Multiple Machines from one Keyboard and Mouse

Ok, that sounds like the obvious KVM line. Not so. Instead I'm talking about controlling and using multiple machines from one keyboard and mouse that is simply hooked up to one computer (no special cables or boxes). Why? Well, if you need to ask, this is probably not for you. I need it since I bring a notebook around wherever I go and I often sit at a desk that has a nice computer, but I still need my notebook. This is especially true of my own desk at school.

If you are a windows person, you should check out Maxivista. Great software, works fantastic on an XP box. Easily use your notebook as a second screen to the main desktop, or control both from the same keyboard and mouse. You pay, but it's worth it.

Not as sexy, but still very useful is Synergy. This will install on linux/max/windows. It allows you to use one keyboard and mouse on many machines without connecting them (they do both need to be on the same network). I will not explain how since the website does a fine job, instead I'm simply endorsing it.

I now come to work, open up the notebook, run the synergy client command (there is a GUI, but I could not get it to work) and then I can work both machines on my desk from the full keyboard and mouse that is attached to the desktop. Try it!

Notebook Software (Smartboard) What a waste!

Ok, this will not help me gain any political points, but it must be said; Notebook software from Smartboard is a major waste of time. I know, I know, it slices, it dices it .... Actualy I know all that it can do. I'm a certified trainer and I will continue to help people use and understand it. Still, it's a waste of programming. Why?

Well, first off we already have Keynote or Powerpoint. Very well estabolished pieces of software that can be extended to do anything. They run on lower hardware requirements and they run well.

Take this simple example. I have a very small powerpoint I'm going to run tomorrow on cellular review. It has 10 slides, 8 of which contain flash objects. It loads great in 2003, has clickable, hidable, and dragable objects. Runs great, no problems. Just to try Notebook again, I thought I'd move my file over. Well, a few slides in and the program hangs. After much time it informs me that there is an error in my flash code. Well that might be, but it ran fine in Powerpoint and on the web. Sadly, this is a recurring problem.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh. For many simple folk this will represent a leap forward. They can easily add graphics and drag them around. The good folks at Smartboard (love their board) have released a nice pack of graphics and flash objects for their Notebook software that is easily accessed and used. That's not the problem.

What bugs me is they could have spent their time writing a great set of snap-ins or add-ons for Powerpoint instead of creating another propriatary piece of software. Now I'll have notes in Keynote, notes in Powerpoint, notes in Notebook, and so on. An even clearer example of this waste hit me in the hallway today. I bumped into a teacher and asked if they wanted to test drive our new Senteo's with me. The response "Oh, I can't this year, I'm really too busy just moving my stuff from Powerpoint to Notebook".

Great, another year flushed down the digital toilet simply because we're moving file formats. I can't wait to find out what program is the fad next year!
:(

iGoogle - It's just the beginning

When I first started playing with iGoogle, it was just that playing. It was fun to add pieces of news, and the few blogs I really stay in touch with. Sure the calendar was nice, and a quick glance at my email was cool too. Still, it didn't really grab my attention. Well, that's changed.

It all started when I bumped into a LaTeX formula creator online. That's the subject of another whole post, but basically it's an online math formula creator. Anyway, it was useful and so I bookmarked it. Then I noticed a small icon that said "click me and I'll appear in your iGoogle page". "OK", I thought, "Why not?". And just like that my iGoogle page now has a math formula app on it. That made me think, "What else it out there?". WOW! There are all kinds of things out there and they work!

So now, I don't just have a home page, I have a mobile desktop/computer where ever I go. On any computer on any modern OS, I type "google.com/ig" and I have applications, calendar, email, news, to do .... it just goes on.

This is so cool I can't help thinking this is just the beginning. If Google Docs can get just a bit better like Zoho.com, soon I will need nothing else. Just a machine with an internet connection. So ... how long with this cost nothing?

VirtualBox and Wine

There are times when you just need a Windows app. Thankfully those times are becoming more rare, but until they're gone there are two good solutions to this problem.

First is VirtualBox. If you have the RAM and a legal copy of M$ XP this is a great way to go. The latest version is much better than earlier versions and with it's seamless window mode you can pretend you don't even have XP installed. It's compatibility is great. All but DirectX works exactly as it should. No need to purchase parrallels or VMware, this opensource app does what it says.

Link: http://www.virtualbox.org/

The downside of VirtualBox is you have to run all of Windows inside of your linux machine and then run the app you want. This means giving up a major amount of RAM and some system CPU cycles just to get your app. Mostly I do not mind, but if it's on my notebook and all I want is to run my Teacher Marks program this is an unnecessary pain. Enter WINE

WINE is an opensource project that has written the Windows APIs from scratch on their own. This means you can install Windows apps without having Windows installed. This is great in theory but not yet in practice. I find myself editing by hand just too many times. Perhaps when this hits 2.0 it will be usable by the average joe.

Link: http://www.winehq.org/

If you have the cash, then you could look at codeweavers crossover office. That is what wine should be like. Easily install most windows programs. All from nice friendly wizard driven installs. No hacking, no command line. I wish they had a version that was pay as you go. Maybe $5.00 a program or something. At $100.00 it's simply out of my league (price at the local store, looks like only $70.00 online). Still, OpenOffice 3 isn't out so if you must have M$ Office 2007 installed, this works very well. A bit weird running windows stuff straight in Linux though :)

Link: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/

Quickest Way to Twinview with Ubuntu Heron

There are far too many poor ways to get X config to see two monitors. I know, because I've tried and forgotten them all. Linux has always been very bad at detecting video cards and changing desktop resolutions. Sure, I know all the reasons why, and I know how to manual edit my xorg.conf file. However, I should not have too. OSX and Windows have been making this easy enough for my elderly parents to do, why can't linux.

Well, I first must admin, Ubunut and other modern distros have come a long way on this front. I recently did an install of 8.04 and everything was pretty good out of the box. Next, I could choose the proprietary driver without problems either. All good. Except I have two monitors and I could not find a control panel anywhere to enable this. Hmm, guess linux is not quite there yet. Still, a quick search on the next brings up some help. Unfortunately nearly all of it is to edit the xorg.conf file by hand. I'm done with that. I used to do that. Now, if that is really where I have to go, then I'll pay M$ or Apple and not use Linux. Yes it's that important.

Anyway, I did find this great site: http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

Here it helps you install one simple package called EnvyNG. Then, once installed you can install better proprietary drivers. Enable twinview and enjoy. All without text editing. Now why hasn't someone made this part of Ubuntu?

Finally an Easy way for Linux to Join AD

This has been the number one road block for using Linux at our School. About once a year I format a student system into Linux. It starts rosy, I'm feeling good about all the open source software we're going to use. It's an upbeat day. Flash forward to about a week later and I'm sadly RISing it back to XP. Why?

Students just can't login with their AD accounts like they do on Windows or Mac. They have to jump hoops, learn how to mount network shares, access network printers. Sure, the technologist out there might argue "but that stuff is all easy." It might be, but it's different enough to cause grumbling in the ranks.

To try to solve this I've wrestled with joining machines to the AD. I usually can do it, but it takes way ... way too long to do this on every machine. However, this has changed! I'm not really sure when this package came out, but I just found it today. It works like a charm. Here are the short steps for a denebian system

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install likewise-open
sudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administrator
sudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaults
sudo /etc/init.d/likewise-open start

For a better explanation, and for more info, run over to this site where I found these instructions: Bobby Allen's Blog.

Now I just need to remember how to trigger a .sh login script from AD ...

Zoho is Great but needs RAM

I took my class down to the computer labs this week to learn about zoho. We only had a class and a bit, but they caught on very quickly. Using the Zoho notebook they quikly built review centers for the unit of study we are working in.

All went well, and I'd recommend this to anyone for a great online project. However, one note of warning. Zoho notebook sucks up RAM. After about half a class they started getting errors. I suspected hardware so bumped up the old machines from 512 to 1GB. That lasted a few more pages then the errors came back.

I had them switch to computers with 3 Gbs of RAM and no errors. So ... zoho is cool, but needs RAM be warned!

The power of Google Docs

OK, this is a lot like the wiki video but it still deserves a look. I can't tell you how many of my colleges think email is the ultimate collaboration tool. Even when faced with multiple versions of documents or being somehow left off the email group list, they still insist it's the best. Perhaps if they saw this great quick video (who is commoncraft anyway?)

Wikis in Plain English

Just in case you have not seen this video on Wikis, and so I'd have a place I could always find it, here is a simple video explaining why Wikis can be so good. Enjoy and think of the possibilities ...

Why has Technology Become a Snooze in Schools?

Hey ... my school lab just got evergreened! I've been looking forward to this for four years. Finally a whole room full of brand new computer technology. What will they be ...

Well it turns out they are big, square, fat, full towers with separate monitors. They come in room dampening black and are full of cords but no card reader, web cam or even a mic. This particular set even comes with ball mice. You remember ball mice don't you?

Well, at first I was very sad. How can this be? Three years ago we brought in a few beautiful flat, all-in one macs. They were white, slim and silent. They was only one piece with few cords, yet they came with a web cam and mic and still ran our district's required Windows. What happened to that direction?

I've concluded that I and my fellow teachers have somehow failed. We've failed to showcase what we can do with better technology. We've failed to engage kids in web 2.0 stuff like voicethread, sketchcast, eyespot or even podcasts. Instead all we've proven is we can use MS Office, so that's what we get. Fast Office boxes.

I really can't blame IT. They do not teach. They do not know how frustrating it is not to be able to see your students. Or how much positive difference it makes if your room looks engaing, innnovative, or even just bright and appealing. They fix boxes. Now they have a large nearly empty case that's easy to access. These are a win for them.

Sadly, they are a loss for us and our students.

So the challenge must be issued. We must do better. Our communities and students should be clammering for more web cams, camcordes, mp3 records, card readers, and cleaner, smaller, easier to use pieces of computer technology. If we do it right, I'm sure they'll listen.

As educators we must pay attention

I came across this video on another educators blog. If you have not watched it and teach students, please take the time. Our world has changed and is continuing to change. I'm not sure yet what the proper response is, but together we'll figure it out.

A look at education and technology through the eyes of our students:

Mobile Internet Devices or MIDs, the next thing

Ok, so I'm stating the obvious. Mobile Internet Devices rock, and we are going to see more of these in our schools. What are MIDs? Well, you could argue that new phones that browse the web are MIDs. That would be true of Apple's iPhone, Nokia's N seriers, and LGs Viewty. However it would not be true of regular phones that just happen to browse the net on some crappy java based browser.

MIDs deliver a full web experience. They deliver properly formated pages and include extensions like Adobe Flash. They usually include connectivity like a web cam, mic and headphone jacks. They keep you intouch with all that is Web 2.0 but on the go.

In some respects my aging Palm LifeDrive was an attempt at an MID. However, it was ultametly crippled by a poor browser that locked it out of running flash or formatting the web properly.

I woke up to this idea in schools when I asked a student to put away his iPod touch. He commented back that he was checking his marks. When checked, he was indeed viewing his online marks. What's more, he had used the underpowered device to login to the class site and post a discussion board comment earlier instead waiting to use one of the inclass full PCs I have for that purpose. Hmmm, I thought, I'd better pay attention to this.

Since then, i've noticed that three other students in that class of only 24 have ipod touches. That number will increase I'm sure. Right now we have poor wifi and it only works in my class and a few other spots. However, this summer we're rolling out public accessible Internet across the school. What will that mean for posting assignments? Shared calendars? Communicating with students in general? Might have to re-think that podcast thing.

Our district demands that all students purchase a TI-83 or better. I wonder if it would be better to demand a purchase of an iPod? I'm sure the students would be game!

VoiceThread .. instant embedded audio comments

Our class has been getting into online discussions with our Moodle course site, but I want to move it beyond basic text chat.

Enter VoiceThread. This is a very easy to use audio/video comment collector on an image or slideshow you create. Well, it's more than that, but this is how I wish to use it. As you can see from the previous blog, you first upload an image, then as students or anyone to comment on it.

First time in, students will be asked to create a user account, but it is done right on the embedded object and they are not diverted to another website. Very cool. Then they just start recording voice or video, or typing if that's all they could do.

All my grade 11 students understood how to use it, but some of their voices were not recorded. I've asked voicethread about it. We'll see what they say. Still, it's worth checking out! Each way to ask for comments on your blog or where ever.

Supersize McDonald's Clown

OK ... this is cool

Alright I'm still not "sold" on Zoho. However this one thing is too cool. Go there sign in and then click on Zoho Creator. Just watch the starting video. AAAHHHH too cool.

Now, without any purchase of a server or software, you can create online databases that are accessible in other websites or blogs. (OK, if you've never done this the hard way, then you won't get this but trust me, this is very cool.)

Another amazing thing is that you can embed any zoho document anywhere else on the web. I'm just looking in to this, but I love the first results I've had with placing the documents into Moodle. Now, different students could be collaborating on a zoho document, but we can all see their progress on our classes moodle site. This could be big !

Zoho ... another online office with lots of features.

I can't say I'm going to use Zoho (zoho.com), but it is worth checking out. If you have not yet bought in to google with gmail, googledocs, and googlecalendar, I would definitelycheck it out.

What is it? Well, it' s basically all the software you might use on your machine, but online. So you can create spreadsheets, word processing files, presentations, and much more. Why this stands out as perhaps better than google is all of the unique extras you can do. From online invoicing, databases, meetings, detailed planning, to complete project management software this online office offers much more than what I've found before.

If you are considering keeping and sharing your documents online, I'd look at this start up. No doubt it will be bought by one of the giants, but cool anyway.

Why so little is here

Seems like the last two years have been too much reality and not enough dreaming. I see cool things all around, EEEPC, N800 tablets, inexpensive science probes, Moodle, gmail for schools ...

However, most technicians with school districts just think inside the box. What's worse is they force the rest of us too. Why not try to do a whole lab in linux? Why not try a cart of EEEPCs instead of full size monsters? Why not dump exchange for gmail or some other free but amazing product?

I don't know. It just might be time to go looking for another school board. I mean, come on. My school district is still running like we are all on Novel or Win NT. We're not. Labs could be on the way out. Students are going to increasingly bring in their own ways to connect. Content needs to move online, not sit in file shares or home directories. We need to get to portfolios, school online centers, and beyond. We don't need to "catch up", we need to lead.