Technology in the Classroom

OMG — recieved an email last week about the problem with my laptop wireless not working and I cannot believe the stupidity of the help desk.

“Dear ______
We are pleased to inform you that your reported Incident has been resolved.

Will be resolved by update to image on netbook. Waiting for DMIG to release the image and imaging tools.”

Generic email or not, and mixed tenses aside, I really do not understand how one can call a problem fixed unless the proposed resolution to the problem has been applied and successfully resolved the problem !

The help desk has gone from telling me it is a hardware problem to acknowledging it is a software issue, and then saying the problem is fixed when for me it clearly has not been.

I relogged the complaint, after some searching for the online complaint service only to discover the limited application of problems allowed to be logged and recieved a second email:

“A solution for re-imaging netbooks is currently overdue for release. As soon as this is provided, the school TSO will be notified and they will reimage that netbook in order to resolve the problem.
In the meantime, once the school has its S1 allocation of netbooks, it will be possible for the TSO to loan you a netbook from the pool of spare netbooks provided for you to use until the netbook can be reimaged.
Please note that no offence is intended with the “We are pleased to inform you that your problem has been resolved” text from the email. It is a generic auto-generated email that we have no control over.”

Again — if the solution has not been successfully applied and the issue resolved then I don’t see how you can call it so. No date for the update has been given even in estimate, and no problem resolved.

Well, more info coming to light on a few things — rumours of what the netbooks do and don’t do have been rife this last few weeks with the majority ill-informed !

The broken wireless connection is still causing problems — as the computer will not find or recognise anything even if it is sitting on top of the wireless router.

A call to the help desk proved fruitless and went something like this: (for full effect read the Help desk in a thick Indian accent !

CDQ: Hello ! I have a problem with my Rudd Laptop ! I broke it ?
HD: Yes? what is it?
CDQ: The wireless won’t work.
HD: Is the light on the front of the computer on
CDQ: Yes
HD: Did you press the green button
CDQ:Yes — only about a gazillion times.
HD: What about F5?
CDQ:Yes — I keep getting a message that says I don’t have admin privileges.
HD: Oh…well no you don’t !
CDQ: So how do I fix it? and when will there be someone in the school to fix it?
HD: Oh the TSO’s will be there next month.
CDQ: Will they be able to fix it?
HD: No — it will be re-ghosted at the end of the year.
CDQ: Well ! we know how well that works — it is no use without the wireless.
HD: I will log your problem and we will get back to you.

Clearly the helpdesk was not very helpful !

A few days later I send an email, and consequently recieve a phone call from a lovely gentleman at the DER who tells me the tech department have told him the problem is “unique to my laptop”. Obviously this was met with a rather large guffaw from me — much to his surprise.

Latest developments: apparently the wireless connection will be  revamped with the next reimage of the machines which no-one knows when will happen…oh and the TSO’s have been fed to the wolves as the DET has not given them passwords for admin or suitable user manuals. YAY !!

Oh and after installing firefox … as soon as I connected to the DET LAN — it was wiped from the computer ! Now that is just plain rude !

Soooo….still playing and have discovered a multitude of  – useful programmes onboard for teachers and students to use ! …and some great resources online.

* http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/  Curriculum support has a lot of useful units of works (although some assume knowledge the majority of teachers would ssimply not have.

RESOURCES for Premier Elements 7

Fundamentals of PremierElemnts #7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK9Kn097Cqc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnx-5T3u5AM –  Forays into Animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81QT4e0dCPs&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NgtkdwvQ7Q&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzREx5a82w&feature=channel_page

http://www.animationsforvideo.com/html/adobe_premiere_elements_tutori.htm

 ADOBE TUTORIALS
http://www.adobetutorialz.com/categories/Creative-Suite-Family/
http://www.adobe.com/products/psprelements/explore/

DREAMWEAVER

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/

Well, I was sititng down to talk some more about the u software that is proving interesting yet unstable as it keeps crashing every few minutes….but when I tried to log onto the laptop today I found I may have succeeded in the challenge of the techie boys and finally broken it without even trying to !!

I have discovered a couple of annoying little problems:

1) Windows 7 does not come with Windows Movie Maker as part of the operating system — ironic considering it gives us Windows DVD Maker, and no disk drives, but extremely disappointing as WMM is a really handy free piece of software. Apparently you can edit with Windows Live but this doesn’t appear to be on it either. Really disappointing especially if like me you do lots of Video Production, stop motion, digital poetry etc….. We do however have Adobe Premier Elements — the dumbed down version of Premier.  I meet alot of teachers who claim to use Premier with Yr 7 and above but doubt they would use the to its full capabilities as the full version is a high end professional use software that teachers have no real need for. It will be nice to have software I don’t have to beg for and and works well  (I hope). If this is on the kids laptops it will be fantastic (see my other posts about the frustrations of digital video editing at school. (You can download the movie maker for Windows Live here: http://download.live.com/moviemaker

2) After successfully using the wireless connection at home for several days the wireless finder seems to have given up the ghost and no  amount of trouble shooting will repair the problem  – it appears to be  a Windows 7 problem and we get the message below:

As I type this at the dining room table watching Meerkat Manor we have bypassed the wireless by plugging in the ethernet cable – disappointing as it takes the portability out of a wireless laptop !

I have tried updating through the windows website but get this error message:

So….still playing with the Rudd Laptop and haven’t broken it yet although this morning I crashed Windows and the cute little music programme destined to give Finale notepad a run for it’s money (twice) !

Resolution is little hard to gauge — the super fine resolution (1026×728) is too small to read and although you can combat this with the magnifer or view in 125%  but it means you can’t fit as much n the screen. Obviously this will be better plugged into a data projector and rumour has it that the next rollout will have full size screens !

The laptop has USB ports on either side of its tiny body which is cool especially if you are right handed and want to use the mouse on the other side. My Mac was obviously design by a left hander as its 3 usb ports are on the left hand side so you either need a wireless mouse, or a long cable, or use the touch pad which I always revert to anyway.

The  windows activation screen — “contact administrator” is an annoying little popup as apparently we aren’t allowed to administrate our own laptops which is a little understandable — I wouldn’t trust most of us either but there are more than a few who know what they are doing.

Also, the flash player appears not to work (possibly due to Windows 7 — there is no download for Windows 7 on the Adobe website and it ain’t on the laptop that I can find) and there is no apparent popup stopper or adblock on the IE7.

So …. MUSE SCORE (http://musescore.org) – apparently a free programme but clearly unstable as I have just crashed it a second time and I had almost finished inputting my 16 bar melody and written the simple accompaniment to it — DAMN !! Lesson learnt — save often ! Doh !!

The programme is similar to Finale Notepad (which you have to now pay for)
* note entry is easy –  you use the keyborad, and changing note values s as simple as typing in anumerical number
* chords are simple to make (alt3 for a 3rd/alt4 for 4th and so on) but you need to know how they are constructed
* you can begin with a template or create tour own and add extra instruments as you go
* laptop on board sound is ok but not great — I will see if I can uload the xg-synth from Final Fantasy
* shortcuts are easy to use and simple alphnumerical entries — adding 3rd/4th etc
* there is an online manual and one in the programme — kids would benefit from a handout
* you can save as xml, midi, bitmap, and Lilypond (http://lilypond.org/web/index) the linux based msuic software — but not as a wav or mp3 for burning to cd or putting on your ipod.
* adding lyrics is fairly simple once you get the hang of it and editing it is simly hilight and delet or double click, adding space or a hyphon
* you can apparently plug in a midi cable and therefore a keyboard — but my adator is not usb to midi so I can’t test it yet ! (if it reads the piamo keyboard input better than finale I suggest you all chuck out finale !!)
* oh and I didn’t need to install fonts to look like notation — it seems installed already !!
* there doesn’t appear to be an import function for bitmap/jpeg or scanned music — but it did open the midi I downloaded and allow me to edit it, and print !!! NICE !!!!

All in all very user friendly !

Oooh — I just found the new paint in windows — very pretty !!!

Oh and “Print Screen” is FN+(Del)PrtSc !!

Now having said all that I have had to dump the laptop as it neared battery dump and come upstairs because the wireless connection decided to go kaput !! This may be our booster box or the laptop onboard wireless….hmmmmm !!

POSTSCRIPT — if you see lots of typos its cause the keybaord on the laptop is tiny and the screen tinier so I couldn’t see half of what I was typing…. yes I was wearing my glasses thankyou very much !!

So ….. I have just recieved my Rudd Laptop — or should I say notebook as the thing is tiny with a miniscule screen that is sure to send most of us not already vision affected by students crapy handwriting further vision impaired !! In fact if I am wearing my contacts I doubt that I will be able to read the screen at all. 

I have ranted and raved about he things for a while but I have to say that now i have got it up and running (a feat I am positive is beyond most teachers) and am sitting here on the first nght of the hols, at home, in front of the TV playing with it – it appears not too shabby.

Rumours about what they will and won’t do abound — the onboard software is actualy impressive — free stuff as audacity, some free music notation software, a stack of adobe stuff, itunes, some cool presentation software, Activ, and the Smartboard Notwbook software (thank god — activ is for babies), and heaps more. They are running Windows 7 (the one after vista) which is ok, but they only have 160g harddrives, and 2 gig off rsm which  am thinking is good for a little machine but we will see ! ooh and you can get stickers to change the colour of the outside — I am going to make a label for mine that says “I wish I was a mac” !

Mind you for those of us that have been using our own laptops for years — there is just the luxury of using a DET paid for one instead of spending our own money for them.

The techo boys have set me a challenge — “see if I can break it” so stay tuned and I will see how quick I can fry the insides !!

Apple must be smarting from not getting this gig!

Some of my Yr 10’s brought in their own analogue video camera to make their film. This presented us with a problem — how do we convert analogue to digital for editing on a computer.

Solution: we played the video camera into the set-top DVD Recorder  (a Panasonic DVD/VCR HDD Recorder/Player) in the library which was attached to the TV’s, then recorded (and finalised) the movie to a disk. I then took the resulting disk which was recorded as an actual playable DVD – VOB file, and converted the VOB file into an AVI file using WinAVI Convertor …. which I then saved to my portable hard-drive and brought back to school to put on the school computer for editing.

HICCUP: — the school computers would not play the AVI file because we didn’t have the correct codecs installed so after an urgent page of the tech boys — the correct codecs were downloaded and the students were ready to go !!!

I remembered there was a cool plug in for this blog called TALKR — it can be found at http://www.talkr.com/index.html – time for experimenting I think !!

Finally after a term and a half — losing Yr10 to this, that and the other thing, tip-toeing around the use of the multi media room for special needs exams, struggling with the outdated equipment in the multimedia room, and with software that is past it’s prime (and outmoded by at least 4 newer versions) — one group out of 5 groups in Year 10 Drama has finished their film.

It was ready to render (create) as a DVD last term but we ran out of time due to usage constraints on the room and the fact we only have a license for the particular software we used on the 4 computers in the multi media room. This term with fresh enthusiasm we attempted to complete the project. However after the re-ghosting of the machines during the holidays something went awry with the programme and it would not recognise the project files so after much blaspheming, and scheming…no … make that screaming, the group, much to their chagrin, re-edited their 10 minute film (which incidentally, they did amazingly swiftly). Then, to our horror the software failed to recognise the project file for a second time….even with a reinstall. With the files on S-Drive where I could access them easily from any computer I installed on the local drive of my staffroom machine the Pinnacle program…same error message!!

After some playing and lateral thinking I tricked the software into thinking it had the files (which it did because I could see them behind the dialog box that said it couldn’t find them) by simply closing the dialogue box and not acknowledging that it didn’t think the file were there. (Very technological!!)

I then resaved the file under a different name, and attempted to render (create) a ‘VCD’ – video compact disk, which is the format between CD and DVD that most people don’t know about. Remember I am now on my staffroom desktop computer and I soon discover I have no CD burner!! No problem! I render the file to an ‘avi’ which surprisingly the staffroom machine only takes 2 hours to do. I say surprisingly because I know if I was on the multimedia computers it would take about 4 hours because they are low on hard-drive space and ram, but at least they have cd-burners. The ‘avi’ file finishes and I think “SUCCESS!”….only the ‘avi’ file doesn’t work and the pc gives a message that it is in ‘chunks’!? I’ve never seen this message and after a little more thought decide to re-render the project as an mpeg file so I can convert it to ‘vob’ files to create a DVD. This time ‘SUCCESS’ for real!!!

The next step is simple (or so you would think): find a computer in the school that has a dvd burner in it then use software such as NERO to convert the ‘mpeg’ to ‘vob’ files for DVD creation. Whilst DVD burners appear to be found sporadically throughout the school the software to complete the task I want to complete is almost unheard of. I know the library assistant has a DVD burner in her machine because the previous day I taught her how to use it so I go into the library thinking I am almost finished but after a quick play with 2 of the burning software programs on her machine I quickly discover they will copy data and cd’s but won’t do the conversion I need and although there appears to be conversion software on the computer it clearly is only accessible to certain people as the machine can not find the folder for the conversion program and a quick browse of the program folder on the c-drive indicate its doesn’t appear to exist …back to the drawing board. After a search of the school…for similar hardware and software together on the one machine…to no avail — I copy the ‘mpeg’ file to my personal portable 60gig hard drive, after dumping a pile of folders on my desktop to make room, and proceed home at the end of the day. Total wasted time: 4-5 hours all up!!

Once home I convert the ‘mpeg’ file to ‘vob’ files using “WinAviConvertor” (a simple but useful piece of software you can buy on the internet for a pittance), then burn the ‘vob’ files to a DVD using NERO which came as OEM software with one of my DVD burners. Total time – 10-15minutes.

Then, so I can place the video on the intranet for all to see I convert the ‘mpeg’ to ‘wmv’ which halves the size of the file so I can put it on with out taking up too much drive space, copy it to my portable hard-drive and put in on the intranet through editing my webpage in dreamweaver. Note: I tried rendering to streaming video but the Pinnacle program although capable of this froze.

Humour of the day:

Explaining some of my problems about codecs, ‘avi’s’ and dvd burning in this schools technological environment to a group of teachers one particular staff member piped up with the question:” Is this with the Mac’s?”

a)      Our school has been single platform (PC) for 5 years and

b)      You don’t have these problems on a Mac!

I’m baaaaaaaaack !!

Here is my new wiki:

http://carlodramaqueen.wikispaces.com/

It is a work in progress !!