DyKnow disappointment

SO, I found out something bad about DyKnow today.  Let me back up, though.

We only have 23 tablets to give out to students,  I have 46 in the class.  We planned to have all students have access to the DyKnow server, regardless of whether they use one in class.  Thus, they could see my lecture notes after class on their home computer. We are assessing whether student who use DyKnow in class do better than those who use DyKnow only at home.  Problem is;  DyKnow will NOT let you share your files with those who did not participate(logon) in the class with a tablet!!!  This is a huge problem.  I am quite sure that our DyKnow rep. told us we could do this and it turns out we cannot!!  Bummer!!  To share the lecture notes I will have to save the file NOT to the DyKnow, but to my hard drive, then transfer them to a Moodle website via FrontPage or other web editing program. . .   More work for me!!

If it weren’t for the cool polling features, this would be just like I did last year with Classroom Presenter. It ends up being at least 20 minutes doing this stuff after class. . . .

Day three – projection disasters again!

SO the projectors failed completely today so I never got the lecture up and running electronically.  I gave an old fassioned chalk talk, which worked well.  I love doing the chalk thing!!  So simple, so elegant, so easy to do.

It is frustrating when I see the potential of the technology, but when something goes wrong, all I see is the flaws.  We gotta get this sorted.  I need consistancy and Faith that the technology will work every time.

Here is my hypothesis, the router is getting overheated in some way or collecting rf current which craps it out.  It seems to work for about 90 minutes total before crapping out,  then it has to be turned off and allowed to cool, before it will work again.  Today, two professors used it, the first one from 9:10 to 9:45 before crapping out.  She shut it down.  The next prof had it turned on at 10:15, and it ran until 10:55, before crapping out,  I tried to log in at 11:05 and if never would start. I let it sit for 10 minutes, still nothing. . . .  I tried it this afternoon, and it started!!

Hmm!! 

What I ended up doing is record a condensed lecture with audio after class and saving that on my computer to send to students later on.

Day Two – Better!

We distributed the tablets last night nad the student had all the typical hardware issues; some could not log on, some had not appeared inteh class roster and had to be added manually, others had tablets that failed or crashed, but after about 30 minutes most of those issues were solved.  It was really cool to see the technophile students and the novices all getting into the tablet, using it writing  stuff, playin with ink colors.  I left with a great feeling about the project!!

The projector issues are still there, fortunately, we had not problems,  the restart worked and I had little difficulty, though the n-1 projector failed to project n-1, but I think I made and error in the routing software.

Post Day One – a bit of a disaster

So, everything I did Sunday was for naught.  the technology completely failed today, no projection, therefore no DyKnow presentation, to say I am frustrated is putting it mildly!!  Turns out the K-4 Projection control device and software is flawed,  because it controls 4 things and we have only three, they kludged something to fit into the fourth slot to allow the system to work.  Only problem?  The kludge failed resulting in a  flashing screen that prevented us from being able to set the K-4, so we could not communicate with the projectors!!  *@#$%!*@#$. Un-@#$%-ing believeable!!

Our IT Folks and the sub doing the work have found a “solution” which will have to suffice until they get a better “kludge” into place.  Get this; Power down the entire rack, wait 30 seconds and power up.  it should force the reset of the K-4 and “you should be good to go.”  Only question I have?  How often will this happen in a 50 minute class period?  They don’t know!