Archive for May 21-25, 2001

Monday, May 21, 2001

With the grand openings of the McLean, Virginia, and Glendale, California, Apple retail stores Saturday, the Mac web is filled with pictures for those of us not close enough to attend. Bill Fox of MacsOnly had the advantage of living close to the McLean, Virginia store and posted a good report on the opening. Bill has a whole page of photos available online. Interestingly, Bill put the photos up on his Mac.com account. MacCentral has photo coverage of both the Virginia and California store openings.

I found a page on the U.S. Census Bureau site that contains free teaching materials! I downloaded the map literacy pdf (452K) for grades 3 and 4, and it looked pretty usable.

StimpSoft has released version 1.2 of their freeware periodic table, Smell-O-Mints. Both Carbon (1 MB) and PowerPC (924K) versions are available for download.

G3 w/ iBook The "Evil NT Techie" appeared in my classroom Friday morning bearing gifts! He had received a new iBook with an Airport base station for a two-week evaluation. While the techie is actually trying to get Apple Ed to make him a decent offer on a couple of iMac DVs for video editing, the iBook left him cold. He'd set up Airport, but apparently missed one setting and dumped the package on me. (I got it to work [grin], but later had the same difficulties as he [Is "ungrin" a word?].)

The model we received for evaluation is the base iBook with a CD-ROM, instead of a burner (probably a good configuration for schools). It had been upgraded to 128 MB of RAM and had an Airport card installed. Pricing for this configuration would run $1338 for K-12 institutions, $1393 for K-12 education individuals, and $1448 retail. The Airport base station is not included in that pricing.

My initial impressions of the new iBook were mostly positive. It's overall appearance is obviously a plus. The 12.1" TFT screen took some getting used to, but is very usable. Machine speed was excellent. Once the Airport was properly configured and then reconfigured when the settings didn't hold, it worked very well in my classroom.

On the downside, the plastic overlay keyboard may not take school kids abuse. It's terribly cramped and our model actually felt unsupported at the top. On a machine that otherwise said "elegant," the keyboard screamed "cheap!" The trackpad is, well, a trackpad. I couldn't connect any faster than 14,400 at home with the internal modem. My connection speeds here are usually slow, but at 28,800 or 26,400. When downloading software, however, the modem picked up to the normal connection and download rates:-).

I've set up the iBook for classroom use for the next week and also sent out an email message to our building staff, inviting them to come and play with it. While I might be tempted to shell out for this model personally, the new iBook should be a killer $999 entry-level model for schools. Unfortunately, Apple priced it $200 more than that. But...how about that Apple Ed getting one of these new models into the hands of potential buyers so quickly. Way to go, Mandy!

Apple announced refreshed server offerings in both hardware and software yesterday at the World Wide Developers Conference. Apple now offers two configurations of G4 servers, one with a single 533 MHz processor and another with dual 533's. Both configurations feature Mac OS X Server 2.0 software. An administrators' training and certification program for OS X server was also added. AppleLinks' Paul Shields, who has often advocated such certification programs, has a good summary of what has been added.

Apple also announced that it would immediately "begin pre-installing Mac® OS X alongside Mac OS 9 on all new Macs® shipping from its factories..." some two months ahead of schedule. Initially, the units will be shipped with the default boot system as Classic OS 9.1.

I've been playing around the last few days with Travis East's freeware Geometry program. Geometry 2.4 calculates the volume and surface area of common geometric figures. The program is available in DOS, Windows, and Mac OS X, PPC, and 68K versions.

To be filed under "Here we go again," IBM has apparently made another hard drive breakthrough with its "pixie dust" technology. They've once again figured out how to pack more data on the same size hard drive disk. C/Net reports that "With further refinements to the process of adding the AFC innovation to hard drive production, IBM Research Director Currie Munce expects data densities of 100 gigabits per square inch by 2003...Drives with densities of 100 gigabits per square inch will enable desktop drives to reach 400GB storage levels, notebooks 200GB, and one-inch Microdrives 6GB." While 2003 is a bit down the road, the technology has already enabled 48 gig laptop drives.

MacFixIt has received reports that the CarbonLib 1.3.1 update conflicts with configuring Quicken 2001 toolbars and using the tear off Application Switcher with System 8.6. MacFixIt has a page of other problems concerning the Carbon Library update. Reverting to CarbonLib 1.2.5 (1.9 MB) is said to fix most of the problems reported.

MacFixIt also has a good report on the World Wide Developers Conference by Robert DeLaurentis.

On days where there doesn't seem a lot of news to post, I like to mention a freeware or shareware that is new, interesting, or sometimes just downright awful. While trying to track down and independent link to The Solar System, a nice freeware beta app that displays some pertinent facts and photos of each planet, I got to thinking about some of the less visited places where one can find annotated software links. While VersionTracker and the MIT Hyperarchive are standards in this area, Mark Woods's Pure Mac Software stands out as one of the better maintained annotated Mac software links pages.

I have updated my Vintage Mac Software links page recently. It has a number of, shall we say, less traveled software download sites.

Since no one released an all-encompassing cradle-to-finished graduate education application today, I'm left with little to write about. But...yeah, I'm never at a loss for words.

Have you noticed the new look at the Macintosh News Network (MNN)? Is it just me, or is there a change in the reporting there since their association with the NewsFactor Network? I'm not sure how I feel about the changes. MNN has been my first stop for Mac news each day for some time...since MacCentral went corporate and Hollywood. Now, when I visit MNN, I find I scan quickly and go on to MacObserver, MacCentral, and others to see if I "got it all." It sorta feels like leaving the table hungry when you're on a diet!

Apple's planned presence at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) is in the news again. Dennis Sellers at MacCentral has a good summary of Apple activities at the convention. As noted before, Steve Jobs will be giving the convention keynote speech on June 25. I'm still working (spell that, convincing my significant other) on attending the convention.

Corel has jumped aboard the Mac OS X bandwagon with the announcement yesterday that it "will be launching a full complement of design tools for Mac OS X this summer and fall." It appears that some Corel applications will be available as build-to-order options at the AppleStore. The Corel press release states:

Speaking of the AppleStore, I mentioned two weeks ago that I'd received an email from Apple promising shipment of the AppleWorks 6.1 education CD (both Mac and Win versions):

The AppleStore for Education still lists my order as "Being Assembled," as it has since I placed the order April 7. Looks as if Apple may have trouble meeting the originally promised "May" shipping date.

Reader Ken Kashmarek frequently will send along a URL to a pertinent education related web posting. He'd sent me one last November for a column in The Register, Computers Cripple Kids. It concerned the dangers of repetitive strain injury as applied to the generation of children now being raised in the "computer age." The column quoted Australian researcher, Dr. Leon Straker:

I wonder sometimes if we will see disabling injuries in our children as a direct result of computer use. In the hustle and bustle of the regular school day, I know I often don't take the time to correct poor posture, etc. exhibited by students while at the computers.

Ken sent along a link today to a column by Michael Dillion in TheTechMag, that concerns the larger question of whether all of the technology we've poured into our schools is really improving the kids' education. I believe the author's question continues to be a valid one. Others, apparently, are asking the same questions, as Dennis Sellers concluded his posting on the NECC, "David Dwyer of the Apple Classroom for Tomorrow program will discuss 'Technology in our Schools: Have We Learned Enough to Prepare for the Road Ahead?' "

As a leading advocate of the use of technology in the classroom in my school, I'm often appalled by the misuse of technology in education. And, that's just in my classroom! As we educators conclude the current school year and begin planning for the next, it's important to evaluate our practices, selecting the best practices for continuation and improving or eliminating those activities that are unproductive to our students. Columns such as Dillion's are obviously good food for thought.

Having said my piece, I'll add that I had the pleasure of helping a student today discover some valuable tools to aid his writing efforts. The student was one who did not qualify for the computer take-home project I'd initiated last fall. His consistent desire to learn and the few remaining parts in my computer room equaled one more take-home unit. He'd worked like crazy to complete his math book last week and found his take-home LC III in the classroom ready for training last Monday. He's spent the week during his math periods exploring what his new machine could and could not do. Today, he showed me the beginnings of a book he hopes to complete! For my part, I was able to show him how to use a spell checker and text-to-speech to improve his writing. It took just a few minutes, but they may have been my most valuable moments of the day.

Have a great holiday weekend as this school year winds down. Next week is our last week (officially, anyway). And...I get to see my grandson this weekend!

Joe Taylor sent an email that pointed out the Macintosh News Network (MNN) has returned to their previous format, after having tried a new look for a few days as noted here Thursday. I'm not sure what that might mean with their previous association with the NewsFactor Network, but it sure is nice to see the "old look" back once more.

By doing a Saturday posting this week, I'm able to note some of the new downloads reviewed on the Kids Domain What's New page. These items are platform independent PDF documents, requiring only the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Note that if you have the Acrobat web plug-in installed, you'll need to option-click the link to download the files (right-click in Windows).

Readers Digest has posted a nice two-page PDF file on map reading (128K). The sample map enclosed is of Australia.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has posted a Sprocket Man (2.7 MB) bike safety comic book in PDF format. Not as glamorous is a report on helmet safety (359K). The Consumer Product Safety Commission maintains a whole page of bicycle safety related links, along with a general search page. If you scroll down to CPSC Publications on their site map page, you'll find a helpful list of links to various safety related links that look to be fairly useful in the classroom.

Last week, the New Jersey Department of Transportation posted a bike safety Funbook (345K), and Velorution posted a PDF (68K) on bike helmet fit and safety.

I'm finishing up a column on useful educationally related freewares. Whenever I post a similar column, I receive many wonderful suggestions of applications, files, control panels, etc. that would have fit well in the column (and some that wouldn't). If you have a favorite freeware that you use in the classroom, why not tell me about it and I'll see if it fits in this piece. Please note that I'm not going to use freewares that I've already written about in previous columns. Thanks!