New Tools for Back to School

While we all wish summer could go on for ever, school's now back in session for pretty much everyone. With school comes homework, and computers are becoming ever-more useful in helping kids and teens alike get their coursework done. Completing homework more quickly means more free time, and that's what we all want, right?

Aaron recently discovered this list of 50 open-source (i.e. free to use and download) software tools that could be helpful for students who are working on everything from math homework to astronomy projects.

From Aaron:

Here is a listing of 50 Free Tools that may be useful in the centers. Glancing over the listings, there is a graphing calculator program that will be useful, especially for the teens.

The graphing calculator program he's referring to is GraphCalc, a program designed to do everything hand-held calculators can do. These calculators are often essential in high school-level courses like Algebra, Geometry and Statistics, so this program could really come in handy for the older kids.

Check out the full list to see if there's a program to suit your needs, but there really is pretty much something for everyone on there. And best of all, it's all open source, which means it's all yours to use as much as you want.

Pigskin Pick'em

Summer is over, there's a bit of a chill in the air and the kids have gone back to school. This can only mean one thing...it's football season!

Hopefully we get to see another picture like this at the end of this season, right?

In the past, we've run a couple of fantasy football leagues in the CLC and Activity Room. While these leagues are a fun way to keep track of stats and battle for bragging rights, they often require a time commitment and can only be played by the older kids and teens who have a wide knowledge of the NFL and its star players.

This year, to get more kids involved, we are running a sort of pick-em contest instead. Each week, those who want to participate are given a sheet of paper with all of that week's games listed on it. The player then must circle who he or she thinks will win each game. There are usually 15 games per week, so that's a lot of deciding to do!

After each week of action is completed, the scores will be tallied. At the end of the season, the player with the most correct picks (or the highest average score per week, we aren't sure which yet) will win pick-em bragging rights and a cool prize.

Want to play? Stop by the CLC and ask for a sheet to get in on the football action.

ESPN's main NFL page, in case you want to read up on the league before making your picks.

Routine Maintenance Complete

This past Thursday, routine maintenance was performed on every computer in the Computer Learning Center as part of an effort to keep the new machines running smoothly.

CC Cleaner was used to clear out old, unused Internet files and histories, opening up as much as a half-gigabyte of space on some of the hard drives.

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware was used to check for any viruses, spyware or adware on the computers as well. Unlike last time, where multiple machines were infected with adware, this time only two computers had any infected files.

We've also identified the cause of the "infections:" an add-on tool bar called the MyWebSearch toolbar. A Google search of "MyWebSearch virus" returns thousands of results, with all of the users complaining that the toolbar had infected their computers with unwanted files.

Running frequent virus checks is a great way to keep your computer healthy.

We're still trying to figure out who is downloading and installing this toolbar, but in all likelihood it's coming packaged with free game demos downloaded by the kids, just one more reason to always read what you're installing before putting it on your hard drive.

A tip for all of you internet users out there: check your web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.) for this toolbar. If you see a "MyWebSearch" tool bar underneath the address bar (the place where you type in a website's address), you should probably use MalwareBytes to get rid of it.

It doesn't appear that this adware is dangerously harmful, but it is unwanted, will slow down your computer and could lead to other problems down the road.

The Activity Room Learns How to Celebrate

For the past few months, we've been playing all different kinds of hockey in the Activity Room, from knee-hockey to street hockey outside at the park.

When we first started playing, for most of the kids hockey was a foreign game to them, one that they'd heard of but didn't know much about. After just a couple of days of playing, however, many of them were hooked.

However, we'd never really practiced one of the most important things (kidding, but it is important) about hockey: how to properly celebrate scoring a goal.

After most goals, the players come together in a pile and tap each other on the helmet; nothing major. But we wanted the kids to get some practice having fun after scoring a goal, so we went on to YouTube to find audio clips of NHL goal horns, the extremely loud (and sometimes obnoxious) sounds and songs played after every home-team goal.

We chose the horns of the hometown Boston Bruins and the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, cued them up to play when Adem, Ibrahim or Nebil scored, and then just let the kids go nuts.

Below are two videos of the goals and the subsequent joyous celebrations.

Needless to say, these youngsters are well on their way to NHL stardom.

Georges Island!

This past Tuesday, JRyan Solutions took the kids of 808-812 Memorial Drive on what has become an annual tradition: the yearly summer field trip!

This year, we decided to go to Georges Island, just one of the many Boston Harbor Islands. After taking the Red Line from Central Square to Downtown Crossing, we walked to the waterfront where we boarded the Harbor Islands Ferry (not before spending some time playing in the fountains on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, of course). For many of the 20 or so kids who took the trip, it was the first time they had ever been on a boat of any kind.

After a 20-minute boat ride across Boston Harbor, during which we saw planes landing at LoganAirport, people fishing off of Castle Island and numerous lobster pots, we arrived at Georges Island, arguably the most famous of the Boston Harbor Islands.

We ate a quick lunch at the island's snack stand, and then used the rest of the afternoon to explore the island, which is dominated by a Civil War-era fort, Fort Warren. The kids were able to walk to beaches, explore every nook and cranny of the fort and even go on top of the ramparts, from which the views of the city of Boston and the harbor were spectacular.

We also scoured the beaches for nice pieces of sea glass, sea creatures and perfect flat rocks for skipping. By the time our return boat arrived a few hours later, most of the kids were wiped out from an afternoon full of fun and exploring.

As the boat made the return trip across the harbor, one of the kids, Ayoub, declared that afternoon's trip to have been "the best field trip ever!"

Here are some of the other kids' answers to the question "what was your favorite part about the whole field trip?"

"The boat ride, because it was mad fun, speeding and driving crazy."
-Adem

"Going to the beach, it was better than everything."
-Nebil

"The dark caves [in Fort Warren]."
-Doodie

"Going inside in the dark and hearing the people scream [from others trying to scare them]."
-Shahir

"Getting scared in the dark places...I like getting scared."
-Sirak

Below are some photos of the field trip, but these are just a few. A YouTube slideshow featuring tons more pictures can be seen at the very end of this post as well.

All-in-all, it was a great trip, one that the kids will hopefully remember for a long time.

Above: The kids playing on the beach and in the water.
Below: A view of the harbor and of Boston from the outer edge of the island.

Above: Ayoub posing for a picture inside of Fort Warren's jail.
Below: The Boston skyline from the back of the boat as we headed to Georges Island.

Connect With People Across the World, All Without Leaving Memorial Drive!

At its best, the Internet serves as a means of connecting people with different ideas, cultures and people from all over the world.

We had a perfect example of that here in the Computer Lab last week. An adult was trying to talk to her brother through Microsoft's Live Messenger, but wasn't having any luck because her brother didn't have an "@live.com" or "@hotmail.com" email address.

A CLC staff member suggested using Skype, an internet-based chat and phone call service. Skype charges money to makes calls from a computer to a landline or cellphone, but doesn't charge for internet-to-internet chats or "phone" calls.

Using a microphone available in the CLC, this adult was able to speak to and hear the voice of her brother, who was literally thousands of miles away. Skype is wonderful technology (and free to download), and allowed her to have a real-time conversation with a family member that, according to her, she hadn't seen in over seven years!

That's just the magic of the Internet, huh?

Image Editing Tips

Recently, we had a patron in the Computer Learning Center who was interested in learning how to edit pictures so that she could make them a custom size, add text to them, etc. and post them to a new website or message board.

While image editing is a handy tool, it's often hard to learn how to do due to the complexities involved in changing a picture.

The preferred image editing program here in the Computer Learning Center is GIMP, a free program designed to be an alternative to the expensive Adobe PhotoShop. However, GIMP is a confusing program to start out with, and can be tough to use if one doesn't know what he or she is doing.

Surprisingly enough, simply using the image editing program that comes standard on almost all personal computers, MSPaint, will usually suffice.

There are a variety of websites out there that offer tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your MSPaint experience, but here are a few favorites:

• MSPaint Tricks
• Neat Tricks in MSPaint
• Tips & Tricks for using paint

By following the above tips and getting lots of practice, one can become very skilled with MSPaint, and he or she can be creating fascinating works of computer art in no time.

Don't believe it? Check out the video below to see what MSPaint can do.