Robbocop

Frightening, isn't it? As an employer, we like candidates to know how to work as a team, and be able to think freely around a problem. So whilst I agree with the young that intuition, communication skills and lateral thinking are more valuable to us than parrot-fashion learning, on the other hand not having any knowledge in your head just doesn't work. Coming back to the iPad, I agree with Apple's blurb that it's a fantastic tool for web browsing, reading, watching video and collaboration, so I can see some real benefits in the classroom. Saving paper might turn out to be a great side benefit too. I'm still hoping that some of the knowledge will "stick" and in that regard I can't see that they are any better or any worse than other computer technology.

re the paper usage debate. A colleague of mine just said that at university she found that writing things down helped her to remember them. I know what she means actually. I'm not sure that typing has the same effect. My 16 year old son floored me the other day by saying he thought that the ability to remember stuff wasn't relevant to schoolchildren any more. The ability to find, organise and spot relationships between pieces of information would be the main skill for future generations. I tried to argue with him but it's more difficult that you think

There's no reason why you can't use two keys in one computer as far as I can see. Same with multiple iLok keys for Pro Tools. However, you should be able to transfer a licence from one key to the other if you do want to combine them. See point 4 on this Steinberg Knowledgebase page, hope it helps! https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/free_articles/kb_show/usb-elicensersteinberg-key-details-tips-and-troubleshooting/kb_back/2020.html

I don't want to be accused of self-promotion here, but I've had a number of people recently asking what camera they can use with their stop frame animation software on the Mac, now that DV camcorders are all but gone, and existing ones in school are beginning to fail. First of all, don't forget that a DV camera doesn't have to work fully in order to work as a firewire camera for a computer. Make sure your art and media teachers are given a chance to keep camcorders even if the tape mechanism fails so they won't record any more. As long as they power up and still output a live picture they are useful. Worth asking your teachers before you scrap any. If you need a new camera, remember that camcorders with no Firewire or iLink connector (ie USB only, card or disk based jobbies) won't stream video live. Webcams work but most are pretty dire. We've been selling the aGent hi def webcam for a while now aGent V5 HD Webcam - Jigsaw Systems Ltd and I wanted to tell you that it works fine with iStopmotion and Icananimate. It gives a crystal clear picture with none of the banding and mottling you can see on a normal webcam. If anyone wants to have a go at hi resolution animation with digital SLRs, I've been doing that too.

It's a really good blog, from someone who clearly knows what he's trying to achieve. No-one is going to win an argument in which they try to justify iPads for every school in every curriculum area, but you've got to hand it to the guy for giving it a try. For his situation it's a great idea. I particularly like his comment: "I get a little testy with people who demand to know "What Will You Use This iPad Thing For?". I don't know what we'll use it for and that, my friends, is the beauty of the thing. When people are allowed to figure out what technology is good for the technology is used better, more often and more effectively than when you're told chapter and verse that This Computer Is For The CD-ROM" Fraser Speirs - Blog which totally turns one major objection on its head. There is a lot of research going on around the iPad at the moment, so if it's not your bag, that's fine, but if you think it's interesting now, just wait and see where people are going with it

HodgeHi has this right. The fact that the ports work with some devices hints that there's nothing physically wrong with them. If you boot from the original restore DVD and open Disk Utility from the menu, see if you can Mount the data stick in there. If you can't then the stick might be in a format the Mac can't handle, or be otherwise a bit iffy. If you can, then you should Verify and/or Repair the boot drive from within that Disk Utility. Repair Disk Permissions for it every couple of months as well. Creating a new user account is a great suggestion too. The keyboard should auto-mount so I reckon it's a permissions/preferences issue. You're not using a usb hub I take it? They can sometimes cause keyboards to fail to mount.

I agree with Siliconalley about the Monarch range. They're priced well for what you get. If you're going for Mac notebooks you ought to look at one of the three dedicated Bretford ones, as the power supplies are annoyingly different on a Mac Wifi connectivity is usually OK for saving docs to network home folders, browsing Wikipedia and so on, but as web sites get richer and schools are starting to create rich media content in the classroom wifi is starting to look problematic. There are some good high speed managed wifi solutions now, but not cheap. Ethernet is loads better for rich content and large files, but changes the way you have to work with laptops of course. In summary, if you need a small number of computers to be used in multiple locations for fairly low-power uses, a trolley full of laptops might work for you. Bear in mind that they can be fragile, and that a trolley larger than 20 units is very big and very heavy. If you want to be creating video and music you're probably going to need ethernet wired machines, whether laptops in a trolley or fixed desktop machines. If it would actually be better to have lots of fixed computers in different rooms but cost is a problem, maybe look at "thin client" solutions where the terminal is really cheap because all the work is done on a server instead. Depends totally on what you need them to do. More info please.

I do find it bizarre actually that Steinberg still use dongles. The reason is that domestic users do tend to pirate software rather than buying it (and before you all start flaming me yes I KNOW that's a very broad condemnation and not true for everyone). Professional users don't like machine ID based authentication because they tend to upgrade their machines quite often and would have to keep re-authorising, so dongles are not such a bad thing for them. The bizarre thing is that in my experience by FAR the biggest market for Cubase is the education sector, where dongles are condemned as too nickable and difficult. Logic doesn't have any copy protection at all other than a serial number to enter, because as long as you've bought a Mac, Apple are happy. Pro Tools uses its interface as the "dongle" so again, they are happy because you have to buy their hardware. I like Sibelius and their choice of stand alone or network authentication. That feels very grown-up to me. Incidentally, if you lose a dongle, Steinberg will normally re-authorise it for you if you buy a new blank one (we sell Steinberg keys for £16.00 plus VAT). They won't normally do it more than once though, and after that you would have to buy a whole new Cubase licence at full price. As other members have said, definitely put the dongle inside the PC casing somewhere. If you have iMacs, buy a Logic site licence instead

I'm really impressed with the Apple one. One of our IT guys has one by STM which looks pretty tough and well made as well, if you can find that on line somewhere. soft inner lining and nylon outer.

iDemo does look good, doesn't it? Let's hope that it makes it through the white water rapids of Apple's App-roval process (see what I did there?) and can be used on non-jailbroken devices. Did you catch the news item recently by the way saying that a US court has ruled that it's not illegal to JB your iPhone in America? iPhone jailbreaking (and all cell phone unlocking) made legal - Yahoo! News I wonder if anyone over here will push for that.

The success of the iPad will always depend on the applications (Apps) which become available for it. I've been playing with Citrix and RDC client apps and I'm pretty impressed so far. The screen size of the iPad means that it lends itself pretty well to this sort of remote screen use. There are other Apps out there which already show the potential for this, but just aren't quite there yet (LiveView as a screen share, and the browser based Ajax client for Remote Buddy), but Citrix is so simple and so elegant that it's my favourite so far. I got a nice tingly feeling working on a full-on Photoshop session running under Windows on my iPad

Theft is certainly a talking point which affects any portable device, including laptops and cameras. It's bound to be more of an issue where you have something extra desirable like an iPad or iPod touch. Schools are talking about engraving the metal backs to act as a deterrent to the eBay crowd. If you book them out to students by serial number (printed on the back of each iPad) at least you'll know who the culprits are when some of them don't come back On a positive note we're finally seeing some strategic thinking about this type of device and what they are actually FOR in an educational context. Lots of interesting comment around the fact that students tend to see the activities on them as games rather than lessons, purely because of the type of experience they're getting. Have a look at Apple - Education - Mac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone for learning to see what Apple themselves are saying.

ARD is normally used for running PKG installers in a managed, centralised way, but you can also use it for copying files and images around. Have a look at this Apple tutorial. Check the section near the end about the "copy" function and try that. I think that if you can isolate the Apple Loops you need from the DVD, or copy the Apple Loops folder from a Mac which you know has them properly installed, you can distribute them this way much quicker than by copying machine by machine. Apple - Remote Desktop 3 - Tutorials - Software Distribution

I don't know if this is the same all over the world, but in the UK it works like this: Adobe Education single licences can only be upgraded to full commercial licences - this is appropriate if you were a student or teacher and you want to work in the commercial sector. There are no upgrades from Education versions to new Education versions. However, new Education licences are still cheaper than the Commercial upgrades. Similarly for multi-user and full site licences: there are no upgrades, you just have to buy new licences. I'm pretty sure this is the same all over the globe, but you should check with your local Adobe office I guess.

Yup! Spot on. If the user or device has a WServer2008 CAL they can access WServer2008 on any server or servers you happen to be running it on. Any other server types do need CALs though. So users (or devices) needing access to TS would need both a WServer CAL and a TS CAL. Similarly for Exchange, Sharepoint and all the other Server types.

Microsoft CALs are never "concurrent" in the usual sense of the word. You always have to buy either a User CAL per actual named user, or a Device CAL per computing device you want to be able to access from. Either method works fine, and it's a question of adding up all the possible devices you want to access SIMS from, and then all the members of staff who would need to access it, and picking the smallest one! For example, if you've got 50 members of staff needing access, AND those people might want to access from a desktop machine in school or a laptop at home, it's probably cheapest to buy 50 user CALs for those people. If your 50 users access SIMS from a laptop EACH, ie 50 users, 50 laptops, it makes no difference. If the 50 users share computers and access SIMs from one of only 20 classroom machines, then you'd only need 20 Device CALs. As pointed out above, if someone accesses Office running in TS, it still counts as a running instance of Office, and therefore still needs an Office licence.

Quite right guys. CALs are for computing devices which need to access the server. If you have more users than devices (and you do) then it's cheaper to get Device CALS. If you were a small business where every member of staff has a laptop and a smartphone, you'd have more devices than users, so it's cheaper for a company like that to get User CALs instead. You don't need them for "slave" devices like printers, but you do need them for each computer or mobile device you want to hook in.

The first thing I have to say, for legal reasons, is that you need to make sure that you have the correct licensing in place to run additional loops on your suite of Macs. Of course you do. The next is to say that Apple loops work best if they are physically installed on the local hard drive of each computer, rather than sitting on a network drive somewhere. So you might need to check whether the missing loops can be found if you search for one of them on the affected Macs. If not, you can copy them to the machines. My demonstration Mac has all of its loops here; Macintosh hard drive/Library/Audio/Apple Loops and then in subfolders Apple Loops for Garageband and all the Jam Packs. You can use Apple Remote Desktop to do all of the Macs in one go. If the loops are in the right place and not being picked up by garageband, try this: Open the Loop browser in Garageband. slide the whole interface window to the left to reveal the Finder. Locate your Apple Loops folder as above with all the loops in it. Drag that folder on top of the Loop Browser. This prompts Garageband to re-index all its loops and should put them into the Loop Browser as expected.

For reasons best known to themselves, Apple ship the Mac Mini Server with the system installed on one drive and the other drive as an independent volume. Typically when we install them we want to mirror the drives for security, but that involves re-installing the system software. Not difficult, but a couple of hours you could have used for something else Insert the installer DVD, boot from it by powering up whilst holding down C, choose Disk Utility from the menus (not from the hard drives, as you'll be wiping those), in disk Utility select the RAID tab and set up a mirrored RAID set, dragging the two drives from the list into the RAID window. Name it however you need to and hit Create. Once completed you can quit Disk utility and proceed with the System installation.

Well I really like the Q3. It's basically a high quality stereo audio recorder with an average quality camera attached. By average quality I mean 640 x 480, which is fine for evidence gathering and performance training. It just seems to be the perfect little camera for a music department or a drama department. Works wonderfully well just as an audi recorder too, of course! There's actually an education discount available on it - not a lot but it's there! See product code X204AWA on our website.

Just to add that many of us have iPhones here, and sync them to the Exchange server at Jigsaw. That gives us work email and calendars and it's pretty quick and easy. Those of us with Mobileme accounts are able to sync those at the same time on the same phone. If I want to access my Exchange email and calendars from a Mac at home I use Microsoft remote Desktop and a VPN and that works brilliantly. If this is a one-off for your school, some combination of these things might work for you.

I'm staring to think about student use. Some of the comments in this fascinating thread are absolutely right, by the way. If you need a device you can type on, and you want to connect to network Home folders, the iPad is a non-starter. If you want a pocket sized device for teachers to use with a VLE to check timetables and mesages, again, not the right device. However, if you're looking for an interesting, fun and friendly way to explore web based applications, terminal services, games and interactive classroom activities, it's worth a look. It won't suit everyone, but then again, neither does a normal Mac. Neither does a Netbook, for that matter - some people hate them All I'm saying is it's perhaps too early to reject it outright. Probably too early to embrace it unconditionally too. Let's see what comes out of the activities people are trialling with iPad first. Oh, and I'm getting one for my kitchen at home, by the way

I saw a really interesting talk from a teacher using iPod Touch devices running an app which linked them to their VLE (Studywiz in her case) and she was very keen. She'd been looking at puzzle/game based learning and had volunteered to see what the outcome was with various devices - PSPs and so on. She made the very valid point that for this sort of activity, the school didn't really want to bother the IT guys with it, and so initially just wanted to look at stand alone devices. The Studywiz app gave her some extra capabilities without much complexity, and now students can check their timetables, internal messages, homework assignments and so on. She's also able to construct role play games by putting character instructions for each student into their Studywiz inbox and some clues to follow. Yes, I know she could do that with sheets of paper, but kids are kids and they respond better to the iPods, apparently. As I said earlier, the way to look at iPad is that it's a portal to a VLE or Terminal Services setup, but with a different interface to normal. So it will be better for different things, and for students with different levels of ability. For special needs use I think it's amazing.For games, puzzles, web based activities it should be good too. For typing, why bother?

There's a list of the top free ones here: Free Photo Editors for Macintosh - Top Picks Another list of very cheap ones here: Budget Photo Editors for Macintosh - Top Picks and a link to the free download of Google Picassa here: Picasa 3: Free download from Google Seashore looks pretty good if you want something simple and free, but you might as well give them all a go. Enjoy

I had a play with one at a special needs school in the Midlands a couple of weeks ago. In that context it was pretty much as perfect an interface as i've ever seen. In the wider context of schools and colleges, particularly secondary schools, it's going to be interesting to see where people go with it. It's a no brainer for Primary, by the way. Amazing what's being investigated there. For BSF there's a pre-existing need to explore transformational technologies, and they'll be looking to see if the iPad has anything to offer. Personally, I think that terminal services is the way forward there. Generally we're expecting a steady movement towards virtualisation and terminal services anyway, and this will just be a different way of accessing those technologies. It's not the right answer for many schools, of course, but for some it's an interesting idea with lots of benefits. The weight of the thing is down to the battery, I would imagine, but having handled one I don't think it's an issue. Interesting times... Ultimately, this is an exciting interface solution for some specific areas, but it's not going to change the way schools operate for the core of their IT needs. Not yet.