Technology Tools Week 4

I viewed an InTime video called "Opera on the Net: Collaboration and Performance." This project allowed students to work together with a school in Sweden to create an original opera via e-mail and video conferencing. This assignment was created in 2001 and seems like it was ahead of its time.

Our school received a grant about 5 years ago to install distance learning equipment. We now have the ability to talk to people all over the world. Our students now collaborate with others around the state and they have participated in activities around the world. This project is a long-term assignment and allows a greater connection between students than what our students currently experience. The assignment seems to be very involved and requires a lot of preparation from the teacher, like taking a summer course from the Metropolitan Opera Guild. It seems to be as much a collaboration between teachers as it is between students.

Students took on roles to develop an opera, from music, to costumes, to staging. In the end, the students from Sweden flew to the US to rehearse and present the opera to the community. What a great opportunity for all involved.

Technology Tools Week 3

Week 3 brings some good resources for me. This week's spreadsheet assignments forced me to use and try things in Google Docs that I had not yet tried. After trying it, I can now comfortably go to my teachers and tell them what I like and what I do not. I feel better about my knowledge of the product and my ability to help them.

NetTrekker was also very helpful to me. I have been researching web sites with lesson plans for my teachers for a number of years. NetTrekker was a great resource. In the past, I have recommended sites like Teacher's Domain, Curriki, and MIT's Open Courseware (specifically for the high school). This is a much better resource than any of my pages. This is something I would like to look in to as a future resource. We have plenty of resources in our library and labs for students like databases, computers, and books. We do not have nearly as many resources for our teachers.

Once again, I found the readings to be the most difficult thing for me. I am not one who learns by reading and answering questions. I am a much more hands on person.

Technology Tools Week 2

Again, this week's class offered up some interesting new technologies. The biggest thing for me, and I would bet for others, is using a different search engine. Most of us probably use one search engine for everything, usually Google. I was not aware that there were so many different search engines out there. While I have used many search engines like Lycos, Google, WebCrawler, Yahoo, and Bing, I didn't know about the others. A quick look in Wikipedia under the term search engine listed all known search engines by their creation date. Very interesting list.

After researching that list for a while, I chose to try out the engine called Cuil (pronounced cool). I chose it mainly because its name interested me. While it is a good search engine and its results format is different than Google, it is not as thorough as Google. I may try some meta-search engines like Dogpile later this week. If it can really search many different search engines and get better results, that is great.

As for the online word processing services, I was already pretty familiar with those services. There were really not any surprises in this area. I am now excited that I have an entire suite of online services. Between Google Docs and some of the others we learned about I now have presentation, word, graphic, and spreadsheet services available to me. While they are not as advanced as something like Microsoft Office, they work for me. I am a basic user, not an advanced one. For the most part, these services will work fine for me and I am looking forward to sharing this information with my teachers.

Technology Tools Week 1

So, it has been a long time since I posted anything here. This week we started a new class and had a lot of new technologies to research and explore. I am going to focus on the two services I used, 280slides.com and toondoo.com.

The first assignment I did was the presentation software review. I tried a couple of different programs, including GoogleApps but was not satisfied with any of them. Then I ran across 280slides.com. The first thing that appealed to me with this service was its look and layout. It tried to emulate the Mac look and feel, which is something I was familiar with. It was extremely easy to use. It only took a few minutes to create a presentation, insert images, and share the presentation with others. 280slides.com does not have its own sharing built in but they have a link to slideshare.net which I used for sharing. This took the longest time because the slide show had to be rendered between 280slides and slideshare. It took about 3 or 4 minutes to share the presentation.

The next assignment was to create a project in a graphics program. I had heard a lot about Mr. Picassohead but after using it I ran into a couple of problems with sharing. So, I moved on to toondoo.com. This was very easy to use. I created a 3 panel comic strip and shared it within minutes. It has some nice features for working with graphics (flip image, enlarge, shrink, etc.). One of our computer classes currently uses a program called Comic Life to create basic comic strips. This seems to do many of the same things for free.

Overall, I enjoyed these two assignments. We are in the process of reviewing our school licenses. Online software is going to play a big part in this process. Things like GoogleApps and other software mentioned here are nice alternatives to programs that are licensed per machine.

How Does This Course Connect To Me?

This course was a big benefit to me.  This opened me up to some technologies that I did not previously have experience with.  The Linux assignment is the one that I will spend the most time researching.  My school is a 97% Mac school while the rest is all Windows XP.  The cost for licensing Mac and Windows operating systems is quite large.  Every upgrade costs about $30/machine and with over 400 computers, that adds up fast.  The first time I installed Linux (Ubuntu) I was quite surprised.  I was not expecting to see such a familiar environment. The software was fast and reliable and very easy to pick up.  

Ubuntu also came with Open Office.  This is something that I read about but had never used.  I immediately downloaded Open Office on both Mac and Windows machines to see how well it functioned.  I now have teachers and students testing this software.  I am contemplating switching from Microsoft Office to Open Office.  This will be a big money saver to the district.  There are still a few bugs to work out but so far, I am rather happy with the software.  I am also talking with other school districts who use this office suite to see what their experiences have been.

I am in an unusual position.  Most of the items discussed in this class are things that I already do.  While a knowledge of anti-virus software and data backup plans are important to everyone, they are things that I do every day.  It was good for me to review different software options and for me to revisit my backup plan.  These are things that, as long as things are working, I take for granted.  I should regularly schedule a review of these things to make sure our network is protected.

So, will I use this information in the future?  Right now, I hope so.  I may not move forward with Linux right away but Open Office is something that I will certainly consider putting into place for the next school year.  At this point, I cannot think of anything that I would change.

I Have a Virus

Viruses. An interesting subject for us Mac users. Until I started my job in a school with a mixed Mac/PC environment, I didn't know much about viruses except they were something that PC users got. Well, that is still the case, at least for now. While some small scale viruses are out there for the Mac, over 99% of the active viruses are made for the PC. They cause systems to slow to a crawl, pass along personal information, and destroy data. Not a fun time for a PC user if you get one.

So, how do you go about protecting yourself against viruses? Even though I use a Mac, I still use some sort of anti-virus protection. For a Mac user there are not a lot of options. There is the free, ClamXAV software, but in my experience, that has not been effective. iAntiVirus for Mac is also a free program but they do offer a solution for $29.95 that includes 24x7 support.

A better solution is the Norton Internet Security for Mac. This is a multi-function software package. It not only protects you against viruses, but it also includes a firewall to protect from online intruders, identity protection, and has an option for those Mac users who dual boot into Windows. The software is an easy install but setup of each component can take some time.

To run this software on the Mac, you need to have a machine that runs Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher on a PowerPC or Intel chip, a CD/DVD drive, at least 256 MB RAM and 150 MB of hard drive space available. An Internet connection is also required for live update which will download updates to the software as well as the latest virus definitions. The cost for this software is $79.99 to purchase and $39.99/year to renew the service. You may be able to find the initial purchase cheaper if you shop around online. At the time of this post, Amazon was offering this software for $36.45.

For Windows users, Norton also makes Internet Security although if you want to include identity protection in the package, you need to upgrade to Norton 360. The cost for Norton 360 for Windows is also $79.99 but I found it online for $49.99. This package includes a license for up to 3 household PC's. Like the Mac version, this requires a yearly renewal.

Also for Windows users, AVG Anti-Virus is available. This company offers a free basic anti-virus program. For $54.99 you can upgrade to AVG Internet Security. This gives you many of the same features that the Norton 360 gives you.

McAfee is another company that offers a complete solution for Windows. It does offer a Mac solution, but only in its enterprise software. Its Windows solution offers the same thing that Norton does and it only costs $49.99 for the first year. I have used this program before and, while it works fine, its interface is not as easy to use and Norton. It also seemed to slow the computer down.

To these products you will need to have a Windows computer running Windows XP (2000 for AVG), preferrably 512 MB RAM, and 500 MB of disk space (300 for AVG). A CD/DVD drive is also required.

Cnet.com said that Norton 360 was the best complete package for the price for Windows users. I found that AVG was a bit easier to setup but the Norton software did receive better reviews. While there are other solutions than what is mentioned here, this represents some of the best products on the market.

Disaster Data Recovery and Your System - Work

What kind of plan needs to be used in a work setting to safely protect your data from hardware failure and viruses? It is a similar process to a home backup but on a much bigger scale. Many of the same methods are used but a greater storage capacity is usually needed.

In our school setting, all user accounts are stored on a server. Even teachers and staff who use laptops have their documents synchronized to a server. So, in most cases, the servers are the main thing to backup. These servers will host things like e-mail, blogs, calendars, library catalogs, and student information systems, as well as all teacher and student files.

For both Mac and Windows servers there are some solutions for backup software. EMC Software's Retrospect is a good piece of software that has both Mac and Windows clients. This software is installed on one machine and other machines on the network have client software installed. The main installation connects to the clients and backs up the desired data. It will backup SQL databases and e-mail (Exchange) servers. Usually, this server is connected to a tape drive, a packet drive, or other storage device.

Like a home user, some of this data might need to be backed up outside the building. Student information and financial data can be backed up to a DVD on a weekly basis and stored in a vault or somewhere else off site.

A third option would be to backup the data using online methods. Again Mozy's business version, Mozy Pro, would work. The software is priced based on the number of servers and storage space required.

This method requires more work by the administrator. Not only does one need to check on the status of the backups, but they need to make sure each server is connecting to the main server properly, and they probably also need to change tapes in the backup drive.

Disaster Data Recovery and Your System - Personal

There are many methods and philosophies on backing up your data. These may differ between home and work but the quest is the same...protect yourself against a disaster, and, if a disaster happens, to be able to recover your files.

My philosophy is simple. Backup your data in more than one place and keep those backups in different locations. Backing up to a computer or drive in your home or place of work will not help you if a fire swept through the building. Keep at least one backup set off site, either on CD, DVD, or online.

At home things are much simpler than a work environment. Depending on the platform you use for computing (Windows, Mac OS, Linux) the method and utilities available for backup and protection are different. Most backup software will require an external drive connected by firewire or USB, as well as a computer with a recent operating system, probably Windows XP and up and Mac OS X 10.4 and up. First, come up with a plan for the backup. Ask yourself, what do you need to backup and what tools do you have or can you afford so you can backup adequately?

At home, I use a Mac. Within the Mac OS there is a backup feature called Time Machine. This backup software will backup to an external drive or over a wireless connection to a Time Capsule, an Apple product that is a wireless transmitter with a hard drive built-in. For me, this software is adequate for backing up locally. It is fast and keeps many copies of documents so if I need to go back to a previous version, it is easy to do so.

For a Mac user, there are not many backup utilities available. Aside from time machine there are various disk cloners out there that will copy your hard drive contents to an external drive. Many of these are free, including Carbon Copy Cloner.

Windows also has a built-in backup program. You can use this program to backup to a floppy (probably not a good solution), a flash drive, a CD, or an external drive connected to your computer.

For Windows users, there are some free and low-cost solutions available. Cobian Backup is a free solution that supports both local and remote backups. Cucku Backup is a "Social Backup." It will backup your local drive to a "friend's" computer. If you are both people running the software you can backup to their computer. The files are encryped and the other person cannot see your files.

To backup to a remote location, both Mac and Windows users can use a program like Mozy. This will backup your files to the Mozy servers in different parts of the country. It is easy to use and you get unlimited backup space for only $4.95/month. This is the second part of my backup method at home. Another home online backup company is Carbonite.

In both the local and online backup methods, the user can schedule regular backups. After the initial setup, which only takes a few minutes, the user just needs to check that backups have been completed. It is pretty much a hands off method.

I have decided to try and post from my iPhone. How often will I use this feature? Probably never but it is cool to have that option.

How Important Is My Data?

Good question. To date, I have never lost any significant data (knock on wood). What can I not live without personally? We don't keep a lot of documents on our computer. We do our taxes online but have printed copies. We have a few spreadsheets and documents but nothing we cannot live without. Photos are another story. We have about 2500 photos of our kids and events over the last 4 years. We did have some of them printed and put into albums, books, and calendars and some are posted on our web albums but a majority of them on the computer only. While I could live without them, I prefer not to.

Professionally, what can I not live without? Everything. In my job as Director of Technology, I am responsible for data for the entire district including student data, financial data, alumni data, and student and teacher files. Lots to worry about. Even if my laptop were lost I would be missing files from the last 10 years that hold passwords, account numbers, instructions, PowerPoint presentations, and more. I definitely do not want to lose these things.

I take steps to protect my data both at home and at work. At home, I use a Mac and use the Time Machine program to back up to a hard drive elsewhere on my home network. I also use Mozy online storage to back them up off-site. If there were a complete disaster and I lost my computer and everything else in my home, at least with a new computer I could recover my files.

At work I also take steps to backup and protect. My laptop has a portable account so every time I am at work the files I have accessed and changed get backed up to a server. I also use the Time Machine software to backup to a server at another school. In addition, our servers are backed up to tape and online. Hopefully, if something happened, I would be able to recover the data. I have had hard drives go bad at school before and, thanks to backups and RAID configurations, I have been pretty lucky. I hope that streak continues...

Computer Predictions for Mike Bartels

What will computing look like in the future? Well, that may be hard to predict. Computing and technology moves quickly. It was not that long ago that I was using a 128k external modem on a computer with 8 MB of RAM. Now we are using flat, multi-touch screens, wireless mice and keyboards, and carrying a multi-function machine that is part computer, part media player, and part phone in our pockets.

I think these things, along with the classes that we are taking now, give us a glimpse of what is to come in education. While one's philosophy about education may differ from another, there is no doubt that technology and education will become integrated.

I often wonder what my kids, ages 2 and 5, will be experiencing in school when they are high school age. Will they even need to go to a physical building? It is certainly possible that they will be able to receive a college degree fully online using interactive technologies that we use now, including video, blogging, and wikis. By then, these technologies will have evolved into something else but its origin will be in the things we use today.

At the grade school and high school level, students will still be in schools 10 years from now. They will probably be doing things more online like turning in assignments, taking tests and quizzes, and interacting with classmates, all from a small, thin machine. They will probably be able to connect this machine to a screen that is paper thin and can be rolled up and taken anywhere. Textbooks will be electronic. Students will be able to take their e-book on this small device and project it on to any surface and manipulate it using their fingers. Operating systems will be gone and an interface such as a browser or an iTunes type environment will be the way people access information on these machines.

How will this affect teachers and students? Well, traditional teachers, which every school has, will have to get on board or get out. I have some of these teachers in my schools now. Anything to do with computers is not necessary. Back to books and writing. That is what education in this country was founded on and we cannot go wrong with that.

I am from another camp. I don't think teachers and students should be totally disconnected but technology is certainly important if we want our society to move forward. We need to encourage our students to use the technology they are familiar with while showing them how to use it responsibly. We also need to try and stay ahead of the game when it comes to technology. Because of funding issues, our schools generally fall behind in this field. But, with technology becoming cheaper by the day, hopefully our schools will think this is an important part of education and try to catch up.

This will require a lot of training and discipline by teachers and students. If teachers cannot keep up, there will not be a place for them in education. It would probably mean the end of teachers who have taught for 30 years and have have never changed their approach.

Do I want this to happen, well yes and no. I think it is time for education to catch up but I hope it does not go too far. That connection between student/teacher and student/student is important in the social development of our children.

To prepare for these types of things, we discuss upcoming technologies in our Technology Learning Community at Messmer. We have not started for the year yet but I have a blog set up from last year showing what we discussed. We only met a few times but I posted more about technology in the blog than what we discussed in person. Most of this was based on books and articles that I read during the course of the year.

It is my job as Director of Technology to make sure my teachers are introduced to new technologies, ideas, and methods of teaching. I need to make sure I stay on top of things and present them in a timely fashion. We may or may not use these technologies in our schools but it is important that they know about them.

Computer History for Mike Bartels

My first computer experience was in high school. I was working at a factory in the late 80's and one of the engineers and I were talking about personal computers. He said he could help me build one for a pretty cheap price.

At the time, I was enrolled in computer programming courses in school. I took two years of BASIC and two years of independent study in Pascal. I was working on Apple IIe and Apple IIgs computers. I even went to programming competitions.

We put together my first computer. It had a 13" monitor, a 5 1/4" floppy disk, and 256 MB RAM. It ran DOS and a couple of years later I upgraded the RAM to 1 MB and installed Windows 3.0.

I was able to do my papers and print them out on my dot matrix printer. I also started playing games like Flight Simulator and various card games.

I decided to pursue music in college. It was my first love and, even though I liked computers, I knew I would not be able to handle the math classes so I decided not to pursue and education in computers.

While in college I started composing music. I went out and purchased my first Mac. I was able to hook up my keyboard and compose using Finale software. That was something I was not able to do with my Windows machine. After graduation I was experiencing problems with my computer. I didn't make much money so I could not afford to have someone look at it. So, I decided to fix it myself. That was when I first realized I might want to re-think my career path.

I did computers on the side for the school district I worked for and soon I was the technology coordinator and band/choir director in a K-12 school. I learned about purchasing, budgeting, researching technology, repair, and training. I was also able to us this technology in my classroom. I had students composing music, used the computer to create quizzes, and was able to demonstrate music techniques with video and audio that I was not able to do with a stereo. But, I was overloaded and had to decide what to do next.

I got married in 1998 and moved to Milwaukee the next year. After a year of working in the instrument sales business I took a shot in the dark and applied for a computer job. I got the job and have been here ever since.

Computers changed my life completely. It gave me a new career path and it has been very rewarding. At times I do miss teaching but computers and technology is where I hope to stay.

First Class Review

Well, our first class has finished. I learned about a couple of new technologies in this course and am already working on ways to incorporate them into our technology plan at school. We will be launching a social bookmark site this week full of educational resources for all grade levels and subjects.

I have also started working with our guidance department on creating a social network for our alumni. One of our counselors wanted an interactive site so recent grads can support current students. Originally the idea was just a discussion board but that evolved and they wanted something more Facebook-like. I showed them how Ning works and we are working on a plan to present to our administration.

I am now looking forward to our next class on how computers work. I already have a good understanding of what each part does but there are some things, like how operating systems work, that I would like to understand better.

Online Services and Collaboration

This class is the first time I am having any experience in a full online curriculum. Between things like Google Docs and collaboration, online storage, and chatting I am thinking of many ways that I can introduce this to my teachers.

Right now, I am kicking around asking a department or level to take their things online. For example, I would like to take the English department (9 teachers total) and have them collaborate on documents like curriculum maps or lesson plans using Google Docs, share ideas using blogs, and sharing all of their files for their classes in an online storage space. This way, all teachers teaching similar classes can easily share their documents.

We are also kicking around some schedule changes at our school. I think this type of collaboration would be great at getting feedback and having people give their input on a subject.

Once I get the teachers involved, I hope they will start using this for the students.

Video Chatting

So, tonight was my first experience using TokBox on the Ning. It worked fine but, in my opinion, it was not convenient for our group. We had a meeting scheduled at the same time as another group and things got mixed up. We were not able to communicate as a group without interfering with others. We ended up typing notes in the live chat area and on the shared Google doc. While I can see the advantages of this meeting method, if it cannot be private then it may not be a solution. Other methods like Skype might need to be explored.

Last Week's Class

I really enjoyed last week's class. That was my first time using an online classroom like that. I have used things like Webex and Go To Meeting as well as video chats using iChat on our school network.

Our school consists of 3 separate locations and we are exploring ways of holding classes and meetings using this type of technology. We have started using Moodle this year for classes and are looking to expand using that technology. As more of our students acquire phones and computers with cameras we may be able to use the WizIQ software.

I was also intrigued by Ning. Creating your own social network is something we have looked at for our alumni department. We have around 17,000 alumni and are working on ways to incorporate new web technologies into our web site so they can re-connect with the school. We are in the process of developing a new web site which will be online within the next 2 weeks. Within that web site we wanted to start using blogs and discussion groups for our alumni but now I am going to research Ning to see if we can incorporate that into our site.

First Post

This is my first post using blogger for my MEIT courses. I have a blog at work that I use for our Technology Learning Community. It is used to post articles, thoughts, and links for members of our school who wish to learn more about technology in education.

My work blog can be found at here.

We have not yet started the learning community for this year so my posts are all from last year.