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15 August 2003
AUGUST NEWSLETTER
1. A FEW WORDS FROM TINA Just a few items to read at your leisure during the odd thunder storm. Next month I’ll be letting you know about my visits to Syria and Pakistan and about the new charity, World Ecitizens (WE) – but now let’s all take a break. Happy Holidays.
Regards, Christina Preston
2. NEW STATESMAN WEB AWARDS
Our congratulations to Keith Phipps, a MirandaNet Fellow.
The final of the NEW STATESMAN 'New Media' awards were held in London on 16th July. Keith’s Internet web site www.pupilvision.com won the award as 'the best school internet project'.
The New Statesman New Media Awards 2003, in association with SchlumbergerSema, focussed on how new media technology is used to make a difference in public life.
The key themes of this year's awards were "innovation, efficiency and accessibility". Keith’s school receives £500. Meanwhile he is holding on to the trophy!!!
The event was hosted by Philippa Forester and the education web award was given by Sir Charles Clarke.
Details can be seen at
www.newstatesman.co.uk/nma/nma2003home.htm
3. NEWS FROM TIM BROSNAN
Tim Brosnan, a MirandaNet Fellow, was a senior lecturer at the Institute of Education until last year when he decided to go back to school as a Deputy Head. Here is his news which talks about children working across international boundaries. We hope to learn from his projects in the new charity, World Ecitizens (WE).
“I am loving life here, there is so much more opportunity to make things happen, to change the way 'real' children are taught. Exhausting though!
I would be very interested in working on the ecitizens project. We have about 170 refugee children at the school and work hard at other projects to inject an international dimension to our work, e.g. Model United Nations.
MirandaNet colleagues might also be interested to see two Internet projects our pupils were involved with: 'Hands up for peace' and the original 'Messengers project', which resulted in one of our pupils being invited to the World Summit in South Africa!”
Tim Brosnan
Assistant Head, Hampstead School, Westbere Road, London NW2 3RT
Tel: 020 7794 8133
Fax: 020 7435 8260
4. HARRY POTTER ON THE NGfL
Harry Potter seems to be featuring on the syllabus now. Some of you have probably packed the new one for holiday reading. The NGfL guide to Harry Potter will point you towards lots of online resources based around the books.
The Harry Potter page is just one of the many on the NGfL. The NGfL portal offers a bookmark system such that you can access your own favourites from any computer - either from work or from home. All you need to do is to register with the portal.
If you haven't already got an NGfL username and password, you'll need to register to get these. If you have forgotten your login details, send an email to:
content@ngfl.gov.uk
including your name, and they'll try to track them down for you.
5. A WARNING FROM FRANCIS HOWLETT OUR WEBEDITOR ABOUT HOAX VIRUSES
I see that you have all been trying to be helpful by sending messages round MirandaLink about a couple of 'viruses'.
As a general rule, if you receive a message saying that you should email everyone in your email box, then it's a hoax. If the message says something on the lines that we have just heard from e.g. Microsoft, Symantec, NASA or some such august body, then it's a hoax. If it says that your anti-virus software can't cope, then it's a hoax. If the message warning you of a virus has an exclamation mark, it's probably a hoax! If it has two exclamation marks then it almost certainly is!! (you get the picture).
Hoaxes can cause as much trouble as real viruses, and indeed can cause more trouble in some cases, as they use up bandwidth (in the case of MirandaLink we ultimately have to pay for the bandwidth) and clog up email boxes, as well as cause unnecessary trouble for all concerned. One hoax gives a neat set of instructions for how to remove a useful part of the operating system. As this has a teddy bear icon it is generally called the teddy bear hoax. Other similar hoaxes tell you to remove the part of the operating system which allows long file names in DOS. And so on.
As for the other hoax that was sent round - a message telling you to beware of an email that you haven't received has all the hallmarks of a hoax scare. Of course, an attached file may or may not contain a virus, and you should beware of any attachment that you receive from an unknown source anyhow, and of course your virus checker should be up to date, but that has nothing to do with the message that was sent round MirandaLink. The alleged file doesn't actually have to exist for the hoax to work.
Think also of the mathematics: if you send a message to everyone in your mail box, and THEY all send the message to everyone in THEIR mail box, in three or four steps we are into HUGE numbers of email messages. No sane person would ever really want this to happen, surely? And then there all the messages saying 'sorry, it was a hoax', doubling the number of wasted messages whizzing round the system.
MirandaLink has been the victim of the teddy bear virus hoax at least three times, and of the Life is Beautiful hoax at least once before, along with several similar hoaxes, so we're not learning.
As your editor I have tried to make life easy for members: on the front page of MirandaNet there is a link on the left hand side to an automatically updated list of common viruses and hoaxes, and the teddy bear (JDBMGR) hoax features prominently. Clicking deeper into the links, you can easily find the Life is Beautiful hoax. According to the web stats, this page is only rarely accessed, and doesn't seem to have been checked before these messages were sent round the system.
Please .... if you receive any messages of this sort from friends, however well-meaning, think before troubling hundreds and perhaps thousands of other people and causing automatic mail-checking systems from sending me reject slips and stern warnings by the dozen.
I normally delete all such messages immediately.
6. UNIVERSITY OFFERING VIRUS WRITING COURSE!
In the light of the trouble we all have with viruses can this be legal?
Geoff Scott-Baker wonders if MirandaNetters have seen these irresponsible websites.
INDUSTRY ALARMED AS UNIVERSITY LAUNCHES VIRUS WRITING COURSE
www.silicon.com/news/500013-500001/1/4372.html
www.silicon.com/news/500013-500001/1/4404.html
www.silicon.com/news/500013-500001/1/4403.html
www.silicon.com/news/500013/1/4423.html
www.silicon.com/news/500013-500001/1/4454.html
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