Review all keys learned home row H E learn I and R

Today we are going to review all of the keys weve learned so far.  Well do that by working in Word and typing from page 5 in the book.

After spending some time reviewing we will add two more keys to our "repertoire" - the I (R2) and the R (L1).

Generally speaking, if you miss a day when we learn new keys the next day we will spend some time reviewing the new keys we learned.  So for those who are gone you can use the following day, during what would be a review time for everyone else, to learn the new keys. This should be beneficial in that if you miss a day you wont need to come in before school to make up what you missed - you can just use the "review time" to make up learning the new keys.

Read More..

Home Mid Summer Roundup

I am home for about 5 days before my next trek up to New York to work on the AP Computer Science MOOC.

In the past week I traveled from NYC to Boston for the CSTA annual conference, then on to Las Vegas for the APCS Principles Pilot II training and the AP National Conference.

Vector River Map From Flowing Data

In other words, my brain is full, but full of good things.

Unless you have been wilderness camping for the last 6 months you may have noticed a few things going on in computer science education.

Ill be posting more details about all of these projects soon, but some highlights:

• Code.org - http://www.code.org/  - Theres the video, which everyone should see. They are also building up some great advocacy resources, worth a look. Plus, I got to have dinner with Hadi and Pat. So exciting to have incredible people committed to computer science education. They are a huge part of the interest in computer science education right now. 

• Computer Science Education Week -  http://www.csedweek.org/ - Do you have your plans yet? Dec 8 - 14th, better get on it.

• Expanding Computing Education Pathways - http://expandingcomputing.cs.umass.edu/ - "Alliance seeks to increase the number and diversity of students in the pipeline to computing and computing-intensive degrees by supporting state-level computing education reforms." I got to attend a great workshop from ECEP at CSTA National lest week - really exciting momentum. I am especially glad to hear more about the role of community colleges in preparing our kids.

• Exploring Computer Science -  http://www.exploringcs.org/ - They are coming to Washington DC, and I am really hoping to attend a training in the next year. I got to do a PD workshop with them at CSTA, and hands down the best PD I have attended. One of those where you walk away going "Well, the last 16 years of my career have been nice, but now I know how to make it better."

• Hour of Code -  http://www.csedweek.org/ - they are asking folks to organize to give beginners 1 hour of code for every one of the countrys 55 million school children...ideas? Let me know!

• http://sitwithme.org/ - "Sometimes you have to sit to take a stand. Sit With Me invites you to validate and recognize the important role women play in creating future technology by taking a small but symbolic action: sit in a red chair and share your story." 

Whew! I know I am forgetting things. It has been a jam-packed summer. Please drop me a line to tell me what is going on in your neck of the woods for computer science education. 

Read More..

HOWTO Build a Fortress for Your Home SOHO Network

**** Content is updated for SmoothSec 3.4-1 on January 30, 2014 ****

Hardware



(A) Unified Threat Management System (UTM)

Minix Mini HD PC (J&W) :

CPU - Intel ATOM D2550 (dual-core and 4 Hyper-Threading)

Chipset - Intel NM10

GPU - Intel GMA 3600 Series

RAM - 2 x 2GB (DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM) 4GB

Hard Drive - 1 x 2.5-inch Hard Drive (80GB or above)

Networking - Dual Broadcom 57788 Gigabit Ethernet



(B) Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS)

Minix Mini HD PC (J&W) :

CPU - Intel ATOM D2550 (dual-core and 4 Hyper-Threading)

Chipset - Intel NM10

GPU - Intel GMA 3600 Series

RAM - 2 x 4GB (DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM) 8GB

Hard Drive - 1 x 2.5-inch Hard Drive (120GB or above)

Networking - Dual Broadcom 57788 Gigabit Ethernet

USB Networking - PCi USB 3.0 Gigabit LAN Adapter UE-1000T-G3 or Level One USB Gigabit Ethernet USB-0401



* A switch is also required for this setup if you have more than one computer.



I prefer the setup is as the following :



Internet - SmoothSec (Suricata) - Router (Untangle UTM) - Switch (any switch) - Computers



Software



(A) Untangle 10.0 (64-bit) as UTM

Make sure you install the Lite Package which is free of charge. If you want to purchase their services, such as Standard, you can install Standard Package. For home/SOHO, Lite Package is enough.



After the basic installation, you need to create an account to the untangle.com in order to install Lite Package (or Standard Package).



(B) SmoothSec 3.4-1 (64-bit) as IDS/IPS with Suricata

Before setting up your SmoothSec, you need to upgrade the SmoothSec scripts to 3.6 and follow the instruction at the link just provided.



To set up IDS/IPS with Suricata, you can follow this section. Make sure you select “suricata” as AF_ENGINE in the configure file. Meanwhile, you should follow this section to set up.



For rules handling, you can refer to this link.



To fully understand the setup, you can read this article even it is written for 3.6 (not yet released at the moment) and the concept is the same.



Conclusion



Due to the high performance of AF_PACKET of Suricata, Broadcom 57788 Gigabit Ethernet and the Intel ATOM D2550 CPU, the network can play 1440p Youtube video without problem. The QoS is set to Medium in the Untangle 10.0 is recommended.



Meanwhile, Minix Mini HD PC is around $120-US (barebone without RAM and Hard drive) and the hardware cost is not too expensive to setup a fortress to your home/SOHO network. The running cost of this setup is very low as the software are free of charge. The footprint of the Minix Mini HD PC is very small. Smaller than a standard ITX computer case.



If you do not know how to manage SmoothSec (Suricata), you can install Untangle only.

Read More..