Having done a bit of Googling over the weekend, I found that the new toy I so eagerly crave is available as a free download from Microsoft for TabletPC. Unfortunately it will not work with a non-tablet PC.
Or so I thought…..
Further Googling revealed that the source code is apparently freely available and that with a wee bit of jiggery-pokery it can be made to work with a non-tablet PC. I’m no programmer, but one of the school IT technicians (Bob) loves a challenge, so I’ve delegated him the task (or should that be derelicted my duty) to find a way to make it work.
Watch this space!
Or, if you too relish a challenge, follow these links -
After the last posting, I was grateful to receive very useful advice from more seasoned hands as to where to begin making something interactive.
Thanks to Andrew I dipped a toe into making something using Captivate 2 and have produced a wee quiz for a physics unit I’ve been doing. It is a bit rough and ready, but it only took a couple of hours to figure enough to put the quiz together. That’s exactly what I wanted to be able to do. Quick, easy, no fiddly bits.
I am really itching to put together some properly interactive stuff together, even if it’s just wee revision quizzes, but know very little about how to even get started.
I’ve spoken to Maggie about looking into getting ‘Breeze’, she also gave me an exceedingly large folder to help me learn ‘Flash’, and I’ve been dead impressed with Graham’s ‘Articulte’ quizzes for Biology. These all seem to be viable possibilities for producing something a bit more interesting than the ‘death by a thousand clicks’ of powerpoint.
What’s putting me off jumping in and getting on with it is the prospect of finding that the software won’t or can’t do what I want it to. Part of me feels it’d be a waste of time devoting the effort to learning how to make it not do what I want it to. The other part recognises that anything I learn will be inherently valuable regardless of its utility.
Just getting back to reality after last week’s conference at Inveraray.
I was so impressed to see the work being done by my colleagues in primary (video editing, enterprise and hospitality); pre-school (interactive whiteboarding, digital photography and robotics); and modern languages (digital audio, podcasting and blogging) that I felt a bit of a one-trick pony with my rather dull powerpoints.
I reinforced this self-doubt by delivering a fairly poor demo of my e-beam, which had new software that I hadn’t had the chance to become familiar with. Luckily the hardware rather speaks for itself, and some of my coleagues seemed quite impressed.
( I will be better prepared for my training day the week after next)
I finally got the XP part of the mac to stop treating the projector as an extended desktop. Just in time for the arrival of the ebeam interactive whiteboard. It now works as I had intended all along.
If only its XP personality didn’t take quite so long to boot up and log on to the network……..
(Added 1/3/07 - Instructions for mirroring desktop on projector to be found in new ‘Mac PC Book Win Pro XP’ section in ‘My Work’ on the right - I should have done this before, but it was a bit like Peter Pan flying - it worked as long as I didn’t question it!)
Today’s ALBA install on my new split-personality MacPCBookProXP went swimmingly after circumventing the very fussy internal DVD drive (it seemed to want the disk to be surgically clean). Only after I’d transferred the necessary files to the network from my trusty old PC, which would happily try to read a Hob-Nob, did I get started.
The installation of each set of applications was over in a flash, and the hardware connected easily via the USB, and in the short time I had to play about it seemed to work just fine. No doubt it’ll wait until I’m taking measurements infront of a class before it throws a wobbler.
I haven’t quite sorted out the video settings to make it all work with the projector - it seems to want to be a second display - but I’m pleased that evrything else seems to be working properly. The IT technician is rightly proud of himself too! (Thanks again, Bob!)
Finally got my Mac back after an extended visit to the IT technician (thanks again Bob). It is now running both MacOS X and Windows xp (after a few wee difficulties that had to be ironed out) . It all seems very stable, and I should now be able to run all the software I need.
I’ve not had the chance to try everything I use on a day to day basis - I’ve got everything crossed for the first try at using ALBA some time next week.
The only bug-bear I have is that due to network privilege constraints for us lowly teachers (regardless of experience and ability) the PC half of my split personality Mac doesn’t allow me administrator rights. This means anything I need to install has to be done by the already stretched IT technicians. I’m more than able to do this myself, but apparently can’t be trusted……
The Mac part of my Mac, if you follow me, will happily allow me to install any bit of software, seemingly being more trusting.
Seems an odd state of affairs, but who am I to judge?
