CyberSchools

As noted in a previous post, I am really excited about the possibilities inherent in cyberschooling your children. It seems like a nice blend of public school and home school, especially since in Colorado, we have school choice, so we can choose any of a number of cyberschools (many of which are charter schools).

So I've been doing a lot of research. There are actually many cyberschools in Colorado. We think we've finally chosen CDELA. Here's a rundown of my reasons for choosing/not choosing some schools:

COVA--Colorado's biggest online school. They are actually just the K-12 School, a well-known homeschool curriculum, administered by the State Online. The reason I didn't choose this one: The online information is condescending in the same way public schools are ("WE know more than YOU about what's good for your child; you have to do it our way because we are RIGHT.") and it isn't really a "cyberschool" (one that takes advantage of the possibilities of technology), just a paper school administered online.

Branson School Online--Seemed like a good possibility. They never gave me a "yea" or "Nay" about Caleb's application, and when I emailed them, they said "Busy time of year" and then "Call the office"--but the office closes at 4:00 pm and isn't open on Friday, so I haven't managed to reach them.

Rocky Mountain ESchool--Uses the CompassLearning Odyssey curriculum, but all their email links are broken. They are administered out of VILAS, CO, which is essentially a ghost town, so they may be defunct. Who knows. They went through "host Schools" anyway, so I'm not sure what that's all about.

Connections Academy--a national "franchise" cyberschool. I was really excited about this school because they have gifted and talented programs for kids once they reach the third grade curriculum, and they can get there as fast as they want. So we applied. But then we got the course listing, and it turns out they are just an online-administered Calvert School (another well-known homeschool books-and-paper curriculum). They are also heavily involved in supervising how you supervise your child's education. Both they and Calvert Curriculum are for "box-checkers" and also seem to not "get" what technology and education should do for each other. It's a fairly traditional "read the book answer the questions" approach to schooling, and you don't spend much time on the computer, and they micromanage a little too much for me. Plus, when I read their print materials, I got the impression that, while they have a gifted program, the school is really geared toward remediation rather than acceleration (which may explain their micromanaging of kids and parents--they cater to people who haven't been succeeding). So I kept this as an option because Caleb was accepted, but it's not my first choice.

CDELA--Colorado Distance and Electronic Learning Academy. This is also a branch of a national "franchise" kind of cyberschool, but it is only in Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania so far. It is also the CompassLearning Odyssey curriculum. But they had links to the curriculum on their website, and I liked it. It is actually an online curriculum, mostly animated, and fun. Caleb even re-did the "dry" lessons over and over, loved taking the tests, incorporated the jokes into his daily idiom, and (most importantly) remembered every fact and detail he heard on it. The school mandates "class attendance"--once or twice a week, each class meets with their teacher online, and participate in a lesson together through cameras, microphones, and the internet--the kids even have to raise their hands to answer questions, which is one of the three things Caleb cited as his reasons for wanting to attend a "big building" school. They do their informational sessions for the parents online, too. They do send book and paper kind of materials, but that isn't the whole curriculum. Also, they don't micromanage parents--you are required to take attendance hours, keep track of lessons, etc, and report in once a week (instead of once or twice a day). And the class size is small (6 first graders), so the teacher can pay attention to Caleb and talk to him on the phone when he struggles, etc. They seem to cater to the "advanced" students and responsible, college-educated parents. We'll see what happens next--if Caleb can get in, what curriculum actually gets assigned, etc.

I've decided that the trouble with educators is they are a self-feeding system: people who did well at school the way it is now are the ones who go into education, and because they did well, they see no reason to change things up. Consequently, even when they "embrace online education", they do just the same thing they've always done. Very few people (if any) have actually sat down and said, "What can technology really do for education" and made a school out of THAT.

We'll see what happens--I'll keep you posted.

Viral Saga

On Wednesday, I was really proud of myself. I paid the bills. Early, even. And checked my bank account to see how much money was left. I was so responsible. I even ran Spybot S&D to clean everything up.

Then I noticed the new icon on my taskbar--that had no name and wouldn't let me click on it or anything. Then I started getting Explorer windows opening randomly to Happy888 and Happy1000 webpages that were blank but always "logging in" or loading. Not so good.

So I opened my Windows Explorer and immediately noticed new files and folders that were mysterious. I googled the names (Scvhost.exe, svchost.exe, sydinar software, dup2.exe, etc) and discovered VIRUSES on my computer. Various websites cited them as annoyances, spyware, hijackers, viruses, trojans, or worms, and the security risk from negligible to "close all your bank accounts if you accessed them with this stuff on your computer". So I read and printed lots of stuff from Geek Forums telling other people how to get the same stuff off their computers, and I started to work.

First, I turned the computer on in safe mode and deleted all the files I found that were bad bad ones. But the popups (Happy888) kept coming. So then I started downloading free spyware and virus removers. Some even promised to get rid of the Happy888 virus/spyware that apparently is very difficult to remove because it keeps changing its name. I downloaded and installed and uninstalled TONS of stuff, and every program identified different problems. The ones the identified the most problems were the ones that you have to pay to access the solutions.

But they all agreed that I had a bad program: c:\Windows\scvhost.exe. There is a legit program needed by windows called svchost.exe, so this was hard to identify, and I had to be careful to only delete the right ones. The problem was, every time I deleted it, I rebooted the computer and it was back. I finally got wise and rebooted with the internet disconnected--and it STILL came back. That let me know I hadn't deleted the source of the problem. Plus, now my computer kept asking me to install drivers for "new hardware," called SBHR, which I had never installed. So I refused to put it on.

Thursday, Jon was in Denver so we went to get him. We'd intended to just visit, but he spent the whole time he was here working on my computer while we visited. That was really nice of him. He also got my kids convinced that Linux is the way to go with computers. They like the Linux penguins. He also introduced me to Google Home Pages, and Mozilla, both of which are very cool. Anyway, we discovered that the guy who sold me my computer (from Nephi, UT!), put a pirated copy of Windows on it, so we couldn't really update Windows, which was part of the problem. Downloaded more and more stuff, and cleaned off old stuff, and the popups were still there.

Finally, we thought we had it licked and Jon went back to Denver to his hotel. And I went down to the secure computer and changed all our online passwords, just in case. (Then today, I went to the bank and reported the problem there just in case it really was hijackers or a trojan or a hacktool (all variously cited) or a keylogger or any of those other tools to steal your identity.)

When I got home from Denver, I checked the virus scan we left running, and it found nothing. And the popups were there, and the Sydinar Software virus that attracted my attention in the first place was back. And the "control panel" on Windows had a new icon: Administrator settings. No more searching for new hardware, though. We did have to recover from a couple of fatal errors, unfortunately.

So I ran all my scans again, deleted the stuff I knew was bad, and let the computer work on finding stuff all night. Nothing.

After working on it most of today, too, I realized I would have to give up and pay someone to fix it, wipe the hard drive and go with Linux and hope it could do what I wanted, or get some help from someone who knows everything.

So I prayed about it. The computer and internet are important to me because they are my connection to other adults and the way I get to use my talents (writing). I figured Heavenly Father taught me how to fix the dishwasher, and the cooler, and the car. Surely He could teach me how to fix the computer. So I prayed, and then I got back on the web and googled all the stuff I now knew about the viruses (names, company names, etc).

This time, I noticed that there were a couple of companies that had the viruses catalogued in their "encyclopedias" and "research engines." Both companies had virus scanners. So, with a great deal of trouble because the viruses kept trying to stop me, I downloaded the programs and ran the scans.

One program was a great research tool, telling me my viruses occurred in 111 patterns (no wonder it's hard to find!). But it scanned my computer and only identified as "possibly dangerous" www.moosebutter.com and mozilla. No good. The other program was one that would scan for free but costs $30 to buy the software to clean any problems. I did the scan and got a screenshot of the results: 10 problems none of the other programs had identified. It cleaned the ones that were not dangerous, but insisted I buy the program to get rid of the bad ones.

Instead, with the screenshot available, I turned the computer on in safe mode and found the files they identified as evil and deleted them myself. It was the same files I had deleted a million times, plus two others hidden in a "system" folder and with a slightly different name (svchost). My research had let me know that the necessary svchost was in the system32 folder, so these were NOT real. So I deleted them. Rebooted. Ran an hour long scan to identify if the problem was gone--and it was.

I rebooted the computer and checked again. Still gone. No popups yet. No running slowly. No annoyances. So far it looks like I licked it, with help from Someone Who Really Knows Everything. Now I just have to find out if I can delete the dangerous entries from the register if I know exactly what they're called (apparently you can really screw up your computer if you delete the wrong things from the registry).

So, a review of the software I tried. I don't remember all of it, but here's what I found:

Spybot Search and Destroy: Catches some stuff, but didn't even notice this stuff.

Dr. Cureit: Caught other stuff than Spybot did, but not my virus. Also slow.

CounterSpy: Caught a few things, but not my virus AND it has no uninstall option, so you have to use windows uninstall and then search out the individual folders and delete them, too. The "found new hardware" message appeared after I installed this, which is run by a company that includes the initials SBHR, and the "new hardware" messages stopped once I finally got rid of the program.

Ad-Aware Away: Their ads promised to get rid of the Happy888 popups. Found some stuff, but not my virus AND you have to pay to get rid of things.

Ad-Aware SE Personal: Found a lot more stuff than most programs, but not my virus. DID clean everything off for free, though. It cleaned off 455 things that no other program identified as evil, but left my virus.

Spyware Doctor: Found some things. Not my virus. Installed itself to load on opening the computer and loaded REALLY SLOWLY. Could only remove the thing in Safe Mode because it wouldn't stop working even if I asked it to, and it's uninstall program stalled multiple times.

XsoftSpyXE: Found a lot of stuff. Makes you pay to remove it, so I wrote down what it found and deleted it by hand. Found most of the sub-viruses (the ones that deleted but reloaded by themselves), but not the source virus that was letting them all reload when I rebooted.

ATF Cleaner: Does the same thing as "Disk Cleanup" on Windows

AVG Suite (Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus 7.5, and Anti-Rootkit): Highly recommended by EVERY forum I found. Didn't find a single thing. Not anything.

System Spyware Interrogator: Great research tool. Identified moosebutter.com as potentially dangerous. Didn't find my viruses even though they were in SSI's encyclopedia, with all 111 variants.

Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool: I had to download a nag screen reminding me that my copy of windows is pirated (not my fault!) and let the computer update windows, which took over an hour, to get this. It doesn't work with Mozilla turned on, even though it's supposed to run in the background all the time and do an additional scan once a month. (Typical of microsoft, you can't even access the help page for their download programs without running them through Internet Explorer). Didn't find ANYTHING, and you have to download a different version in addition in order to scan through their online page OR scan more than once a month--and downloading the programs froze the computer. Typical microsoft quality and thinking.

SuperAntiSpyware Free Edition: The second one that identified my virus, calling it the "scvhost worm". It also found 32 MORE things that Ad-Aware Personal missed (I ran the scans one after another). Removed the "worm", but not the core program that was installing it. Very slow, but thorough.

e Trust PestPatrol: The only program that identified the REAL problem. I only did the quick scan, even! It scanned for me, but wouldn't clean everything for me (only inocuous things) unless I paid them. Couldn't block and copy the list of problems they found, but I could get a screen shot and open that in Word and use it to delete the source virus, as far as I know. So far so good. Now if I can just get rid of the registry keys it found.....

There may have been a few more. I also read a few reviews of software that said the best on on the market is called Max-something (maximillian?). The free ones are not any of them very thorough (the best only catch 70% of the problems). Most people recommend running more than one anti-spyware program in order to catch everything if you insist on using free stuff.

So there you go. I'll let you know if I'm really done working on this problem or not.

Product Review

Editorial note: It was actually a Remington Precision 200, model 8017. I don't know if the rest of Remington's line are as bad...

We realized finally that we HAD to buy a buzzer so that we could have haircuts with longer-than-1/2 inch-buzzer-attachments. Caleb can't sit still long enough to cut a traditional scissors cut on the top, and his hair is so straight that it doesn't look good. So we took a Christmas gift card to Wal-mart and bought the cheapest buzzer they had in stock, the Remington Pro. $12.74.

We read the instructions, went down into the bathroom, got Caleb comfortable with a promise of a "fast haircut" and turned on the buzzer. ZZZZZZZZZZZ. It worked so far. Fit on the 1" attachment. ZZZZZZZZZZzzz. Put it to Caleb's hair. ZZZZZZZZZrrrrttt.

Despite the claims on the package that it is one of the most powerful buzzers out there, it couldn't even vibrate in Caleb's hair.

So back to the instructions. It said take short, slow strokes. Okay.

Fifteen minutes later, the back was buzzed with the 3/4" attachment, and it looked like I had hacked at it with scissors, and Caleb was growing restless and extremely frustrated because the buzzer kept pulling his hair. Hard. Finally he said, "How long will this take?"

"Um," said I, realizing "short, slow strokes" would take an hour and then he would look like Anda had cut his hair with playdoh scissors.

I got out the old old standby Wahl buzzer mom gave us years ago that has cut Tim's thick hair without problems for five years.

MIRACLE! The buzzer attachments fit on the old Wahl clippers, which still work fine but were just missing the long attachments. So quick as a wink, fit the 3/4" attachment on, and then the 1/2" for the sides and back. Haircut done in 10 minutes flat. It was shorter than Caleb wanted because the Remington with the 1" attachment wouldn't cut his hair at all, but next time we'll just go straight to the Wahl and use the 1" attachment, and all will be as Caleb wants it to be.

Remington Pro 8017: Crap. Don't buy one unless you happen to have an ancient Wahl buzzer and need the set of combs for $12.74. They fit.

Mom said to always buy Dog buzzers--they have more guts and can actually cut people hair. Like the old Osters. We have one of those, too--it also doesn't have long attachments. Remington won't cut hair. It even just pulled Daniel's hair--and there's not that much to get hung up on.