Just 13 things - Tablet specific

Five things to try on your HP 2730p tablet. (Rather specific I know, but there are reasons.)

9.)  Play games.

The best way to get used to the pen is to do something fun. The games section has “Inkball”, which is mildly amusing (I ended up playing it for a ½ hour, but I’m also easily amused).

10.) Check out the Microsoft Experience Pack for Tablet PC (located in “All Programs” after you hit the Start button). There’s Ink Art, Ink Crossword, and the “Snipping Tool”.  The snipping tool actually quite useful, I use it to take ‘clips’ of articles or pictures I’m reading and stick them into OneNote 2007 if I’m doing research.

11.) Download your own “Experience Pack”.  As an operating system, XP is fairly old. As a result, there is a whole whack of resources that have been created for it, that you can download and install. Remember, to install anything, you will need to be logged in as the Admin user on your tablet.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx and take a look at what’s available. There’s art tools, a drawing animator, a physics illustrator, a bunch of games, a Music Composition tool, and a bunch more.  My personal favourite is the “My Font Tool”, which allows you to make your own font – in your own handwriting! I managed to fool my Bio12 class for a week that I finally learned how to write in a straight line by preparing some notes in “Neufeld Font” on the Smartboard.

12.) Explore all the buttons and settings.

When I got my first laptop, I noticed that whenever I was typing, occasionally the mouse would ‘jump’ around and I’d end up typing in the middle of a previous sentence without realizing it. This was frustrating, and I thought my laptop was defective until I finally found the culprit – my large thumbs. While typing my thumbs would hit the Touchpad.

If this happens to you, there is a way to shut off the touch pad when you’re not using it.  Press the Function key located on the bottom left:

And then press the F5 key at the same time, located at the very top leftish:

The light above the F5 key should turn on, and be amber in colour. This is to remind you that the Touchpad is off.  Since you have a pen, you essentially already have a mouse, and don’t need a Touchpad unless you prefer it. I hate the touchpad with a passion usually displayed by two year olds towards their vegetables. To turn it back on again, hit the same key combination (fn + F5) again, and the amber indicator light should shut off.

13.) Turn on the light.

Lastly, I don’t know if you noticed, but your laptop comes with a light to illuminate your keyboard at night. I think it’s kind of unnecessary and gimmicky (and therefore kind of cool), but in case you haven’t noticed it, press the little square button at the top of your screen as indicated.  The light should pop out, and illuminate your keyboard. Just push the light back in to shut it off (I have no idea how quickly this drains the battery – I assume relatively quickly).

I thought that might be of use to some of you – it took me awhile to figure it out. I still haven’t found the off control for the nub (labelled “Pointstick” in the diagram), so if anyone knows how to shut it off, let me know.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Just 2 Things - Part I

A major project kept me away from blogging for a long time - luckily that's slowly winding down. Part of that project involves a focus-year for professional development for our school on technology. If it seems odd that I'm blogging about the importance of reading blogs...this was also emailed to my colleagues. Hopefully I don't end up in somebody's permenant blacklist for spam.

This is for those teachers that would like a head start on their pro-d, before classes, marking, and the usual marathon starter gun goes off. Funnily, most of the things you can do as 'pro-d' also qualify as an enjoyable summer's afternoon, so in this series of blog posts I will very roughly outline a few suggestions. Pick and choose or ignore.

1.) Start Reading blogs.

Whether it's in education, or your own interests, simply becoming more familiar with the ever increasing blogosphere would be a great investment in time. There are is a blog for every interest, some of my personal favorites are Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, Skepchick, and Skepticblog, all of which keep me loosely up to date on science and critical thinking and any Internet memes that happen to be flying about. And if a student asks me an off-the-wall question about the Moon Hoax, I might have a chance of answering it.

Educationally, the following is my current list of education-based blogs that I'm reading:

• 2¢ Worth
• A Plethora of Technology
  
• always learning
  
• Change.org's Education Blog
  
• Countdown to Teachhub
  
• Dangerously Irrelevant
  
• Generation YES Blog
  
• HeyJude
  
• Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech
  
• James McConville
  
• Moving at the Speed of Creativity
  
• open thinking
  
• Practical Theory
  
• The Fischbowl
  
• The Thinking Stick
  
• Weblogg-ed
  

Of course, I haven't been doing this long enough for my list to necessarily be a good guide, but there are many other places for recommendations. Sylvia, from the Generation Yes blog published a list (Bookmark This!), and for science and critical thinking www.resurch.org is a wonderful list from the author of the SkepDad blog, and of course as previously mentioned Discover Magazine and Seed Media Group both host many quality science blogs.

I also have my own blog, which is either linked in this email, or you're reading this article in it. It contains such amazing advice I find I often have to hid it amid poor grammar, spelling and logic just to ensure Blogger isn't overrun with readers.

You may have noticed a particular theme running through my recommendations, vaguely along the lines of science-based resources. On the Internet, however, if you can think of a resource, somebody else has either invented it, or written about it. From the Blog "Making Teachers Nerdy", I found a much better list than my own: "Educational Blogs You Should Be Investigating", covering a wide variety of interests, plus 50 Must-Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers, and focusing on educational technology, check out 20+ Must-Read Education Technology Blogs. Beyond that, it would be useful if, having found some great blogs in your own subject area, share their recommendations here in the comments section for everyone else.

So, when your significant other mentions that some chore needs to be done, or certain relatives need visiting, you can slump your shoulders slightly and claim that you've already got some critical work to do for next year. And then snuggle up with your laptop/desktop and some good reads. My wife is probably far too busy to actually read my posts, so I should be able to still get away with this for some time yet.

2.) Write your own blog.

You didn't think blogs created themselves did you? And you don't think your own thoughts are important enough to publish? Nonsense. If everyone had that kind of attitude, the Web wouldn't be the kind of place it is today!

Seriously, even if you never intend to blog, investigating how it's done is useful in and of itself. I know of two people that write private blogs, viewable only by themselves, as it can never be 'found' in the house, and is accessible for writing anywhere there is an internet connection. I write a family blog with family photos that's only my immediate family can see. Whether you write for an audience of one or one million, or are even just exploring the process, set up an account and start.

There are many free alternatives for blogging, obviously I'm most familiar with Blogger, but there's also Live Journal and WordPress as two others that immediately come to my uninformed mind. Like always, somebody else has already created a great list of 40+ Free Blog Hosts.

Of course, I can't quite leave it at that without a word of warning. As will be true of anything that involves people putting content on the web, rather than just receiving content, use good judgement. As a rough guideline, if you wouldn't want to see it attributed to you on a public billboard, don't put it on the web.

Remember, nothing suggested is mandatory. If you find one blog with one article that was useful, you're good.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Student Accommodations and Teacher Resource update

A colleague made a comment about the increasing number of students seeking testing for learning style differences. The issues of over-testing, undiagnosed learning style differences keep coming up, but I don't think we've actually examined the real problem.

These tests are, first of all, quite expensive. A full psychoeducational assessment runs $1500 to $2000, and there's no guarantee that anything useful will learned. Being informed that instructions should be repeated, and that the student would benefit from the use of a computer, (or that when confused they will become anxious) seems like a painfully expensive way to state the obvious. On the other hand, a student may discover that they learn more effectively if they use visual imagery rather than auditory cues. Incredibly hard-working assistants and specialists can then help and guide the student what techniques, tricks, and tools will be the best for them. Adjudications, such as extra-time, to a reader for tests, or being exempt from learning a second language, now fall into place. It's an expensive hoop, to gain access to resources that should be available to everyone.

It's been bothering me a lot this week, but given that our government is more concerned with giving people placebos perhaps I shouldn't be surprised this problem hasn't been seriously tackled yet.

Lastly, the teaching resources I have come across this week.

100 ways to use ICT in the classroom - Interactive whiteboards, google docs, & pocket video camera.

Awesome stories - Stories and biographies that link to primary sources.

Blood typing "game" - Reviews ABO and Rh blood typing.

Science flash animations.

Article on students using interactive white boards.

Online tool for creating graphs and charts.

Smart board revolution - resources of interactive white boards.

Tutorials for smart boards.

Easily created games for practicing vocab or spelling.

Even more Smart Board resources. The link takes you to some math resources, but on the main page there are resources for many areas.

Wordle - create a quick summary of important terms for any piece of work. Paste in any block of text, and a picture of the words, with each word enlarged in proportion to how often it occurs.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School