Wii Remote Multi-Touch Whiteboard: Parts Ordered

• November
• 23

After a bit of my own research and reading over some great info supplied by the five STJA students working on the project, I went head and ordered enough equipment to construct two Wii remote multi-touch whiteboards. Yay.

2 Wii Remotes: These items are rather key. ($39.98 each from antonline.com)

Nyko Wii Remote Charing Station: We’re going to be using these pretty much all day every day, so a quick and easy recharging method seemed useful. ($26.53 from antonline.com)

AZiO BTD603-132 USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter: The Wii remotes will be connected to each computer via bluetooth and not every school computer has built in bluetooth. ($14.99 each from NewEgg.com)

4 Penteractive IR LED pens: Yes, it certainly would have been possible to construct our own IR LED pens. There is certainly enough information out there on how to do it. After watching a bunch of videos and reading through several how-to’s, it because clear that constructing the pen can be a pain and the casing isn’t always too sexy. So, I searched around and found someone making exactly what we need for $8 each. Nice. Sometime down the road we may construct our own IR LED pens (maybe when we need LOTS of them), but for now these should be perfect. ($8.00 each from penteractive.us)

2 Gorillapod Original Tripods: We need an easy way to stabilize each Wii remote. It would also be helpful if the stand could be used on uneven surfaces or be attached to a pole or cieling mounts. I’ve used these stands for my cameras for the past couple years and they work really, really well. I also picked up an extra attachment pack that we can use to attach to the Wii remotes without needing screws ($24.95 each from Joby.com)

After all shipping and taxes the total price came to $254.67 for two complete setups.

That means each setup cost $127.34. Now that’s what I call an inexpensive multi-touch whiteboard :)

I also did some poking around for software options. I know Johnny Lee has his own package, but it seemed logical that there would be others out there. It turns out that I was right and that a cross-platform amped-up program has been written.

All of the parts should arrive by early next week. I can’t wait to get everything assembled.

The assembly party has ben set for Tuesday, 12/2 from 3:30 to 4:30 in SV21. Anyone is welcome to drop by and help out.

In the future we should be able to put together everything we need for under $75 by making our own IR LED pens, building out own Wii remote mounts, and not having to buy another Wii remote charging station (The Wii remotes should need recharging so infrequently that we should need no more than one recharging station per 25(?) Wii remotes.) We’d also get to dodge the $14.99 USB bluetooth receivers if we made sure every classroom computer we buy has built in bluetooth.

The point is that we can certainly shave down the cost of each setup. And that’s from starting at the low, low price of $127.34 per setup. Sweet.

Shift Happens

• November
• 21

This video surfaced over a year ago. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it now. (The original version of this video is posted right here.)

Spell Checking Progress Reports

• November
• 20

As everyone is aware you are not able to spell check progress reports directly. Most of us have been resorting to writing our comments in a separate document, spell checking out work there, and then pasting the text into the form. This does work, but it’s clumsy and annoying, especially since there are lots of text fields on each progress report.

It turns out there is an easy way to spell check your progress reports directly in the form.

The reason you can’t spell check your progress reports directly is that they are “protected”. This is a setting you can turn on in a Word document where you can limit what changes can be made. In this case the protection is done so that the automatically populated fields (name, grade, etc.) aren’t accidentally changed by a teacher. A document can be protected with a password or without a password. If a password is set you need to know that password in order to unprotect the document. If no password is set when the protection is set, all you need to do is press the “unprotect” button, which is sometimes a little tricky to find. The big downside to protecting a document is that is disables many features, including…. spell check.

So, to enable spell check, you need to unprotect the document. Fortunately for us, no password has been set on the progress reports. So, you just need to flip the right switch. Once your progress reports are unprotected, you can spell check to your heart’s content. While your progress reports are unprotected, the autopopupated fields can be changed. It would be good practice to reprotect your progress reports after you’re done spell checking.

Here’s how you unprotect a Word document:

Microsoft Word 2003 (Windows): Open the document, click on “Tools” –> “Unprotect Document”. Voila. You’re done. When you’re done spell checking I recommend turning protection back on without a password so you don’t accidentally change any of the autopopulated fields.

Microsoft Word 2007 (Windows): Open the document and click on “Review” –> “Protect Document” –> “Formatting and Editing Options” –> “Stop Protection”. You can watch a flash video of the procedure right here.

Microsoft Office 2009 (OS X): Open the document and click on “File” –> “Save As” –> “Options” –> “Show All” –> “Security” –> “Unprotect Document”. After you hit okay a couple times, you’ll be prompted to save the file. Once you’ve saved the file (give it a new name) it will be unprotected. You can watch a flash video of the procedure right here.

Please remember that while your progress reports are unprotected, the autopopupated fields can be changed. It would be good practice to reprotect your progress reports after you’re done spell checking. If you do reprotect your document, it would be good practice to read them over at least one more time to make sure you didn’t make any accidental changes while spell checking.

What I do & The 21st Century Learner

• November
• 17

Last week I attended a two day technology conference run by November Learning. I took what I learned and piped it into a presentation I just gave to the Curriculum Committee.

SJA Department Chairs: If you’d like me to give this presentation to your departments, let me know. I can give the general presentation or I can focus on specific elements. Let me know what you’d like me to cover and I’ll customize the presentation to your needs.

Wii Remote Smartboards

• November
• 12

What we think of as a smartboard is simply a surface that tracks a writing tool. Traditional smartboard surfaces can easily cost $1,000+. What if you could track a writing tool for $50?

Check out the video posted right here.

The phenomenal Johnny Chung posted all the software he wrote along with detailed instructions on how he built his “Low-Cost Multi-Touch Interactive Whiteboard” right here. How awesome is that? He also posted information and videos on his two other Wii projects: head and finger tracking.

The SJA Math Department has committed to building two Wii smartboard system. Five students are currently researching exactly what they’ll need to order in order to put the units together. The goal is to have two of these boards setup by the end of next week.

His ideas are wonderful. The way he went about sharing his work is even better. Make sure you check out this NYTimes article.

Digital Survey Presentation

• October
• 22

Here is the presentation I gave yesterday on digital survey methodology.

Digital Survey Methods

• October
• 9

I will be running a mini-class on how to create digital surveys next Tuesday, 10/21 from 3:45 to 4:15 in Severance 21. The session will show you how you can eliminate the use of paper from the data collection process. If you loath paper surveys as much as I do, this is the class for you.

If you plan on attending the session please let me know by next Monday afternoon.

- Josh

A Message From SJA’s IT Department

• September
• 26

This just in:

Subject: Recent Home or student USB thumb drive or pc viruses
If you get one of these recent viruses (aka malware) that don’t seem to
go away on your home PC or USB, you can try the recipe in the attached
MS Word document.  Students also seem to be getting these mentioned (see
document) viruses lately on their USB devices also, so you may want to
print them a copy or post a copy in your classroom.  Note we assume the
USB is plugged into a PC that the student, family member, or
staff/faculty member controls.

Please once you have read or saved the attachment to your local drive
or USB device, delete this email to conserve space on our e-mail server.
If you forward this e-mail and attachment to anyone, also delete it
after sending from your e-mail “Sent Items” folder.

The recipe assumes the user has full administrative control of your own
home PCs.  This does not apply to Apple Macintosh computers.

Thank you in advance.

You can download the document right here.

My favorite line from the message: “This does not apply to Apple Macintosh computers.”

:)

Academics Manager: Round 1

• September
• 25

Here is the presentation I will be giving to the Academics Manager “Strike Team” later this afternoon. The Strike Team will be responsble for the first round of faculty-wide Academics Manager training which is slated to happen during the January inservice.

OpenDisc

• September
• 15

Last semester I posted about a great free software package for students. It turns out that package “lost steam” and has been replaced by OpenDisc and OpenDiscEducation.

Each package is a huge group of programs that are all bundeled together into one CD that is easily burnable. The OpenDisc programs are listed here and the OpenDiscEducation list is online right here.

There is no Mac version at the moment. Steps on how to burn the CD are online right here.

I will be stockpiling copies of the CDs in the SJA ResNet office located on the first floor of the library. If you’d like to pickup more than 5 copies, please email me (jseamon@gmail.com) and let me know so I can make sure they are ready for you.