iPod touch

I'm typing this post on an iPod. If you've never played with an iPod touch before, borrow one from a student. Better yet, get them to show you things like how it displays photos, videos, and album art. It also has a notepad, wifi, and a web browser. It can function as a PDA, or even almost be a replacement for a laptop.

There is also a phone version that you may have heard of, the iPhone. I've seen a few of these around, but they are officially coming to Canada July 11th (the second generation iPhone). Everything I just wrote about, plus mobile phone and GPS.

student email addresses

There are a few options for providing student email addresses. At my school we're using Google Apps Education Edition, and we like it. If you're looking for filtered email and don't mind somewhat more intrusive advertising, Gaggle.net is an option. Another option, though, is to use an existing FirstClass system and add students as users to it; this isn't as easy, and may not be free, but it is an option.

We have gmail (Google email) accounts for all 1250 or so of our students, as well as gmail accounts for the staff. Students can use their to forward assignments home, collaborate with other students, and get in touch with their teachers outside of class. I have also had students use them to hand in assignments (either as attachements or as Google documents), as email reminders or class communications (I have a group email list for each of my classes), and I have a shared calendar of upcoming assessments.

We've made up a list of the pros and cons of using Google Apps Education Edition.
Cons:

• No uptime guarantee
• Who owns your data?
• No control over spam filter, password policies, logs, blacklists, etc (some of this is available through the API)
• No directory lookup for >200 users
• Advertising (although targeted text ads only)

Pros:

• Free (but there are paid options)
• Easy to setup and administrate
• Bulk account upload/update
• Stable
• Good Spam Filtering
• Other Apps (calendar, docs, etc.)
• POP and IMAP
• Lots of space (>6 GB per user)
• API (provisioning, usage reports, SSO, etc.)

I recommend GAEE, and in fact there are quite a number of Universities implementing it as well. And hopefully we won't have to worry about Google going out of business.

downloading YouTube videos

It is possible to save YouTube videos to your computer so that you can watch, or show, them even if they are removed from the site, or your Internet access malfunctions. The process of this changes every once in a while, a new application (or website) comes along and/or YouTube changes something.

That being said, the way I recommend to download YouTube videos is:

1. find the video
2. copy the ULR (uniform resource locator, aka the location) from the address bar of your web browser; probably the easiest way is the right click it and choose copy
3. past the URL into the "Enter YouTube URL:" box on TechCrunch's Video Download Tool and click Get Video
4. if you are using Internet Explorer, you'll probably see a yellow bar come up at the top of the page... click that to download the file
5. you should now have the video file saved to where you had specified

Now, the video is in Flash video format, so you need some player like VLC to play it. If you are not able to install VLC because you are not the administrator of your computer, you can use the portable version.

That's it in a nutshell, comment if there's something I'm missing.

format painter

A seldom used but useful feature of Microsoft Office programs, such as Word and PowerPoint, is the format painter. This is for those situations where you would like something to be formatted like something else.

To use the format painter, select the part that has the desired formatting and click the button on the toolbar that looks like a paint brush (or you can press the c key while holding down the Shift and Ctrl keys). Then select the part that you want formatted (if you used Shift-Ctrl-c, you then need to use Shift-Ctrl-v). You've now applied the desired formatting.

small, cheap laptops

I'm writing this post on a very small, cheap laptop. There seems to be a trend, more companies are realizing the potential demand for these sorts of things. I think the OLPC XO has something to do with that, but there's a topic for another post. The “subnotebook” I'm using is the Asus EeePC, but there are a number of others out or coming out, from vendors such as Everex and Dell.

Because of the small form factor, they tend to have smaller-than-normal keyboards, but I find them easy to get used to, and certainly better then trying to type on a PDA or iPod Touch. The screens are also fairly small, but usable.

The other attractive part about these ULPCs is price. There are some very expensive ones, but for the most part they are $300 to $500. Which, in my opinion, is the most you should spend on a laptop. If you're looking for a portable computer, particularly to supplement a desktop back home, I recommend a cheap subnotebook.

tablets and interactive whiteboards

There seems to be a big province-wide push toward the use of interactive whiteboards, such as SMARTboards. I think that these are good devices, and I am particularly impressed with the rear-projection units. They are very intuitive to use, just like drawing on a whiteboard, and they also fulfill all of the functions of a regular data projection screen.

That being said, though, for the high school level I am more in favor of tablets or, if you prefer and can afford them, touch screens. Tablets, such as the Wacom Bamboo, are nice because they are inexpensive ($80 and up), portable, durable, pressure-sensitive, and have a quick response to drawing motions. Touch screens have some of these features, but are certainly not inexpensive.

In my classroom, I use a tablet for drawing on PowerPoint presentations, among other things. I also use the free program ZoomIt. At some point I may get a wireless tablet, but for now I'm just using a long USB cable. I like the flexibility of being able to click through the prepared show, but also add or embellish as we go along. And my penmanship is improving.

photo class lists

Here in our school division it is possible to print photo class lists. I know, other divisions have this built into their student information system, but apparently that's coming here too.

Until that time, here's an outline of how we do it here.

1. Get photos of all of your students. Hopefully the company that does your ID cards can provide you with this.
2. Use the photo class lists export function from our student information system.
3. Put the photos and the html files (from step two) into the same folder.
4. Open the file PHOTO_COURSE_LIST.HTML

Easy as that.

Okay, it's not that easy. But it is possible. And useful.

Edit: apparently other schools are accomplishing this differently... but that's as much as I know.