Intresting …….

This is a youtube link that I found interesting… on Digital Ethnography

Markbook – Email set up

How to use bell sympatico with mark book to send multiple emails / marks.
This method is needed only for those who have smtphm.sympatico.ca as its SMTP server.

Three things your need.
1. Yahoo email account
2. Email client outlook, outlook express, thunderbird etc. any one of them.
3. Download and install YPOPS

a)
Setup of email client:
Set up your email client use your yahoo user name. The user name should the part before the @yahoo.com.
eg marks@yahoo.com. “marks” is the user name.
POP mail server should be 127.0.0.1
Port 110
Use secure connections “never”

SMTP server 127.0.0.1 Port 25
Use secure connection: TLS if available

b)

YPOPS set up:

Here is the link for download of YPOPS

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/yahoopops/ypops-win-0.9.5.1.exe?modtime=1188994497&big_mirror=0

YPOPS has a default set up, so you don’t have to change anything.
However this is the set up you will see.

Bind on IP address is 127.0.0.1
POP3Port 25
Enable SMTP

c)
Markbook set up:
Go to setup choose email
Fill in the boxes with relevant data
SMTP host Name: 127.0.0.1
Your email account: your email add
SMTP Authentication choose plain
User account name use your yahoo user account name
Password: You dont really need the real password, but dont leave it blank.
Now you are all set to send emails from Markbook.

This works fine for me.
Note:
There is no guarantee for this process you should know that you are totally responsible for using this method and what ever consequences it may have.

Markbook and Email Woes

Recently I tried using markbook to communicate with students, unfortunately the program is not set to work with bell canada if the SMTP server starts with “smtphm”. However the program indicates that it can be used to send email / marks etc. in one go. I tried communicating with the asylum software and they dont have a solution to this problem.
However I have found a way to circumvent this difficulty and can now send mails using Mark Book. I am not sure though of the security issues surrounding it. I will get back with it once I am done.

The big question is “Bell Canada” is one of the largest ISP’s and if your program cannot work with them, I would be concerned.

High school text books in Ontario

Education seems to be on the fore front of today’s political agenda and in keeping with the trends the new curriculum of Ontario was in place and with it came a lot of new text books. What I see potentially disturbing after going through some of these prescribed text books by the ministry of education is, are these changes in the text books merely cosmetic in nature? have they taken the science out of these books? can you make education “Fun” by presenting the facts in a fictitious way?I believe facts have to be facts there is no easy way to present it, some of the facts in these books are twisted and presented in inconsistent sequence, compare them to the older text books used while the OAC was still there, you had the chemistry and physics as expected, you can refer to any of those text books for facts and this is true in many of the class rooms even today . I get statements from students who say “Why can’t the text books be as simple and as factual as these (reference) books” which they have to use ocassionaly to get their facts right.

One of the other interesting aspects that I noted is that there are errors in many of the problems and solutions given. Why do they have to make simple concepts so difficult? Why do they make the solutions way too long than necessary? When in reality the problem can be solved in a couple of steps.

Which makes me wonder did the authors make these new text books appear different from the previous ones just for cosmetic purposes? Or did they really think that they did a really great job by sequencing it differently and adding a few new pictures? I do agree a few colourful pictures in the text books in kindergarten would help in keeping the attention of the little ones, the ones learning science at the secondary level should learn it for the love of the subject and hence it cannot be all the time presented in a fun way as authors tried to do. But of course doing science is fun. Another aspect that was obvious was certain parts of these books revealed a lack of expertise on the part of the authors. As the saying goes what you don’t know wont hurt you.

Gutsy Gibbons 7.10

Ubuntu 7.10 count down is here.

I am waiting for the final release.

I did install the beta version and I like what I see. Printer set up was a breeze and a lot of other interesting and cool features, this tells me Ubuntu is maturing as a Desktop OS. With the changes proposed I am sure anyone can install it on their desktop and feel as comfortable as you are with the other operating systems that are around.

New Features on Gutsy Gibbons