M.A. Hochberg’s Technology for Teaching

Making technology easier for people

Tuesday
10/30/2007

10:05 am

A Windows friendly newsletter for beginners

There are thousands of newsletters available on the web, for every possible interest (don’t ask how many “Harry Potter” newsletters & groups I read!).

One of my favorite newsletters for computer beginners is Ask the Computer Lady. Her newsletters are friendly, simple, and direct to the point. It’s great for people just getting started or for those teaching beginners. She writes in plain English and doesn’t assume you have the latest and greatest in technology.

http://asktcl.com/

The Computer Lady

Tuesday
10/30/2007

8:52 am

Bookmark Website for School Staff Members

After last week’s Oaks/Tesa training, I realized that I couldn’t put off making a bookmark site for our staff, similar to our Student bookmark page.  Here is the result:

http://www.guest.portaportal.com/mlbvstaff 

Like all sites, it started with just one or two categories but it is already growing by leaps & bounds.

Having bookmarks available all in one place, no matter which computer you are on, is a pleasure. It makes things so much easier and faster. Best of all, it is easy to share with others.

The Internet has been an amazing place. I’ve been using it for over 20 years and messages and ideas that I sent out when I started still come back to visit me.  I had a message from some one in South Africa who wanted to know about a project that I did in 1988!

Monday
10/15/2007

8:43 am

Mac Friendly Newsletters

Two of my favorite Mac newsletters are from Small Dog Electronics. They are fun, easy to read & very useful.

http://www.smalldog.com/subscribe.html

Tech Tails is the more technical newsletter while Kibbles & Bytes is a more general newsletter. This is also where I hear about useful Widgets for my MacBook.

Today, I posted a blog page that is an article from their newsletter about transferring files from a Windows to a Mac.

Even better, here is a tip from the latest newsletter. Check out the screen shot below. Click on it to open in another window.

Screen Capture Tip

Thursday
10/11/2007

12:40 pm

User Unfriendly Programs

Most programs are reasonably good at making things easy or at least understandable for an ordinary person. Sometimes, though, one wonders just what the program designers were thinking when:

  1. The icon for both the teacher version and the student version are identical. There is not even a name on the icon so even an adult would have trouble telling the difference.
  2. You have to have one license per school but can’t have more than one school on a computer. Don’t specialists and district staff work at more than one school?
  3. Your program license allows you to install it on 10 computers—but you have to have the sole program disc in a computer to run it.
  4. A “site” or “classroom” license is limited to only 10 users at a time. While most of us would love a class size of 10, I don’t know of any school that routinely has classes that small.
  5. A program includes many audio discs with disc names of “Disc 1” and track names of “track 1.” Titling and submitting CD and track names, something that only needs to be done once, would help Windows and Mac users everywhere.

I’m sure that there are many others like these out there but this is only the collection from the past month.

Tuesday
10/09/2007

10:49 am

Newspaper Comics in Spanish

While cleaning out my mailbox, I found a website that has newspaper comics in Spanish.

http://www.gocomics.com/sitemap.phtml

Click on the name of the comic to get today’s strip.

You can also sign up to get them emailed to you.

Tuesday
10/09/2007

10:23 am

Best Music for Typing

I’ve always played classic music when the students are doing their typing lessons. After talking with our music teacher, Chris Dobson, recently, I’ve replaced the general classical music with Bach and Vivaldi.

Looking at some of the research, it is amazing how much music affects our ability to learn and remember. Check out any of Oliver Sack’s books, especially “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”