Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Many households now have more than one computer.  More people are buying a laptop to go with family desktop.  Add a router and you have a network.  Once you have a network, there is no reason to use “Sneakernet” to move your files from one computer to another.

Turn on File Sharing.  This will let you get to files on Computer 1 from Computer 2.

Depending on your needs, you can control the access of network users to resources that are shared.  The control falls into two general categories and is “set” by the computer doing the sharing.

Read
Read & Write

Read access permits a network user to open a file for viewing, but the network user cannot change or delete the file.  If the network user has Read and Write access, the network user can view, change and even delete the file.

I share all my music and photos over the home network in Read mode.  I don’t want someone accidentally deleting something.  If a network user wants to modify a photo, that photo can be copied to a computer where the copy can be changed, but the original is unaltered.

Sharing files on your home network does not share them with people on the Internet if you have a router/firewall.  Someone would have to break into your home network to get to your shared files.  An added layer of protection is to require a valid username/password for network users to access files that are shared.  In this way, a user not only has to be on the network, but also has to know a working username and password on the computer sharing the files.

Behind a firewall, your shared files are pretty safe from the Internet.

TSPY=2.22

If you use Word, learn the spell-check short-cut key: F7.

On the fly, Word will underline in red any word that is misspelled.  To run through the whole document, press F7.  Word will start at the cursor and go through the entire document prompting you for any needed corrections.

If you are using another program, check the Help screen for the spell-check short-cut.

You can add a spell-checker into your browser.  Here is ieSpell for Internet Explorer.  A similar tool is built into Firefox.  Right-click in a text box where you have entered text on a web page.  Select “spell check” from the drop-down list.  I’m using it now in my blog editing form.

TSPY=0,
Saved Embarrassment = Priceless

Do you use the “Christopher Columbus Method” of typing?  That’s the “find your key and land on it” method.  The Ohio Department of Education says you should learn to touch-type in third grade (check the bottom of page 90). 

I learned to type in graduate school.  You are probably guessing that I didn’t take Typing 501.  You’re right.  I was trying to communicate with people via the computer.  One day I realized that I was wasting a lot of time “looking” at the keys and then looking up to see my mistakes. 

This was long before the days of Mavis Beacon, or at least my knowledge of typing software.  Besides, I was a graduate student.  That translates into “poor” and there wasn’t a lot of open source free software to use either.

One day I decided I was no longer going to look at the keys.  That lasted about a minute.  Fortunately I had an IBM keyboard with removable keys.  I took them all off and rearranged them.  Looking at the keys no longer helped.  That’s when I learned to touch-type.

Today, I can type about 35 words a minute.  That isn’t bad for an old guy that never took a formal typing class.  Now my eyes are free to watch for those misspelled words.  Unfortunately, learning to type did not improve my spelling.

TSPY=42.0

A man with two clocks is never sure of the time… unless each clock is connected to the Internet.  This site

http://www.time.gov

will tell you the time within 0.3 seconds of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s master clock.  That’s close enough for most people outside of Switzerland.  In that country men are known to break into fist-fights over the correct time.

Microsoft uses NIST’s clock to keep accurate time on the Microsoft time servers (time.windows.com).  You can synchronize your computer with one of these servers.  By doing this, your computer’s clock will be adjusted to the correct time each day.  Here are instructions to set this up on your computer.

This won’t help with your wrist watch, but it will keep all your computers in sync.

TSPY=0.0000000003 and one fist-fight each year

There are many ways to find out your Internet Protocol address (IP address).  Probably the easiest way is to go to this page.

http://www.whatismyip.com

This will give you the IP address that the outside world sees when you visit web pages or other Internet resources.  It’s like caller ID for the Internet.  Anyone you connect to knows who you are based on the fact that no two computers on the Internet have the same IP address.

If you have a hardware router, this is actually the IP address assigned to the router.  If you have multiple computers in your house it is likely they all use the same IP address (assigned to a router) when going to the Internet.  Each of your computers is given an “inside” IP address that can’t actually connect to the Internet.  To find out your computer’s IP address, do the following.

Windows Key – R
CMD <enter>
IPCONFIG <enter>

This will list your IP address with some extra information – subnet mask and gateway.

If you don’t have a router and connect your computer directly to the Internet, the two methods above should give you the same IP address.

TSPY=0.02