Chris Spackman

Every Sentient Being’s Guides

Chris Spackman’s Guides to Technology

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I say that these guides are for every sentient being as a way of being inclusive without calling anyone idiot or dummy or the such.¹ I hope you find them helpful. The first is Every Sentient Being’s Guide to Password Security^*, released in June of 2021. The second, and most recent, is Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^*, released in December of 2021. I’m not sure what my next will be, but I’m pretty sure it won’t land here for a few years, at least.

All the resources available here are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Quick PDF Downloads:

• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^*
• Every Sentient Being’s Guide to Password Security^*

Updated 2022 January 4: Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^*

HTML and Other Versions Now Available:

• ETGTT (HTML) This is one big HTML file.
• ETGTT (epub) epubs are for reading on mobile devices.
• See Other Files, below, for zip, odt, and other formats.

2021 December 8: Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^*

The first edition. The book has four parts:

1. The Best Tool for the Job — covers different types of software and when to use them. For example, it looks at word processor features that many teachers could use every day; gives some advice on using slides; and gets into detail on using graphics and desktop publishing software.
2. TechInEd Topics Deep Dive — goes into some detail about tech issues that teachers would benefit from knowing a bit about. Some of the topics are a bit more general, such as copyright and copyleft. Others are more day-to-day practical, such as scanning, OCR, and translating documents. And some are in between, such as typography and accessibility.
3. Resources — is like an annotated bibliography of sorts, but includes web sites and software in addition to books. It is very, very, far from complete or comprehensive. I plan to expand on it in future editions.
4. Back Matter — includes all the links from the book in full url form (in case you can’t click); the pathetic beginnings of an index; and a similarly bare-bones start to a glossary. The index and the glossary will be expanded significantly in future editions.

Update: I fixed a few small issues in version 1.0. Version 1.0.1 is now linked here. Small issues, but they included external links, so I thought it best to update immediately.

Recommended Files

• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (first edition, updated) (PDF) — recommended for reading and printing
• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (first edition, updated) (.tgz) (gzipped tarball of the original LaTeX and images)

Other Files

Please note that LaTeX and PDF are the primary file formats. HTML, EPUB, and ODT files are automagically converted from the LaTeX and are incomplete in some ways (like page number references). If you just want to read the book, I highly recommend the PDF file (above).

• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (html) — for reading online
• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (epub) — for reading on ebook readers / mobile devices
• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (odt) — for editing in a word processor if you don’t use LaTeX
• Every Teacher’s Guide to Technology^* (zip) (zip file of the original LaTeX and images) — for MS Windows / Mac OSX users

2021 June 1: Guide to Password Security

A short (about 70 pages) introduction to passwords, password security, and a bit of general computer security. Chapter 2 has all the tips boiled down into about 4 pages. The rest of the book goes deeper into the advice and also explains a lot of the why for the advice.

Recommended Files

• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (PDF) — recommended for reading and printing
• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (LaTeX) — recommended for editing (this is the one I used to create the PDF file)
• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (tar.gz) (gzipped tarball of the original LaTeX and images) — for *nix users

Other Files

Please note that LaTeX and PDF are the primary file formats. HTML, EPUB, and ODT files are automagically converted from the LaTeX and are incomplete in some ways (like page number references). If you just want to read the book, I highly recommend the PDF file (above).

• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (html) — for reading online
• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (epub) — for reading on ebook readers
• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (odt) — for editing in a word processor if you don’t use LaTeX
• ESB’s Guide to Password Security^* (zip) (zip file of the original LaTeX and images) — for MS Windows / Mac OSX users