YFSD Tech Blog

2009-02-13T07:32:00.002-09:00

TECH ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED
(February Inservice 2009)

Technology Committee

In the YFSD 2009-12 tech plan, who should comprise the Technology Committee? Tentatively, I was thinking of it including each of the site administrators (or designee), Superintendent, Curriculum Director, Federal Programs Director, SpEd Director, Counselor, Business Manager, Technology Director and Technology Assistant. What would your preferences be?

In addition to meetings at the two semi-annual inservices, how many additional meetings should be scheduled? Quarterly (two additional meetings) or every monthly (7 additional meetings)? These non-face-to-face meetings could be via teleconference, distance learning or audioconference.

Videoconferencing Options

Our current 3-year service contract with DRS runs until the summer of 2010, but the bidding process for the following contract must be completed next December/January. At that time, we’ll need to decide what services the bidders on that contract will include.

One definite change will be an increase in bandwidth for downloading.

The other major possible change regards videoconferencing options. The previous contract (selected two years ago) included two options which are available to us:
VTC (“videoteleconferencing”) is the one that you’re currently familiar with, which uses the silver Tandberg units on the carts. It’s easy to use and has slightly better full-screen video, but has limited options and is more bandwidth-intensive.

DLS (“Distance Learning System”) is the one that we received some training on from DRS last year, but would require additional training for use at both the Tech Department and site levels. However, it offers more options, uses less bandwidth, and the lease costs are lower. Because component costs are less (and would lose value less quickly), having spares on hand in-district would be an affordable option.
Lake and Pen School District (another DRS customer) opted for only DLS (no VTC), and are using is quite actively.

Because DLS offers comparable services to what we’re currently getting VTC plus the additional benefits mentioned above, I’d recommend that we use the balance of this current school year plus upcoming school to make greater use of DLS, so that a better determination can be as to which option we want to choose.

Note: Of the components in the video carts, the monitor and carts themselves are owned by YFSD, with the other items being leased from DRS.

Office–Type Suite Software Options

“Office-Type Suites” means “software packages which include a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program and often additional software. Some type is needed, and we currently have two of them installed on all computers (plus two others on my own computer):

Office 2004: This is what most of us are using, and continuing to use it for another year remains a very viable option. I was concerned earlier about file incompatability with new (Office 2007/2008) files, but later discovered that the Office update process takes care of this quite nicely, and I’ve also documented that process for performing this update manually (as well as performed in on my own computer).

Office 2008: Like Windows Vista falling rather flat in the Windows world (with many users preferring the previous version, Windows XP), Office 2007 has likewise not been well-received, mainly due to an almost complete changeover in the user interface (what you need to know in order to run it (my favorite description being “seemingly-random changes made for no apparently purpose”). Upgrade cost would also be a factor. Our original purchase of 2004 cost us only $50 per copy, but the cost for the new one would be substantially higher. Even at only $50 per copy, that would cost $10,000 for 200 computers.

iWork 08 / 09: Copies and 3 years of upgrades for iWork (and iLife) were included in the purchase of the 1:1 laptops. After that time, Apple has attractive pricing available at the district level.

OpenOffice / NeoOffice: Both are free, and work well on Macs.

2009-02-12T22:03:00.007-09:00

SKYPE INFO AND OPTIONS

Skype General Info

Skype is the most successful company at present in computer-based VOIP (“Voice over Internet”).

Many other VOIP services exist (and some of them are cheaper), but Skype has the largest user base (usually 15,000,000 users online at any time), is the easiest to use, and is generally the best quality.

Basic Skype accounts and the Skype software are free, but limit you to computer-to-computer contacts.

Skype Unlimited accounts (U.S. and Canada) cost $29.50/year, but let you make free unlimited calls to any telephone in the U.S. and Canada (eh?). To my mind, this is a great bargain.

I use it even for 800 calls, because the quality is usually (though not always) better.
I also like the convenience of just clicking a name from my Skype list.

Additional free Skype options include:

Skype-chat (a.k.a. “instant messaging”)
Voicemail (though this may require a “SkypeIn account at extra charge)
Conference calls (up to 9 parties -- Skype or regular phone)
Video calls (between two people equipped with video) Caution: Don’t do this during school hours, due to high bandwidth consumption!
File transfer (including files that are too large to email, but see bandwidth caution above)
Money transfer (never tried it yet, but it’s there)

You can also get a service called SkypeIn for about the same price which provides you with a number in a city of your choice where other people using telephones can call you. Unfortunately, this call isn’t free to them (unless they live in the city that you picked a number in), but is a handy feature when you’re traveling, because it’s automatically routed to you wherever in the world that you (and your computer) might be. It offers superior voicemail and recordkeeping as well.

Skype Hardware

You can use any Mac laptop as your “phone” (instead of a handset or headset), but the person on the other end may have trouble talking with you due to echoes (as the sound comes out of the laptop speaker and goes back in through the laptop mic). Plus you have more background noise and less privacy. Note: The echo problem may be reduced or eliminated by tilting the screen further back.

A handset is similar to a linephone or headphone, and I prefer them for convenience. I was able to get a lot of Cyberphone K handsets (my favorite type for desk use) at a very good price on eBay (less than $10), but smaller cellphone-size types are more convenient for travel. So far, my fave is still the old Yealink P1K (about $15).

However, headsets are more comfortable than handsets, and you may be able to hear better if you have a two-ear version.

Linda Geis recently volunteered to serve as a “test pilot” for a Microsoft LifeChat headset (headphones plus mic) which despite the Microsoft name was actually rather comfortable and with good audio quality.

Note: I recently discovered that headsets that will be used on Macs must be USB-type – not the more common type that use two round plugs. Same for microphones.

Installing Skype

The process for downloading and installing has always been simple, and keeps getting simpler.

To find a source, Google for “skype download mac”. After clicking the download link, double-click the resulting .dmg file. What shows up next will look like the pic at the top of this post. Just drag the Skype icon on the left over on top of the Applications folder icon on the right, and release . . . and the Skype program is now in your Applications folder and ready to use.

You'll also need to do a quick signup for an account after running it for the first time. To do this, click the "Don't have a Skype name?" link. Then, in the [Create a New Account] window, pick a Skype name and password for yourself, enter an email address where forgotten passwords can be sent to you and put a check in the box for [I have read . . . .]. The other three boxes are your choice. Then click [Create] and you're ready to go.

To change settings, go to the [Skype], select [Preferences] and then use the tabs to look over the various options. The one that you SHOULD change is in the [Video] tab, adn the change is that the [Enable Skype Video] box should be unchecked, to prevent Skype from sending video every time that you connect with someone who has a built-in videocam (including ALL curtrent Mac laptops). The reason for this is down below.

Skype Cautions

Every powerful tool for good is also capable of being a tool for bad under some circumstances. Here's two:

Being “online” in Skype (which is all that’s needed for chat) uses relatively little bandwidth, and audio is isn’t too bad. But video is a serious bandwidth-hog, and can interfere with web-based activities (like Autoskill) and video teleconferences. ISPs (DRS, in our case) can’t block Skype video without also blocking Skype audio. For this reason, please use the video only during non-school hours (which you can do by clicking the camera button at the bottom of the "Call" window).

Students using Skype who don't adhere to this policy might jeopardize the use of Skype for ALL YFSD users (including by staff). A related problem is that at one point in the not-far-distant past, some YFSD students were using Skype to make (virtually untraceable) crank calls to village elders and school board members.

So please do what you can to ensure that these problems don't recur . . . so that we don't lose this useful resource.

2009-02-12T19:24:00.002-09:00

OPTIONS FOR TROUBLESHOOTING OR GETTING INF0
(from Scott or Richard)

Ranked from usually-least-productive to usually-most-productive:

Email

This method is best suited for short-answer questions with no likely complications . . . which in my experience doesn’t seem to happen very often. This is the reason why many of my email replies end up being so long (and late, and sometimes MIA completely).

Suggestion when requesting help from Richard: If the issue will likely require some research and he gets a “heads-up” email about the general nature sometime prior to your call, he may be able to have the answer for you before you call.

One additional benefit of email is that if you’re having a problem with a certain file, you can attach a copy of it to the email.

FirstClass Chat

Because this gets info back-and-forth faster than email, it’ll usually get the job done quicker if the person that you’re trying contact is online and at their desk.
But if they’re away and you log off before they get back, they won’t be able to reply.

Skype Chat

When both people are online, this is very similar to FirstClass chat. However, it has the advantage of not requiring both parties to be online at the same time. If a question comes in to me when I’m not at my desk, I can still reply as soon as I get back, and you’ll see my reply the next time that you log into Skype.

You can tell if you have new Skype-chat messages by a little red number on the Skype icon in the dock (which is number of chat-sends or attempted calls).

Clicking the red number near the top of the Skype window will give you a list of contact attempts, with chats being a blue “speech balloon” icon and call-attempts being broken red arrows.

Double-clicking a name in the list opens up a chat window with the newly-sent message displayed in it. You can also see older messages from that person by clicking an option at the top for however far back in time you want to see messages from.

Phone / Skype voice

Voice is usually the best means of communication, because it's two-way, and is faster than typing.

If you have a (free) Skype account, you can call us by typing our Skype usernames into the “Skype Name or number” box at the top of the window (“lbatfish” for Scott or “richardbloom2” for Richard).

Otherwise, you can chat or email me a phone number to call you at or call me and give me a number to call you back at.

Note: Even though you have a “toll-free number” to call the district office with, it’s actually a just a transfer of charges from the calling phone to the District Office bill.

One additional feature of Skype when both parties are present is being able to send files. This saves time and steps compared to sending a separate email-with attachment. And unlike emails attachments, there’s no file size limit (though for bandwidth reasons please don’t do this during school hours). Also avoid sending files during video calls or they'll go v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.

Note: Sometimes chat is useful during a voice call, as a more reliable means of sending copied-and-pasted text (such as web links) or email addressed.

Apple Remote Desktop

Apple Remote Desktop (often called “ARD” for short) gives one user the ability to look at the screen (and optionally perform mouse and keyboard actions) on another computer that it’s connected to via the local network or internet.

This is mainly used by some teachers for monitoring student computers, but as long as the “problem” doesn't involve “no internet connectivity”, it can also be a very handy tool for troubleshooting (because it eliminates the bother of describing “what’s on the screen” or “what steps to take”).

For Richard or I to be able to do this, we’ll need to know the “IP#” for your computer.

Thanks to a little program called “IP in Menu Bar” which was installed as a part of the current “master image”, this number should be showing at the top of the screen (usually “10.6.4x.xxx”).

Note: While ARD permits chat between the two computers, it doesn’t offer voice (not yet, at least). So this resource is most useful as a supplement to phone or Skype contact, rather than instead of voice.

2009-02-11T21:09:00.006-09:00

WELCOME TO THE YFSD TECH BLOG

For the past year-and-a-half, I've been very aware of the need for some method of getting info out to all YFSD computer-using educators, but . . .

. . . adding it to the YFSD website would take too long (and eat up too much time), and . . .

. . . emails aren't very modifiable after sending (no fixing, on adding onto), and can also be tricky to locate if the email-of-interest was sent long ago. Also, most people's Inboxes have the bad habit of getting way too full, and I hate to personally contribute to that problem.

Initially, the primary intent of this blog will be to provide a means for information to be sent out, rather than to serve as a forum for discussions. However, if some of you wanted to be able to make comments or responses to the blog posts which could also be read by others, this is something that could be enabled in the future. I would also be happy to enable posting by anyone else in the district who wished to share their tech-related findings or wisdom with the rest of us.

So even though blogs are usually linear in nature, I'm planning to use this one as a tip-book-like storage place where I can upload any tech-type info that warrants being typed up, to be available thereafter to whoever might need that info at any point later on. Each "post" (article) will be limited to a specific topic, usually not in any particular order (especially at first).

I hope to put up quite a few posts in the near future, most of which will be updates of things that I've already written up to distribute in various other ways in the past . . . including replies that I've written to YFSD staff regarding questions or problems that you've emailed me over the past year-and-a-half. I'll also try to figure out how to make these topics easy-to-find (over in the right-hand portion of the page), so that you can jump to them by just clicking the link.

After I've posted most of my backlog of already-written stuff, newer posts will probably be more "newsy" in nature.

In general, then, this isn't something that I expect many people to read regularly (as is the naive hope of many newbie bloggers). Instead, it's a place that you can check for info at such time as you need it.

As many of you are aware (from the length of some of my email replies), yes, I do like to write, especially in areas that I think would be of genuine use to at least a few of you. So please offer me your suggestions for which topics you feel would be most relevant to you in your roles as tech-using YFSD educators.

Please also notify me of any errors or omissions that you see in any of my posts. That's one of the beauties of blogging vs. other types of media -- a mistake exists only as long as it takes for the first person to notice and contact the blogger. And knowing this tends to give me a greater incentive to getting stuff out to you a lot faster and more often than if I felt that every last post needed to be "just right" before "publication".

Bon appetit!