Today she sent me an e-mail describing what she had created, with an attachment of her assignment. Since she has a good sense of humor, and I am just so tired of people in our system only sharing via e-mail (the syndrome I refer to as "e-mail attachment disorder"), I relied with this message:

WARNING WARNING This email program has returned the message to you as the owner of the account prefers that all such items be sent as URL links to content in the Maricopa Learning eXchange. Wouldn't great ideas live longer and wider if they were not confined to e-mail?

She laughed, and sent me the MLX link 10 minutes later.. so, here hot off the press, is MLX Package #1503: Using RSS Feeds in ENG102.

Now id her "bite" can only infect a few more colleagues ;-)

It took about 75 seconds in phpMyAdmin to clean out the spambacks, but I decided as a fun task to build my own web tool to do it even easier. Presenting the Spam Trackback Annihilator:

All I need to do is to fill in the easy to guess typical spam words, and select to wipe out from the Source, URL, Title, or Body fields (or all at once to lower the big boot). In one click I can kill thousands or roachies. You will not find this URL on our server, as I can run it locally from my OSX desktop. Next, I will set up a cron job to clean out the poker jokers once a day. Y'all are now wasting your time, not mine.

I'm also toying with whipping up a similar tool for MovableType blogs. That too would be a snap to zap bad trackbacks.

Out of those 1100, probably 200 are there as direct result of online reports to other electronic systems, maybe 60 are things we have entered in other people's names so we could populate web sites with content (see how the winners of the Innovation of the Year program are pumped from the MLX to its own site).

The same goes for an ePortfolio platform, developed at one of our colleges, that we have had running for more than a year. The take up for a free system has been, well sluggish, with 45 published titles sitting there (counting one of mine and one by some guy named "Biff")

So let's here it for surprises from unexpected places. A few days ago I got an email:

John Arle suggested I contact you. I am an adjunct at Phoenix College and my MGT276/Human Resources course will be fully online this coming Fall. I am interested in building a package for the MLX warehouse. John has indicated that this has many purposes including helping me market the course as it will be searchable on Google.

If you don't mind, could you reply when you get the chance and let me know what I need to do in order to get this process started? And if I need any approvals from my dept chair I can get that going as well. I'm sure she'll be supportive.

One last question. I also found something called Maricopa ePortfolio, which appears to be separate from MLX. Is that true? What are the differences, do you know? Should I build both?

I responded with some URLs for our getting started materials in both the MLX and the Maricopa eP, and let her know it was all self service.

In less than 2 days, she had already produced a nicely formed eportfolio for her class materials, and then she listed this as an item in the MLX:

I just wanted to let you know that I set up both my ePortfolio and MLX sites and to compliment you and your team. These sites are very user friendly! I couldn't believe how easy it was to set these up. And I'm very pleased with the results.

Just wanted to say "thanks" and "kudos" to you. If you have any feedback on what I've done, please feel free. I've pasted my links below.

http://eport.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/published/j/is/jiskiyan/home/1/
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/mine.php?id=585

I just have to say wow. An adjunct faculty has done more in 2 days than... well a lot of other, full time, experienced faculty.

Wow, and thank you Jill for restoring some of my faith.

Before today, the feeds we generate as fixed static files (updated every hours as a cron script) on the MLX where the 10 newest items over all, the newest items and random items per Maricopa College, newest items in a set of subject areas (Biology, Humanities, ...)-- and available as both RSS 1.0 links and JavaScript include files (unlike FeedtoJS, these are static files that just echo the output created from the hourly updates, cheap caching).

I just updated that set of "fixed" feeds to include ones that are random selected items in the discipline areas. That was an easy update, and something that just fell off the radar. This is dependent, of course, that our MLX package "creators" provide an academic area when they create their packages. It was un-reasonable (IMHO) to create a "fixed" vocabulary, so it suffers from some of the slop of folksonomy, or user supplied free form tags. But it is not bad, e.g. the MLX items for Nursing, Biology, Humanities, etc. all have new and random feeds.

We had before the ability to generate a URL link and an RSS feed of the 10 newest items form ANY search result, dynamically generating the feed (meaning doing the database query, and returning the results as XML). What I just added today are new options to generate a randomized result of specific queries.

So for an example, a listing of all MLX items containing "critical thinking" and associated with Chandler_Gilbert Community College is linked by a specific URL:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/search_results.php?college=CGCC&scope=5&srt=1&words=critical+thinking

And you can get RSS feeds for the 10 newest in this same query:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/get_rss.php?college=CGCC&words=critical+thinking

As well as a feed for 10 random in the same query:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/get_rss.php?college=CGCC&words=critical+thinking&rand=10

As a bonus for CDB readers, the random number parameter on the end can be any number of desired results (well not any number, it is capped at 20 as there are pranksters out there).

Now that we have these sorts of feeds, one could, in theory, use them with FeedtoJS, but keep in mind, these results follow this path:

* query sent to MLX database
* results parsed to XML output
* XML processed by Feed2JS script
* content echoed to web page as JavaScript

It might be a lot of traffic, so I may explore, someday, a strategy for caching the dynamic generated search results.

Anyhow, it was fun to get my fingers in the MLX code again. Much more work there is coming next month, as well as a new face lift (CSS Design).

And this week, the projects here habe been coming down in torrential buckets (as opposed to buckets of torrents?). Why spend even more time blogging? I need a break from the coding! It relieves me! Whatever.

I am still short staffed with absolutely no sign of any change on any horizon, meaning I am floating my projects and the ones that Colen had supported before be moved to a cushy job at ASU. These means a big slowdown, or grinding halt to working on the supposed open source version of the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX). I have a deadline now to drive me, as I am offering to build one for another office in our organization, and they would need it for their March conference, and Pat D is coming to town as well and is likely looking for an oMLX too.

While I do not have the programming support, I do have a talented new web designer to help relieve me of much of the web tasks which suck the days out of me... well, there is a lot for Cheryl to learn with the tangled web of 11 years of content here, and all of it tied with scotch tape and rubber bands that only I know how they connect. Well, it is not that bad, but it takes time to jump in to our web of webs. Anyhow, Cheryl is working this week on some new CSS styles for the MLX, and I am hoping to eek out some programming time to get that pesky last 10% done.

Something I've toyed around with adding, but may wait now, is some sort of ability to MLX visitors can build personal collections, like the way MERLOT does, so as you surf through the MLX you could add packages, share them, annotate them... it would not be all that complex to do if I had some T-I-M-E!

In the meantime, there are new dialogue day web sites popping up left and right, each with online registration, emailed notifications to registered participants, and slightly different content on every site. I have it down to a nice PHP template, but still, ti can be about 2 hours start to click.

I've also had to do some mad web toiling for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival site, coming here in February. It has been pillaged a bit from the Dance Festival site I provided last year. The Theatre Festival is a huge planning operation (not my realm), with 2 college sites plus events at a hotel, and maybe 1000+ participants. The content has been very slow in getting to me, and their dreams for online registration evaporated as the choices expanded-- I bailed and set up Word app forms that are mailed and faxed with payments.

But with less than a month out, just yesterday I got a pile of documents with the content for the schedule, workshops, and presenter bios. The planners had the notion if they formatted it all pretty in MS Word, I could just click a button and make a web site. So it was all day yesterday, yanking content out of Word, reformatting, putting some stuff into a database to make it less tedious. It would have been less horrendous if their Word formatting was consistent (thanks to BBEdit and grep search/replace), but noooo, sometimes workshops had a colon after their name, others not... Anyhow I got the schedule linked up nice with a database to drive the Workshop details, dynamic links to the presenter bios... well, that is fun when it works in the end. Don't tell any CSS snobs, but I wimped out and tossed a few HTML tables in there.

We also have tasks going with our internal Learning Grants, a process which runs on a 100% online submission, review, and notification system we built. There are all kinds of layers of activity here, right now the 60+ submimtted grants are out to review by some 80 reviewers (we assign electronically at least 3 readers per grant), and along the way we need to trigger reminder messages etc-- it is more combing of the database, but anytime you have to run a script that sends emails to a bunch of people, cc:s their deans, well, you spend a lot of time testing before you click the big red button.

And I am rushing to work on another internal application system for our faculty professional growth summer projects, which needs to open at the end of the month. Last year was the first time around for an elecotrnic application and review system (plus online report submissions, which get cross listed to the MLX). The good news our faculty commmittee agreed to our suggestions to simplify the complexity of their group projects, the bad news is that I have to rewrite a lot of code.

And we have planning to do for the semester and beyond for our Ocotillo Groups including our year end Ocotillo Retreat, where this week I also need to build an online form for submitting presentation proposals. There is pre for our February 25 ePortfolio Dialogue Day, Digital Stories of Deep Learning for Students and Faculty with Helen Barrett.

I have some video interviews to shoot by the end of the month as well.

And along the way are March presentation for the League For Innovation Conference, a visit and presentation at MIT, a keynote for the TCC2005 conference in April.

And of course, I need to check my RSS feeds several times a day, and blog about silly stuff.

Yes, it is raining projects, it is crazy, and I would not change it for anything.

a brief tutorial that demonstrates the procedures for determining areal weighting from point precipitation gages using the Thiessen Polygon Method.

While I have no clue what this is, apparently a colleague in Indonesia found it useful, and left this comment:

I am a lecturer of principles of Meteorology at DIploma Program RS&GIS, Geography Faculty, GMU, Indonesia. Your flash file of Poly.Thies. has shown clearly about the method. I have used it in class. It iwll be good if the layout is made better and clear/more interesting. Thank you before

That pretty much balances out cleaning 1000 spams of phentermine flaff.

Our regular MLX spammer bit the bait completely. Within a few days, they triggered 1200 identical Trackback insertions of the same URL. I allowed them to think their tactic worked, but this was all a ruse to get them to stick their spam roach feet in the honey pot, where they left some incriminating and useful bits of information (the spam has been cleansed in one click).

The evidence collected clearly indicates that this spammer is a CDB reader. Lovely.

I have been advised not to bait and taunt spammers, and to allow them to continue their bully like tactics. Fortunately, I did not take this advice, and recently I was approached by a group of white hat trained hackers, the "International Spam Counter Attack Force (SCAF)". They have tools and techniques I could never understand, but with their help, our Trackback scripts were modified to collect some interesting data from our roach visitor. They people who act as local agents for SCAF have the ability to unleash a series of strikes on this person, their assets, records, etc, and once I give the go ahead, the trigger is set to go off at a random time in the future, maybe today, tomorrow, next week, a few months from now.

Here is the deal- as much as I hate spammers, this is pretty heavy stuff for me. I have 3 days where I can call off the SCAF attack, so if the spammer can step up and contact me, confess, and prove their deeds by sharing:

• the GMT date/time the spam attack begain
• IP(s) used as spoofs
• Full text of the excerpt inserted in the MLX
• The 3rd, 5th, and 8th MLX packages spammed in your attack.

This information is easily available to you, spammer, given the things I know now about your methods.

I am willing to call it off if this spammer can step up like an adult and claim their deeds. I sincerely doubt it will happen, so as a bet, I am willing to send this "person" $100 if they actually step up and confess.. Yes, you can make more money being honest than doing spam work. Why would I offer? Because I know a spammer will not do it.

Thus, this person is left to pulling down the window shades, wondering about every phone call they make, triple checking their wireless phone and net usage, checking their account balances. SCAF is not just an online bunch of geeks, they live where you live, spammer, and have devoted their free time to busting roaches. Plus they enjoy it. Is all of it really worth it to push some stupid phentemrine links that are not going to stick here?

Why not take your technical skill, spammer, and do something productive for the world, instead of wasting the time and energy of busy people with your unwanted, irrelevant, intrusive URL insert attacks?

You have 3 days to decide your future.

Yet. while well received, it is not happening anywhere. We run a summary of all MLX trackbacks and it is pretty meager, 47 total in more than 18 months we have enabled this feature... and I am responsibile for about 40 of 'em.

it's pretty simple. If you compose a weblog entry (especially in MovableType, were the pinging is built in) and link to any MLX URL, the blog publishing platform checks all URLs for an embedded RDF ping address. Upon finding it, it transmits to the source (the MLX) 3 tokens of information that "trackback" to your newly published URL- a title, a url, and a small (typically 250 character) excerpt.

It seems do-able... objects sit in one place, descriptions of how they are used are written elsewhere, and connections made when the descriptions are published.

The implementation we have at the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) is called "Sharebacks". How about giving it a whirl? Just blog an entry about any of our MLX items, include a hyperlink to the MLX slip URL, and publish your blog. For more, about MLX sharebacks see How MLX Trackback Works, another Breeze-y show that is extracted from our epic Mysteries Revealed: Inside the MLX.

If you need a direct ping address, it is provided in small grey text on any MLX slip (like this one). Just by me writing this link in this paragraph, I will be creating another trackback to MLX Package 127.

C'mon, give us some lovin' show us some pings. Send 'em our way... Send us some Sharebacks....

PS- Spammers are not welcome. Last week, in one click, I removed 1264 Trackback database entries from the Phentermine folks (nice to see ya again), and how sad that they wasted the time as none of their links will see the light of day on the MLX. New measures are in place that cut them off before they can get their roach toes inside our door.

We merely tracked contributions within a set date range, a rather simple database exercise and provide software prizes to the top producers. We obtained software by begging some vendors (thanks much to Macromedia, Anystream, and Apple) or using our New Media Consortium (NMC) software discounts to obtain others.

We started out awarding prizes to our colleges that contributed the most new items within a set period Nov 2002 - Feb 2003 expecting to do this as a one time affair. However, after noting a severe drop off in contributions right after the "race", it was suggested we make the process ongoing, and adding incentives to individuals contributing the most for Mar 2003 - Sep 2003 and Oct 2003 - Mar 2004.

Also individual scores are weighted by a factor that favors packages with more visitors, so there should be a payoff for getting content in in the earlier part of the race.

It has been fairly effective in getting waves of new contributions, often days before the end of the races, but all along I was hoping to get out of the "bribing for packages" game, so for this last race, we offered only individual prizes. I'd have to say that the numbers are not overly awesome, as the top individuals in years past were in the 20+ range, while this time, the output is more in the 7-9 range. We have colleges that year after year are at the top of the list, and other colleges that do not really end us anything.

I extended it a few times to get more participants, then because I was gone 3 weeks ion November, then one more budge when I found my weighting factor for individual scores had a bug in it.

And I view all the numbers through a filter knowing that a good chunk come from the required reports for our Learning Grants program, where 60+ grants awarded each year are required to submit final reports which are designed to send copies to the MLX. And we have other programs, such as the Innovation of the Year where we actually entered MLX items in the names of others so we can have the MLX feed a specific web site with site dependent info (the list of winners is actually generated by a call to an MLX special collection).

But not to ride the pessimism train too much, I see some great new MLX packages, and hear more people than our office being regular vocal advocates of the MLX. A faculty group we are working at see it as a key component to a new web site and project we are working on related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

I even had a demo las week for new faculty where one said, "Why should we need software as an inducement to share? It does not motivate me." Speaking my words, niiiiiiiice.

And I get wind of some nice anecdotal pieces-- word from our colleges that adjunct faculty are finding the teaching materials very useful. And just last week, one of our MLX users emailed this nice little story from Sharon:

I have to say, Alan, that I have had some wonderful experiences and interactions with newly found colleague-friends as a result of MLX.  My most recent email communication back and forth with a professor from the University of Texas at San Antonio has been in relation to a couple of things about critical thinking that I packaged for MLX.  She and I have enjoyed a wonderful, informal e-conversation about Richard Paul, critical thinking, and such.  I have found it invigorating and motivating!

So my MLX commercial might be sound like.. "9 new MLX items.... Copy of Macromedia Director; 7 new MLX items... Apple iSight Camera.... Anecdotal story of faculty developing new connections... Priceless!"

After the dust settles from the race, over the next few months, I am eager to find more of these anecdotal stories of how people are using the MLX (along the lines of our 2003 "Believe It or Not" video clips), stuff you do not get from web stats.

We have a "de-Maricopized" version running (this does not have the latest changes), but I am doing the new developments on another copy of the MLX. This works well, as once I can bang them on the R&D version, I just merely copy the updated .php and assorted files to the other versions. All of the customization is carried in an external configuration file.

There is some deadline pressure mounting, as I hope to have a copy of it running in Auckland for my November visit to new Zealand (check out the inverted CDB!) as well as another grant funded project group in our building that has some good needs for their own MLX.

Today's work was re-routing the method for generating the MLX Feeds. On the Maricopa server, I am running cron scripts that generate updated static feed files on a regular basis. I had been using the RSSWriter code for generating RSS files on the fly. But I did not want to make the openMLX hinge on cron. I just implemented today a different strategy using FeedCreator.class.php code as it is capable of writing the files instead of only returning the XML directly. It also has a built in cache logic, to save hits on the database. The code looks ok, but the documentation is rather sparse (as will mine for the openMLX ;-)

Once the feeds are in place, we have most of the pieces functional. Next week I want to deconstruct the kludgy tables based HTML layout for the public pages, and move it to complete web standards CSS so others can more easily do customization. The inner part of the MLX, the loading dock" will likely remain in tables for now (I cannot see a pressing need to change the layouts here) as might the packing slip layout.

This needs to mostly happen next week, and then I can whip up some documentation, build the sourceforge site, and perhaps let it out. It's all a bit scary.

The spam is still coming into the MLX comments, but my fixes so far are working good. The notifications sent to MLX package owners now provide one click links to either hide a comment (toggle a database flag so it is not inserted to the packing slip) or to delete it completely. There have been 87 documented spammers stuck in my trap just in the last 4 days, and they are trying a range of new IPs, more than 25 are already in my Blacklist. Too bad they do not realize that spoofing IPs will not get around my wall.

Also, sniffing in the database, I found 3 that were chugged into our "Shareback" form ( a web form that allows people to entering information that is the same as a TrackBack auto generated by weblog postings). There is now some new code the plug that hole as well.

This all is happening in the background of keeping our web site current, build new event sites and registration forms, create a new database calendar editing tool, build a site for a theater festival with online registration and class selection, make sure our online learning grants is ready for business in November, modify the online faculty professional growth summer project applications for deployment in January, help guide and develop events for Ocotillo, stay up to date with the FightSpamClub, keep up with all the other blogs I read, prepare for 3 weeks of workshops in New Zealand.... oh and get a pre-conference workshop ready for EDUCAUSE on Oct 19. Oh, and a faculty group wants a new web discussion board. And Apple wants to schedule a demo here (as does Macromedia).

Sigh. So much fun.

I mean that. To gear up for the crunch next week, I'm off tomorrow night to our cabin for a 3 day siesta. Get out of the office and chop some wood or scale some peaks. Or sit around and watch DVDs.

And I guess my finger pointing at domain registrars was off base as pointed out by some comments earlier today. Somebody out there must be responsible.

My hourly spammer's last submission was about 8 hours ago. Maybe they have homework to work on. Or they figured out the futility (in my dreams) or they are reloading for a different tact. Or picking other victims. One should never be confident they have plugged every hole.

In a way it was a learning experience. I found some new ways to create activity logs, tools to display and add functionality to them, some some cool thinks about hashes.

Update Oct 4:: They are back. Good morning spammers....

I have a latest fix which will be secretive since I believe the spammer is a reader here ("howdy!")- but so far, from the new spam logs I am running, they are going directly to the dung heap. From the patterns I recorded up to now, it is apparently the work of one spam roach, and this roach has likely written a script to do this, or they just enjoy cutting and pasting their spam into forms. His/her format is sadly predictable.

In a way, I set one trap. We now have a spam key hat is generated from the comment submission form, but it is embedded in the for as a hidden form element. Any script kiddie knows how to get that, so the roach thinks he/she is pretty smart.

Little do they know about diversions.

Anyhow, we've got a few levels of protection running, and maybe I can devote a little more time on working on the open source version of the MLX.

The sad thing is that in the last few weeks of watching the spam comments roll in there have been no legitimate ones ;-)

Update: The spam originates from an IP address traced to Korea. In fact in the last 4 hours, I have recorded spam comments sent from 220.93.120.39 and they occur exactly at one hour intervals. They obviously are stupidly tryiong to guess that my spam hash key is based on time (ha ha on you, Korean spammer!).

Using the address digger tool from SamSpade, I traced this IP to an address controlled by Korea.net. I certainly doubt that they will do anything, but I gave it a try to abuse@korea.net. I know they will not do anything about spammers, since they would rather collect a few pennies per spammer for giving them IP addresses than doing something that is constructive for the rest of the world. But hey, you never know....

For the last two weeks, the educational web site I maintain at: http:///www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/

has been repeatedly attacked by a computer at the address:
220.93.120.39

which according to SamSpade is withing your range:
http://www.samspade.org/t/lookat?a=220.93.120.39

This person has repeatedly attempted to insert URLs into a comment feedback for that goes to our teachers. This spam includes various unwanted, unrelated links to web sites (there is no educational connection between online gampling, online phramcies, etc and our site. I have documented more than 40 examples of this abuse (four are attached as examples).

Please verify to me that you have closed this person down and refuse to allow these kinds of peopleto ruin the internet experience for teachers and learners from around the world who use our web site. If no action is taken, I will start a publicity campaign to ask that other web sites start banning access to their content from anyone within your IP range.

Please stop promoting spam and start shutting it down. It will hurt you in the long tun.

In the meantime, remember to ban

220.93.120.3

from all of your sites.

as well as:

61.50.172.143

I now have all identified spam automatically adding to an MLX blacklist.

Update 8 hours later Stupid spammers, every hours on the hourkeeping at at although all of their attempts are going to dev/null (trash). An excerpt from my log:

10.02.04 08:10:01 am	220.93.120.39	napoleon2621@bigfoot.com
10.02.04 09:10:26 am	220.93.120.39	azaddin6651@home.com
10.02.04 09:10:55 am	220.93.120.39	azaddin6920@work.com
10.02.04 10:10:05 am	220.93.120.39	bushmills1946@mail.com
10.02.04 11:10:49 am	61.50.172.143	napoleon2483@bigfoot.com
10.02.04 11:10:01 am	220.93.120.39	absinth591@mail.ru
10.02.04 12:10:44 pm	220.93.120.39	absinth472@mail.ru
10.02.04 01:10:10 pm	220.93.120.39	absinth1191@hotmail.com
10.02.04 02:10:26 pm	218.50.2.74	napoleon2367@mail.com
10.02.04 03:10:49 pm	210.251.92.104	jane_doe7143@classnet.pl
10.02.04 04:10:58 pm	220.93.120.39	bushmills1800@rocketmail.com
10.02.04 04:10:59 pm	220.93.120.39	gocha9536@see.it
10.02.04 04:10:07 pm	220.93.120.39	bushmills1800@rocketmail.com
10.02.04 04:10:35 pm	210.251.92.104	gocha9659@see.it
10.02.04 04:10:47 pm	220.93.120.39	absolut4626@arrivo.br
10.02.04 04:10:47 pm	80.55.203.182	huy_lo5779@mail.me
10.02.04 05:10:44 pm	220.93.120.39	johndoe7916@come.to
10.02.04 05:10:33 pm	220.93.120.39	huy_lo5854@mail.me
10.02.04 06:10:39 pm	220.93.120.39	absinth712@mail.ru

And All those fake "absinth" emails have shown up in my MTBlacklist traps as well.

Stupid stupid, spammer.

Don't you think a spammer would get a clue they are wasting their time? Nahh, that assumes some level of intelligence.

Their spam is going right into the can!

I have things in place to ensure the submissions are coming from our form and not spawned by a script.

They latest tool is an email notification that will go to the MLX package owner, and allow them a one click option to trash a comment or make it visible. It should be running tomorrow.

It sure woudl be nice to develop some new resources than waste time with the roaches.

Crunch! There goes another phenedrine pusher!

So into the database I went and quickly rooted out a few more (also FYI, Spammer, I have a filter on you, splfffffffff!). We have been ready to roll in a tool for package owners to have delete control on comments, so now I have a reason to finish that task.

I guess getting a web site spammed is some sort of sick, twisted, form of recognition... that I would rather not waste my time dealing with.

Is there no end? I wasted time again this morning with a spat of Chinese URl wiki spam. Maybe there will be a full time job soon as a Professional De-Spammer.

Someone, someone out there please get the guys at Google to wake up and take responsibility that their formulas for page rank are the prime incentive for Mr Gambling and his Assorted Spam Friends.... and that the result of this are thousands of small time blog site owners and other web site admins wasting time cleaning up the spam.

Take away Google Rank for spammers. Make a Google Blacklist for 'em. Do Something. Please. Please. Please.

Update (1 hour later): 14 more comment spams rolled in. I've got a simple blacklist rolling now, but I need to get some better regex matching that what is in place. I have turned off notifications to our faculty. Actually I yanked the whole script for while to generate some 404s for the bastards.

I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, but I actually have some real work to do.

Die Spammers Die!

So take a spin to the MLX and look up Pop Culture Bingo created by Analicia Buentello (Estrella Mountain Community College).

I like to start the first day of class with an icebreaker for students to get to know each other. My ENG 102 class is centered around pop culture, so I decided to ask questions to test pop culture literacy. The sheet also serves as a contact sheet for students should they need to contact a classmate.

I start the class as a game show and issue nametags. I tempt my students with a fabulous prize if they are the first to complete the pop culture bingo card.

Once students receive the bingo card, they move around the room and try to find people who know the answers to the questions. When they find someone who knows the answer, they need to have each student sign their sheet and provide either a phone number or e-mail address. Students can not use the same name twice or provide answers on their own sheet.

There's more, but I'll ask you to visit the MLX packing slip to see it ;-) Analicia has included the "object"- a simple Word document that has the bingo card she recently used. This is something that is on a technology level simple, but on an effective activity level, priceless.

Isn;t this where the focus ought to be? Not on the Las Vegas giant flashing mondo objects, but small, reusable ideas? Again, do me a favor, and send Analicia some comments or Trackbacks via the MLX packing slip

Now, I have some work to do on this trivia, e.g.

What is the name of Bart Simpson’s dog?

What name is rapper/actress Dana Owens better known as?

What House is Draco Malfoy a member of?

What was the first video played on MTV?

(Hey, I do know that last one, I watched the entire first year of MTV, missed a few classes...)