21st Century Displacement Activities

In the old days, when I had a bunch of marking to do I would go off to the union shop and spend ages choosing a suitable red pen. I'd try each of those on sale at least once and then carefully weigh up the heft of the pen, the quality of the ink colour, the feel of the writing action and so on. I could usually pass quite a while doing these activities, not actually doing anything towards getting the marking done, but feeling good about the fact I was in fact making progress. When of course I wasn't.

Spool forward a few years and I can't do this any more. Some of the stuff doesn't use a pen at all, everything happens on the computer. But I still need my displacement activities. Fortunately the computer, if it is nothing else, is a wonderful source of potential displacement.

I've been marking stuff submitted via Class Server. This has the option for the marker to create six pre-formed text items which can be inserted into the student comments. Thing is, six is nothing. I've got loads more than that. Loads. It really hurts to type the same kind of thing over and over, but I need more than six. More like sixty. So, I built PasteMaster to do this for me. It took me around an hour to build, which is probably longer than I spent choosing pens, but I think it is worth it.

You can type the comments into the text fields and then when you press the button they are inserted into the block at the bottom. You can edit the text at the bottom and add new bits, and everything you add is also placed in the paste buffer, so you can drop the whole report into any windows app. It remembers the comments from last time you ran it, and there are 6 pages of 12 comments that are colour coded and you can flip between.  I managed to set up a page of comments about each of the deliverables I was asking for, so that I could pull out pre-formed bits where appropriate and save myself quite a bit of typing.

(I was going to add a "randomise" button which would pull a comment out of a textbox on each frame and make a random response, but I thought this might be dangerous....)

Anyhoo, it works a treat and saved me a fair bit of typing. Of course, I could have used Notepad, but I think it would have been a bit harder to do and I would not have had the fun of making Pastemaster work.

If you fill out forms with pre-formed responses, or you do the kind of marking that I do, you might like a copy. If so, let me know.... 

What can you make out of combs and odd socks?

I've no idea. But something out there must be making a big one, the number of combs and socks that have gone missing from my house....

Unwilling Radio Star

Paul heard me on the radio this morning. Apparently I sounded OK. I never, ever listen to me. To my ears I sound awful. I once tried to record some pod-cast type things but in the end I had to give up because I had to listen to myself when I did the editing and it just wasn't worth it.

Safety on the Internet

Every now and then I get asked to comment on something technical by the local radio stations. They say I have the perfect face for radio.

Anyhoo, today a chap came to talk to me about safety on the Internet, Tomorrow is European Internet Safety Day (what, you didn't know?) and they wanted some quotes about the dangers lurking out there on the wire.

My opinion on this is quite simple. Just about everything in life can be used for good and bad things. Even fluffy cushions can be used to bad purpose (as they are in just about every other "Midsummer Murders" episode). The Internet, mobile phones and social web sites are just the same in this respect. The key is to be aware of what they can be used for, then you can get involved and help.

The oldest trick in the book (and particularly if you have kids) is to put the family computer downstairs in the living room rather than hidden in one of the bedrooms. Then you can see what is going on, and maybe have a go yourself. In these days of WIFI and multiple systems in houses this may be more tricky, but there is now technology you can use to limit the use of the computer and the places that kids can visit. Windows Vista (to name one system at random) has technology for both controlling access to web sites and limiting login times.

With regard to social networking, why not have a go yourself. Apparently there is presently a huge growth in middle aged use of things like MySpace and there is nothing to stop you having a go apart from fear itself. And as for mobile phones, be aware that they can be used for bullying and sending nasty messages.

Apparently when postcards were invented they created a whole new way in which people could get in touch with each other. Rather than having to visit the house to correspond, a lady could scribble a message on a card and then drop it into the nearest postbox. This brought about a revolution in courting behaviour. This took a lot of control (and awareness of what was going on) away from the parents, and was probably the cause of much debate and concern at the time.

Something similar is happening/has happened with mobile communications. I'm sure that when postcards came out there were people sending nasty ones, and you had to learn to deal with this. I guess the same is true with the Internet and mobile phones etc.

Another profound question

Do people who write smoke signals work under a "nom de plume"?