrote this blog post about the experience.

Rapid Pi Case 2

This is version 2 of the Rapid Pi Case. This one is more elegant and even more rapid than the first. It also has some ventilation, and easy access to ports on the Pi using a craft knife. In this case, you can see the HDMI plugged in.

On the Inadequacy of Mobile

These days all we hear about is the convergence of desktop and mobile, and we are made to suffer those ugly and cumbersome interfaces like Unity and Metro (or most of you are; I stick to a traditional desktop), where actions you used to take for granted are no longer possible, and someone else has decided what your computing experience will be like.
So on the recent Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Ride, I decided to take only a Nexus 7 and my phone (still using my trusty Galaxy Nexus after all these years). In any case, with most nights being spent at camp sites without power points, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to make my laptop battery last the whole trip, while the tablet and phone could be charged in the support van, either directly or via external battery packs. All we needed to do was take plenty of photos, update the team Facebook page (that was one of the students' job), check e-mail, and write blog posts. My reflections on the experience follow.

Visible Thinking Certificate

Here is my Visible Thinking certificate

Looks like a grade 7 student made it in Draw, in keeping with the rest of the course!

The While-loop Game

Last week I introduced a while loop to my cryptography class, and it was used for the first attempt at encryption (a simple reverse cipher). Since this is such a crucial concept, and absolutely vital to further and unavoidably more complex algorithms to come, I wanted to reinforce it with a hands-on activity.

The While Loop Game

Game is a misnomer, but it got their attention and they didn't complain, so it worked this time!

I created some paper cards, and also an electronic version of the game. Actually only round 1 exists on paper so far. Round 2 has to be on the computer.

Everything is in this file, electronic game and paper game to print and cut up:

while_loop_game.odg

How to Play

The While Loop Game involves constructing a while loop by arranging cards, either physically or on the computer. Here is how to play:

1. The paper is the programming editor. The solid line represents the left margin. The dotted line represents a 4-space indent.
2. With your partner, arrange the cards to make a working while loop. You won't need all the cards. Partners must explain their ideas and run through the loop together to make sure they agree how it works.
3. Write the output of your program, in order, into the output box.
4. Check your answers to see if you won.

The Outcome

The game went very well, and really improved the confidence of some of the teams (they worked in pairs). Of the 12 pairs of students, three could build a working while loop without any comments from me, and the rest could do it with just a little help here and there. In the more difficult round two, only one team could get it unaided, but several followed after a few hints. Only one team was still far away from the solution when I revealed the answers.

Actually several teams pro-actively started typing their programs into codeskulptor to check them, which I hadn't expected, and was nice to see.

Rapid Pi Case

I have a Raspberry Pi in my house which is mostly for testing things out for school or workshops. For example when I needed a samba server for a workshop, or a web server with sftp chroots for kids to practice web sites. Anyway, it runs headless powered by a usb cable from the firewall and sits on top of it, next to the router. If I need to prepare something graphical like a Scratch workshop, I connect to a remote desktop using vnc. Until today, it has been inside my lego case; the one I spent about a week making and perfecting. So to bring my lego case back into circulation, I decided a quick replacement was needed. This is what I came up with.

Not like the cases you see on the Internet, but in terms of functionality return for time invested, its a winner. There is an ethernet cable running in one end, and the usb into the other. Five minutes' work. Maybe ten. It took longer to write this post. It even has its IP address handily visible, look.

Introduction to Cyber Security: summary

The course turned out to have only cameo appearances by Cory Doctorow, and most of the lessons consisted of introducing terminology via web pages.
There were some quizzes to do, which were incredibly easy, and a little bit of sharing on the forum, but it was without purpose.
However, I did grab a few resources, which was my main reason for taking the course.




I got some summaries of recent security breaches, such as Adobe and Target, and an explanation of Stuxnet, which are short and of about the right level of difficulty for my grade 7&8 IT class. The Sophos Threatosaurus looks useful, too.

Week 2 was mostly about password security, which is something I already teach well, I think. However, I got a few audio-visuals which will go well with what I do
A side-effect of this reading is that I knuckled down to work on something I have been meaning to do for quite some time. I wrote a quick Python program to create random strong passwords (32 random alphanumerics of mixed case) for my web subscriptions, and store them in a file on my computer. The program will give me the choice of creating a new password, or looking one up. So when I go to a web site that requires me to sign in, I will run the script, which will prompt me for the name of the site (part of the name is ok), and then return the login and password

Stage 2 is to apply GnuPG to encrypt the file with my public key, so that it will be safe to store in google drive. At the moment I am encrypting and decrypting manually, but I will get that built into the program soon)

Why do this myself? Well, firstly because I can and its fun. Secondly, I don't trust cloud services like lastpass to keep my passwords safe, and thirdly because I found that I was using password recovery for almost every site I log in to!

Password generators and crackers is a topic I am hoping to introduce into one of my programming classes, using material from the excellent book Hacking Secret Cyphers with Python:
https://inventwithpython.com/hacking/index.html

Here is a list of resources obtained:

assymetric_or_public_key1020.mp4
conficker.html
ConfiguringyourownfirewallPC.mp4
Cybersecuritybreaches.mp4
digitalsignature.jpg
Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG) Mini Howto (English): Using keys.html
hashandsalt.html
mac_security_vid_1002-wm.mp4
malware.html
OpenPGP.jpg
ou_futurelearn_cyber_security_vid_1117.mp4
passwordsecurityintro.mp4
phishing.jpg
psn.html
publickeyencryption.png
securitythreatannouncements.html
Sophos_Threatsaurus_AZ.pdf
targetstuxnetadobe.html
Tim Berners-Lee audio (OU Cyber Security).flv
Week_1_Where_can_I_find_out_more.pdf
Week_2_Good_Password_Practices.pdf
Week_2_Setting_up_two-factor_authentication_on_Facebook.pdf
Week_2_Setting_up_two-factor_authentication_on_Google.pdf
Week_6_Configuring_your_own_firewall__Mac_.pdf
Week_6_Configuring_your_own_firewall__PC_.pdf
Week_7_Recovering_from_a_virus_or_other_malware.pdf
Week_8_Fix_your_browser.pdf
windows_security_vid_1002-wm.mp4

Student Surveys - Mathematics

I gave the mid-year survey to all of my students last week. Here are the results for my mathematics classes in grades 6 and 7. Almost 100% response, because I held off giving the survey until the end of the week, when several students returned from sickness.

Again I used the standard school survey, with ratings from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), and I plotted the results onto a net on a scale of 2 to 4. Click the image to view.

Student Surveys - IT

Mid-Year survey given to all students as a Google form, to complete anonymously.
Questions are answered on a scale of 1(strongly disagree) to 4(strongly agree)

Introduction to Cyber Security

Signed up for this course offered by Futurelearn (The Open University), taught by Cory Doctorow. From reading his novels and papers, I know that he has a good balance of technical knowledge and communication skills, and I am hoping it will be an interesting 8 weeks.

I am hoping to boost my resources for when I teach these topics to middle and high school students. Its very difficult to find materials that are neither overwhelmingly technical nor superficially trivial on such things as malware, cracking, encryption, tracking, etc.