I had an interesting experience this week that challenged a lot of what I write about. The students were working on research for a project I have them working on. With only two extra computers in the classroom, there was a line of students waiting to access online sources. While the students were working I had a student pose a question. He had a phone with internet capabilities, and was wondering whether he could use it to study. I almost immediately said no, but I thought about it instead. Considering that our school’s policy states that use of personal electronic devices is at the teacher’s digression, I said yes… but that the student had to keep it where I could see it at all times and told him that all rules regarding internet access at the school would apply. He agreed.

He immediately hopped on to Wikipedia. This was his first problem. Not because it has often unreliable sources.(He was researching Metal music, something that is probably better suited for wikipedia than most) The problem was the speed with which the pages were rendering. So I pointed him to wapedia.mobi which is a version of wikipedia for handheld devices. From that point he was locked in and ready to go. Considering the student, he undoubtedly did a whole lot more reasearch from his phone than he would have done on any full size computer simply due to the fact that he was doing something that no one else was doing. Would this feeling wear off? Probably, but not that day.

There could have obviously been some serious problems with this scenerio. He could have started texting his friends or visiting uneducational sites. This of course is why I had him by the other computers, keeping it where I could see it. Considering that rules haven’t been hashed out for this type of use, a number of things could go wrong. The point here is that as technology gets better, the more we can stop taking away the tools that students use on a daily basis and start finding ways to harnass it, we could find ourselves easing the strains on our technology starved schools.

How do you feel about this? Problems, ideas? Leave them in the comments.

Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has designed a project for creating an interactive whiteboard out of a Nintendo Wii Remote, an IR LED light, and of course your projector. The price? $50(projector not included). The site has a video demonstration, details on how to make the pen, and includes the software for running it.

The concept behind it is that the Wii remote uses an IR camera that tracks the movement of anything giving off IR light. So by constructing an IR pen with spare parts from a keychain, and using software that he wrote(free) you can use the pen just like you would use the pen that comes with expensive whiteboards for writing, mouse emulation etc…

Here’s the link.

Scenario: You arrive at school ready to take on the day. You go to turn on the computer and get a strange error message or blank screen. Windows never boots, and the thought of all those important files being erased strikes a chill down your spine.

The good news is that in almost all cases those files are still savable. Even if you have a hardware problem. The bad news is that some technology departments won’t have time to retrieve those files and will simply give you a replacement and their condolences. Enter the Knoppix Live Disk.

Knoppix is an Operating System on a disk. It requires no hard drive or installation to work, and if everything else on your computer is running fine then you might just save those files yourself.  Here’s how. Note: Computer must have power to do this process!

What you will need:

• Blank CD
• Burning software( http://cdburnerxp.se) -it’s free and incredible
• Flash Drive

Download Knoppix- This is a 300mb file, could take a long time on a slow connection.

http://ulises.hostalia.com/miniKnoppix/miniknoppix_2005_EN.iso

Once the file is downloaded you will need to burn it to a disk as an ISO. If you are using the CD Burner XP from the link above, open it. Select the data cd option. When the program opens go to File>Burn disk from iso file. Browse for the Knoppix file. Hit Burn.

You are now ready to run it on the problem computer.

Step 1  – BIOS Settings

This step can look scary at first if you have never seen your computer’s BIOS before. Follow the steps and you will be fine. When you start the computer start tapping F2. This will bring you to what is called the BIOS. It controls a lot of the background functions of the computer. For our needs it handles the process of selecting the hardware to boot from.

The default setting is the hard drive. You will need to find the Boot Order screen and set the first device to your CD Drive. Since each BIOS can be different, you may need to do some looking around. The screen you are looking for will say “boot order” and list devices such as Hard Drive, USB, CD/DVD, etc. Set your CD drive as the first device so that computer knows to look there first when starting.(Since you are only changing where the computer looks first, you are only changing what the computer will boot from if it finds a CD or DVD). No worries. Save your settings and restart the computer.

Step 2 Starting Knoppix and Saving The Files

With the disk inserted in your computer it will boot up with the Knoppix OS instead of Windows.  If you arrive there you are in good shape. If not, you are going to have to get other help for this problem. When the desktop opens up it will look almost similar to Windows but the icons will look different and have different names.

Look for the icon on the desktop that says Hard Drive. Open it. From there you have complete access to all of the files on your computer. Look around and find the ones that are important. You will need a place to save them so insert your USB flash drive. When the icon for your flash drive appears on the desktop open it. You can now drag and drop all of your important files onto the drive.

Turn off the computer and rejoice over your files being back from the dead!

Other ideas for restoring files from a broken computer? Let us know in the comments.