Monday, October 22, 2001

Tables 3.1 is a nice freeware math fact program by Georges Charitat that includes record keeping and reward functions. The interface seems a bit quirky, due to the mixing of some French and English words, but the application works well and is offered for the full spectrum of Mac OS's, with a carbon version for OS X and a fat version for PPC and 68K.

Synergy Creations' $15 shareware, Periodic Table, has received a minor bug fix update to version 3.0.1.

CNN is carrying the Associated Press story, Mental training for learning disabilities? Researchers have found that "retraining, using computerized educational games, leads to physical changes in the brain...that...can help some children with dyslexia and other language-related disabilities to learn."

Evelyn Porreca Vuko offers some valuable insights in her Washington Post column, Taking the Dread Out of Public Speaking.

I had reason last week to dust off a Macintosh utility I hadn't used in over a year. I was burning a CD for a friend in North Carolina. She's helping a private school make use of some older Macs and asked if I could send a large group of documents that might aid in keeping the various old Macs up to snuff. Just having the files and folders show up on the CD is rather drab, so I decided to jazz it up a bit with an icon based graphic.

My two year old copy of Erick Tejkowski's freeware Iconmacher still worked well. A newer version, Iconmacher 1.5.4 (1.3 MB), is available from Purple E Software. While you need to have your graphic sized properly before making the icon spread, Iconmacher's simple interface makes the job pretty easy.

The cat graphic isn't mine. It came from a collection somewhere along the line. Perturbed Pussycat Productions (PPP, get it?) is a label I used for several years for materials I wrote or collected on the net to be distributed at my school. It was, of course, an allusion to Point-to-Point Protocol, which most of us use to connect to the internet. When shareware was a dirty word to a previous administrator at my school, Perturbed Pussycat Productions disks were a humorous underground attempt at a bit of constructive rebellion.

If you need a bit more in the way of functions than Iconmacher offers, Iconizer Pro 1.6.3 offers a number of attractive features, including functionality as a PhotoShop plug-in.

Cheryl Vedoe, Vice President for Education Marketing and Solutions for Apple Computer, will be presenting a session at the EDUCAUSE 2001 conference, "Empowering Higher Education with Tools for the Digital Age." Ms. Vedoe will be speaking on Tuesday, October 30. The conference runs October 28-31 at the Indiana Convention Center and RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana. Registration runs $445-700, so even though Indy is just a hop, skip, and a jump down the road from Educators' News, I'll be in the classroom those days:-). If you've been fortunate enough to convince an administrator to send you to the conference, Apple has a web page devoted to their participation in the conference, including a bunch of hands-on sessions where you can play with some cool Apple goodies.

It's Windows XP week!

If you haven't noticed the saturation advertising on network TV, you haven't been watching. John Naughton, writing for The Observer, offers his views on Microsoft's new OS in Why we should chuck XP out the Windows. Naughton writes:

So why are all these idiots in computer stores drooling at the prospect? Answer: because Windows XP is a monstrous, bloated brute that requires a state-of-the- art PC and two gigabytes of hard disk space before it will even say 'hello'. This means any consumer foolish enough to want to run XP will probably have to buy a new PC.

James Coates describes Windows XP as "an undeniably huge improvement in the way that Windows machines look and feel" in Upgrading to Windows XP can be a nail-biter. Coates isn't totally delirious over the new upgrade. He first notes the enormous system requirements:

Windows XP will not work properly on a majority of the PCs now in American homes. Microsoft recommends that machines have at least a 300 MHz Pentium-class processor and 128 megabytes of RAM. Just two years ago such PCs were the absolute top of the line and even this time last year, a 300 MHz chip speed was considered more than adequate.

He concludes this column, "Upgrading operating systems never was for the faint of heart, and that remains the case with Windows XP." Before you think that Coates abhors XP, his previous column, Windows XP works well for newer computers, describes the new OS in very positive, but objective terms.

We only have one machine in our home that could remotely meet the requirements for Windows XP, a 330 MHz Compaq Deskpro. It currently is our test machine for Windows 2000 Professional (NT5) and Novell NetWare, so I suspect we'll wait until we buy a new Windows box before experiencing XP for ourselves at home.

Equal Time (sorta) for Mac OS X

Bill Fox continues his frequent speed tests on MacsOnly with Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X. While Bill's testing regimen is ongoing, his posting for today caught my eye because he did some speed comparisons between OS X version 10.0.4 and 10.1 on a 266 MHz Beige G3. Educators' News is produced on such a beige G3, albeit chipped to 300 MHz currently, so I read with interest and approval the promising numbers from Bill's tests.

I'm entering one of "those weeks" this week at school, as grades are due and we conference parents on Tuesday. We also have half days of school Tuesday and Wednesday for the conferences, followed by our fall recess vacation Thursday and Friday, so the kids will be flying high this week.

One of the changes in special education regulations a year or so ago was the addition of the requirement that we report out to the parents each grading period on each goal and objective in a child's IEP. For me, this involves coding progress and printing out the goals and objectives of each of my kids (only around 30 right now). The goals section of the IEP can easily run 5-10 pages on an average IEP, which requires a good deal of ink for my printer.

Last spring, our "Evil NT techie" neglected to order cartridges for all of the inkjet printers. After a good bit of fussing this fall, I was informed Friday that the "ink is in!" When I appeared in the techie's office, it turned out that all the cartridges were indeed in, except for the ones that fit my Epson 850! Since I teach at "Backwash Elementary," no one offered to overnight the needed cartridges, so I set out Saturday to find a few black ink cartridges in Terre Haute, Indiana. While I struck out at my local Sam's Club, Staples did have the required S020108 black ink cartridges for a cool $27.87 each. No off brands were available. I reluctantly bought just one. I'd recently exhausted a supply of off brand cartridges from a MacResQ special. The special was for 3 black and 3 color cartridges for $37.99. Even with FedEx shipping, the total ran $45.38, or around $7.60 per cartridge!

Regular readers of this page know I'm a tad on, shall we say, the cheap side. I love educational freewares and delight in good, inexpensive sharewares that feature lifetime free updates (my sharewares carry this promise as well). When I got my Epson 850, I actually bought two of them, one for home and one for school. I got them as refurbs from Ink4Art.com for $125 each. Each included 3 black and 3 color ink cartridges and some special print paper. Both printers carried a full year's warranty. Both have proved to be a good investment, other than their voracious appetite for expensive ink cartridges.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, I returned Sunday to the MacResQ site and used the pulldown menu on the left to go to Epson compatible cartridges. Lo and behold, the "special" for 3 black and 3 color cartridges was still in effect! Better yet for me, there was (is) a special for 4 black cartridges for $24.99! With shipping, the deal ran $32.38, just over $8 per cartridge.

So, if you're in the market for inkjet cartridges right now, click on over to MacResQ for a bargain. If you click through from this site's ad or the link above, I may pick up a few pennies from the deal as well!

The SchwabLearning.org site continues their update of the Assistive Technology Guide this week with updates to the Reading Tools section: Audio Books & Playback Units and Screen Readers & Optical Character Recognition. The second column unfortunately omits the Macintosh's built-in text-to-speech functionality and Craig Marciniak's SpellTools (1821K).

Other items from The SchwabLearning.org this week include:

• Priscilla Vail Speaks about Emotional Issues at Three Stages of Development
• Auditory Processing Disorder (APD): An Overview

Apple Computer yesterday introduced the iPod. Destined to quickly join the ranks of the Newton and the Cube, the iPod was described by Lukas Hauser over on Wired News as "A year late and a gigabyte short." As the Apple Turns commented on the iPod, "Let the class action lawsuit against Apple for misusing the term 'groundbreaking' commence."

Friday, October 26, 2001

Microsoft yesterday officially rolled out their new Windows XP operating system. Computerworld has good coverage of the London and New York introduction hoopla in Microsoft's Ballmer formally introduces Windows XP and Gates launches Windows XP at NYC event, along with a Special Coverage page for the new OS release. TechNN, MacSurfer's general technology links page, also has links to lots of information relating to the XP introduction. CNET's coverage of the rollout includes XP released; Do you need it? A Reuters column, XP Draws Fire From Mac, Linux, Even DOS Faithful, points out that many aren't all that excited about Microsoft's new release.

The Washington Post's Ariana Eunjung Cha has an interesting column about the changes found necessary by Microsoft's lead advertising agency, McCann-Erickson, in marketing Windows XP after the September 11 attacks. Cha notes in Microsoft Changes Windows XP Focus that the ad slogan "Prepare to Fly" was replaced with "Yes You Can." "Images of planes and tall buildings" were also removed from the ad campaign.

Christian Science Monitor staff writer Tom Regan provides one of the better reviews I've seen of Windows XP in Microsoft on a mission. While Regan early on states, "Those people aren't going to be very happy with this review of XP," he also does a good job of reporting the strengths and pitfalls of the new release. Regan liked the stability of XP and its Fast User Switching. On the negative side, Regan offers the following strong indictment:

Almost everything about XP...replicates the monopolistic practices Microsoft has been found guilty of. It screams that Microsoft has learned little from its recent convictions on eight counts of violating antitrust law.

On the Mac side, Microsoft has fixed November 19 as the availability date for Office v. X for Mac. Bill Fox today has a disturbing report on MacsOnly from a user of a late beta version of Office X:

After installing it on his second Mac it would not fully launch on his first Mac if connected to the internet. He gets the message: "This installation of Microsoft Office X exceeds the number of installations permitted by the license agreement. (So and so) is already using this installation of Microsoft Office X. The program will now quit."

Bill notes that the message sounds disquietingly similar to the Activation function of Windows XP. He notes, "It may be a good tool against piracy, especially in an enterprise environment, but we are not willing to give up our freedom to use software that we have paid for on the computer of our choice at any given time." I agree.

Microsoft also has released a patch (211K) for Internet Explorer 5 that corrects problems with the Windows Media Player, Macromedia Flash, QuickTime, and the simultaneous use of Explorer and Entourage.

The online discussion continues on Apple's new iPod MP3 player:

• My Turn - iPod by Tim Robertson of MyMac.com -- "At $399, this thing is WAY overpriced."
• iPod = iFlop? by Philip Machanick on MacOpinion.com -- "Cool. But knock $200 off the price before I'll look at it."
• Will The Real Apple Please Wake Up by Vern Seward on MacObserver.com -- "Just like in those old movies, the strangeness is not something you'd notice right away, it's subtle. The doppelganger in the movie would lull you into in thinking everything is fine, then BAM! It eats your face off, or, in the case of Apple, it gives you iPod."

Sorry, but if you want to read something really positive about another underequipped, overpriced, and over-hyped product from Apple, you'll have to look elsewhere.

The current online Newsweek carries the feature, The Classroom Of the Future, with comments from Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Newt Gingrich, others, and, oh yeah, classroom teacher Brandon Lloyd.

In California a report released by Professional Development Task Force recommends eliminating emergency teaching permits and boosting teacher salaries. Sacramento Bee staff writer Erika Chavez notes in End emergency credentials, report recommends:

One in seven California teachers is teaching a subject that isn't covered by his or her credential or lacks a credential altogether...

 

...a disproportionate number of uncredentialed teachers are put into the poorest schools to teach the neediest children.

In a story carried by just about every print and online educational publication (except Educators' News -- ouch) last Monday, the Associated Press's Greg Toppo describes Publishers Rush to Update Textbooks. Toppo focuses on McGraw-Hill's last minute efforts to include information about the September 11 attacks in social studies textbooks that were ready to go to the printer.

Jeff Adkins' Mac Lab Report for this week, Starting a Computer Loan Program, tells of how he makes good use of Macs too old for regular classroom use. If you're considering starting a similar program, you might want to take a peek at a couple of View from the Classroom columns where I recorded my experiences with a computer take-home project (still ongoing):

• A Gaggle of LC IIIs: Part 1
• A Gaggle of LC IIIs: Part 2

Also on Low End Mac today is a really good column by publisher Dan Knight, Macs, PCs, and Power Users. It reads as if Dan got started with a minor rebuttal to a column he ran this week by Tino, Why PCs Are Better for Power Users. Dan quickly moves on to an excellent comparative discussion of Microsoft and Apple operating systems and PC and Mac hardware over the years. He concludes with some observations about where technology is going and specifically, where he'd like to see the Mac go. This one is a really, really good read!

Thorsten Lemke has updated GraphicConverter to version 4.1. It's available for download in three versions for Macintosh: PPC (3.0 MB); Carbon (3.3 MB); and 68K (2.2 MB). GraphicConverter is the Swiss army knife of graphics tools for the Mac. It easily converts images from one format to another, as its name implies, with many automated options. Version 4.1 adds a number of improvements and bug fixes. While not noted in the history file, my most used feature, the image browser, seems a lot quicker in 4.1. The regular GraphicConverter download site was swamped at this writing, so the download links above are to the AusMac Archive. And yep, that's my honey, Annie, holding our grandson, Caleb Steven.

The popular Mac GUI enhancer DragThing has been updated. Version 4.2 (1.2 MB) adds a number of new features for both Mac OS X and 9 along with some bug fixes. Version 2.9 (3186K) is still available for those running system 7.5.5-8.5.1.

Jim Rapoza has a really helpful column in this week's eWeek, Let's Go Surfin' in the Past. Jim reports the Internet Archive's 100-terabyte database is now available to the general public without registration via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The column cautions:

The Wayback Machine pulls content from a huge database,so it takes a lot longer for pages to load&emdash;although not much longer than surfing on a 14.4K-bps modem connection.

Like Jim, I found the response acceptable (in the late evening), but had to try several times to load some pages due to the server being busy. The Internet Archive currently carries web archives as far back as 1996.

I could have really used the above site last August when I wanted to link to a column that appeared a year ago on a current Mac news site. Unfortunately, the site had purged not only the column, but all reference to it, the author, and the author's column series! I wrote an inquiry to the site about availability of the column, but received no reply. Now, with the assistance of the Wayback Machine, I can at last properly update the Educators' News August 31 posting with Tom Wetzel's column. Maybe a certain unresponsive Mac site should follow the links as well!

While poking around the Low End site yesterday, I saw a link that I'd missed earlier this week to Steve Gilliard's excellent editorial, The Failure of Tech Journalism. This editorial, along with Thomas Wetzel's Spelling, Grammar, and the Fanzine Mentality, should be required reading for all Mac webmasters!

After reading the eWeek posting (in the print version in the...nah), I quickly found that my old MacTimes series, That Other Steve... is available once again even though MacTimes is gone. I quickly updated my Columns and Editorials page to reflect the "new" discovery.

I received an email today from our Apple Ed rep that produced some mixed emotions. Mandy Monroe quickly, as usual, answered an email I'd sent her today and said that she's been promoted to another district. I hate it that our district is losing Mandy, but that also signals that Apple Education is moving good people like Mandy up through the ranks. Best wishes, Mandy!

Many Indiana public schools are observing "fall recess" October 25-26. The fall break is a holdover from the days when the state teachers' association had a fall conference and teachers were required to attend or be in the building on those days! With the advent of bargaining and unionism, the convention days have morphed into a fall vacation. I celebrated yesterday by making a beef stew (cook, not get frustrated), Grandma Wood's hot rolls, and welcoming home one of our adult daughters from her Cancun vacation!

If you have some suggestions, news ideas, etc., please .

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