ItsTheMitchell

Today will be a very short blog post. Sorry, but there is a ton going on this weekend. I wanted to remain dedicated to my weekly posting schedule, so here you go. Am I the only person that remembers sitting at the computer in the early 90's looking for Carmen? Yes? No? Either way, get ready to experience Carmen all over again with the help of Google Earth. If you have played before, hit the link after the jump. You'll love it. Play along with your kids. Get the next generation searching for Carmen. If you've never played before, it goes like this. You are a detective charged with finding Carmen Sandiego. You travel the world, interrogating witnesses to figure out your next destination. This is a great casual game for learning interesting facts about other countries, and with the Google Earth integration, you can now get a better concept for how the locations relate to each other as you whiz around the world looking for Carmen and her VILE henchmen. Anyway, before...

I'm late with my post again. I didn't get it done last weekend, and I'm only able to do it today because I'm at home with a sick little one. Don't worry, he'll be fine. It's nothing serious. One of the main reasons this post is so late is the little technology break I took over the weekend. You see, I had the opportunity to attend a weekend event that was NOT a tech conference. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It was a quiet Men's retreat at a campground nearby. The attendees were not allowed cell phones... or watches. I have to say, I was a bit apprehensive about putting the technology away, but also somehow, strangely looking forward to a few days without my phone. My watch, however, I didn't want to give up. I knew ahead of time that I would not be able to take them with me. In fact, Wednesday night, my wife told me that was one of her biggest worries about the event. She knows me so well. I packed my bag on Wednesday, and after work o...

Your digital footprint. According to techterms.com, it is "a trail of data you create while using the internet. It includes the websites you visit, emails you send, and information you submit to online services." Considering that, your digital footprint includes; every email you have sent, every tweet you've posted, every Facebook status update, every comment, every video, every website you've visited, every shared post, every time you shared misinformation with knowing, every reply, every picture, every thing you have ever done on the Internet, ever, ever, ever, ever. Here's is what I tell my students are the two biggest things to keep in mind when thinking about your digital footprint... 1. The Internet is all knowing. 2. The Internet is forever. Imagine this. You (yes, the real you sitting there hopefully reading this right now) have an imaginary backpack. That imaginary backpack keeps a list of every thing you do, everywhere you go, and everything you...

I am often amused at life's peculiar twists and turns. The way seemingly unrelated events transpire to create mischief at a later date often makes me smile when I look back. I had no idea what was in store for me today when I woke up. I'm glad it turned out the way it did. Also, I have never considered myself the easily offended type. I feel that I have a fairly realist view of the world. I also believe the power of words lies not in the words themselves, but rather how they are used, or misused. I hope you feel the same. Today started like any usual Sunday. Church. Home for lunch. Put the boys down for nap time. Put the wife down for nap time. Circumstances dictated that I would need to take an unexpected road trip about two hours up the road to a meeting spot in South Carolina. I considered my options, and decided that rather than take out the T-tops and blast the stereo, I would purchase my first audio book. Hi. My name is Itsthemitchell, and until today, I had never ...

Fearless: without fear; bold or brave; intrepid The question I have been pondering today; do we need fearless teachers? You know what... I think no. Hear me out. Before I jump too far into this, I'm not talking about mortal fear. I do not think that kind of fear should be a normal part of your classroom experience. If you fear for your safety while at work, something needs to be done. Speak up to someone that can help. Bold, brave, intrepid teachers all sound great to me, but fearless? I've got to say that every time I try something new in a class, there is a bit of fear. Fear of how will this be received by the students. Fear of if this will work the way I have it planned. Fear of the pacing taking too much or too little time. While these fears may not register on the same level as bungee jumping or flying cockroaches, it is fear nonetheless. Fear is something that is normal, and is hardwired into our brains. The limbic system controls much of our emotions, includ...

Back on December 23rd of 2018, I published a blog post about teaching coding with Google. It was basically a bullet point list of things I saw as I was looking at the website for the first time. Now I have had the time to implement it with my classes for a week. Here's my thoughts. First, this is a very well laid out platform. There are videos with screencasts showing you exactly what you need to do in order to get started. They frequently use starter projects in Scratch. The starter projects typically include code that is either too complicated for where the students are, or is trivial for their ability if they have made it that far. Often the starter projects will include sprites or backgrounds premade for those particular projects. The videos are high quality. All videos have captions available (in English, I have not looked for other languages) and have the ability to play back at a faster speed, as well as a lower speed. The instructions were clear, and incredibly eas...

tl;dr 1. Don't use a garbage password.  2. Use a strong password.  3. Use different passwords for each account. 4. Consider a password manager.  5. NEVER give your password to ANYONE!  6. Check out howsecureismypassword.net .  7. Check out haveibeenpwned.com Hello Internet. I hope you are having a beautiful day. I'd like to talk to you about your passwords for a minute. I don't mean to be ugly about it, but I need to put this in no uncertain terms. Some of you have awful passwords. Terrible. Awful. Get your act together. First, we're going to talk about what makes a terrible password. Splashdata, an internet security company, maintains a list of the most common passwords each year. Let's take a look at some of the perennial greatest hits. #1. 123456 #2. password #3. 123456789 #4. 12345678 Let's jump around a bit... #8. sunshine #9. qwerty #10. iloveyou #12. admin #18. monkey #20. !@#$%^&* - This one lo...