The Wireless TabCam Streams, Records, Presents, and Shares

TabCam, a wireless streaming camera, works with iPads, Android tablets, and computers and can present live video with annotations, highlighting, and more without “being tethered to the camera.” The device captures lessons, which can be used for future reference and for use with substitute teachers and students who were not present for the lesson. The advantage of having a wireless device that has a battery life of eight hours can’t be underestimated in a mobile classroom. Take a look at the videos, which describe using TabCam for flipped and blended instruction. The price on the Touchboard site is listed at $527.99. Kathy Hagar, a Director of Technology on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, tells us that she purchased several at a price of about $515 each and that her teachers love them. If interested, do a query on the AVer site.

Creating Access to the Internet

It’s a great idea to put digital devices to work in classrooms, but the more digital devices we have, the more access we need.  To get everyone online as classes demand, schools need robust wireless and wired networks. When several classes in the vicinity of each other are busy with lessons that require wireless, will some students be denied access? Suppose your school installed enough access for the number of students and staff in your school. Will this be adequate? Not if parents and others coming into your school want to connect wirelessly and your students come to school with their own personal digital devices. Think of the students who have digital devices in their lockers and backpacks, and remember that some students come to school with more than one device that seek access to your network. Perhaps, you say that those coming into the school can only connect with one device. How do you go about making sure this system works—passwords, getting the Mac addresses of all authorized devices. . . . ?

The Center for DIGITAL Education, in an article by Tanya Roscoria in December 2012, quotes Shane Buckley, CEO of Xirrus, saying, “build out 10 times more capacity today than you think you need. By the time these devices get deployed, you’re going to eat all that up straightaway.”

The Education Week article, School Districts Seek Faster Internet Connections, tells of how limits in bandwidth cause problems with use of online video, educational games, video editing, etc.  The article also reminds us that problems of slower access may be caused by outdated wiring, routers, switches—all the ingredients that make access possible.

Classroom Grant Sweepstakes

Discovery Education and CDW-G are offering schools a chance to win a wireless lab and weekly technology prizes. You can enter your school every day for the giveaways. Those who enter must be 18 years of age or older and employed by an accredited public or private school. The competition ends at 5:00 p.m. EST on May 3, 2012.

USAC—eRate News

For those of you who have been waiting on funding decisions by USAC (Universal Service Administrative Company), the School and Libraries News Brief of 12/09/11 announced that for the Funding Year 2011, decision letters for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance at 90% will be going out beginning 12/13/11.   Funding letters for the year 2010 for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance at all levels will be going out beginning 12/14/11.  Don’t forget, even if you haven’t received your commitment letter for this school year, you’ll need to get started on completing your 470 Form for year 2012. The funding letters are slower to come out this year because the deadline for the 471 forms was in March and because there was a need to recheck applications from the 2010 year for Internal Connections and Basic Maintenance. If you’d like to subscribe to the Schools and Libraries News Briefs, just enter your email address on the USAC site.

Pros and Cons of Using Social Media in Your School

THE Journal’s article Keeping It Clean by John K. Waters, provides excellent information about sites like Facebook and MySpace and their use in schools. Could someone put up a fake social media page and make it look like it is your school’s official page? Yes, says an administrator at Blaine High School in Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, who adds that the person who did it has yet to be identified. The page seemed harmless at first, but then caused problems. Anoka-Hennepin decided that the best thing to do was to establish an official district page with individual pages for each school. The pages target parents, teachers, and administrators and are not pages for students to interact with school personnel or each other. In the Palo Alto Unified School District in California, students use social networking to learn about school events and to access teacher pages. Palo Alto installed LinkExtend, which includes KidSafe and ways to alert users about problem links. Some educators, like Matt Levinson (From Fear to Facebook: One School’s Journey) suggest that Facebook should follow Google’s example and provide a place that “teachers and students could use ... as a teaching and learning tool securely.” That’s what Edmodo does. It’s a free network that doesn’t require students to give private information. Teachers sign up for it and interaction is directed by teachers.

Tech & Learning’s Webinars

If you’re like me, you get an email notice of an upcoming Webinar, but when it’s live it doesn’t fit your schedule or you forget to attend. On the Tech & Learning site, you can view archived webinars when you have the time. Some of the webinars available include: The Five W’s of Wireless, Web 2.0 in Schools, Learning Powered by Technology, Affordable Computing for Classrooms, Is Your Network Secure, 21^st Century Skills, Netbooks in K-12, Writing an Innovative Grant Proposal, One-to-One Computing, Making Classroom Movies, Forensics, Early Reading Success, Ending the Headaches of Textbook Management, and many more.  Go to Tech & Learning and browse through the list. You’ll be sure to find a webinar that targets what you want to know.

Wireless Document Reader

No wires. Totally portable. The Lumens™ DC120 Ladibug Wireless Document Camera will be available in January 2011. The wireless battery base, called the FLYER accessory, works with any DC120 Ladibug Document Camera. Using the FLYER, you can move the camera to any place in the classroom while displaying what you want on a whiteboard or screen.

The Battle of the Budget

With technology in fast forward, what is it wise for schools to purchase?  Aaron Eyler in his Synthesizing Education Blog addresses the problem in  “The Battle of Education Technology: Software, Hardware, & Funding (And What to Do About It)”. He suggests spending budget money on those items that will develop school infrastructure, like networks, bandwidth, wireless connections, and servers; purchasing netbooks and other student-centric devices, rather than laptops and desktops; and using GoogleDocs and Open Office instead of software like Microsoft Office. To prepare for the future in our schools, Eyler advises that we support school IT departments, enhance the home-school tech connections, and prepare for the future. What are your ideas about what we should be doing with our tech budgeting and future planning?

Learn About WiFi From School or Home

On Wednesday, January 27^, 2010 at 2 p.m. EST, T.H.E. Journal and Campus Technology will host its free 60-minute Webinar, Getting Smart About Wi-Fi at School. During the session a network engineer and a computer services coordinator will offer information for K-12 schools about advances in Wi-Fi technology including affordable solutions, flawless uptime, improvements in 802.11n, ultra-simple WLAN management, and reduced client problems. Also on the agenda will be the topics: dealing with interference, supporting streaming multimedia applications, adaptive wireless messing, and extending signal range and coverage. For additional information about Wireless, go to our Power to Learn resources: Everything You Need to Know About Wireless (student interactive case study), The Wireless World: What Parents Need to Know, and other ideas available through our Digital Smarts blog.

Everything You Need to Know About Wireless

A new Case Study has been added to our Power to Learn Internet Smarts Library. Everything You Need to Know About Wireless is an interactive slide show that will help your students better understand how wireless technologies work. Emphasis is placed not only on the technical aspects but on avoidance of pitfalls that may arise when using wireless technologies such as laptops, smart phones, and PDAs. —And don’t forget to put the other case studies—Social Networking: Don’t Give Yourself Away; Digital Permanence: Forever is a Long Time; Cyberbullying: Not Just Name Calling; Misinformation: Truth or Spoof; Fair Use: Beg, Borrow or Steal?; Keeping Personal Information Private; and Music Downloading:Paying the Piper—to work in your classroom.