M.A. Hochberg’s Technology for Teaching

One of my pet peeves was that there was no way to add the calendar date on the menu bar. I finally found a way to do that without adding another program to my computer. Note: This works on 10.4 or later only.
http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-tip/display-the-date-on-the-menubar-316029.php

The directions are fairly clear but here are a few more tips.

• You can insert the date before or after the time.
• You can add spaces or ascii characters around either the date or time. I added a couple spaces between the date and time and added square brackets around the date. This improves the readability. Mine looks like this:

• It took a couple of tries to get it looking the way I liked it. Each time I made a change, however, I had to go back to the Date & Time in System Preferences and uncheck “Show Day of the Week”.

I think I will include this hack in the next golden images that I make. This should save a lot of “What’s today’s date?” questions from students.

We recently had a problem with file-sharing on our network. After we resolved the problem, I sent out a message reminding staff members not to do peer to peer file sharing.

Here’s the message that I sent:

Peer-to-peer file sharing is not allowed on 4J computers or on personal computers using the 4J network. This includes programs such as Limewire, Bit Torrent, etc. Due to copyright violations, security issues and bandwidth issues, sharing should not be turned on.

You can have any of the programs on your computer, even Limewire, etc. You just can’t have them sharing files from the 4J network.

iTunes and iPhoto must have file-sharing turned off. (I make sure that it is turned off when I set up the computers.)

If you turn on file-sharing when your computer is at home, you must turn it off before the computer returns to school.

If your computer is sharing files, it can be permanently blocked from using the 4J network.

The complete district policy is at
http://www.4j.lane.edu/cis/appropriate_use

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

~~~~~

Someone later asked me what “peer to peer file sharing” meant. Here’s my reply:

“Peer-to- peer” means the same thing in computers as it does with students: students who help other students are often called “peer helpers.” With computers, it means that one computer is helping (or passing information) to directly to another computer. No computer server (or teacher) is involved.

While the process itself is legal, it is often used to illegally copy music, movies, etc., to someone else. It also uses up a lot of the network’s capacity to send information. That means when someone is doing peer-to-peer file sharing with their computer, it slows down everyone else’s access to check their email, go on the Internet, or print.

~~~~

The bottom line? If you don’t know, ASK!

Thank you, Mary F, for asking me what “peer to peer file sharing” means.

One of the best summaries of what to do with your blog is from another blogger, of course. Here is my favorite article. It is by Lorelle of WordPress, the company that makes this blogging tool.

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/what-do-i-do-with-my-new-wordpresscom-blog/

Happy Blogging!

There are lots of programs and tools to capture sound from your computer and transfer it to another format. In this case, an iMic and Final Vinyl software made it quick and easy. Inserting tracks and burning the final result to a CD went quickly and smoothly.

The costs were right too. An iMic runs about $40, the software was free (Final Vinyl for Macs and Audacity for Windows or Mac), and a connecting cable was all that was needed. That and a lot of time.

Setting up the equipment for transfer doesn’t take long. After the initial setup is done, you need to do is adjust the sound levels and push record.

Once the tape is transferred, the next step is to add track markers. You can let the software do the work or put them in yourself. If you want track names, then those have to be typed in when you save the finished capture.

The final step is to drag the sound files into iTunes, putting them in a playlist, and burning them to CD.

A little time consuming but well worth it for those precious, fragile cassette tapes and LPs.

Laptops that get handled as much as those in elementary schools do get a lot of grime and fingerprints. Most fingerprints will come off the screen with a soft, water dampened cloth. Dirt and grime, as well as crayon marks come off the outside with a damp Mr. Clean Stain Eraser.

The one thing that doesn’t come off, though, is clear tape. Ordinary clear “Scotch” tape can stick on there as solidly as a barnacle. It even shreds the Stain Eraser to bits.

While searching for something stronger than my fingernails, I found a hard plastic eraser. A white Staedtler Mars plastic eraser does a wonderful job of removing tape from a laptop without harming the case. With just a few strokes, it was all gone.

Yeah for clean laptops!

On the laptop:
When the light on the plug is green, the battery is full charged.
When the light on the plug is orange, the battery is being charged.
When the light on the plug is off, the batteries are not charging.
In a COW:
If all the laptops in a row of a COW show a green or orange light on the power plug, they are charged or charging.

If all the laptops in a row have no lights, they are not charging.

If only some of the laptops have a light and the others are dark, then the plug is not pushed in all the way. First check the plug going into the laptop. If that is tight, then check the power plug in the back of the laptop.

The lights on the battery itself
The lights on the bottom of the laptop shows approximately how much power the battery has.
4 lights = 100% charged
3 lights = 75% charged
2 lights = 50% charged
1 light = 25% charged
no lights = battery has no charge and must be plugged in.

Keep in mind that a “full charge” does not mean it will last 3 or 4 hours, especially if the battery is more than a year old. After 2 years, a “full charge” may only mean 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Finally, how long a charge lasts has a lot to do with how many and which programs you are running. Word processing and programs that do not connect to either the Internet or network use less power than searching the web or working with graphics.

I almost put the word “calibrate” in the title of this post. It is the correct term but it sounds so intimidating. Calibrating sounds precise and technical and that you need special tools and expertise to do it.

In this case, all it means is charging your laptop battery, letting it rest, draining it, etc. To keep your battery in good shape and extend its life, you should calibrate it every six months or so.

Here is a simple explanation of what to do. It’s from one of my favorite newsletters, Small Dog Electronics.

How to Calibrate Your MacBook or MacBook Pro Battery
By Dawn@smalldog.com

PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD), MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Pro (17-inch)

With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.

2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.

3. Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.

4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.

5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.

6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Tip: When the battery reaches “empty,” the computer is forced into sleep mode. The battery actually keeps back a reserve beyond “empty,” to maintain the computer in sleep for a period of time. Once the battery is truly exhausted, the computer is forced to shut down. At this point, with the safe sleep function introduced in the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) computers, the computer’s memory contents have been saved to the hard drive. When power is restored, the computer returns itself to its pre-sleep state using the safe sleep image on the hard drive.

From Apple’s Knowledge Base article #86284:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284

Some projectors, such as certain Hitachi models, let you know when it is time to clean the air filter.

Others projectors, such as certain Epson models, simply tell you that it is overheating and past time to clean the air filter.

While projector manuals say to clean the filter after every 100 hours of use, it’s a good idea to check it every month, especially if your room gets dusty or if you have an outside door or keep your windows open.

How you clean the filter varies with each projector but the basic principals are the same.
1.    Turn off the projector and let it cool down.
2.    When cool, unplug the power cord.
3.    Find the filter. It is usually on the side or bottom of the projector. It looks like a thin, flat sponge, usually covered by a plastic grid.
4.    Remove the filter. On Epson projectors, the grid is attached to the filter. On other projectors, the filter and grid are separate pieces.
5.    Clean the filter by either vacuuming it or washing it under running water. If you wash it, let it dry thoroughly.
6.    Before replacing the filter, look inside the opening when the filter was. If it is dusty, vacuum it out also.
7.    Replace the filter. Plug in the power cord and you are done.

Let’s keep it simple. Here is a sample screen.

Skitch, a public beta release from the same company that produced Comic Life, is quick and easy to use.
Capture the screen immediately, use a countdown timer, or even use your webcam. Once the image is caught, you can draw or type on it, erase your mistakes, and quickly drag it into an email. It automatically saves your work & even has a history function.

http://skitch.com/

David, thanks for telling me about it!

Nothing is so frustrating as having trouble installing a program that you have used for many years. It took four tries to get Kid Pix installed recently. The reason? The hard drive had a blank space and a / in its name. The program was looking for a subdirectory called “blank space.”

Some programs warn you about naming conventions. For example, the current version of Apple’s Print Center warns you that some printers have problems with spaces in print queue names. Most, however, do not.

When naming things on a computer:

• Use a name that will help you to find it again
• Keep the name as short as is comfortable for you. While your computer may allow very long file names, you will run into problems with communicating with another computer or sending a file in email. 36 numbers, letters, and spaces is about as long as you want to use.
• Use numbers, letters, and underscores to name a file. Most modern computers do not have a problem with spaces in a name but that is not true of everything, including printers, scanners, external hard drives, etc.
• Don’t use special characters such as ?, /.|,\, “, -, *. Yes, some computers do well with them. The problem occurs when communicating with another person, computer, or machine.

Follow these naming rules and you will have much less trouble with your computer.