Well here we are at the end of the 2nd class of the MEIT cohort and we finished strong with an assignment about putting together the perfect computer. I read quite a few blog reflections from others where they expressed relief that this class is over but I'm actually wishing that we could have had a couple more weeks to get a little more in depth. My hardware knowledge and skills have always been decent but this class took me to those limits with assignments to the point where I wanted to edge a little further to expand my horizons. I know I spent at least an hour longer on the perfect computer assignment because I kept getting sidetracked by wanting to take a deeper look at Hexa Core processors, different types of RAM, USB 3.0 external hard drives, etc. The same is true of some of the other assignments as well. The Operating System assignment was probably the most eye opening for me because I had little to no experience with Linux. After the exposure to Linux I have big plans for it after reading numerous forum posts where people told stories of Linux rescuing their older laptops or desktops. Apparently Linux still runs fast on machines with older hardware - now that is knowledge that I can put to good use.
I love that this Master's program is online, don't get me wrong, but this might have been a class that I would've enjoyed being in a lab with my fellow cohorts while playing around with the different hardware, devices, and operating systems. Maybe that's just me.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Safety, Security and a Plan
This week's topics happened to coincide with a very similar unit that I just started teaching to my middle schoolers. Our technology committee had decided that it was time to incorporate some mini-lessons about being safe and secure online. While some of the content that we covered in my MEIT class were more in depth, there was also some overlap. We talked about different kinds of viruses, malware, phishing, identity theft, and safe practices for using email to name a few. After doing a security audit of my PC using the website auditmypc.com I discovered that my PC was pretty safe except for my Internal IP address. The auditmypc.com website was able to run some little Javascript and get around my router to view my internal IP address. I'm actually not too concerned about it but it was still somewhat eye opening since I thought my router from AT&T Uverse was masking my IP address. Everything else looked ok, though, so thumbs up!!
Another topic we covered was the creation of a disaster recovery plan at the personal and organizational levels. I didn't have too much trouble with the individual plan because I already have a pretty comprehensive plan in place but creating the disaster recovery plan at the organizational level was quite the mind-numbing experience. It is one thing to plan for a disaster at home where you might have 2-5 PCs or similar devices but it's a whole different ballgame when you start thinking about locking down and securing a network that may contain multiple servers, 100+ computers, 100+ users, and an overwhelming amount of data. There are numerous factors to consider in the structure of a network before you can piece together the most efficient infrastructure. I didn't realize that there were so many choices of RAID and I didn't really understand what the advantages/disadvantages of each of them were until this assignment. I also never really thought about using "cloud" storage in conjunction with the regular file/data backups. We did the organizational DR plan as a group and we found that while we all worked at places that had existing plans, they were all very different because of the different hardware, devices, operating systems, etc that were unique to our schools. As a result, my group's normal 1 hour weekly meeting turned into a 3 hour groan fest as we tried to piece together an adequate plan. I can't imagine what it's like in settings where there are even more people involved in the decision making.
Another topic we covered was the creation of a disaster recovery plan at the personal and organizational levels. I didn't have too much trouble with the individual plan because I already have a pretty comprehensive plan in place but creating the disaster recovery plan at the organizational level was quite the mind-numbing experience. It is one thing to plan for a disaster at home where you might have 2-5 PCs or similar devices but it's a whole different ballgame when you start thinking about locking down and securing a network that may contain multiple servers, 100+ computers, 100+ users, and an overwhelming amount of data. There are numerous factors to consider in the structure of a network before you can piece together the most efficient infrastructure. I didn't realize that there were so many choices of RAID and I didn't really understand what the advantages/disadvantages of each of them were until this assignment. I also never really thought about using "cloud" storage in conjunction with the regular file/data backups. We did the organizational DR plan as a group and we found that while we all worked at places that had existing plans, they were all very different because of the different hardware, devices, operating systems, etc that were unique to our schools. As a result, my group's normal 1 hour weekly meeting turned into a 3 hour groan fest as we tried to piece together an adequate plan. I can't imagine what it's like in settings where there are even more people involved in the decision making.
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