Great Typing Web App

At our last technology meeting there was a discussion about our students' lack of typing skills. This becomes a serious issue when the reach the high school level, in particular in our system because we have a 1 to 1 initiative there, so students who cannot type are going to have some problems keeping up.

 We have Type to Learn 3 installed on our network.  It does a sufficient job, but I am not crazy about it.  For one, we have one set of Chromebooks and are hoping to get more, so I needed a web application.  But also, the software seems a little childish - which middle school students do not respond well to.

I did a lot of searching around and I struggled to find a quality alternative.  Eventually I found Typing Club and I have been very pleased with it.

Here are some of the reasons I like it:

• It is currently free (they plan to charge in the future, though their pricing seems like it will be affordable)
• It has a teacher portal - it is very easy to add students.  (It took me about 5 minutes to set up classes with our middle schoolers, you just copy and paste from a spreadsheet) 
• If you set up a school account, you get a subdomain portal that students use to login.  (For example yourschool.typingclub.com)
• It can show them which finger they should use for each keystroke
• It has 100 lessons which go through a typical keyboarding pattern.  (Starting with home keys progressing to numbers and symbols)
• You can modify the wpm or accuracy % required to pass a lesson.
• You can add custom lessons
• It is simple, no frills, no games, no distractions - just typing, which I think is good for middle school. (I haven't tried it yet with younger students)
• Surprisingly, one of the best features was the scoreboard, which lets students follow each other's progress.  Middle School students (boys in particular) seemed to be obsessed with getting as high as they could on that scoreboard.  To the point that several went home and typed on their own with no direction from me, just to try to win.   Other comments I heard - "this is addictive" and "can we doing that typing program again today?"

 

Getting Students Started with Google Apps

We finally have Google Accounts set up for students.  I am really looking forward to having students use this tool.  8th Graders signed in on the Chromebooks last week.  Everything went well, the hardest part of the whole process was probably the captcha.  Most students did this just fine, but it was a challenge for some.  (I know I can have a hard time with them sometimes.  "Is that a k or an r?...")  

Students loved taking their pictures on the Chromebooks.  Of course, it turns out that picture does not attach to their Google Account, it is just local to that particular Chromebook.  So the teacher asked if their was a way to get the picture onto their Google Account.  I knew this was simple enough on desktop, but I had to think about it a little bit on a Chromebook.  My first thought that maybe it would be an option to add a picture straight from the webcam in gmail.  No luck.  I had to find a web app that could save the picture from the Chromebook web cam to the Chromebook hard disk.  Just as I was going to do a web search, as student had a solution.  Web Cam Toy.  Awesome - it worked, it was fun and easy, and they even have an app in the Chrome Web Store, so I can automatically install it on the Chromebooks.  This is why it is so fun to work with students.  

The Cart has Arrived

If you order 30 or more Google Chromebooks, you receive a free cart.  Our Bretford cart arrived today.  It was impressed, especially for a free cart.  It has a 'smart' charging system that  which seems to do a good job at keeping Chromebooks from getting to hot. It also has excellent cable management.  There are locking doors on each side.  The back is used for organizing the ac adapters.  I like that this compartment can be locked independently of the Chromebooks, I think it will be easier to keep the cart organized if fewer people have access to that side.  

An 8th grade class used them to take a test via a Google Docs form.  I gave a brief explanation of how to use the touchpad, but I am not even sure that was necessary. They didn't seem to have any trouble.  They seemed to like them too.  I had one of the students come and ask me if she could use one today.  I told her she could just use one of the desktops in the lab and she responded..."but they take forever to log on!".

Users this week include a 4th grade class taking an online test, and a 3rd grade class visiting spellingcity.com.  I am going to try to expose grades 3-8 over the next few weeks, just so everyone has used them one.  I suspect students and teachers will start requesting them soon after that.

Getting started with our Google Chromebooks

Our school recently purchased 30 Google Chromebooks.  I have set them up and enrolled them, which was very easy.  We plan to put 25 of them on a cart for and make them available for teachers to check out.  We are still waiting on the cart, but my Google rep has assured me that it is coming soon.  I am also waiting for Google Accounts to be set up for students.  There are some issues with Postini that need to be resolved before the accounts can be set up.


But in the mean time, they have been used a little bit.  The students really like them, and it is amazing how quickly they boot up. A 4th grade class used them to collaborate on Google Presentations.  Because they don't have Google Accounts, I created the presentations, then made them so that anyone with the link can edit.  Then I put the links on our website.  Unfortunately we had some problems with this.  For whatever reason, we were having connections errors, and it was very hard for them to edit.  Also anonymous users could not add images to the presentations.  The option did not appear in the menus.  (To troubleshoot, we had the students try editing in on windows based machines in a lab, and we had the exact same issues.)  So fortunately, this is not a Chromebook issue, it is a Google Docs issue.


Most issues were resolved by having the teacher and I log into all of the machines.  Hopefully we will get those Google Accounts soon.

Active Directory App on Android Devices

This school year our school sytem made the switch from Novell to Active Directory. I have been pleased so far - being a Microsoft product, things seem to integrate better with Windows.

For whatever reason passwords have been a nightmare.  The new user accounts were set up with a forced password change upon the first login.  Well we were the first school in the sytem to get Active Directory last May right before the school year ended.  Teachers, students it doesn’t matter - they all seemed to have forgotten their passwords over the summer.  So I have been resetting passwords like crazy.  I only have the AD software for resetting passwords installed on a couple of computers so sometimes I had to run up to my office to reset a password.

I thought I would look for an Android App that had some Active Directory tools.  I found a pretty good one: Free ActiveDir Manager.  It is pretty handy.  You can reset passwords quite easily. As long as you are connected to a WiFi network in your Active Directory Network you can login with your domain name, server name, username and password.  

With the free version it doesn’t remember your logon information.  I am considering buying the full version just to support the developer.