She was asked to create the school’s mascot, which is a bear. Here is a picture of the beginnings of the bear:

Since her aunt had just taken a biking trip over the summer in Italy, she really wanted Thalia to add some beautiful sunflowers to the bear along with a laptop, since IT IS the computer lab after all!

Unfortunately, we had to leave before we could see the bear’s completion.

Last week, we had a chance to come back and visit the school to check on how the InterCLASS software was doing. Of course, we then had a chance to view the completed bear, sunflowers and laptop and….we LOVED IT!

She really did great job! Way to go, Thalia and keep up the good work!

We recently took a short trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for InterCLASS training (YES! Really…) for Valley High School, which is one of several schools in the Clark County School District.
The high school purchased InterCLASS as a school site license last year and teachers have been getting used to watching what their students are doing in each classroom and with the laptop carts.
Since more teachers will be getting InterCLASS into their classrooms this year, the school had requested us to do another onsite training before students headed back to school.

We decided to drive from Denver to Las Vegas this time, since my partner Christine has many reasons not to fly there:

A. She wants to visit her sister in Grand Junction, CO since it is “on the way.”
B. She doesn’t like flying, mainly due to the fact that she needs to be in control of any operating vehicle (she also doesn’t trust my driving).
C. She needs to haul back about a million items from Trader Joe’s for herself and family (the closest TJ’s to Denver is in Santa Fe, NM).

Although it takes 12 hours to drive from Denver to Las Vegas, the Rocky Mountains are really beautiful during the summer time. Since I had several hours to be in the passenger’s seat, I decided to take some pics:

Driving from Denver to Grand Junction.

Driving from Denver to Grand Junction.

Driving from Denver to Grand Junction.

Driving through Utah and Arizona is really interesting for me (I am from Japan). I really like looking at canyon/desert locations and middle of nowhere-type places.
While we were driving through here, I kept envisioning myself on Tatooine where the Sand People are ready to beat me up, and suddenly “Ben” Kenobi rescues me while John Williams’ music is playing in the background and I live out the day to watch the two sunsets (OK, I know, I am a bit of a geek and nerd).

Driving Utah – Arizona – Nevada

Driving Utah – Arizona – Nevada

Driving Utah – Arizona – Nevada

Coming to Las Vegas is always exciting. However, this is indeed a business trip, so I cannot recreate the Hangover, Part III – The Return to Actual Comedy.

While at Valley HS, we explained InterCLASS software to their tech person and about 15 teachers over a two-day period. We really hope that they will be able to get good use out of the program for their lessons this school year.

InterCLASS Training at Valley High School

InterCLASS Training at Valley High School

InterCLASS Training at Valley High School

After finishing up our training, we went to In-n-Out Burgers (Yum!), Trader Jo’s (to donate some more $ to them) and then headed back across Tatooine toward home.

I hope we can return to Las Vegas soon for InterCLASS training for other Clark County Schools.

I have a 6-year old nephew that consistently drops his Nintendo DS, so I think that the Classmate PC’s non-slip, non-scratch rubber frame helps out a lot for elementary school use. After we installed and setup InterCLASS, we explained to the teacher how to use it in her class.

She was really impressed with how InterCLASS will be able to help her for the new school year and was particularly happy with the following features:

1. Remote logon for younger kids

   By using InterCLASS, the teacher can logon to all of her laptops with a generic student user from the teacher station. This will save so much time for her in preparation for the new kindergartners using the laptops (gone are the days of taking a half hour just to log everyone in!).

2. Sending a URL to the student’s browser.

   Younger students have difficulty clicking on links, starting a browser and/or typing in a lengthy URL. InterCLASS can open up any URL on the browser for them. This is also time saver for the teacher.

3. Showing a student’s desktop on the projector without connecting directly with a cable.

   Since the Classmate PC’s screen is really small, it is difficult to show one student’s screen to the other kids. By using InterCLASS, the teacher can bring up one student’s screen to the projector wirelessly. She can share the student’s work on the projector without connecting their computer to the projector directly.

We’re hoping that with InterCLASS, this teacher can have a successful new school year!

While I was setting up InterCLASS on the laptops, I encountered a few issues that needed to be tweaked for the network, so I would like to share my experiences with you all.

Issue 1. Cisco Wireless Access Point

Cisco wireless access points are set to disable Multicast or Broadcast as the factory default. Due to this issue, we usually ask an IT staff member to enable it so that the InterCLASS teacher program can find
the student computers that are ready to connect to the teacher program over the network. However, this particular school district that we visited centralizes the wireless LAN configuration and
we could not change any configuration of the CIsco AP to allow for multicast. To work around this, we changed InterCLASS to the TCP mode. In the TCP mode, InterCLASS can communicate with the student computers even if Multicast (UDP) is disabled. The TCP mode also works if the teacher computer is in a different VLAN (segment) from the student computers.
If you have a similar situation, please contact our tech support, so that we can guide you to change InterCLASS to the TCP mode.

Issue 2. The DNS server’s cache returns the wrong (old) IP address for some of the computers.

On 8 of the 30 student laptops that we were installing on, I realized that InterCLASS’s Power Control Feature wasn’t working properly. To troubleshoot, I compared the real IP addresses with the DNS-stored IP addresses for the computer. Those 8 student machines had the old IP addresses in the DNS cache, despite the fact that the DHCP server already had leased out new IP addresses for those student computers.  This actually happens quite often when you re-image computers for a new school year. InterCLASS’s Power Control Feature doesn’t work well if this happens, so we had asked the district’s Help Desk to delete the old IP addresses from the cache of the DNS server.
I have posted more troubleshooting information about this issue here.

If you have similar problems, please feel free to contact us!

Ari

The new update will include the following enhancements:

1. Native 64-bit edition of InterCLASS.

   Since some of our customers already have chosen to use 64-bit computers, we will provide the native 64-bit program installer for 64-bit Windows 7. This edition will remove the known issues of the application block function that is caused by the 32-bit emulation mode on the 64-bit OS.

2. Limiting student web browsing for all web browsers.

   Teachers can control student web browsing on any internet browser including Firefox, Chrome, IE, etc. This will help if your lab has multiple browsers for various reasons, such as website development classes.

3. Blocking students from using USB drives / CD/DVD drives.

   Teachers can disable/enable USB flash drives or the CD/DVD drive on student computers without restarting the student PCs. Students cannot run inappropriate programs or files from an external drive.

4. Stopping students from excessively printing.

   You can simply stop printing from any student computer at anytime. Save toner and papers from unwanted printouts!

5. Internet co-browsing and drag and drop browser control.

   You can synchronize your teacher PC’s web browser and student web browsers to navigate to the target webpage for the students. If you just want to show the current webpage, you can drag the address bar icon on to the browser and then drop it on to the student icons on the InterCLASS console. This will be a really easy and quick way to show websites to the students.

6.  A remote logon feature for Novell Client2 and logon banner for Windows

   You can logon to all of the student computers from the teacher console even if your school uses the Novell Client program or a customized logon banner (message) appears on the student logon.

7. Other improvements

   We have implemented usability improvements, bug fixes and performance enhancements as much as we can based on feedback from you, our customers. Hope you have an even better experience using InterCLASS!

Currently, our QA team is doing the final QA testing in our testing lab. We will also do field testing in some of our customers’ environments prior to releasing the new update for everyone. I will post a release date when all of the QA testing has passed.

Our programmers are also starting to making specifications for the next spring or summer version up. We are thinking about adding a mobile App for InterCLASS as well as the quiz feature improvements. If you have some wish list items, please let us know!

Ari

For more information about InterCLASS Classroom Management Software, please go to:
http://www.interclass.us/

Here’s how she uses InterCLASS for her lessons:

Classroom Equipment and Layout

• The classroom has 32 computers and they are placed in a traditional horseshoe shape layout and islands.
• The Teacher computer is hooked to a room speaker and a projector, so that her desktop and audio are always on the projector.

About the class

• She teaches a graphic design and illustration class.
• When I visited her class, students were working on their own Store Brochure design project.
• For this project, students have to pretend to be a store manager and create their ownstore brochure for their potential customers.
• Students were instructed to create an attractive design to promote their productsand to also include all necessary relevant information for their customers,such as the store’s address, contact info, hours, driving directions and maps.

How did the teacher use InterCLASS for her instruction?

While the students were working on their own projects, the teacher would frequently use the full screen monitorand remote control functions with her projector to share her feedbackto the class on things she saw on individual projects. One student was also asked to evaluate and comment on the same studentproject. Thus, students could quickly improve upon their own work based on both the teacher and class feedback.For example, the teacher realized that one of the students forgot toput store hours on their brochure, so she brought the student’s screen up on her monitorand the projector by double clicking the student icon on the InterCLASSteacher console. Then the teacher asked other students to give himtheir feedback, too in regards to the stipulations of the assignment. One student said that he didn’t know when the store opens andother students commented that the font size was too small to read. The teacher supported their comments and shared ideas with the entire class.
I noticed that several students took these ideas to heart by adding store hours and changing the font immediately. She did these full screen monitor/feedback sessions quite a lot in her class for the hour and a half that I was there.

Benefit

In her pre-InterCLASS traditional computer classroom days, the teacher would have to travel to each student’sdesk to give them her advice personally. However, by using InterCLASS, now she caninstruct each student from her desk and then can share it with the other students in real time. This method allows her to motivate and engage her students more.

Hope this information helps all of you InterCLASS users (or soon to be!) out there!

For more information about InterCLASS Classroom Management Software, please go to:
http://www.interclass.us/

To do so…

1. Start the InterCLASS teacher program.
2. Click the “Settings” button located on the bottom right of the teacher console and click “General” Settings from the menu.
   
3. The Setting Dialog will pop up and then click the “Student PC” tab on the setting dialog.
   
4. Click the “Setting” button under the Power Control Settings section, then the Power Control Setting dialog will appear.
   
5. On the Power Control Setting dialog, please change the [Network Client] to “Novell” and type in the correct window title from the actual Novell Client.
   
6. Click Close to close the dialog and click the Apply button under the Power Control Settings section to apply the modified PCS.ini to the student PCs.
7. Restart all student computers.
   Click the “Power” button on the teacher console (located on the lower right), then the power control dialog box will appear.
   
8. Click Restart to “restart” all of the student computers.
   
9. When all student computers have restarted and all student seating icons have turned to this blue color,
   
   click the Power button again to show the power control dialog.
10. Please try to Log on to the student computers from the teacher computer.
    Type in a user name, password and click Log On to log on all student computers at once.
    

The Student Activity Log (SAL) automatically saves student computer usage for up to one week (seven [7] days).  Teachers can view the entire class as a whole or individual computers.  When using the InterCLASS log in feature, the student’s login name or ID number will be shown on the computer they were using.

The SAL can also show teachers the length of time spent on each program or website as well.  The log can also be saved in an Excel spreadsheet format for quick reference should the teacher need it. Also, the Excel format allows teachers to email the attachment of the spreadsheet to their Principal or a student’s parents should disciplinary actions be necessary.

For more information on this great tool or to check out the other outstanding features of InterCLASS, please go to:

http://www.interclass.us/

or click on the InterCLASS link to the right.

TIE Conference

We had a wonderful time meeting folks at the Technology in Education 2009 Conference in Copper Mountain, Colorado, from June 24-25. The TIE Conference brought out teachers and administrators from all over Colorado and several were excited to see that we were offering resources for Interactive Whiteboards and Wireless Tablets.  With a sister who is a second grade teacher in Colorado, I was notified by her and her colleagues that they were really lacking planning time to create resources for their IWBs, so we decided to search the globe for activities and games to be used as whole class supplementation to help out.  The best ones to date have come out of England, where they have been using IWBs for a while now, as directed by their Ministry of Education.  We were very lucky to meet up with a truly fantastic guy named Mark Cogan at their annual BETT show held every year near London (BETT is an equivelant to our NECC conference here in the States).   He is a former teacher there and created the Interactive Resources line up, all from his clever little noggin. If you would like to give them a try, please click on the IR link to the right.

InterCLASS is sold in lab packs based upon the number of student PCs in the classroom or lab (up to 10, up to 30, etc.). We do not charge extra for the teacher’s program. Volume discounts are available for multiple labs in one school, school districts, higher education institutions, government organizations and corporations.

For more information about the InterCLASS, please visit to the product site.