Santa in Summertime

I haven't posted anything anymore since the 1st of April... must have been a joke. ;-)
But I have been working hard on two school projects and one European one.
The most demanding part was the programming of the 37 laptops for my colleagues, and connecting them to the wireless network. All this while attacking the problems of connections and printer problems of the "old" system.
The actual problem is the migration to a new system while maintaining the old one.
But as time goes by there are results and the system proves to be stable.
This week I am distributing the laptops to my colleagues.
Services go first! The laptops are programmed generally and are later on personalised so that the teacher gets connected to the server, and all the online services (mail, sharepoint, schoolonline, blackboard,...) in every corner of the school, so to speak!
This week I feel like Santa in summertime since I am distributing all laptops to my colleagues who seem to receive their beauty with big smiles!!!

Great IT-project

It was quite a complicated job, but I've just rounded it up: the ordering of computers for the school IT-project. All hardware companies and stores that I contacted did what they could. Prices were very sharp. But the decision is made. Every teacher in our secondary school will be provided with a Dell Latitude D820 by mid 2008. A Port Replicator will connect these computers in each class with a Dell Projector 2400MP with 3000 ANSI lumen light intensity.
Classes in primary school will use Dell Optiplex 745 computers.
So this will be my job for the rest of the school year: installing computers, beamers, printers, study and test the wireless and wired networks of the school, training the colleagues in the use of the learning environment Blackboard.
Schools can't go back. ICT has become a part of our modern culture, and education, being a part of that culture, has the task of showing young people how to use this modern technology in a positive way. We have to show our kids how to find information, how to evaluate it and how to use it to get to the heart of the matter and to be creative. The pre-computer generation can help here since content is still more important than the means, just as drill is important for memory training and concentration is important for success. If teachers feel surpassed by the technological (r)evolution, I want to be there to help, because I know that their knowledge and experience can help in keeping the balance. Their input must make students realise that there is more than chat and mail and games and second, third and fourth worlds... How about developing this one? ;-)

Xaco Hotspot

Today was testing day for the wireless hotspot system at school, and, by God, it worked! Only on the ground floor and only for the classes near the teacher room. During the holidays the rest of the network will be installed (three dozen of access points) and tested. Finally our partner Ferranti will do the final tuning!

Manipulating pictures for publicity

Read more on this smartboard-aspect in my photobog!

Smartboard "SMART" for your eyes?

Yesterday I watched "Terzake", one of the better Flemish daily TV programmes that reflects on news items. An IT-innovative school was shown in Keerbergen. They have changed all their blackboards or whiteboards with Smartboards, an interactive white board on which a projector shines the computer images. I once tried this system, but not for long... The group of teacher trainers I was part of pushed it into the classroom corner after some trials.
There are four reasons I don't like the system:

• It constantly shines on you while you're standing in front of the Smartboard (the image on this pages is less ideal as on the commercial page!). Since my volume is rather XXXL, I'd better wear a white T-shirt, so students can still read the spherized letters on my non-virtual body. Moreover, I can't get an overview of my board since my shadow constantly interferes. I end up dancing in front of the board (like this distant brother of mine...)to avoid standing in front of my information.
• What's more: a screen is made to look at from a distance. Computer screens tend to have higher resolutions, so on the one hand the teacher can't get a good overview and back sitters in bigger classrooms can't read the letters.
• But a bigger problem is the fact that since a teacher is 90% of the time turned towards the students, this means that he/she is constantly looking into the projector's beams. Projectors shoot some 2500 - 3500 ANSI-Lumen nowadays, so I think that this can hurt the teacher's eyes, certainly if you use this system 7 hours a day since you have no alternative!!
• The last remark is that with this tech board teachers tend to think they reach their ICT-goals with the students. They have indeed integrated IT in their lessons. However the aims want students to work with ICT. So they still have to go to the computer classes or the OLC's with students so that they can work actively with IT.

The smartboard - as it is now - is according to me, not very healthy for the teacher, especially if he/she has to work with it constantly. Hopefully the plasma (or newer) technology will evolve quickly so that the interactive board will be back-lit.
Until then I wouldn't want to introduce a Smartboard in our school in such a way that all teachers are obliged to use it.

How Wireless is Wireless?

Just a picture to show you the state of my working space at school. The blue spaghetti is the incoming cable system which in the coming weeks will connect the server to 36 access points all over the school. From that moment on the whole school will be one big hotspot, and all the teacher's laptops will be connected to the network through it.
The joke of the week was: someone coming in, saying "what are all the cables for?" and me answering "For the wireless network...". ;-)

Desktop or portables?

That was the question... the answer was: portables!
The digitisation-project of our school is developing. The wireless network should be active by the end of the Easter holidays, but I hope the electrician will start working on the cables... Yes, cables because there needs to be one cable between each access point and the controller. And there being some 35 access point all over the school this is quite a job.
Then there was the question of one desktop and one projector in each classroom...
Finally the verdict was: let's lend each teacher one portable. There are a number of advantages:

• Personal responsibility is better for the survival of the hardware.
• Teacher can prepare everything at home and be sure the software works when use it at school.
• For parallel lessons this is a good solution: the teacher is sure the computer in the next class will work: it's his/her portable!
• Teachers can use it for their school mail.
• The school is responsible for the licences of the software they have installed. From then onward the teacher is responsible for the other software.
• Security: teachers take the computers home during evenings, weekends and holidays. The risk of theft is divided.

There are also some disadvantages:

• IT-responsible can't control the state of the computer at all times.
• The local and server profiles might be a bit confusing for the user. I'm looking for a solution for that. Help is welcome.

Of course there is also the cost, but I will do some work scanning the market to get the best deal!

In all this means that the school will invest in some 75 portables in 2 years time...

Hotpot + Scorm 2.1 --> Blackboard

One of the interesting steps in the well-known exercise software Hot Potatoes is the integration of the exercises in a learning environment (Blackboard - EloV) in our case.
What's this all about? For years teachers and educators have been using Hot Potatoes to develop interactive online exercises, but to me the feedback/evaluation was always a weak point. Students could do the exercises and read the feedback linked to correct or wrong answers. But in the end they just got a percentage, so that the feedback for the teacher was very poor. Teachers need to study the results, need to see whether the student made a typing mistake or a fundamental mistake, so that remediation is possible. That was difficult with Hot Potatoes... I preferred the exercise module of the Blackboard learning environment, since there it is possible to check the real answer of the student and adjust the marks if necessary.
Thanks to the SCORM norm it is possible to develop exercises and content in third party programs and import them into the learning environment.
Now Hot Potatoes has taken that step (in Beta). From any exercise module it is now possible to export the exercise to a zipped scorm file, which you can then import into Blackboard.
In a first, brief test this morning three out of four exercises seemed to work after importation. During the next few days, I will be testing all the possibilities.

The Best, the Better, and ... the Ugly!

Wireless network. That is the aspect I have been working on for some time. We already have two access points in our school (Belkin Pre-N system) but since the board wants the network to cover nearly the whole school, a more professional approach via outsourcing was necessary.
So I contacted three firms, let's call them B, D and F, completely independent from each other, but with the same question: we want a wireless network to cover the whole school. It should be built in two to three years time and in different steps. The system should be flexible so that in the future more computers can log in, and that speed is optimal.
I first contacted firm B who claimed it was necessary to do a "site survey" to be sure how many access points should be necessary. The site survey would cost 75€. In good faith I said that this site survey could be done.
The CEO of firm D appeared to be a former student of mine. It was very nice to meet him again after all these years. We talked about the network and in no time at all, he detected a few weaknesses in the system. Things that firm B hadn't noticed at all...
Finally I had an appointment with two people from firm F, a commercial and a technical representative. I immediately felt the professionality in both sales and technical aspects. The optional offer of Cisco controllers that make V-lans possible and the physical detection of portables on the system was very tempting...
In the end I waited for the offers. B was the last one - I even had to mail them to get the offer in time before I was going to Vietnam for the English and ICT workshop.

During my stay in Vietnam, the school board took the brave decision to invest in the best!

Back in school, I mailed firms D and B that we had decided to take the offer of firm F.
D was a good sport. He sent me a nice mail, hoping we had made a good choice and that we might meet and do business again. I'm sure we will!
B, however, was utterly frustrated and accused me blindly of transferring the results of their site survey to firm F!!! He also claimed more costs for the site survey!!
I have never seen such unprofessional reaction in my life! Apart from the fact that I received the results of the site survey days after I had received the offers of firms D and F, these other firms did not need a site survey of 75€ to get to more or less the same results!!! All they needed was their professional experience...

This was really a case of the Best, the Better, and the Ugly! ;-)

Marianne Wartoft's freeware

I have tried out some freeware for English, developed by Marianne Wartoft. I think the software for phonetics, Sephonics, can be a good help for all students and teachers of English, but particularly for those who are learning English in some remote parts of the world where they have a very limited contact with native speakers. I have experienced in Vietnam that some teachers of English, though full of energy and good-will, had difficulties expressing themselves. I suppose that the Vietnamese language lacks a number of sounds that are used in the English language. If they're not regularly in contact with native speakers, the production of these sounds becomes problematic. Maybe this program can help a little...
Intonation is very important in the Vietnamese language: one evening we were invited in Saigon by Mr Tach for dinner, and the subject of Vietnamese language popped up. They were pronouncing three words, identical to me, but quite different to them because of the intonation, an aspect that I failed to perceive... very interesting!!
Marianne Wartoft has also Selingua to exercise vocabulary and verbs, but the exercises and games are presented mostly in another language (Swedish, German, French, Spanish, but - unfortunately - not Dutch (nor Vietnamese...).
For our Geography colleagues Seterra seems to have been a success for years....
Great to see that some people share their works without the need of financial profit! Thanks to Marianne for that!