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One of my favourite activites when teaching any current issue such as viruses, hacking and denial of service is to get students to search the web for recent incidents. I often use the BBC and PCW magazine as two prime sources.

Once again, this technique came up trumphs, with pupils discovering a wide range of articles relating to ethical and legal issues in ICT. My particular favourite is this one from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6100016.stm

This article raises a number of issues that Higher Computing students should be able to debate. Here are my thought/ideas for what they should be able to talk about:

• Technically, the problem the article reports is not actually a virus, it is a trojan horse (can be followed with explanation of virus being a self-replicating program)
• What technique have the writers of this malicious threat used to spread the trojan when this would normally be impossible (discussion on safety of data files?)
• How does the codec package 'fool' the anti-virus software, many of which also look for spyware threats?
• Why is this likely to be such a problem (popularity of YouTube etc, inexperience of those using the service, non-connection of the idea that a codec is a program and thus executable).

Also another interesting one that came up was this from PCW magazine:

http://www.pcw.co.uk/computeractive/news/2167543/car-park-signs-tell-residents-f

Admit it - how many times have you driven past a big orange VMS sign and wished you could 'borrow' it for a wee while!

Just a quick post - There's a great debate taking place just now on Robert Jones' Weblog. Many thanks to Ollie for blogging about it - great stuff. I'd encourage all teachers of computing to have a look, and perhaps join in.

http://www.jonesieboy.co.uk/blog/2006/10/04/activote-walkthrough-part-1/

Wow! That was a quick two weeks - I've been meaning to post something since the start of the new term, but time has just flown by. Just to update folk, I've (finally) moved into my new house in Dunbar, which is great as I can now walk to work in 15 minutes, rather than a 1 hour drive over the lammermuirs. (Don't think the environment will be complaining either!)

Anyway, Subject Support: we had our first meeting of the year on Friday at the Old Clubhouse in Gullane. Discussions ranged from the exam results to how to deal with the explosion in online community sites, such as bebo . On the one had, as ICT specialists, we should be teaching safe use of this technology to pupils. However, there is no doubt that these sites present dangers that conflict with our duty of care towards them, not to mention the ability to inflict a new form of 'online bullying' using the technology. Striking a balance between these two might well prove to be an impossible task, though the forthcoming SSDN - now ' Glow ' - looks like bringing many of the functions of bebo, youtube and others into a safe, manageable environment. Exciting times!

Anyway, with less than 1 month until the BorderSAR sponsored walk , I'd better sign off and get planning. (blatant plug ends!) Weekends are filling up fast: Trip to Fisherfield this weekend; MRT exercise next; Medical seminar on the 30th, Walk on the 1st; EMT refresher looming! (To think I expected to have more free time once I'd moved - aye right!)

Cheers!

Well folks, we finally made it to California on the 2006 "Following in John Muir's Footsteps" trip.

I'm not going to say too much on my own weblog, as we have a seperate one set up, which Alice is maintaining each day. You can view it here .

Suffice to say, having a great time. Weather is fantastic, John Muir House was very interesting, and Santa Cruz fun! The staff are off on a little visit to the Napa Valley tomorrow to sample the local 'refreshments'. Wish me Luck! We leave for Yosemite on Friday morning, and with the recent landslide on HW140 it promises to be a long journey around the detour!

I meant to blog this the day after it all happened, but as per the last post, just been too busy!

Every year, Tweed Valley MRT ( our nice neighbours) hold a 24 hour Mountain Challenge, and boy is it challenging: 40 miles, 10,000ft ascent. Ouch. Anyway, I've completed it for the last two years (21 hours 2005, 18 hours 2006 ... 2007?). What really impressed me however were theat no less than five former pupils of DGS took part this year: Andrew Maddox, Steven Low, Ben Mincher, Ian Thompson and David Bower.

The five pupils have no doubt raised hundreds of pounds for a very good cause, and are a credit to Dunbar Grammar - well done lads. Only two managed to finish the challenge, but all five done very well, in fact they all got further than even I honestly expected.

My personal highlight of the challenge was meeting up with a nice fellow from Duns, who would become part of the challenge folklore. Half way round, he lost his ankles. they just disolved, vanished, disappeared in a large pool of blood. No joke, they were the worst I'd ever seen since I managed to hospitalise myself breaking in a new pair of boots by trekking across two munros! (note to self - bad idea). I had to patch them up on the hill - only half way round remember - using the only first aid kit I had - two wound dressings and a flask of 12 year old Glenfiddich. Amazingly, he finished the walk! Certainly a braver man than me!

Anyway, I'll leave you with a couple of photos from the walk: The ankle-less man, and four of our former pupils at the finish line, proping themselves up against the first thing to hand!!

Well, what a shock I got today: I was aware the weblog was slipping as the end of term starts to get hectic, but I just had a quick look and seen that it was actually April when I last posted! So much for 'at least once a week' that I had aimed for when I started this. Oh well...

Of course, one of the main reasons things are getting busy, is that I am off to Yosemite in just over a weeks time - along with 3 great colleagues (name checks for Gillian Williams, Alice Clubb, and Ciaran Earle) and 21 students. It's an experience I am certainly looking forward to, as I know the pupils are. Now that we are all in the process of packing it has just started to dawn on me how close it actually is! It's quite inspiring to talk to people like Gillian who were on the trip two years ago and see how many good memories they have of Yosemite, Martinez and San Fran. Speaking to Don Ledingham too, it was so obvious how much he enjoyed Yosemite Valley in particular. Don't worry Don - I'll have my camera and be up at the crack of dawn too :-)

Anyway, you can follow our progress at the weblog Alice has set up for the trip. I'm sure it will be a fantastic experience for both staff and pupils' a real trip of a lifetime for many of them.

dgscomp.wikispaces.com

I have been working with my S3 class just now on revision, how quickly the exams come around! Normally I would encourage pupils to create and share revision notes and questions to try and brighten up what can sometimes be a dull time in class, with endless past paper work, revisiting old topics, writing lots of notes, and so on. However, I have decided to try something different this year: a Wiki!

For those of you new to the idea of Wikis, it's quite simple: essentially it's just a group of web pages that anyone can edit and add content to. Exc-el already has a Wiki site here . My hope is that this will encourage the pupils to research topics both in class and at home, then add to the Wiki. Initial results seem quite promising, as you can see if you visit our Wiki.

In one of those "I can't believe I haven't mentioned it before" moments, I thought I should post about some exciting news: Microsoft (you know them, that company everyone slags off yet still uses all their software...) are giving away Visual Studio Express edition for free, nought, nil, gratis, etc..!

Exciting news for anyone even slightly interested in programming . Hurry fast though - they will only be doing this until November, after that you'll have to buy a copy as usual.

Get yours from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

There's also lots of tutorials and samples on the site for everyone from novices to experienced developers.

This is, in my opinion a smart move by microsoft - there's no doubt in my mind that our students today do not have anything close to the practical grounding in programming and low-level interaction with a computer that those brought up on the8-bit home computers of the 1970s and 80s had. Perhaps encouraging programming as a hobby and interest will help combat the loss of these vital skills.

Thanks very much, Mr Gates! I'm off to throw out that copy of openoffice !

One of the simplest - but best - uses of technology I have came across in this job is the use of smartgroups by computing teachers. Basically, any teacher who wants to can join a smartgroup for a particular course, giving them access to hundreds of fellow colleagues via a simple email distribution list.

Quite often, it pays dividends. Today was one of those days. Many thanks to Kathryn Brown, who posted a link to warriorsofthe.net on the Higher Info Sys smartgroup - a free to download animation film that helps to explain how data is sent across the internet in an abstract way. If you have broadband, it's well worth a download to see a difficult subject presented in such a novel way. The video is 12 mins long, perfect for the start of a lesson, which can then be followed by further exemplification of the subject.

Now, if only they would also cover anti-virus, search algortihms, ... :-)