EdTech Avenue

They didn’t go to kindergarten, but with some convincing, these two platforms have finally learned sharing nicely the space on my external hard drive.

I have this huge drive that would easily fit a backup for both my PC and Mac, but it took some time and research (and a little luck perhaps), to get it to do what I want.  I knew I could format a FAT32 partition to be read by my PC, but my backup file using XP Backup would be much larger than that.  My plan was to create multiple backup jobs (as undesirable as that was).  I created two partitions using my Mac’s Disk Utility – one FAT32 for my PC backup, and one MacOS partition for Time Machine.  I had it working that way but decided I wasn’t satisfied.

Then I thought about using SwissKnife made by CompuApps.  It’s a free partition and formatting software for Windows.  I used a couple months ago to format a hard drive to FAT32 to use with Symantec Ghost for work.  When I opened the drive on SwissKnife, it showed the FAT32 partition, but it showed the rest as free space.  When I tried deleting the FAT32 partition with the intent to replace it with a NTFS partition, it made it all free space and in essence made my MacOS partition magically disappear into the crowd.  Back to square one.

My next thought was to do the initial formatting on my PC.  I used SwissKnife to format an NTFS partition for my PC, then also created a FAT32 partition for my Mac.  Then I connected the drive to my Mac to see if it found the drive, which it did… good… keep going…  I used Disk Utility to then erase the FAT32 partition and create a MacOS partition instead.  So far so good!  I have connected back to my PC, and the NTFS partition is still intact.  I was able to perform an XP backup onto it, creating a file MUCH larger than the FAT32 file size limit.  And it is currently connected to my Mac running a Time Machine backup.

Perhaps there may have been an easier way to achieve this?  But regardless, I win!

Lisa Whitaker has a school board member that wants them to run on Linux.  Any thoughts? 

The school board member writes:

I have been looking into Linux and think we could do some travelling carts for pretty cheap. Or if not carts we could have some computers in the classroom. Linux runs well on old computers (Windows 98 or the Mac equivalent), which could be pretty cheap to get our hands on from places that are upgrading, and then you can run all sorts of free programs – word processing, etc. If you put Wine on the computer, it will emulate Windows and you can run many (not all) old software CDs. That would allow teachers to do keyboarding and art and math facts, etc. on the computers.  There is a guy on my work listserv who runs his whole law office using Linux, free software, and internet-based programs.

It might be something to look into for the future. Do you know much about Linux, or have you heard of any schools using it? We probably couldn’t do podcasts and things, but it might be a solution for the younger grades, which could free up tech room space for the older grades.

This post was requested by Lisa Whitaker.  Please see below and join the conversation!

I heard recently that not all features on Smartboards work with a Mac but I can’t find anything so far that shows me that.

Our librarian passed this onto me: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/14847-any-school-using-interwrite-pads-bluetooth.html

I found this free Promethean viewer at Promethean Planet. You have to register but that is free as well: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.15853&ua_siteLoginRequired=1

Below are the updated documents for the interpretation of ISTE Standards for the Archdiocese schools who wish to use them.  If you wish to collaborate on the “Resources & Lessons” documents, please email me with your Google account email address and I will share it with you (ArchSPM only, please).  You do NOT need a Google account to view the documents.  Links to the documents will also remain on a static page on this website for future reference.

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades K-2

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 3-5

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 6-8

Standards (gr. K-2) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 3-5) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 6-8) — Resources & Lessons

Contact me with any questions or issues with the documents.

Anyone using Moodle? Just found out our high school is, and wanting to bring down to younger levels. We are feeders into our high school, and strive to have our kids ready for the task. Not knowing how to set up a moodle server. anyone else???