The Classroom Tablet
A true blog of my experiences in using my tabletpc in my classroom: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hope to keep this updated and not fall of the edge of the blogosphere!
Monday, September 04, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
If you click on the “small” picture of a MindManager map below, you’ll see that I’ve put more than a little thought into the matter. This ability to post a “web” map is a pretty nice feature of MindManager in itself by the way! The only problem that I had with it was that the jpg file it created was over 8MB! I’m sure there’s a setting somewhere to lower the quality of the image, but until then I’ll just use Photoshop to do that (the full map is now just over 1MB in size and opens in the upper right corner so you'll have to scroll around ...and a big monitor helps!)
Most of all, I really want the idea to go forward and be successful. As always, feel free to share your thoughts.
Monday, April 17, 2006
In the course of the year, I found that even being wired to my projector through the VGA cable was too confining. I wanted to be able to wander the room with my tablet as I ran through my demo’s, lectures, and whatever. I also wanted to be able to plop my tablet down in front of a student so they could do examples or show their insights “on the fly.” It also has the benefit of letting me work through some ideas of how I would teach a class if everyone had a tablet. Since I had been very frugal with my funds for the past several years (and my students had gone easy on the science glassware), my principal gave me the funds to buy a new projector that supports wireless connectivity (an Epson 755c). Of course, I think he was really going to get another projector anyway and that he like the one I had just fine ;-)
It just arrived and I’m going to start testing it out as this week – I’ll let you know how it goes!
Sunday, April 16, 2006
The other day I had to make a presentation for a grant in front of a group of people who would be donating serious money (more than $10). Normally, I have no problem doing this. However, I have been suffering many sleepless nights (a cold or West Nile) and I wasn't as prepared as I like to be. Not only that, but the speakers who were to go before me were mostly missing (late) so I got bumped up into the first group. As I start my presentation, the secretary starts banging away on her keyboard to take notes -- it was loud! Every time I spoke "klackety-klackety-klack!" Every time I stopped, silence. Very distracting.
Yet another reason for Tablet PC's: a return to shorthand!
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Anyway, I have a couple of new "broadcasts" for you: one on OneNote and one on Journal & PowerPoint. Surprisingly, I've managed to keep my usual chatty self limited to less than 10 minutes for each! I hope that you can understand me in spite of a rather severe cold that I had at the time...
The OneNote video starts by showing what I think is my best use of OneNote to date: how I keep tack of what my students are doing on a daily basis (besides the gradebook). Of course there's more, but I think that's my "best use."
Monday, March 06, 2006
-- after sleeping on it --
For those of you who can't wait for the nice small .wmv file (and a little polishing of the content), I've compressed the shockwave flash movie content into a .zip file. It's still about 28mb, but at least you can download it! I will still have the .wmv and some new content (OneNote) out by mid-week, plus some supporting files (including some mind-maps).
zipped shockwave movie (open the .html file to play)
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Shay asked a good question about sizing of ink topics in MindManager:
"I am just wondering, how do you increase the size of the ink input window when you write in a subject with your pen?"
I cheat....
In the Tools/options/tablet menu, you can set it up so that your input panel is large, while your finished map topic is reduced. I set mine to 70%...