Sunday, March 27, 2011

Anti-Virus Experiences

Okay, this topic could not have come up at a more opportune time. We have a desktop that is about 7 years old and runs windows XP. We have had issues with it in the past and have tried a variety of anti-virus programs. We started with McAfee, since that was the program that was installed on delivery (you got a free year with purchase). Then we started having issues and got the dreaded blue screen of death, even after scanning multiple times a day. We had the computer wiped and then used AVG and Webroot Spysweeper with more success. However, we have been experiencing a lot of problems lately, AVG seems to be able to find viruses when it does a scan, but it doesn't seem to be preventing any (it is regularly finding and removing a number of viruses on each scan) So I took this opportunity to try a new program. I uninstalled AVG and installed a free trial of Vipre Anti-Virus Premium to see what it could do. The reviews all said that it was rated high when it came to preventing viruses from getting through in the first place. I installed it and tried to run a scan - I got a message that said it needed to update the definitions, so I did that. The definitions still said "0", so I did it again. I uninstalled the program and then reinstalled it, with no success. So I accessed the help desk - good way to see their customer support first hand. I got a pretty quick response and we tried a number of things for about an hour. Then the tech. person gave me a link to completely uninstall the program and re-start my computer. Upon restart, I have no icons whatsoever. I can't access anything. I have used the right-click on the desktop, control-alt-delete, etc. and the computer just shows my wallpaper. So....., any thoughts? Was this a problem with the anti-virus software, or was my computer just too far gone for it to help? Maybe the viruses already on the computer where battling with the program and keeping it from installing all of the components. This was not quite what I was hoping for from the experiment. If any of you have suggestions, please let me know. I am at a loss right now!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

My Computer Experiences

My first computer experience was as a member of the computer club in Middle School. We worked on a Tandy computer, and learned how to write simple programs. There was absolutely nothing fancy about it. This was actually the first time I had ever seen a computer, and I think it was the only one in the building. At home I typed (and I mean typed) my papers on an old manual typewriter and I took typing in high school. I say typing, because that's what it was. We did not learn keyboarding, we typed (at least the school typewriters were electric!)

My brother got a personal computer when he graduated from high school. It was an IBM and used DOS programming. You had to insert a floppy disk every time you turned it on to run the program. Then you had to insert a different floppy disk to run the word processing program (I can't remember what that was called), and then I would print to a dot matrix printer. When he studied abroad for a semester I actually got to use it for my work. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

When I went to college, we had 2 computer labs for student use. We used Word Perfect for writing papers. All of the computers still used the actual floppy disks, and they crashed often. I can still remember hearing people scream in frustration as they lost their entire term papers.

When I began teaching, we still used an actual gradebook for keeping track of grades and there was one computer in the department office for us to use. Eventually we all got our own computers and actually began using computerized grade books. I couldn't believe how much easier it was, although all of the information was still kept on a disk. The Internet was just beginning to take off when I stopped teaching to stay home and be a mom. I only had a couple of students that last year who were getting information from the Internet and using CDroms.

When I got back into education a couple of years ago, I was astounded by how much I didn't know. My first class "Information Literacy" was a terrifying and exciting whirlwind of technology. I was thrilled with the potential that all of the new technology presented for lesson planning and learning. I immediately started revamping my old lesson plans and couldn't wait to implement the changes.

I have always found computers intriguing, and I have also found that I seem to be able to learn to use new aspects fairly easily. I think that this ability has helped make me more desirable as an educator, and it has certainly made me better at my job.