Techstuff 2 May 6, 2007
Posted by Steve in Musing, Technotrivia.trackback
My computer lab was re-imaged by the IT blokes over the school break. I did extensive testing (so I thought) with the master machine. But, alas, after the entire lab was re-imaged, the students discovered they could not access their flash drives through the USB ports. The IT blokes spent hours trying to overcome the difficulty but to no avail. So they had to add to the master machine and re-image the computer lab again. Mind you, I have never experienced a major re-imaging of a computer lab without something going wrong. My compliments to the IT blokes who are snowed under with requests.- Assisting people with their computers goes with the turf being a computing teacher. As we visit our friends socially, I am being asked to set up their wireless router which they have purchased, installed but not able to get the software operational. Fortunately, setting up the software usually goes smoothly. It is just time consuming. My testing always involved interacting with the school’s email or directories. If the system can handle that, it can handle anything.
- We (the school) did our first evaluation of a Learning Object prototype from the Learning Federation. It was a Maths module dealing with ratios. Much to my surprise we had work stations that could not run the module because they didn’t have an updated version of Flash Player or Shockwave. My solution: I brought in my department laptop and my wife’s laptop for two students to use. The process was very interesting and the students did identify a couple of areas that could be improved with the prototype. I was somewhat surprised that the Year 7 and Year 8 students did not know the word ‘ratio.’ Evaluation sheets were filled out and Express Posted back to Melbourne. We did not raise an invoice because no casual relief was brought in and I used a Prep period to carry out the evaluation. My thanks to the Maths co-ordinator who was open to the idea of evaluating a Maths Learning Object prototype.
- I attended an inservice entitled “Blogging to Learn” by the Association of Independent Schools. When I applied for the course in February, I knew little about blogging. By the time the course actually took place, I had experimented with blogs in the classroom and as a teacher. I did get some valuable information from the course and shared what little I knew. Participants seemed impressed with what my Year 8 students were doing.
- The Honours Programme seems to be going well in terms of using communications. We still have a few students who have not joined the TIGSHONOURS group which suggests technical difficulties. This has been a long, drawn out process. I bet we do better in 2008 in terms of establishing online communications.
- Next project: setting up blogs for the partipants!
- I have yet to evaluate SchoolKit which is from Western Australia.
- Due to circumstances, I bought Office 2007 for Home and student use to place on our laptops. We are allowed to put it on 3 laptops. While I have not actually used Word 2007, I was most impressed with the new layout and the use of tabs. I am used to using tabs in the newer web browsers. It will be interesting to see how others adapt to the new layout.
- I also succumbed and purchased Photo Shop Elements 5.0 for home use. Paintshop Pro was uninstalled. I was getting confused when using the two different graphics program. Now I am synchronised with school. Version 5.0 should have more features as compared to version 2.0 which the school uses.
- My Kodak digital camera has seen its day. It eats up the batteries at an uncommon rate. Solution: purchased a new Olympus digital camera and a 2 GB memory card for the camera. The small size of the camera appealed to me.
Hi Steve, good looking blog you’ve got going. I’m interested in how you go with blogging with your students. Education systems are struggling to come to terms with Web 2.0 generally - the whole concept of students being able to publish anonymously is very foreign to school administrators and many teachers. The recent story about ratemyteachers.com is a case in point - that and the ongoing videos of schoolyard fights and bullying on YouTube. The general solution as far as schools are concerned is to block all of these Web 2.0 sites, but that solves nothing. It just puts blinkers on the problem. Anyway, look forward to hearing about how your students go with it. I think there is huge potential.