Going from room to room across 4 schools I hear this a lot. We are used to things happening fast on our computers. We click a button, and we want something to…well..happen. Instead, we click a button and leave the room to get coffee, talk to the teacher next door, check our mail in the office, and finally, finally, come back to our computer to….well…click the next button.
So why are our computers so slow? Well, there are a number of reasons. Here are just a few.
1. The RAM is insufficient. The what? The RAM (Random Access Memory). Your computer needs this in order to have a free space for your software to do its thing. The more you have, the easier it is for that software to process all the complicated calculations it takes to simply type an email. In our schools, often we have purchased the minimum system requirements to make the software work. For Windows XP, that is 512MB (megabytes). However, that is the minimum which means it is barely going to operate from there. Newer computers are coming with 3 or 4 GB (gigabytes)! And that’s part of the reason they are so much faster from the get go.
2. Rogue Software. Sometimes you get things on your computer you didn’t want, or didn’t know you got. Two of the biggest guilty parties for this (in my mind at least) are game sites and Java updates. Game sites want to track what you’re doing and offer ads to you while you’re playing. So the install stuff in the background that is continually “phoning home” to use an old E.T. expression. In fact, you would be surprised at how many programs on your computer are just chattering away over your Internet connection. But Java is one of the worst culprits I’ve encountered. Too often, we just keep clicking OK until the updates are done, but with Java there is nearly always an extra piece of software offered at the end. If you don’t uncheck the box, you can download Norton software, PC Registry software, or toolbars from various websites. All of these continually run processes in the background. It is what they are designed to do. Add that to a computer with limited RAM and you are really slowing things down.
3. Toolbars. I am constantly amazed at how many toolbars are added to computers around schools. Again, most of these are downloaded through a Java update. Google Toolbars. Ask Toolbars. Yahoo Toolbars. Coupon Toolbars. The list is almost limitless. Each of these toolbars are designed to go out and complete their assigned duties of reporting to their bosses everything you are doing (so they can sell you more stuff) before they allow your web browser to even open! And so you wait. And wait. And wait. Simply getting rid of toolbars can see a marked improvement in how fast your computer is getting online.
4. Firefox. Mozilla’s Firefox is my favorite browser. And yet, it is a memory hog. It runs processes in the background that other browsers don’t. A recent report I read about Firefox indicates that it “grows” over time if it is left up. In other words, it gets worse and worse at eating up memory the longer it stays open. So, it is a good thing to close it when you don’t need it.
5. Defragmentation. PCs write data to a hard drive. In a perfect world, all of those little “1″s and “0″s get placed side by side on the hard drive. But, every time you delete a file, you leave an empty space somewhere, and your PC doesn’t like empty spaces. So the next time you save something, a little bit of it will go into one empty spot and another piece of it will go into a different empty spot. Your hard drive has to read itself several times just to find all the pieces. And if the file is really big, or your hard drive is really full, it will slow down your machine. Fortunately, there is a “defrag” tool that will move all those bits of code and re-arrange them so they are together again. Believe me, your PC will thank you for it.
6. Time of day. At home, this isn’t such a big deal. You may have 1 or 2 or 3 computers that are accessing your Internet connection at the same time. However, at school, we have thousands of computers getting turned on around the same time every day. And on Mondays, first thing in the morning, every single one of them is downloading an update from Microsoft that was delivered over the weekend. Monday mornings are slow!
If you don’t feel comfortable uninstalling programs, or want to know more about how to defrag your system, or any other questions, please feel free to contact either your school’s Technology Coach, or send in a work order to the IT department. If you tell the IT people what you want done and supply them with the IP address of your computer, many times they can log in remotely and fix it that day!
Have you found other issues related to why your computer is slow? Feel free to offer some tips in the comments section!
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Almost from the beginning, the question has been asked by teachers, “How can I show my iPad on the projector screen without using any wires?” The idea, of course, is to be able to roam freely around the classroom, using the iPad remotely and wirelessly. And it sounded so simple.
But it wasn’t.
Until now.
With a a Mac app called Reflection, you can now display your iPad 2 or iPhone 4s on the monitor of your Macbook. It was already possible to stream your iPad through Apple TV, but very few teachers in our district have that in the classroom. There are, however, a growing number of teachers who have their own personal Mac laptop (like mine).
I don’t teach in a classroom, so my needs are a little different. I will now be able to use a program like Jing to capture video of how to use apps on the iPad by recording it on my Mac (for both video and audio). In the classroom, a teacher could hand the iPad to a student who would demonstrate solving math problems, analyzing sentence structures, finding places in Google Earth, or any other activities permissible in literally hundreds of thousands of apps.
Granted, the Reflection app is $14.99, but I didn’t even blink an eye before installing it. See how it works in the slideshow below.
Some time ago we put up a short post about bandwidth in our district. Then, we lost all our previous posts, so I thought it might be time to put this information back up in a new format.
Simply put, bandwidth describes how much data can be downloaded (or uploaded) per second. Data are just those small bits of zeroes and ones that make up all the stuff we see on our computer monitors. We all want our Internet experience to be fast, and bandwidth is definitely a big part of that. But other things come into play as well.
Sometimes we describe bandwidth as a sort of pipe. There is a big difference in the amount of water one can get through a straw compared to how much can come through a garden hose (or a fire hydrant). The bigger the pipe, the more data can travel through it at the same time. At home, you might have 15 MBs per second on your cable Internet connection and everything works great. And yet, at the schools in our district we have 100 MBs per second and sometimes we just want to throw the computer out into the hallway because the Internet is so slow! So, there must be more at stake here than just bandwidth.
Here are a few things that can impact the way things work on your computer at school:
1. Wifi vs. Ethernet Cable – Each computer plugged into the wall with an Ethernet cable (theoretically) should have the full 100 MB download speeds available in our district. Likewise, each WAP (the thing that sends out our wifi signals) has 100 MBs. The difference is that now that speed is shared between however many devices are attached to it. If it is just 2 or 3, things probably work great. A portable lab of 30 laptops all connected to the same WAP will probably feel sluggish at times. Just recently I did an iPad training for teachers at Waterville Community Elementary. We had 35 or so iPads connected to the WAP in the library. Surfing the web and checking email was no problem. But when everyone attempted to download a single app at the same time the Internet connection came to a grinding halt.
2. The number of devices connected – To expand on the first item, this is important. The number of mobile devices accessing our wifi at schools exploded after this past Christmas when teachers and students alike began to bring their iPads, iPods, iPhones, Droids, Kindles, Kindle Fires, and more to school and connecting to the school’s wifi. Each connected device has an IP (Internet Protocol) address assigned to it. When a school with approximately 250 or 300 computers and printers has over 700 IP addresses assigned at one time, there are a lot of persoanl devices connecting to those WAPs and diminishing the speed of our connections on all mobile devices.
3. Websites Part 1 - Some websites are set up for speed. Others are not. If you are on a site where the pictures have been optimized to look great but take up a small space, sites will load really fast. However, if you are on a site where a picture file is uploaded at its full size (which can be really, really big) but displays a thumbnail, then all of that file has to download. In terms of file size, think about the difference between the size of a postage stamp and your computer monitor. The postage stamp will load really fast. If you have a website you created for students to access, you can help it load faster for students if you optimize your pictures first. You can do that easily at a site like WebResizer.
3. Websites Part 2 – Other websites are optimized for speed by grabbing unused bandwidth and not letting anything else have it. Netflix is a great example of this. Netflix has been optimized for HD quality movies to stream sleamlessly over your Internet connection, even from a wifi connection. The way it does this is to sort of “search ahead” and claim bandwidth that isn’t being used in order to download enough of the video to stay ahead of where you are viewing. This works great if you want to watch movies at home. It doesn’t do so great at school. Why? Because the students next door trying to take an online benchmark test using the portable lab need that bandwidth for their assessments to work. When Netflix steals it all, we start having problems. And when a dozen people across the district are all trying to stream a Netflix movie at the same time, the bandwidth across the district can start to slow down noticeably. The three biggest types of websites that kill our bandwidth are video streaming sites, music streaming sites, and gaming sites. While all of them can have educational value, if they are abused it can cause problems for other services we need to operate in all schools (things like SuccessMaker, DE Assessment, PLATO, Oddyseyware, Study Island, and more). I remember a time at Lake Forest when our four computer labs had students going to DE Streaming to find videos about careers. We had nearly 100 students streaming educational videos for a worthwhile project. But we were also using up nearly 75% of the total bandwidth for the entire district in the process. Whenever possible, download your video or music and play it from your computer’s hard drive.
So what can we do?
First, be aware that what you are doing on the Internet impacts what everyone else can do on the Internet. If your kids are in a lab watching music videos for the last ten minutes of class as a sort of “reward” time, it could negatively impact the teacher next door trying to demonstrate something on a Flash-based webpage at their Interactive White Board.
Second, teach your students responsible use of the wifi on their personal mobile devices. We are their teachers, after all. And if you don’t know enough about it to teach them, your technology coach can train you.
Third, use a site like Edmodo to host video and music files for kids to watch at home (on their wifi).
Fourth, optimize, optimize, optimize. Recently, I helped a teacher upload a Word document to an online program for her Master’s program. The file was too large to upload. With 3 clicks of the mouse, we optimized all the images in the file for viewing on the web. The file size shrunk by nearly 80% and uploaded beautifully. As a test, I created a 1-minute video tutorial using my iPhone to record video. It was 6 MB. I recorded the same 1-minute video on my iPad. It was 107 MB. (Think postage stamp vs computer monitor for size comparisons). The iPad video was too large to even upload to Edmodo! It would take forever to stream online. If you don’t know how to optimize files, ask the technology coach for your school. He or she should be able to show you how to optimize Word documents, PowerPoint files, images, and more.
Few things are more frustrating than to be traveling at 75 miles per hour down a 6 lane highway and come upon a section where 4 lanes are closed and all those cars start to bunch up and slow down. 75 miles per hour soon turns into 35. And that soon turns into stop and start, stop and start.
Our district’s bandwidth is the same way. It hums along nicely most of the time. And then something comes along that causes the data bits to slow down, or stop entirely. Our videos won’t play. A website won’t load. Students get frustrated. Classroom management skills are stretched to the limits. The bandwidth has been used up.
We are all on this Internet highway together. Please be curteous to the other drivers.
Recently, a teacher asked me about creating a background video that could be inserted into Prezi. Obviously, Prezi is designed to use YouTube videos embedded directly from the YouTube site. This presents a problem at school with YouTube embed codes behind ENA’s filters.
It is possible to download videos, but in this case the teacher had some specific objectives in mind that could most easily be solved by creating a short video. I chose to do a short tutorial on using pictures and audio files in Photo Story and then converting the final video from a .wmv file to a .flv file (which Prezi likes much better!).
What makes the tutorial interesting is how it was created. Using Splashtop i remotely accessed a PC sitting on a desk at the Annex from one of our schools. Everything was done on the PC and then screenshots were captured on my iPad. in order to get the final product uploaded to Slideshare (as seen below), i uploaded the final presentation from Keynote to iWork.com and back down to my Mac at home.
i am writing this blog post and embedding the code for the presentation using Splashtop at Starbucks and controlling my Macbook Pro.
All of this work can be done from the iPad if you are willing to think outside the box and take a few extra steps. How are you using your iPad for creative purposes?
It took me a while to warm up to Evernote. I don’t consider myself an early adopter. I’m more of a sit-back-and-see-what-happens-first kind of tech guy. So, when everyone was hopping on the Evernote bandwagon, I did what I usually do: I sat back and watched. And what I’ve seen is truly amazing.
Evernote is a cross-platform note-taking app/program. You can download it to your PC, to your Mac, to Your iPhone or iPod or iPad, or even your Android device! And what you share on one device miraculously shows up everywhere.
You can take notes, embed pictures, or record audio. You can create different “notebooks” for your files. So, it is possible to create a School notebook, a Family notebook, or a Harry Potter notebook, and group various notes/files inside that notebook. Going to a 3-day conference? Create a notebook for the conference and save all the notes from each session in it. Been selected to serve on a committee at school (and who hasn’t?)? Set up a notebook for the committee. In fact, share your notebook with the committee!
That’s another great thing about Evernote. The files you create can be shared with other people using Evernote. Think about collaborative planning, parent-teacher conferences, IEP meetings, and more!
Have I sold you yet? No? Well, let’s go one step further then.
Google Plus is Google’s new social networking platform that is now intricately tied into everything Google does. Instead of lists or groups, Google+ has you create “Circles” of friends. Like Edmodo, when you post something on Google+, you must tell it which circles are going to be able to see the post. A circle can have just one person in it if you like. All you need is an active email address. Here are step-by-step instructions.
Interestingly, Evernote assigns each user with a specific Evernote email address that is used to share notes and files across the system. In Google+ you can create a circle called “Evernote” and just put in your own specific Evernote email address. Now, when you share something from Google+ with that circle, it automatically winds up in your Evernote account! Work with a team? Create a circle with everyone’s Evernote email and you will all be updated every time something is shared in that circle.
Ready to download it yet? No? Whew! You are wearing me out! OK, here is a link to a LiveBinder that has TONS of interesting links and pages about how to use Evernote. And, of course, there are all kinds of other things Evernote is involved with that enhance the experience. Check them out at the Evernote website.
Tell us what you think about Evernote, or how you are already using it, in the comments section!
If you want to learn more and more about how to integrate technology into your classroom, discover the best and newest apps or Web 2.0 sites, or just sit back and be amazed, you need to follow some Education Technology Leaders on the Web. So, the question becomes, “Who do I follow?”
Lisa Thumann has put together a great list of EdTech leaders in the SlideShare presentation below. You may not need to follow all of them. Perhaps just one or two are doing work in an area of interest to you. Follow them! You will find links to their websites, blogs, and Twitter accounts where available. Out of the 25 listed, I personally follow 18 between my Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds and Google+ accounts. I will be connected to the other 7 soon!
Let me know in the comments section if you decide to follow one, two, or all of these leaders!
While the iPad is, quite possibly, a game changer for education down the road, the Apple Education announcement from New York yesterday is more of a game tweaker.
Here are the three things announced yesterday:
1. iBooks 2 – iBooks is the app that houses both downloadable electronic books and PDF files on the iPad (and iPhone or iPod Touch). With the new version of iBooks, textbook companies have started to put their pre-existing, paper textbooks into digital format with embedded video, moveable pictures, and other interactivity geared at making textbooks more attractive to today’s students. Textbooks are already available for math and science subjects for high school with more coming soon. The textbooks retail for $14.99. That’s a far cry from the $85 to over $100 we currently pay for books that are immediately out-of-date upon arrival.
2. iBook Author – This app is available for download to your Mac and will enable anyone, anywhere to create his or her own textbooks and publish them to the iBooks 2 store. I have to say I love the interface. It is simple and sleek like Keynote. It is drag-and-drop. It imports Word documents and automatically formats them for book in-line text. There is a downside in the EULA, however. If you want to give away your creation, you can publish it anywhere you like. But… and this is huge… if you want to sell it, you can only sell it in the iBooks store after Apple approves it like all other apps in the app store. You still own the content, but Apple retains the rights to its “look and feel”. There are plenty of e-Pub apps out there that will allow you to create interactive books (Pages will do it as well) without this “ownership” squabble.
3. iTunes U – There were already videos and such available in the iTunes U store. The Tennessee Department of Education has several really good resources there. However, iTunes U is expanding to include all information from the class (syllabus, teacher info, etc) in order to actually offer these classes to students attending school. This could positively impact high school students as well if there was a way to allow students to take these classes for dual enrollment or elective credit. We’re not there yet, but its worth looking at.
So, is this a game changer for education? Not really (in my opinion). It is a tweak. A major tweak, but still a tweak. We are still talking about purchasing textbooks with assigned curriculum. We are still talking about those textbooks being the same for everyone across a state.
What would be a game changer? Textbooks that are open source. Textbooks that are free. Textbooks that allow for social networking within the book so students can study together, research together, or share information in general. Textbooks that come embedded with creation tools so students can embed their own videos into it.
These are just a few of the things I believe will eventually be available in education. For now, teachers still have to rely on creating wikis, Edmodo groups, blogs, and more. Textbooks will still be….well….”text” “books”. For now at least.
What are your thoughts about the Apple announcement?
In our last post, we looked at a number of sites that recommend apps. A comment posted there asked about apps to use the iPad to control a PC or a Mac. I’ve looked at a few, and several are very good. I have one I use that I like, but even it is somewhat problematic at times. So, if this is something you are interested in, here are a few pointers (along with a few apps):
First, do not use VNC as an app to control a school computer. In our middle and elementary schools the IT Department uses VNC as a remote log-in device in order to access your school computer for remote repairs and troubleshooting. They already have it installed and it is password protected so no one else can get into it…including you.
Second, understand that you must install an app on your iPad and a file on your computer. The app has to “talk” to something. Obviously, if you could just install an app and access a laptop anyone could access yours! However, once you choose an app you can install the computer application on more than one computer. I have a Mac and a Netbook. I can control both through my iPad. Each has its own identifying name and password for me to get in.
Third, some apps only work if both the iPad and the computer are on the same wireless network. This is problematic if you want to access a computer at home while you are at school.
Fourth, anything you use on your iPad to control your computer is going to make both of them operate more slowly. If you really like the iPad because it is fast (like I do!), you have to take a deep breath occasionally and let the computer catch up. This is even more true if your computer is slow due to low RAM (like my Netbook).
Fifth, the iPad can be used to control your Interactive Whiteboard software on your computer, but it is not the same as standing at the board. Even with a stylus, writing on the iPad is clunky and awkward. If you don’t mind your writing looking like a kindergartner just learning to make letters this may not be a problem.
Some apps you might look at include SplashTop, LogMeIn Ignition, and iTeleport. All of them have their good points and bad. And sometimes you can find them for free on the app store (I downloaded LogMeIn Ignition over a weekend while it was free).
So, what app do I recommend? Simple. Team Viewer. It is available for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android devices. You can also use it to control one computer from another computer. I use the free version of the program.
I have used Team Viewer at school to control my Netbook and my Mac while they are at home. (I have not yet tried it the other direction). In the settings area you can decide if you want it to be fast or if you want it to be clear. Fast means you won’t get a great screen resolution because it is trying to push less data. Clear means you want it to look really good even though it may be a bit slower. I always choose the better screen resolution.
One caveat here: While using Team Viewer your iPad now works like your computer. You can’t “swipe” things to move them. You can’t just touch an icon on the screen and make it work. You are controlling the mouse on your computer, so you have to move the mouse pointer where you want to click. This takes a little practice. And it is much easier with a stylus than your finger.
Using a remote app like this can help you access files on your computer that you need but forgot to bring with you. However, it is not a great work around for using trying to watch streaming videos from your computer onto your iPad. The speed at which data travels in these environments is pretty slow.
If you decide to install this app and need some help, don’t hesitate to send me an email (BCS employees at least. LOL). But remember, the iPad has its most education value in the hands of student running apps; not in the hands of the teacher controlling a computer.
I know, I know, not everyone got an iPad for Christmas. Some people got Kindles, Kindle Fires, Assus Transformer Primes, and more. But, the single biggest phone call, text message, and email topic I’ve received over the holidays involved teachers getting iPads.
So, let’s start off by sharing a few sites that might be of interest to you as you search for apps to use at home and at school.
Apps in Education is a great place to start. This blog is dedicated to reviewing apps in the iTunes store. It is divided into education topics such as Math, Music, Language, Special Education, and others. It is a blog that is updated regularly, so simply add it to your RSS feed and let the information come to you!
Fun Educational Apps also reviews apps for the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Along with a link to their top picks, their reviews are broken down by age group (1-5, 5-8, and 9-12 – ages…not grade levels). They also offer give aways from time to time. Again, it is a blog. There’s that RSS feed again.
App Advice is a site I go to regularly as well. Check out their App Lists page or App Guides page to look at apps by interest area. Tons of stuff here!
Edutopia’s K-5 Apps for Bloom’s Taxonomy. This would be a great starting point for elementary teachers. Apps are listed by the 6 traits of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It would be helpful as we move our lesson plans into Quadrant D!
Make Use Of’s Best iPad Apps. I read the Make Use Of blog every day. They have a multitude of writers on even more subjects, so many times the articles are not what interests me. But I find something worth looking at every single day. This particular page lists their picks of the best apps for the iPad. They are broken down by area of interest (Movies, Browsers, Drawing, Finance, etc).
APPitic lists over 1300 apps for education, and the list is obviously still growing. A great place for Special Education teachers to visit as well.
In addition to these sites dedicated to apps, you might be interested in the lists of apps here, or the 100 Best FREE iPhone Apps for Educators here.
Do you have a “go to” site for apps? Have a favorite you just can’t live without? Feel free to post it in the comments section!
As we continue looking at tools for teachers in our series of posts on the iPad, the second most often asked question after, “How do I get my email?” is usually, “What is the best way to take notes at a meeting?”
And, as is usually the case with an iPad app, the general answer is, “Well, that all depends….”
We’ve put together 4 quick overviews of various note taking apps that each accomplish something different. Each has its own purpose, so perhaps just one app won’t do. The apps are linked to the overviews at Slideshare (another great tool for teachers to use with websites and Edmodo). Each overview was created on the iPad using the screenshot feature and Keynote.
Penultimate – Penultimate was the first note taking app I installed on my iPad. It is $1.99 in the App Store. Click here to see the Overview on SlideShare. It is now the most limited of the note apps I have installed. While you can turn the iPad to landscape mode, the paper will only work in portrait mode. You can write or draw notes with your finger or stylus. Various pen colors and line thicknesses are available. The scissor tool allows you to delete a lot of information with one click much like the “draw a circle and tap” available with the eraser on the SMART Board. One of the best features of the app is the Storyboard paper template that would allow students (or teachers) to map out a storyboard for videos, podcasts, or creative writing. Another good feature is the ability to take or add pictures to your notes. This might be a snapshot of a PPT slide from a presentation, handouts from a meeting, or a quick picture of everyone that was present. Click here to check out Penultimate in the App Store.
Paper Desk – 
Paper Desk is another simplified note taking app. It is $3.99 in the App Store. Click here to see the Overview in SlideShare. Visually, it looks like a legal pad. There is a typing function, so note taking can be made to appear neater than hand written. The pen tool allows you to use your finger or a stylus to do hand written notes and drawings. The eraser tool can be modified to be big or small in order to eliminate objects more quickly. It will not erase typed text. An added feature is the ability to record what’s going on in the meeting. As you type, your notes are synced with the audio enabling you to jump to certain sections of the meeting on playback simply by clicking the text. Paper Desk has one of the most expansive ways of sharing notes. You can email them, open in another appp, or share on Twitter, Google Docs, and iTunes. Click here to check out Paper Desk in the App Store.
Sling Note – I quickly fell in love with Sling Note as tool for both teacher and students, but primarily students. It is $2.99 in the App Store. Click here to see the Overview on SlideShare. Used in landscape mode, Sling Note allows for note taking on one side of the screen and web surfing on the other. You can easily “cut out” sections of websites and drag them onto your notes page. Images can be resized and moved around just as typed text can be using the finger pinch we’ve all come to know and love. And the image you cut out can be flipped over to reveal the URL of the website it came from and allow for adding more notes to the back. As with the others, there are pen, eraser, and highlighter tools available. However, there is also a lock function to keep from accidentally removing something you need. Notes can be emailed or printed to use on other iPads, or they can be shared as PDF files (making them available on any device). Click here to check out Sling Note in the App Store.
AudioNote – AudioNote is another of the note taking apps that I love. Again, it can be of great benefit to both teachers and students. It is $4.99 in the App Store, but it is well worth the money (there is a Lite version available for free if you want to try it before you buy it). Click here to see the Overview on SlideShare. The paid version allows for unlimited voice recording while taking notes. So, a teacher could record an entire workshop or faculty meeting for listening to again later. A student could record all of class, or just the segment where the teacher is really explaining a key concept. When you type notes, the text is synced with the audio enabling you to click the notes in playback and jump to the spot of the recording where that note was written. There is a pen and highlighter tool as well. Click here to check out AudioNote in the App Store.
Do you have a note taking app you love? Share it in the comments section for others to try!