M.A. Hochberg’s Technology for Teaching

Making technology easier for people

Wednesday
12/17/2008

2:34 pm

More things not to worry about? More Disk Utility confusion.

In 10.3 , there were “spurious permissions,” false positives when repairing permissions with Disk Utility. See http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/hochberg_m/2008/09/09/when-repairing-permissions-keeps-fixing-the-same-things/ In 10.5, they are “accurate but not a cause for concern.”

The two types of messages I see most often begin with “Warning: SUID file…” or “ACL found but not expected on…”

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448

Wednesday
12/17/2008

11:06 am

Broken headset?

Sometimes headsets are obviously broken—frayed wires, exposed copper, dangling earpieces. Too often the “broken headset” is quite repairable, however. The most common fixes are:

  1. Turn the sound back on. Check the volume control icon. Is it muted or turned way down?
  2. Is the plug in the correct socket? Often it is plugged into the “audio in” instead of “audio out”. Since this often happened on our desktop computers, I covered the audio in port with a piece of blue paper. Audio out port
  3. Is the plug in all the way? If it is not, the sound continues to come from the speakers.
Thursday
12/11/2008

3:51 pm

How many programs go on a new Teacher computer?

If you guessed more than 20, you were close. My current list has 24 programs to be installed!

  1. Accelerated Reader
  2. Adobe Flash Player
  3. Adobe Reader
  4. Adobe Shockwave
  5. All The Right Type
  6. Avervision
  7. Clicker Software
  8. Comic Life
  9. Desktop Curtain
  10. Fetch
  11. Firefox
  12. Flip for Mac
  13. Google Earth
  14. iLife 08
  15. iWork 08
  16. Kid Pix3x
  17. Kidspiration
  18. Math Facts in a Flash
  19. MS Office
  20. Read Naturally
  21. Smartboard/Notebook
  22. Stuffit
  23. Tech Tool Deluxe
  24. Virus Scan

While some of them, such as Tech Tools, are only used by me, others are actively used by teachers.  It saves so much time and frustration to have the programs installed and ready to go when needed.

This is especially true of Shockwave and Flash. No one likes standing in front of a class saying “It worked on my computer at home!”

Monday
12/08/2008

3:47 pm

Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer too small to read?

If the text on a web page is too small to read, you can quickly change the size.

To make the text larger:

  • On a Mac, press the command (apple) key AND the plus key.
  • In Windows, press the Window key AND the plus key.
  • Repeat until you can easily read the text.

To make the text smaller:

  • On a Mac, press the command (apple) key AND the minus key.
  • In Windows, press the Window key AND the minus key.
  • Repeat until it is a comfortable size.

This works in Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer and is especially helpful with user name and password boxes.

Thursday
12/04/2008

10:54 am

Free Mac Tutorials

Apple has some excellent tutorials on their website. Check out

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/

to learn how wireless works, how to change the dock, using Finder etc.

There are also tours of iLife ’08 and iWork 08

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/guidedtours/ilife.html

http://www.apple.com/iwork/