USB condoms

Let’s start with USB condoms, because, frankly, that’s why you decided to read this post. It’s okay to be honest. We’re friends.

The cable you use to charge your phone and your tablet serve as both a power cable and a data cable. Electricity and information both flow through this same cable. As long as you are home, you are safe. When you venture out into public, however…

Let’s say you’re at the airport and you’d like to top off your phone’s battery before boarding your plane. You plug your USB cable into one of those now-ubiquitous charging stations. Unfortunately, someone with nefarious intent has been there before you. Once you plug in your USB cable, the nefarious person begins to steal any data that flows through your cable, such as passwords, or sends malware to your phone.

This is called juice jacking.

How much do you need to be worried about it? Frankly, probably not much. As of this writing there have been no known incidents. But we do know it’s possible. The FBI officially recommends not using USB outlets in public spaces [added 4/11/2023]. And since it started getting press a couple months ago, someone is probably working on it.

What you do about it depends on your risk tolerance.

Option 1: Do nothing.

Option 2: Don’t use public USB outlets. Instead, use your device’s adapter and only plug into electrical outlets.

Option 3: Use a USB data blocker, dubbed a USB condom. Plug your USB cable into a device that’s about the size of a flashdrive then plug the device into a public USB outlet. You can purchase two PortaPow Data Blockers from Amazon for $11.99.

The real risk

While it’s unlikely you’re in much danger from using a USB outlet for charging your device. In addition to juice hacking there is much more risk with using public wifi. Every time you connect to public wifi, such as at a coffee shop or airport, a nefarious person may be lurking on that same wifi. With the right skills that nefarious person could swipe any data you send over that connection, such as your login names and passwords.

VPNs

Like a USB data blocker, you can put a layer of protection between you and public wifi. In this case, the solution is software, not hardware.

A virtual private network (VPN) is well, a kind of private network. After installing the VPN on each of your devices (phone, tablet, laptop – anything that may leave your home and connect to the Internet), every time you connect to public wifi, sign into your VPN with your username and password. That login provides the layer of protection you need. All of the information flowing between your device and the Internet will be encrypted. No one can read it without knowing your VPN username and password.

There are several very good VPNs out there. I use Private Internet Access (PIA), but ExpressVPN is always on the lists of excellent VPNs. A good VPN costs a few dollars a month, but most occasionally run big sales or offer year-long or multi-year purchases. You can install the VPN on all of your devices, but there is a limit to how many devices can connect to the VPN simultaneously from that same account. PIA allows 10, and ExpressVPN allows 5, for example. There are free VPNs, but they may not be as fast or may limit how much data you can send through their servers each month. If you want to go that route, I recommend Hotspot Shield Free or TunnelBear.

On your device, when you connect to a VPN, you can choose where the server is that you’d like to connect through. Going through a VPN will always be slower than traveling the Internet naked. The VPN is a password protected gateway. You first have to go through the gate, don your virtual hazmat suit, and then head out to the Internet. It takes a little bit of time to do that.

For fastest speeds, connect through a server that’s physically closest to you. From my home router, I generally don’t use a VPN. My password protected router gives me the shielding that I need. Here are some sample Internet speeds I just ran today; check yours with Speedtest.net.

From my home router without a VPN: download speed was 77.0 Mbps; upload speed was 9.46 Mbps

Connected to PIA VPN going through a Seattle server, the one closest to where I live: download 75.2; upload 8.81

Connected to PIA VPN going through a New York City server that’s almost 3,000 miles away: download 59.0; upload 7.92

Connected to PIA VPN going through a Norway server that’s about 4,500 miles away: download 33.5; upload 5.3.

Yes, you can connect to servers just about anywhere in the world. This is very handy if you’re traveling in, say, Europe, and want to spend an evening watching Netflix. You may, though, only watch Netflix shows for a European audience. If you want access to all of the Netflix shows you watch at home in the United States, you can use a VPN, and choose a server location in the United States. Netflix will think your device is in, say, Chicago even though you and your device are actually in Vienna. If you intend to use your VPN in this way, choose ExpressVPN as your VPN provider. Netflix isn’t fooled by all VPNs, but ExpressVPN, at least as of this writing, can pull it off. (Here is a short list of other VPNs that can, too.) ExpressVPN is a little more expensive than other VPNs; you get what you pay for.

Travel router

If you travel a lot and are frequently connecting several devices to, say, a hotel’s wifi, it can be a hassle. You (and your spouse, and your kids) have to connect each of your devices, and then—as you now know—run a VPN on each of your devices. Some hotels limit the number of devices that can connect to their wifi. The last hotel I stayed in had a limit of six devices. Since it was just me, I came in well under their limit. If I added my wife and a couple teenagers (fyi, I don’t have any teenagers, and, no, I don’t want yours), we’d easily be over the six-device limit.

Consider purchasing a travel router. The travel router connects to the hotel wifi just like any device does. The router works by adding a new password-protected wifi signal. My travel router uses the same name and password as our home wifi. As soon as the travel router is up and running, all of my devices see the home wifi name and will connect to it automatically. And what about that hotel device limit? The hotel sees the travel router as one device; it won’t see all of the devices connected to the router.

With a travel router, there is no need to use a VPN since it comes with the built-in protection of a username and password and encryption. (If your router doesn’t come with encryption automatically enabled, enable it.)

I use the TP-Link N300 travel router. Setting up the software and connecting can be intimidating. It’s been a couple years since I bought it, and other travel routers have since come on the market. Try this RAVPower travel router for about the same price.

Conclusion

A couple years ago, I wrote about password security. In that post I advised using a password manager, like LastPass. Still, the number one threat to your online security are your passwords. Strong, unique passwords for every site you log into will provide you with the best protection.

VPNs, travel routers, and data blockers (if anyone actually steals data that way) keep your passwords protected as they flow from your device out onto the Internet.

Stay safe out there.

For the discussions in my online courses, I have added an expected minimum word count to help students better gauge what is expected of them. Each initial post has three sections, and each has a different word count minimum. Same with the discussion responses.

I am certainly not going to count the words myself. And it seems silly to copy and paste each discussion post into Word to get a word count.

Instead, I added a word count tool to my browser.

In Chrome, I use Word Counter Plus. In Firefox, I use Word Count.

While both look a little different, they work exactly the same way. Once you’ve installed your chosen tool into your chosen browser, highlight any text on a webpage, right-click, and then choose the tool from the menu. You will get a pop-up that will give you the number of words and number of characters in your selection. Word Counter Plus will also give you average word length and longest word length thereby illustrating that just because you can calculate a statistic does not mean that you should.

To make the pop-up go away, you have a couple options.

Chrome’s Word Counter Plus: Click the “OK” button, or press the ESC key on your keyboard.

Firefox’s Word Count: Click the X, or go about your business and the box will disappear in 6 seconds.

Happy counting!

For those of us who like to—or least tend to—have a lot of browser tabs open at once, Chrome’s new “tab groups” along with the previous ability to pin tabs can help bring order to the chaos.

Below, you can see what I currently have open in Chrome. The six tabs on the left are “pinned.” These are tabs that I frequently use, so I’ve pinned them. I have easy access to them without them taking up so much real estate. To pin a tab, right-click on it, and select “Pin”. [Extra credit: how many of my pinned tabs can you identify based on their icons? Answer below.]

The functionality that Chrome recently added is tab grouping. Above, you can see that I’ve created two groups: Canvas and News. Each group has its own color and its own label.

To use tab grouping, you will need to switch it on.

Go to: chrome://flags/

Scroll down to “Tab Groups” and enable it. [Pro-tip: This is a lengthy list of Chrome features. It’s faster to hit CTRL-F and search for “Tab Groups”.]

Switching “Tab Group” to “Enabled” will produce a “Relaunch” button in the bottom right corner of your screen. Click on it to close your browser and, well, relaunch it.

Now when you right-click on a browser tab, you can add it to a new group. To select several tabs at once, hold down CTRL and left-click on each tab you want to group together. Once you have them selected, let go of the CTRL key, right-click on any of the tabs you selected, and select “add to new group”. Once you’ve created a group, right-clicking on a tab will give you the option to “add to a new group” or “add to an existing group.”

If you are in a group when you open a new tab, that new tab will be added to that group. To change which group a tab is in, click and drag it to a different group.

When you create a new group, Chrome will automatically assign the group a color.

Left-click on the colored circle to choose a different color and to name your group, if you’d like. Here I’ve entered “News” in the text box.

Finally, to delete a group, close all of the tabs in that group—or move all of the tabs out of the group.

Conclusion

If “be more organized” was one of your new year’s resolutions, organize your Chrome tabs, and call this one resolution complete!

Extra credit answers: from left to right, Message by Google, Google Calendar, Gmail, Trello, Google Keep, Outlook 365 To-Do

My college has been with the Canvas learning management system for a few years now. There are many things I like about it, but the cumbersome number of clicks it takes to delete a bunch of pages is not one of them. And I wanted to delete a bunch of pages.

We recently turned on “Atomic Search” within Canvas that allows instructors and students to search within a course. If a page is published, it’s fair game to be returned in search results. As I copied courses from quarter to quarter to quarter, I never had to worry about those unused pages. They weren’t linked to anything, so students had no way to get to them. But now, with search, they do. I have to delete or at least unpublish dozens and dozens of pages. Over 100 pages. Unfortunately, Canvas does not have a native bulk delete feature where you can just check boxes next to what you want to delete, and then click a button to delete them all. That would be awesome. Instead, Canvas pages can only be deleted one by one. And the last thing I want to do is delete 100+ pages one by one.

Because of how Canvas is built, however, knowledgeable individuals can build tools that will make using Canvas easier, such as using a Google spreadsheet to change assignment due dates. In this case, a shout out to James Jones for creating a way to delete or unpublish a bunch of Canvas pages in one fell swoop using Google spreadsheets.

Follow the instructions. All you need is a Google account.

Several years ago, I moved away from using presentation slides in my courses. They just didn’t work with the interteaching model I had started using. Instead, I returned to where I started my career: writing on the board. My current board is digital (interactive short-throw projector with whiteboard software), so my “markers” never run out of ink. For my conference presentations –except for my tech talks—I still use presentation slides, specifically PowerPoint. I know some of you really love Prezi. As my colleague Steve Chew has observed, Prezi is the only presentation software that requires the audience to take Dramamine first. I’ll attend your Prezi talk, but my eyes will be closed.

Since psychologists know a lot about how we learn, I’m not sure why it has taken so long for one to compile the research and give us an evidence-based/evidence-informed book on how to create effective slide presentations. Gary Fisk, psychology professor at Georgia Southwestern State University, has given us Slides for Students: The Effective Use of Powerpoint in Education*. I confess that the title confused me a bit. I wasn’t sure if this was a book meant for students to use to help them create effective slide presentations or if it was a book meant for instructors to use in presenting content to students. It is indeed the later. In an early chapter we learn that PowerPoint was developed for sales presentations. And, indeed, taken out of the box and using the default settings, it may be effective in sales. In education, however, we are communicating a different kind of message, so a different approach to creating slides is needed.

The first chapter sets up why this book is necessary: we are not born knowing how to create effective slide presentations. Chapter two details every complaint about slide presentations and every counterargument offered in response. If you’re of a certain age and have stood in enough faculty breakrooms for enough years, you have heard it all already. You have permission to skim this chapter. If you consider yourself new to teaching, it’s worth a closer read. If you’re curmudgeonly, chapter 2 will give you some fodder. If you are anti-curmudgeonly, chapter 2 will give you an arsenal of replies.

In chapter three, Fisk summarizes some of the original research in this arena. Early studies compared lectures using presentation slides with lecture that did not—that used, say, a whiteboard instead. There were no differences in student performance on exams or in the course. With hindsight we can see that this wasn’t quite the right question to ask. Presentation slide software is just a tool. We don’t ask whether a hammer is effective. Instead, the question is what’s the best way to use the tool and under what circumstances. Using a hammer is very effective at, well, hammering. It doesn’t work very well at drilling holes. You can’t blame the hammer for that! Students like presentation slides, but they also acknowledge that there are some downsides. I’m more interested in whether presentation slides can be used in a way that actually helps students learn, not whether students think they help them learn. Fisk draws the same conclusion, “The guiding spirit [of this book] is to determine how teachers should use this medium to augment their teaching and thereby improve student learning.”

Take a minute to reflect on some of the worst presentations you have seen, whether it be as a student or at a conference.

Fisk cites survey research on what audience members hate the most about presentations. Number 1 on the list: the presenter reads the slides. I have mixed feelings about this one. As a presenter, I cannot assume that everyone in the room has the visual acuity to read my slides, no matter the size of the font or the degree of contrast. To say, “Take a minute and read this slide,” makes me worry that I have systematically excluded a chunk of my audience. Having written that, the solution is obvious. I shouldn’t put the text on the slide at all. How about I just say it? If it’s a quote, I can have the quote in my notes. The quote does not need to be on the slide. That also solves the second biggest complaint audience members have: too much text on the slide. That complaint is really about how hard it is process what’s on the slide. Fisk reports that complaints three and four are in the same vein: “small text and overly complex graphics.” Frankly, so is another problem: over-stylized presentations. While programs like PowerPoint give you the option to add all kinds of bells and whistles—PowerPoint 2019 includes new features like zoom and morph—don’t use them. They will distract more than they will add. Also, don’t go crazy with the technology. The less technology you use, the smoother your presentation will be. The more technology you use, the more things can go wrong. While you’re troubleshooting and fixing the technology, your students/audience members have lost the thread of what you were saying, and they have moved on to other things, e.g., Instagram. Fisk covers some other “presentation killers,” but most of them come down to one general presentation principle: keep it simple.

How should you structure your simple presentation? Fisk suggests appealing to emotion, although he cautions that too much emotion can overwhelm an audience. Many psychology textbooks start their chapters with a vignette, often a real one, but not always. This draws the reader in; they want to know how the story ends. A presentation is no different. Use emotion to help your audience care about what you are saying. Sprinkle emotion throughout your presentation, such as (appropriate) humor. Fisk offers several other ideas for drawing in an audience. End your presentation with a take-home message.

Through your presentation, remember that you are not locked into your slides. You control your slides; your slides do not control you. While you may have been thinking of a particular path when you created your slides, through student questions during your presentation, you may discover that a different path may be more appropriate. It’s okay to take that path. You don’t have to announce to students that you are taking a different path than the one you intended. If students are locked in to thinking that they are there to hear you deliver a fixed lecture, they may perceive such an announcement as a sign that you are going off on a tangent or being derailed by student questions. You’re not. You are flexibly responding to the learning needs of your students in that moment.

One of the benefits of having a sensation and perception expert write a book on slide presentations is that we get an explanation of how our slides should look due to the function and limitations of the human visual system. In chapter 7, Fisk makes recommendations for the best font size and background for your slides based on the lighting in your room. And he offers some caution about the use of color. Fisk gives us some concrete advice on how to design the layout of our slides. Psychologists will be interested in the rationale that’s based on Gestalt principles of organization.

Fisk nicely summarizes the relevant research on attention, cognition (such as memory), and behavior (such as notetaking and attendance). He, then, offers concrete suggestions on how to design your presentation to make best use of what we know.

In chapter 16, Fisk brings it all together by walking us through a well-designed presentation.

While Slides for Students: The Effective Use of Powerpoint in Education looks intimidating with its 300 pages of content, the large font and substantial spacing between lines makes this a quicker read than it initially appears. Having said that, you still will want to take this book one chapter at a time. In editing your current presentations, change one set of elements this term, such as reducing text or moving to more reader-friendly font, and then address another set next term. You don’t have to revise everything today!

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review at the request of the publisher.

Some instructors and students like to use a Jeopardy! format to review course content. I’ve learned that it’s not my thing, but I’m happy to support those of you who are into it.

First, you need a Jeopardy! board. I wrote about Jeopardy Labs in 2011, and that is still a solid board creation tool.

Next, you need a way for students to buzz in. The easiest is the free BuzzIn.live website. (Shout out to the developer, Logan Sinclair!)

Visit the BuzzIn.live website and click the “Host” button.

That brings up your host dashboard. Tell your students to use their web-enabled device to visit the BuzzIn.live website. If not all of your students have a web-enabled device or if you’re over the 150-player limit, ask students to work in pairs or small groups so only one person in the group needs a device. They’ll click the “Join” button, enter the 6-digit game code, and enter their name(s) or team name. The limit in this field is 12 characters.

On your dashboard, you’ll see a list of the connected players. This will update automatically as players join. Clicking “Toggle Lock” will lock the room so no more students can join.

By default “sound” is unchecked. In your BuzzIn.live dashboard settings, you can decide whether you want students to be able to turn on their buzzer sound or not.

On your dashboard, click the settings button, then decide whether you want to give students the option to turn on their buzzer sound.

Clicking on the button will remove the buzzer sound option.

Participants who have joined your room will see a big green BUZZ button on their screens.

Ask your question, and students will hit the BUZZ button. That will turn the color of their button to red and it will now read BUZZED.

On your dashboard, you’ll see the players who buzzed in and in what order.

Ask MWashburn to answer the question. If she cannot, move on to AFreud, and so on.

When you’re ready to move to a new question, click the red “Reset ALL Buzzers” button. Everyone’s buzzer will go back to green, and you’re good to go again.

Pro-tip: Since you’ll most likely be showing the questions on your main computer screen, consider using a different device—your own laptop, tablet, phone—to run BuzzIn.live.

Each of
us
sees
color
differently.

Download the free Color Blind Pal app to your phone or tablet.

Open the app, tap “inspecting color” to change it to “filtering colors,” then tap the at the top of the screen.

If it is difficult for you to see the color differences in the pie chart below, under “color blindness type” select your form of color blindness and click the ← at the top of the screen. Point your camera at this pie chart to see the colors shifted making the colors easier to tell apart.

If you have typical color vision, under “color blindness type” select “simulate protanopia,” and click the ← at the top of the screen. Point your camera at the pie chart above to see what someone who cannot see red sees.*

* “Red? But the chart is green/orange…” Protanopia is absence of red and deuteranopia is absence of green. Our brain knows red and green are different by comparing them to each other. If one is missing, there is nothing to compare to, so they look the same.

When someone knocks on your office door, you may have a sensitive email or student work on your screen. Rather than figuring out if what is on your screen can be safely seen, use a keyboard shortcut to minimize everything so only your desktop shows.

Windows

Windows key + D (“D” is for desktop).

When your visitor leaves, that same key combination will bring back everything where it was.

Mac

Command + F3 (“F3” is for F3).

When your visitor leaves, that same key combination or just F3 will bring back everything where it was.

Windows 10* has a built-in emoji menu. Go into any program where you can type, like Word or a new email message.

Press Windows key + semicolon.

Choose an emoji from the menu.

The first page (clock icon) shows your most recently used emoji.

The magnifying glass is for search. Type what you’re looking for, like “smile.” You’ll see all of the emoji tagged with that word.

Click on the other icons to browse emoji by categories.

To close the menu, click the X in the top right corner, press the ESC key, or click anywhere that is not the menu.

Choose a skin tone

On the ‘people’ page, click on the skin tone icon in the top right corner to choose a different skin tone.

For Macs, Control + Command + Spacebar will call up the emoji menu.

Choose a skin tone

Click and hold on a person icon. You’ll get a mini pop-up screen showing the person with different skin tones.

**************************

*If you have this icon in the bottom left corner of your computer screen, you have Windows 10.

Select the entire web address

Mouse fans: single click on the web address

Keyboard shortcut fans: CTRL-L

Click and drag into your Windows folder

Double-click on the bookmark in your folder to launch the page in your web browser

“Can I rename the link?”

Yes. The default name for the link is whatever that website’s webmaster called the page. Just as you can rename a file in your folder, you can rename your bookmarks. In your folder, right-click on the link, select “Rename,” and, well, rename it.

“I use Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive. Will my bookmark links synchronize across my devices?”

Yes.

“That means that when I go to a Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive folder on my phone, and tap on a bookmark link, my phone will open the webpage?”

Yes.