Wow, thanks for posting this, salindger. It’s a fantastic question that, IMO, potentially touches a lot of peoples’ workdays.

Really looking forward to hear what similarly beleagured folks — esp. teachers — have to share.

Where were you when I was going to school? A teacher who is multi-platform and is an engineer, wow. I applaud you. It has been over five years since I graduated high school and I still wish I had a teacher of your caliber.

Unfortunately I do not have answer to your questions, however I would recommend contacting the guys from Casting from the Server Room podcast. They are IT guys in the education field. These guys know their stuff and I find it very interesting and I do not work in the education realm.

I look forward to seeing what others say on the topic.

1> Install Log Me In on your home computer. Use it from school to edit the documents you need, in the programs you need. Email them to yourself, or pay for the pro subscription and use the ftp client it has.

https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en

I’ve used it for years and have loved it. If you can’t get the client working on your school computer, download Portable Firefox at home, copy it over to a $15 USB key you buy at Target, then use that. Portable Firefox: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

2> Your scanner is defaulting to low compression. That’s not what you want. If you can see a compression setting, you want to turn it up.

If there isn’t a way to up the compression in the scanner software. The following procedure will work on your school computer: 1. Scan picture with scanner into a jpeg 2. Open in mspaint (a default installed program on windows pc’s) 3. Save as GIF.

Won’t look as good, especially if there are lots of colors or photos. Will work fine for most pictures of text and hand drawn diagrams.

3> Get a wiki host to post notes and question and explanations. I suggest PBwiki.com’s. They are dirt simple to use with an editor that doesn’t require HTML knowledge to use. They’re also free.

4> As far as equation making goes, you have a lot of options. The one I bet is best for your situation is this one: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science/latexit.html There also are wiki’s that allow this sort of equation creation.

5> On top of all of this, you can always download a USB linux distro that runs in a virtual machine, and have full control of what you’re trying to do. Here is one: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb-qemu.html

—Michael Langford michael.langford@rowdylabs.com

My company also produces software at greatly reduced rates for educators (in python, which runs on Mac without an install).

I'm a piano and guitar teacher. I run into the same problems. I download my videos at home, keep grades on my person computer (the schools system continues to crash and loose grades), and design all my lessons at home as well.

Thankfully, I have a MacBook. I've also figured out how to get on my "teacher account" with an unregistered computer.

Our school has a huge budget for board member travel and I've been trying to get our electric keyboards fixed since October (I have six semi-working keyboards and at least 24 students in each class)! It is amazing that my students are learning anything.

Peace.
Stuart
http://theNogblog.com

I am also a HS math teacher, and I experience many of your frustrations.

1) School’s teacher web space is embarrassingly unreliable. Had to buy own site and pay to have it hosted. Except now I can’t update from school b/c I can’t FTP through district firewall. The LogMeIn idea is a good one - I used it a lot for personal purposes before Leopard’s new ichat shariness. Alas, for me, my laptop is my computer and is always with me…

2) Our district used AppleWorks, which it is just now abandoning for Word. Appleworks was tolerable. Word is not. It is ugly, hard to use well, and the equations are not cross-platform compatible. My solution: I gave up and relearned LaTeX. Now all my worksheets are TeXed into PDFs, which make for a mad-happy environment of universal access and cross-platform nirvana.

Seriously: TexShop (LaTeX) + KomPoZer (HTML - I’m cheap and don’t make pretty pages) + Transmit (FTP - don’t be cheap when synchronizing web sites…) have made my workflow very fluid and reliable.

If you’re afraid of the LaTeX jump, consider the previous comment about LaTeXit as an entry point.

No, my speech in class is not as convoluted as my writing :-)

Salindger and other teachers that read 43folders,

Check out my new webpage Classroom Zen. My goal is to create a webpage like 43folders or zenhabits that is for teachers by teachers.

For your notes instead of scanning them you can take a picture with a regular digital camera and upload them to flikr. This would eliminate the need to scan things at all and should be somewhat faster. Shouldn’t matter if the notes are png files instead of pdfs as long as they can be read. And that will save you the trouble with Acrobat rights. Assuming flikr isn’t blocked which, of course, it will be. This also assumes you can load pictures off a digital camera on your work computer - I’ve worked at schools where the USBs were all disabled.

Please, all the classroom teachers who have little tricks for managing paperwork and increasing productivity email me at secondarygeneralist@gmail.com Classroom Zen is just a hint of a thought right now but as this post Salindger’s post proves there is a need for a community where teachers can try to figure this stuff out.

Mike

I am a university mathematics prof so far less of my time is devoted to teaching, but I still try and save it where I can.

For any class over 20 students I now use a tablet to lecture. I prepare notes in advance (using MS reader), save them and print them to pdf and then go back and erase the majority of material. I then make a pdf of the fill-in-the blanks notes for the students. These notes include figures, headings, tedious calculations and enough other info that the students have some idea what is going to happen. Many print out my skeleton notes and fill them in in class. But, there is not so much there that they mistakenly think they needn’t come to class. I bring a hard copy of the full notes for when I get lost while lecturing.

I must stress that I write out all my class notes. There is something about perfectly typeset mathematics that overly dehumanizes it for many students. Seeing me write it out and “do mathematics” in real time makes it much more approachable. This is one area where technology hinders rather than helps the student experience.

I often prepare too much for a given class but this can then but dragged to the next days class. I have also re-taught classes this way and it is easy to add things in or take them out.

MS Journal is barely sufficient but I am very sad having to use a PC. All in all this has turned out to be a boon to my time and I hear mostly positive reviews from the students.

I’m a teacher in a private school. We have some pretty oppressive IT policies, but still — not as bad as what you’re experiencing.

I’d still recommend that you take the time to hassle the IT department to get what you want. Just because you’re the only one on staff that really has a clue to how computers could be used doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get to use your tools.

Sorry that I don’t have more to add; but I think it’ll be worthwhile for teachers’ to push back against overly-draconian IT policies. Eventually, IT folk will get together and realize that their schools are gaining, not losing, by letting tech-savvy teachers do what they want.

Also a math (and science) teacher, but at the grades 7/8 level ... similar problems (mostly caused by inadequate servers) and more (can't access personal webspace from home; can't connect home computers/laptops to network at school; school computers have wordperfect while every student has word at home; high schools have word ... we don't) etc.) ... I've got all my preferred apps (firefox, thunderbird, open office) on a corsair voyager stick to deal with some of these. I've been trying to find solutions for years to zillions of similar problems (I don't have an elmo; all I have is a 10+ year-old lcd projector to connect to my laptop ... my next attempt will be to use an adesso cyberpad for lecturing/notetaking purposes (as a virtual whiteboard ... I tried with a watcom graphics tablet a few years ago but it just didn't work out)

There’s another wiki program at Tiddlyspot that will allow you to access it from both the client and the server side - so you can download the online wiki to a flashdrive, run it off of any computer, save the changes and upload it later to the web. It’s free. That might help with the class notes.

But for the other — is it possible to just use a laptop at school? Then you have all the programs you need with you during the day, and you can still upload the info to the school’s computers when necessary. You can make what ever changes you need to your host documents, and FTP from home. I second the idea of your own space: if nothing else, it’s dedicated, and won’t change if you ever switch to a new school.

And although I love my mac, if getting a laptop is an option, maybe try a tablet computer. They have handwriting recognition, and there’s the OneNote software that’s supposed to be pretty good.

I’m a student, and I use Word docs and the wiki all the time. I tend to save the pdf until I know I’m switching from the mac to the pc or if I have to upload it. I also use Math Type, but in a pinch, you can use the old-school math notation using the regular keyboard symbols that appear in Word — these can be cut+pasted into the wiki directly.

The great thing about the wiki is that it permits tagging: so if you’re talking about say, differentiation on one day, and power series later on, you can tag them to each other and explicitly put the connection there.

EXCELLENT! I just tried LogmeIn, and I will be trying tomorrow morning when I’m inputing semester grades!

LaTex..wow. Haven’t touched that in years… I’ve been using MathType which has been invaluable as it can turn the equations into .eps Which I can then throw into a layout program. I can do LaTex, but I like layout programs because they don’t restrict my visual relationships within notes/worksheets. But I shall still look it up.

I want to avoid using images because they don’t print out well. Granted, my scanned version of notes is nothing but a picture in a pdf skin, at least I know when they are printed out, I won’t get useless papers. At my district, the USB is almost off. Its been a periodic “will it work today”. As for the digital camera… I would have to go borrow one from Photography. My family pilfers my gadgets. :/

Keep the suggestions coming!

I guess that my question is, what are your input requirements?

There are a lot of solutions out there, but which ones to go for really depends on what exactly you are doing - one system might be great for capturing notes and ideas but very poorly suited to document editing, for instance.

The great thing about paper is that you can pretty much capture anything - ideas, diagrams, etc. The problem with paper - and most other systems - is that you frequently need to transcribe your work into a digital format or some other digital format.

Can you say anything more about what your personal requirements are?

-Daniel

I’m a music teacher in Canada. My district is openly anti Mac. I managed through a loophole, a supportive principal and a budget windfall to score an iMac for my room without permission. (easier to beg forgiveness after). It goes unsupported except for me. I can’t connect it to the server and am limited as to what I can do with it. Even GoogleDocs are blocked!

Our PC laptops, 5 years obsolete when we got them, are useless. We are told not to use the 40G hard drive and store ALL our files on the 500 MB drive on the server. That won’t hold one of my Garageband projects anyway. I call it my attendance machine.

I teach songwriting and recording, copyright, Digital Rights Management issues, independent publishing and creative commons liscensing. All in a very restrictive and closed minded system.

Teachers have always lived by the unwritten expectation that we have to supply our classrooms out of our own pocket and be part MacGyver. Bringing technology into the classroom seems to be no different.

Power to the teachers!!

My options for making tests and worksheets are Appleworks at school with the equation maker, InDesign and MathType at home. I cannot install applications at school.

Just barely related to LaTeXiT above, but if you have OSX at school and home, and if the local IT folks haven’t blocked secure shell, then I’d consider the following:

• Get a dynamic dns account with dyndns or some similar service. This is free, and will be step 1 in getting remote access to your home Mac via salindger.homeunix.net or whatever address and domain you choose.

• If you have a router at home, set it up to forward port 22 (ssh) to your Mac. See portforward.com for details.

• Now you should be able to pull up a terminal and do any of the following:

  • ssh yourusername@salindger.homeunix.net to get a shell prompt on your home Mac.

  • sftp yourusername@salindger.homeunix.net to start up an ftp-like secure file transfer to your home Mac (see FreeSMUG’s portable apps list for some more graphical alternatives).

  • dynamically forward traffic from your web browser through your home Mac, to bypass local restrictions.

  • run LaTeX or any other command-line or X apps from your home Mac and get the display to show up on the local Mac (if X11 is installed locally).

Which reminds me, I need to clean up and properly document my nefarious random test/homework generator that uses LaTeX for the document generation and Matlab or Octave for the randomness. Imagine your students’ joy when they get their own individual assignments that they can’t copy from each other, and know that you have their own individual grading key, too.

Why do educational institutions put road blocks in the way of those trying to do what they are hired to do?

I worked in higher education for 15 years and now own a college marketing company working with about 400 colleges. My company’s mantra is “Overthrowing Dead Culture” (ala Steve Jobs) because we find our clients need a little push to have the gumption to challenge the status quo. And the status quo is just what you describe you’re going through.

My suggestion: push the system to change! Cause disruption by showing what is getting in the way to get your job done and teach more effectively. Find work arounds but don’t forget to make your voice heard. Go to the board meetings, show what can be done if they only get the road blocks out of your way.

Best wishes for changing the rules!

I have read comments with interest. I am course leader for Music Technology at Northampton College in the Midlands of the UK. I am actually an arranger by trade, but it pays the bills and is fun to boot! Problem is I do about 5 jobs and to be organised I need to find a better method for making lesson plans, getting them into the classroom and working with them once i am in there. I think I earn more in a year than our entire college budget (and that’s not saying much) so i get broken leads, dodgy projection and all the rest of it.

I could buy some equipment myself, i can afford it, but I don’t know which way to go. I saw the message on planbook and have just got that on trial - we’ll see how we get on, but my mac doesn’t get seen on the college wifi - so uploading gifs etc won’t help. Any ideas from anyone?

David Tobin

I am a math teacher for several community colleges and here is what I use to get my techie fix:
-To make worksheets, exams, etc. I use pages togther with the Latexit Service that converts latex code on the document. It works very well. You can then convert it to pdf right away.
-I have given up dealing with the different schools and just made my own website for all of the schools that I teach at. I made it using Rapidweaver and the Yourhead Blocks plugin. Bloody easy easy easy to make a nice looking website that is easy to navigate. You can take a peek if you would like: www.guillermoteaching.com
-I use Easy Grade Pro for grading purposes. I really like it. This is the first time I heard of planbook so I think I will give it a shot. It seems like a very good idea.
-I also have a .Mac account where I publish my ical calendars for each class. There is a free service that does this as well at www.icalx.com and you can use it with rapidweaver pages.
-To make sure I have everything in order and organized I use the new GTD app called Things which I really like.

I don't know if this is really of any use but i thought i would share.

I’m assistant head of a Canadaian middle school where I teach English and math. I appreciate the pressure to use technology, but as Allan Kay (inventor of the GUI) says, there are very few ideas than can’t be explained by drawing with a stick in the sand.

Have a look at this short video, which makes reference to James Piilans (1778-1864), who invented the chalkboard and coloured chalks and used them to teach geography.

http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/2008/01/a-vision-of-stu.html

Regards,

BOC

Wow, I just would like to say that I am really impressed by salindger’s devotion to her students. As a student myself (college sophomore), I have dealt with a variety of teachers, some tech friendly and some not. Until college, every teacher I encountered rarely used technology, they had to be dragged into using the online grading system in high school, usually updated once a quarter and complained because it was buggy (blackboard). Now its a different story, the professors use technology to a great degree. It makes everyone’s lives easier, but I have to admit as a student, I’m sure I take advantage of the fact that the professors probably have to deal with their fair share of problems to get their work to us. So thank you salindger for being a cool teacher who is embracing tech and doing some sweet hacks to benefit your students!

PS. Merlin, is there a tear in your eye to see how wonderfully helpful the community of 43 folders has been since essentially 4:30 today. ^_^ Woot.

This won’t help with the math stuff much, but for an English guy doing grades and keynotes only, this works:

-I do my presentations in keynote on my macbook, exporting them as .pdf’s and uploading them to my slideshare.net account. I use them in class off of slideshare. Not too classy and one serious disadvantage: you have to get it right ahead time - no editing on the fly. Despite these problems and after a lot of creative attempts, this seems to be the easiest way to get my keynotes to my classroom PC with minimum hassle and without screwing them up. I just hope slideshare remains unblocked. One advantage of this system: students can access the exact same presentation and grab notes from it if they miss class. A few of them are even so brilliant as to notice that I upload my presentations the night before, and they are magically way ahead of the rest of the class consistently.

-Grades I do on the school system, but I keep my backups on Google Docs (also unblocked, fingers crossed), which I can access at school or home, eliminating a need for me to carry a flash drive or papers back and forth.