Hello Reader, I came home from an absolutely amazing and inspiring Momentum Workshop with a head full of ideas for GetMeCoding and entrepreneurial efforts I am involved with my students and University. Then work and life checked in. Apparently, my calendar hadn’t attended the workshop. This past weekend, my wife and I traveled to Washington, D.C., to cheer on our son and his fellow Marine in the Marine Corps Marathon. Watching their determination, and the crowds supporting so many runners,...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, I was thinking about movie assistants while working on this week’s podcast, and somehow I nearly overlooked one from a favorite movie of mine: JARVIS from Iron Man. Ironman Apparently, I need an assistant to remind me about assistants. 😄 Tony Stark has this calm, capable voice helping him manage his home and build a flying suit. I’d settle for a little help keeping track of appointments and finding that email I know I saw somewhere. That’s part of what makes today’s AI...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and I'm excited to share this year's theme from our friends at Stay Safe Online: "Don't Make It Easy for Them." I love that message because it takes the pressure off. You don't have to be a tech expert, and nobody expects perfect. You just have to make life a little harder for the folks who are hoping you'll take shortcuts. Today's shortcut: short, reused passwords. The grown-up version Stay Safe Online tells the story of a hacker who...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, This week, I gave my first-year security students a challenge involving encryption, access control, and a suspiciously endangered grade file. x files GIF by The X-Files There was competition. There was some confusion. There were teams leaning over clues and trying to figure out what the other teams were doing. In other words, it looked a lot like learning. I’m not sure every part of the lesson landed perfectly. That happens in a classroom. But they understood something important:...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, I am sending this to you on FRIDAY morning before a student meeting and my freshman First Year Experience course but I will share I made it through the first week of another school year as I firmly assume my new program coordinator role. All in all, a fun week. After nearly three decades of teaching college, you might think the first week would feel pretty routine by now. It doesn't (does it ever??). There are new students, new personalities, new classes, and inevitably a few...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, This week’s email is arriving a little later than usual because today is the first day of classes, and the past few days have been filled with the usual start-of-semester mix of Canvas updates, link updates, syllabi rewrites, rosters, emails, course prep, and trying to remember what I forgot. In other words, I probably needed a restart myself. Which is fitting, because this week’s episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks starts with one of the most familiar pieces of tech advice around:...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Something funny happens when people know you work with technology. A phone won’t connect. A printer won’t print. Some strange message appears on a screen that nobody has ever seen before. And eventually someone says… “Ask Mr. Fred.” Apparently, I’ve been issued some kind of universal technology decoder ring. Except I haven’t. I’ve worked with technology for decades. I teach it. I created something called GetMeCoding.com. And there are still plenty of times when somebody hands me a...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Last weekend, I sent you an idea that sounded a little backwards: Use AI to get kids off the couch. Give AI a few details. Let it suggest an adventure. Then close the screen and go do it. The more I thought about that idea, though, the more I realized there was a bigger question hiding underneath it. What happened next? That might be one of the most useful questions we can ask about kids and artificial intelligence. AI made a picture. Okay. What happened next? Did the child build...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Growing up in the 70s and 80s, my mom had one weekend command. "Get outside." That was it. No plan. No gear. No app. And somehow we always came back dirty, tired, and happy. I would dig in the yard with my Tonka trucks and setup my army guys, drag a friend into building a fort, or when I got older, grab my dad's Super 8mm camera and try to make a science fiction movie in the driveway and getting film developed at KMart. (stay tuned...reworking that old footage into something cool!)...
3 months ago • 1 min read