Food for thought

If you get a chance, please read the article below on technology and education (David Hathaway forwarded it to me).

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21543

After reading the article, feel free to respond to my comment below:

Interesting article. Where technology has its greatest role, I think, is differentiation of instruction. We don't do enough of that. It would be interesting to see if there is a guru out there who knows something about the use of technology to help differentiate instruction. Maybe we are the guru, that is, the Tablet PC working group. Maybe we can debate this in a share session, maybe today? Anybody using their Tablets specifically to differentiate their instruction? Feel free to comment in person/on the Blog.

Tablet + Camtasia = Great when missing class

I should have posted this long ago, but I've had trouble logging in. Using Camtasia and the Tablet made it much easier for me to go on the Burch trip this year. Before I left for the trip, I taught all the classes I was going to miss. I used OneNote to write notes, and recorded the session with Camtasia. While I was gone, my students watched a lecture each day by their normal teacher and were able to keep up daily. The time investment to set everything up was difficult, but not as bad as it seems. Since there was no interaction, I could cover everything I would normally cover in a class period in about 15-20 minutes.


PS - My video about changing the brightness settings is not very useful. Unfortunately, as soon as you shut down, the computer goes back to the original default. I have not figured out how to change that.

What has your tablet done for your lately?

It's been a little while but I figured I'd get the blog started again so we can share some ideas. So far I have found One Note to be an exceptional organizational tool and I plan to continue using it. Everything is organized into neat little tabs so I can pull in content (both old and recent) with a couple taps of the pen. The kids like getting the notes in *html form and I think the use of one note in conjunction with the markup features has allowed me to have a good balance of both prepared and "on the fly" presentations. As a result of all this, I am not using *PPT presentations anymore, though I never really did in the first place. This might be a reason for Mike Miller using Journal more than One Note; he already has his *PPT presentations organized so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. I'd love to hear any feedback the rest of you might have.

Also, Camtasia has been great for putting together online tutorials. If my students don't know how to do something in Blackboard, Audacity, V Brick video streaming, I just do a Camtasia video for them and they can get started.

Here is an example of a Camtasia video Tom Berry did regarding screen brightness.

What have your tablets done for you lately? Add your thoughts to the Blog and bring them to the next share session on Nov. 7, 2:30 pm in LC 303.

Backlighting

Does anybody know how to make the backlighting settings stick when you shut the Tablet down and reboot? Every time I boot up, I have to adjust the backlighting by using the FN and Home keys. When I shut down and restart, I lose the increased backlighting. Very annoying!

Using Stylus to comment on Student papers

I've been experimenting with actually writing (with stylus) on students' e-mailed work......it's all electronic this way, and it's frankly what I'd anticipated using this Tablet PC for.....here's a sample of a dialogue Paul Blake and I had last night....as we were both figuring out how this was going to work:

Oh btw the handwriting thing is great!!!!!!! It is so cool! It makes everything so much easier because I can make the corrections right on the page!
>>> Tim Rogers 9/11/2007 10:07 PM >>>
Better!
>>> PAUL BLAKE 9/11/2007 9:51 PM >>>
I made some corrections.
>>> Tim Rogers 9/11/2007 9:47 PM >>>
Great! See what you can do to fix those up, if you understand what I meant....and you can just add your sentence combinations to this document as well....thanks for being my guinea pig!
>>> PAUL BLAKE 9/11/2007 9:46 PM >>>
yes sir!
>>> Tim Rogers 9/11/2007 9:45 PM >>>
See if my comments have shown up here.....

One-Note session

Chris helped me set up my classroom (new audio/video equipment) so that I can use One-Note as an immediate projection session.....I foresee doing notes and background material ahead of time (typing, using a higher percentage type size, as my handwriting is lousy), then using that instead of my classroom white board......I can always go back and use the stylus to highlight/underscore important points. I've thought about then sending the notes to kids afterwards to possibly store in a folder of their own. Chris and I found a way.....from a One Note page, go to File, then Send To......it'll open up the e-mail address box, and send the page as a One-note file (which kids can't open apparently) and an html, which they can......I plan to experiment with this these first few weeks.....I don't want to them to not take notes in class of course, so I'll need to decide what/how much I send them on a daily basis.
I'm now able to download and post a United Streaming video to a One-Note page as well.....still unsure how to do a YouTube video other than just show it directly from the net.
I've been unsuccessful at using Snag It....anyone have any helpful hints?
WillyMo Rogers

Peter Jordan Question

Anybody have an answer to Peter Jordan's question about OneNote?


I was going to have my students instal the trial version on Onenote so that they will be able to open files we create in class, however in the installation process through the Microsoft site it says there will be a key needed if it will be used more than 25 times. Is there another way to be able to allow students to use the program so they can view the app outside of class?

Peter Jordan