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. . . .

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.

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.

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!

 I am also impressed with how fast one can generate assessments.  I had imagined having to generate all these in advance, but it is clear I don’t have to. 

I have two questions for those out there who read this and are using DyKnow already. . . 1) How big are your classes that have students using tablets.  what is the largest class you use this technology in? and 2) how have you assessed the use of tablets verses not using tablets in your class? 

Thanks for any input you may provide.

For an operating system that was “already installed” let us just say it took an hour straight just to get the tablet up and running and that was not including the Office 2007 install and the DyKnow install. Vista seems to have difficulty (slow) in actually starting up sometimes. I get an Explorer error occasionally. . . I have disabled the “are you sure you want to do that?” prompt made famous by the MAC computer advertisements, and now my security settings are telling me that I am less secure. . . Obviously this operating system is made for the general public (and Microsoft) who are paranoid about such things like installing software from a CD. I even got the prompt when I was installing Office 2007, a Microsoft product!

I grew frustrated with trying figure out where all the settings are and will try to set it up to look like my XP machine in my office tomorrow. Vista is just SO different than XP in appearance and file arrangement.

Right now I am charging my long life battery (supposedly good for 10 hours of use) overnight.

Tomorrow, a plane to Rhode Island!!

1)  We loved the instant feedback capability where students can check a box, one of three choices(I understand, I sorta understand, I have no clue).  DyKnow then collates and provides a either a pie chart or list with responses of the classroom at anytime during the lecture. 

2) We loved the fact that students can replay our slides as animated movies and that voice can be captured and saved as well.

3) We did NOT like, at all, the fact that point to point writing is NOT possible for students. So, in doing a presentation, each pen stroke appears after it is completed, so direction of lines drawn is NOT seen.  This is because Dyknow communicates over the web, and with something to do with bit rates and stuff I do not understand.  If the student replays the presentation as an animated slide, the point to point IS shown.  Not sure why they cannot do this for both live presentations and for replay. . . Hmmmm. . .

4) We liked the Monitor feature that DyKnow has (for an extra fee) that allows the prof. to see the computer screens of each student. (so if they are checking e-mail or AIMing folks we can know this and Bust them with an individuallized warning to pay attention)

5) We REALLY like the feature that will allow us to project multiple slides of our presentation onto the two screens on our lecuture hall.  This will stop the “can you wait a second while I finish copying your slide” that slowed me down last semester.

All and all we have decided to adopt DyKnow for this year.  I am excited about starting to learn how to really use it.

Aaron spoke with teh DyKnow developer and he told me that ther a rtelots of features the rep. did not know about. . .   looking like a steep learnign curve, but we’ll manage!!