I, Robot(ics)

How did you decide on the topic of your ILE?

I chose robotics as the subject of my ILE mainly because it was my biggest, and most important, extracurricular activity. At the time of planning the ILE and around the time of presentation, it was the most active, with pre-season happening around the planning period of the ILE and the presentation of the ILE occurring at the halfway point of the build season, when we actually start constructing our robot. Since I had been doing robotics for four years, I’ve become fairly knowledgeable in it and what constitutes the process of building a functional robot in six weeks. Finally, every year that I’ve taken part in robotics, I’ve always learned something new and useful that I can use outside of the club, so I anticipated that this year would bring something new to the table as well.

What were the goals that you established for yourself?

• Win (or at least do well at) the competition
• Have a great year as a team

My goals, which were the same as Ronak’s, as we started out planning our ILEs together, were more team-oriented rather than goals that I set for myself during the duration of the ILE. However, while working together toward the superordinate goal, I still gained valuable knowledge from experience and advice that I gained from mentors, and team members as well.

Last year’s festively dressed robot.

Did you achieve the goals that you established for yourself? Why or why not?

Technically, we did not achieve the goals that we established, considering we are only a little over halfway through the build season. Our goals will be achieved by the end of the build season, somewhere around mid- to late-February. However, we are doing very well at this point in time, compared to previous years. Our chassis is driveable and the programming team is working on finishing up all the code required for all the robot’s commands in order to increase the likelihood of the drivers being able to practice with the finished robot before we pack it up and send it to competition. Also, this year we are using CAD in conjunction with the mechanical team effectively. This allows us to design potential robot parts and prototypes on the computer using PTC’s Creo software, see if the measurements and mechanics are feasible when building an actual robot, and then building a robot based on the 3D model. To add on to our 3D revolution, one of the mechanical team members has also successfully created his own 3D printer at his home. This means that, using free 3D design software such as Google SketchUp, he is able to create custom parts for our robot, print them out at his house using the 3D printer, and utilize them on the robot without the need to improvise due to lack of custom parts.

What was your motivation level during your ILE? What were the factors that kept you motivated?

Considering I’m the president of the club, my motivation level during this project HAD to be at its peak. As president, I had to serve as a role model and guide for other members of the club, so if at any point I was not actively engaged in the club, it would show the other members that they were not required to be actively engaged either. Also, with senior year being my last year of the robotics club, I had to ensure that this year was the best of the four that I had in high school, both in terms of academics and extracurriculars, so I was always (and still am) pumped up about going to robotics and making significant progress each time we meet. As a bonus, if we do well this year, then next year the club would be able to advertise their success and gather more sponsors, which would in turn allow for better materials and more quality robots, and perhaps even more complex strategies. Overall, however, the biggest two motivators for my ILE and for the robotics club was the presence of my friends in the club, as well as the simple love that I had for the club due to the amount of time and effort that I invested into it. Motivation was definitely not an issue for me during the ILE process.

The brains of the robot.

What challenges did you face as you worked towards accomplishing the goals of your ILE?

The biggest challenge, as was usual with previous years, was deciding on a design for the robot. Usually we have team members come up with design ideas for a potential robot and present them to the team, and then we all vote on what idea we think is best. However, we usually run into issues at that point, because each team that presented an idea believes that theirs is the best and, in most cases, refuses to acknowledge the benefits of using parts and ideas from other teams that presented their designs. This year, we eliminated that problem by having each team that presented an idea rate their design based on 10-12 criteria that we all saw as most important for a robot to have. Using this method, we eliminated certain designs with overall low ratings right off the bat and eased the voting process for ourselves.
The other issue that we encountered which was, as usual, present in past years, was the issue of communication. Although communication between mechanical, programming, electrical, and logistics has improved greatly this year, there are still areas which we could fix to make perfect rather than acceptable. The programming team, for example, had encountered an error with the electronics part of the robot and could not get it to drive. Instead of asking electrical what they did and seeking their advice in finding out the source of the problem, the programmers were vehement about trying to figure out the problem on their own, despite our urging them to ask the electrical team. Although they did eventually find what was causing the issue, the conflict could have been resolved using a much faster, and more convenient, method.

What successes did you experience throughout your ILE?

As I stated before, this year was much more organized in terms of choosing a robot design and listing criteria that were regarded as the most important aspects of a successful robot. We also got a $10,000 sponsorship from NRG, a company that one of our mentors works for, for this year and next year, meaning we should (hopefully) not run into any financial pits anytime soon. We also set up a marketing subteam that will do (and has been doing) a significantly better job of keeping our sponsors in touch with what we’re doing and thanking them for the huge help that they have given us. Finally, we finished all the field elements and have put retro-reflective tape on them so that once our robot is completed, we can jump right into driving practice and prepare as best we can for the competitions.

Early prototyping.

What skills and knowledge did you develop as a result of your ILE?

• Leadership skills
  As president, it was my duty to make sure that each person in the club was assigned to either a team or a task, so I learned much in terms of strategies and tactics for getting people to work, even when they might not want to.
• Problem-solving skills
  Honed mainly during design decision and the time limits associated with gathering sponsors for food on Saturdays, the longer build days
• Planning skills
  Planned what restaurants would provide us with food on which dates, planned who was going to pick food up and when, planning who would go pick up the kit of parts on the day of kickoff, etc

Will the skills and knowledge you developed through your ILE help you in your future?

Most definitely. Communication is a crucial component in the real world, whether during a job search or in the office. Problem-solving is essential when working in groups and deciding on what components will constitute a potential final project, the pros and cons of each decision, and in general how a final product is going to be constructed. Leadership skills, the most important of all the ones that I trained during my ILE, are most valuable to me because leaders are always sought after in the real world. Leaders are able to motivate workers, in turn facilitating the progress of a product and the likelihood of its success. My position as president of the club will surely be beneficial to me in the future.

Programming code for the robot.

If you could start over, would you have changed the topic of your ILE? Why or why not? Are you proud of the outcome/results of your ILE? Why or why not?

I would not change my topic of my ILE if I could start over due to how important and personal the robotics club is to me. I am incredibly proud of robotics and the immense time and effort I have put into the club. I am more than jovial that all my work has allowed me to finally become president of the club during my final year in the club. I’m also proud of the results that we produce each year. At the end of each build season, looking upon a finished robot unifies us with a club because we can proudly show off our creation in only six short weeks. Finally, the thing that really convinced me that robotics was the right topic for my ILE was Mr. Musselman, the new member of the Science Center, saying that “[he] knew college kids did this kind of stuff, but never thought high schoolers were engaged in it, too”.

What advice, strategies, and suggestions would you provide to future Help Desk students to help them with the ILE?

Four words: pick something you love.

Google Glass Turns Classrooms into Glassrooms

Google Glass in Education: Part II

Google has recently released a new piece of technology, a computer worn on the face as a pair of glasses called Google Glass. While some people are trying to play with it and use it as a novelty item, others are applying it to educational and academic environments with hopes of changing how certain subjects are taught and perhaps one day replacing laptops and smartphones with a more sleek, less bulky alternative. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In case you did not have the privilege of attending our presentation on Google Glass, let me cover that first.

image from techcrunch

How Does It Work?

Since Google Glass rests on your face and mimics a pair of spectacles (with or without corrective lenses), it’s hard to hook up a traditional keyboard and mouse or stylus and stand to use it effectively. Rather than relying on mainly physical contact to control the system, Google Glass relies on voice commands. Alternatively, for those unable to use voice commands at the moment, there is a section of Glass on the right side of the frame that can be used as a touchpad to control the interface physically, for those who still can’t fully adapt to the voice command revolution.

image from lh6

The Glass interface itself is located in the top right corner of your vision, physically located just above your right eye. The idea behind this design was to allow users to view the computer’s screen in the top right angle, but still have a very wide and mostly unaltered view of the real world, radically changing the constant necessity to look down while using portable widespread devices today, most commonly the smartphone. Glass sees everything that the user sees, so it is able to recognize certain objects and, with a voice command or two, get you the research you’ve always wanted or the picture you’ll always keep. Overall, Glass’s interface is not complex, nor is it anything we’ve never seen before, but it will take some time getting all the commands and head movements down accurately.

What Good Is It?

Now that you as the reader are aware of what Glass is, you might be saying to yourself, “wow, this is amazing! but, what does it do?” Some people might argue that although Glass does have some potential, if it catches on, that it never will catch on because it’s just an overall bad device. I, personally, have to disagree with that statement. The features that Google Glass offers are quite useful and, for those who can afford the $1500, may prove to be worth the money. So, getting back to the original question: what good is Google Glass?

• Hands-free camera

• Google maps

• Google something on the tip of your tongue using something on the tip of your nose

• Field Trip App

• Facial recognition

• Tiles

• Empowering the physically disabled

This shortened list provides just a taste of all the features that Glass has and is capable of performing. While the majority of the ones listed are self-explanatory, the Field Trip app and Tiles require a bit more explaining:

Field Trip

Tiles

Now comes the important part: how are educators using Google Glass in their Glassrooms to change how lessons are taught and, most importantly, how children learn?

Google Glass Makes Classrooms into Glassrooms

Elementary

Teachers around the globe are hearing news of Google Glass and want to get their hands on a pair to make their contribution to the edtech community and try to change the future of education. One such teacher, who utilized the #ifihadglass hashtag on Twitter, was lucky enough to win an invite to the Glass Explorers program and get a pair of her very own Google Glasses. Powers took the opportunity and recorded a lesson using Glass for her first grade class. The childrens’ assignment was to build a large keyboard and assemble all the keys in the proper order. Powers helped her students and, at the same time, recorded the lesson with Glass. After watching the video later, she commented, “watching the Glass videos, I saw that it was hard for students to wait for their turn to put their key up on the bulletin board,” wanting everyone to admire their hard work. Although Google Glass was not directly used during the lesson with the children, the ability for a teacher to revisit a lecture or lesson later and evaluate how students responded to certain parts of the lesson is crucial for improvement in teaching methods.

image from Pando

Similarly, Glass does not have to be a tool which students use to solve world hunger or solve three day long calculus problems. Sometimes, all you need is an artist, a masterpiece, and a camera.

Jokes aside, Google Glass could be an excellent tool for people to make, as well as watch, tutorials and guides on how to construct, paint, or design anything they want. With a camera on the face and two free hands, creativity and imagination are free to run wild and create.

High School

Jumping from simpler to more complex tasks, we take into consideration the application of Google Glass in high school. Stacey Goodman, a teacher of a Personal Projects class, shares her thoughts on Google Glass. While her student, Dylan, is working on grinding down a piece of ruby-colored stained glass, Goodman worries about him recording the process with Google Glass, and with good reason. People who have been working at their jobs for decades get distracted sometimes; what’s to stop a 17-year-old with a gadget on his face from doing the same? Yet, as Dylan begins recording the video, the whole process goes smoothly and all fingers remain intact. Goodman comments that “the ease of use is partly why [she is] excited by pioneering Google Glass in the classroom, but [she is] most eager to explore the possibilities of using it for immersive, experiential learning and documentation used for reviewing and reflecting upon the student’s work.” Again, mention of reviewing and reflecting upon work. In this sense, Google Glass is not necessarily only good for reflecting upon performance by teachers during a lesson, but also by students who apply what they learned during the course.

College and On

Speaking of learning during courses, why stop at high school? We essentially spend our entire lives learning and doing new things. Marcie Cambigue, the Director of Technology at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, has also entered and joined the Glass Explorers program. With her very own pair of Google Glass, Cambigue talks about the two ways Glass can influence education: inside and outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, students are developing their own apps for Glass, potentially adjusting the device to fit their personal needs. The ability for Glass to be tailored and designed to each individual student’s needs  makes it much more than just a fancy piece of technology. Outside of the classroom, Cambigue is exploring the benefits of Glass for med school students, taking pictures and film during surgeries as a method of teaching, or a hospital in a remote location where a nurse examines a patient while connected to a doctor via Google Hangout. Whether inside or outside the classroom, Glass is a versatile tool able to be utilized in almost any setting. Here’s one graduate student’s take on Glass.

Personal Experience

My personal experience with Glass was very short and, personally, unpleasant. When I put them on, it was interesting for the first three minutes because I was completely amazed by the technology and the fact that there was a computer 2 inches from my face and I could control it with my voice. However, as the minutes passed, I started getting dizzier, to the point that I had to look away from the screen and straight for some ten minutes before my vision returned to normal. Even as I’m typing this I feel a bit woozy. I am unsure if that happens to everyone their first time wearing Glass and if it just takes some getting used to, or if I just cannot look at things at the edge of my sight for too long. As someone who wears vision correcting lenses, Glass also did not rest very comfortable over my pair of glasses, nor was I able to adjust them to line up straight with my pair of glasses so that neither was crooked. They make it look so easy in the pictures… In any case, I couldn’t use Glass for very long, so I wasn’t able to get a solid opinion on them from my own experience.

Glass? In My Class? It’s More Likely Than You Think

Just the other day, in our AP Physics C class, we were showing how rotational inertia changes when you pull your arms in and stick them out, much like ice skaters do. My friend recorded me spinning with his phone, and I couldn’t help but wonder how cool it would be to record a video with glass and show the change in speed from a first-person perspective as we pull our arms in and out. We were also doing Poetry Out Loud in my English class last week, and our teacher asked if any of us wanted to be filmed so we could see our posture and review any flaws we had in our recitation. I thought about how it would be useful if our teacher recorded us with Google Glass instead, so we could see what we look like from her perspective, which is the most important part of our presentation. I could list countless opportunities in our school where Glass could be employed. The bottom line is that Glass is very viable in a high school setting and, if not for large-scale projects, could be used for little projects or simple tasks. After all, it’s the little things that matter.

Save the Best (and Worst) for Last

Since educators and people globally are using Google Glass for one reason or another, it must be an excellent, flawless product, correct? Although widespread and useful, unfortunately, as with all products, Google Glass has its fair share of cons, but also pros as well.

Pros: mobility, hands-off, Field Trip, Google search, camera, facial recognition

Cons: price, privacy issues, problem for those with vertigo, hands-off, corrective lenses

Although an incomplete list, these are the pros and cons that I have found to be most popular.

Let’s start with the positive attributes. Google Glass is light and allows one to carry it almost anywhere. It’s less bulky than any cell phone and especially an iPad, meaning that teachers can easily use it during a lecture without being impeded by a bulky device in their hands. Glass is hands-off, which ties in with mobility, allowing the user to have both hands free to do whatever they’re doing, such as a wood shop teacher cutting a piece of wood, while also having access to all the features that Glass offers. Field Trip allows teachers to pull up more information about whatever site they’re at on a field trip to better explain to students the history and importance of certain landmarks. Google Search is, well, beneficial in any situation. The camera is extremely useful for teachers performing some sort of lab or activity during a class. If they can perform the lab and record it, they can then share the video with their students who can mimic what the teacher did, or perhaps use it as a way of checking for error in their experiment. Finally, facial recognition is an amazing way for teachers to learn students’ names at the start of the year (many of my teachers would definitely appreciate this aspect of Glass).

image from 3gdoctor’s wordpress

And now the not-so-positive attributes. The main reason many people are not interested in Glass is the price. $1500 is a pretty penny to spend on a gadget still in beta mode. My argument for this complaint is this: With Glass, you are able to reflect on your work and make improvements where necessary. Those with jobs, for example, could buy Glass for $1500, record themselves throughout the day, fix their mistakes which would, in turn, increase their productivity and customer satisfaction, and ultimately earn them a promotion. With this promotion, they would easily make back the $1500 they bought Glass with. Thus, in a perfect setting, it is possible for Glass to pay for itself, if used correctly.

Back to cons. With Glass’s voice command system, commands and conversations are very public. Many people believe, and are right to do so, that privacy would be very minimal during Glass usage. When communicating via Google Hangout, conversations would lose all sense of privacy and basically anyone would be able to listen in to your personal conversations. Another concern is the location of the screen in the top right corner of the field of view. For those with vertigo, it would be a problem to look in the corner of their vision without triggering their vertigo. If the screen was out forward more, rather than off to the side, it would be better for those with vertigo, but then the user’s vision would be obstructed, so there is no way that I can think of to avoid this issue.

Glass’s hands-off feature, although useful in the majority of cases, may be a hinderance to those who are more used to touching things and learning with their hands. If they are unable to touch the device and get a feel for it, they might have more difficulty adapting to the device. (Glass does have a touch surface on the frame but the more common method of controlling the device is by voice command). Finally, as was the issue with my glasses and Glass, Google Glass is not easily compatible with regular eyeglasses being worn at the same time. As a result, those in need of corrective lenses will need to either wear contacts while using Glass or purchase a separate set of prescription lenses for their Glass.

image from 3.bp’s blogspot

Overall, Glass has its positives and negatives for educational use. In my opinion, it is up to the user and educator to decide if it is a plausible educational tool for his/her specialty.

Sources

Techlife

Variety

TheJournal

Edweek

HuffingtonPost

Edutopia

K-12TechDecisions

Pando

365DaysOfGlass

MPowersTech

Weeks 8-10: A 1:1 Ratio of Independence:Procrastination

As students, we feel a wave of excitement come over us every time we see a substitute teacher enter the room rather than the familiar face of our teacher. Although our teacher still leaves us work to complete during the period, it’s much more relaxing and laid-back to be able to converse with friends while completing the assignment rather than paying attention during a quiet lecture or whatever the teacher decides to do that day. In our Help Desk Class, we have a similar situation, only it’s a little different. Instead of a substitute teacher, we have no teacher. Mrs. Scheffer has a Digital Literacy class during the same period as a Help Desk class, so she has to go up to a different hall in the school to teach some twenty-odd students and leaves us in the room, alone, to do our work.

Now, if I heard this as a student outside of this class, I would be wildly jealous. That amount of freedom and independence must be amazing. I will admit that a teacher-less class allows for a much less serious classroom experience and is thus not as stressful as regular classes may be. However, there is a very dark and usually ignored side to not having a teacher in the classroom: significantly decreased productivity.

If I conducted a survey and asked people what they really enjoyed doing, work would most likely not be one of the most popular answers. As high school seniors, we are burdened with loads of work from all kinds of classes, and entering a class without a teacher tempts us to slack off and take a break rather than do our assigned work. This is what happened to me in the 2nd period Help Desk class in Burlington High School. Now, I wasn’t completely slacking off, since I was getting quality posts completed, but due dates were missed and my posts were weeks late. At time, more than one overdue post was hanging over my head and had Mrs. Scheffer reminding me to finish them as soon as possible.

The moral of the story is that, although as teenagers we always claim how we don’t like rules, how rules are stupid and how we could do stuff on our own, sometimes we need that little extra push that teachers give us. Sometimes, the constant reminders and the incessant repetition of “Are you done with your assignments yet?” is the boost we need to actually get our work done. Now, maybe I’m just a slacker (ha, maybe…), but I feel that, despite my significant lack of work ethic, everyone would slack off just a little without a teacher. So after reading my story, be thankful for your teachers, despite the fact that they might get incredibly annoying with their reminders about deadlines. Without teachers, and an established sense of order, it’s incredibly easy for productivity to fall apart.

The past three weeks were slow regarding visitors to the Help Desk room, but there were a few:

Mr. Chiocca came in from next door again and asked us if we knew how to connect computers to the school’s printer server. I asked him if the computer had Windows 8, because I have no idea how to connect a printer on Windows 8, and when he said no, I assumed it had Windows 7. When I got to the computer, however, it turned out it was running Windows XP. Although it was nice to relish in the nostalgia of Windows XP, I tried connecting to a printer but there were only printers that the computer was connected to via a cable. There was no option to connect wirelessly to a printer, so unfortunately I could not help Mr. Chiocca.

Before that, a lady came in asking for help in connecting her iPhone text messages to her iPad’s iMessage app. We first tried entering the number in the iMessage settings on the iPad but the only thing that could be entered was an e-mail. We then thought to enter her email on the iPhone’s iMessage settings and designate it as a receiving e-mail for all incoming text messages. Unfortunately, this did not work for only her daughter’s phone number was connected to the iTunes account so she could not add a recipient e-mail address from her phone. We then hit the “learn more” button under the iMessage settings and found out that if she adds her phone number to the iTunes account that she and her daughter share, she can then add her e-mail as a recipient address and receive messages to both her phone and iPad. We did not get to see if it worked since class ended halfway through our searching for a solution, but she has not come back since, so we assume it went well.

As for the question of procrastination and getting posts done on time, Mrs. Scheffer came up with the brilliant idea (why have we not thought of this before?..) of us going up to her Digital Literacy class on Fridays when our posts are due and sitting in on her class. There, we can finish our reflections on time and under her supervision to ensure that we don’t get sidetracked or start putting work off until later.

 

The Hour of Code!

For the Hour of Code this Friday, 12/13/2013, Mrs. Scheffer told us to go through the very organized and detailed flyer she made and pick one of the coding tutorials to learn. Due to my love of games and tendency to play them, I picked to learn programming using the LightBot puzzle game.

The point of LightBot is to program the little robot to light up all the blue squares on the field. Though there are only a few possible controls and the field is small, the game takes more thinking than one might assume. The game is not excessively hard, especially this version that was created specifically for the Hour of Code, because it is more of a beginner tutorial with an added element of fun to it rather than a serious coding assignment or challenge. The levels get progressively harder in each category, so you start off the first few levels learning the basics and then really apply what you learned on the last level of each category.

starting off simple

My experience with LightBot was incredibly positive. I expected the game to be extremely simple, but I found that it took me a few tries and some pretty hefty thinking to get through some of the levels. The first category deals with just the basics of how to make the robot do what you want and how to get it where you want it to go. There was nothing to cover here, just an explanation of the commands and how they work. The second category, the hardest for me, included using procedures and substituting multiple steps as one command in the main sequence. I was doing fine with these until I got to the last level and couldn’t end up figuring it out.

looping using one procedure

Overall the game did a great job introducing coding in a fun and engaging way. I knew a bit about coding prior to playing the game, but I still learned how to use loops and such through this game. LightBot is also a great way to introduce kids to programming. While the game uses programming as a large part of its composition, in essence, it’s still just a game, so it doesn’t necessarily require kids to know anything about programming while giving them a decent introduction to the field. Like other games, children will like or dislike it, so it allows for detection of early interest in programming among children. This is crucial since the programming and computer science fields are so competitive that an early interest in programming would allow children to better prepare as students in high school and excel in the field through projects and personal endeavors to become better candidates for college and, eventually, the job market. After playing through LightBot, I would definitely encourage more game developers to create more programming-oriented games and more parents/teachers to introduce their children/students to these kinds of programming games early on in life. If not for programming purposes, the game is still effective in fostering thinking and problem solving in children which are essential life skills regardless of one’s career choice.

some levels are trickier than they appear

In my opinion, LightBot is definitely a step in the right direction towards a bright future in introductory programming methods.

I did it!

Week 7: Poorly Prepared Third-Party Products

We at Help Desk started off this week rather unusually. Near the beginning of the week, a student came in with a problem unlike any we’ve seen before: her iPhone 5 cable was stuck in a third-party portable charger. As she gave us the device, we had to stare at it for a second before we realized what it was. Then she told us that the cable was stuck and, naturally, we believed that she just wasn’t pulling hard enough because she didn’t want to break the charger, or the cable. We tugged on it once. A little harder the next time. The last time we really gave it our all, but it would appear she was right: that cable was stuck in place. Although the cable wiggled around to the left and right, not matter how much we pulled, it wasn’t budging. Andy then had the idea of using leverage to get it out and, after some careful placement of a pencil, we managed to get it out. Prior to leaving, the student thanked us and informed us that she wasn’t going to be using that charger ever again. Solid idea.

Next, we had a student come down because she was having trouble with her school e-mail. She said that her account was disabled and that she needed her password reset. Since we as students don’t have access to the program that allows us to reset email passwords, we had to get Ms. Scheffer to do it. After Ms. Scheffer reset the account’s password to the default login password, we told the girl to sign into her e-mail with the new password. She tried it once on her iPad. Didn’t work. As usual, we told her to try a second time, only this time to make sure she entered every letter correctly, slowly, and carefully to ensure that it worked. Again, however, it didn’t work. Ms. Scheffer worried that perhaps she had reset the wrong account’s password. Just to be safe, we asked the student to try logging in on one of the computers instead. When she started to log in, we noticed her mistake: she had forgotten to add the @bps121.org after her school ID, so Gmail was not registering her account as a school e-mail account but just as a random string of numbers.

On Friday, Mr. Wood came in near the end of class with a problem on his computer that he did not explain to us because he had to show us for us to be able to understand. I personally do not know what the problem is since I did not go, but hopefully Mr. Wood was able to get everything fixed up and working again.

As for my thoughts on third-party products: make sure to always check reviews, warranties, and the validity of third-party products before purchasing them.

Week 6: The Struggles of Change

As I mentioned before, our school recently changed from Windows 7 to Windows 8. We also changed from using Microsoft Office to using Google Drive, in hopes of saving paper. Although this new idea is good for the environment and allows easy storage of all the files, most of the teachers in the school were used to Microsoft Office, so the switch to Google Drive has been difficult for some. The school has also made a switch to the PC version of the well-known Evernote app, which the Head of the Science Department, Dr. Nassiff, came in asking about this week.

Dr. Nassiff was able to make his own file have several notebooks in it and he was wondering how he could do that for all the other teachers that were in the Science Department group. Unfortunately, none of us use Evernote on a daily basis, if at all, especially not the PC version, so we sat down with Dr. Nassiff and attempted using trial and error to see if we could figure out something that worked. We tried creating new notebooks and sharing the files via e-mail and even tried deleting and re-adding the teachers in the group. Sadly, we just could not figure out a way to get Dr. Nassiff to his desired goal.

On a happier note, Shams and I began brainstorming ideas for our next Help Desk Blog post. I was thinking that we could do another survey since those were most efficient at collecting information and opinions, but tweak it this time to make it more use-friendly, perhaps omitting all open-ended questions and replacing them with multiple-choice questions that ask a similar question. We do not have a solid idea about what we could do a survey on, but if we ask Mrs. Scheffer for her input I’m sure she’ll throw an excellent idea or two our way.

Remember: change is always bad.

Week 5: Super Survey Summary

After the survey really got out, people started voicing their opinions from near and far. Students, teachers and administrators all sent in their thoughts on iOS 7, which we explained thoroughly in this post.

As for visitors to the Help Desk, we had Mr. Wood, the AP Biology teacher, visit us this week. He said he was trying to help out Ms. Belcher, an astronomy teacher, with her printer but he could not figure out how to access the printers since the school had upgraded all the teachers’ laptops to Windows 8. As some of you may or may not know, in Windows 7, typing something relevant to what you are searching for in the Start Menu search bar would inevitably lead you to what you were looking for. In Windows 8, however, the Start Menu is no longer present, and, to my knowledge, the ease of access of finding specific settings is more difficult now. Although I have not used Windows 8 (and I sure don’t plan to), it seems that other teachers, such as Ms. Belcher and Mr. Wood, are also having issues with Windows 8.

Also this week, Mr. Chiocca came in again (it’s easy for him to visit us when he needs help; he’s right next door!) and asked how to set up an iTunes account without attaching a credit card onto it. Everyone in Help Desk at that moment reassured him that there was just an option to not attach a credit card, but alas, he showed us there was not. This really confounded all of us. Every single one of us recalled an option to not attach a credit card when making an iTunes account. Did someone plant false memories in our heads? I digress. We tried everything we could, even starting the account creation process from scratch, but nothing worked. We could not figure out how to get past that stage of the account creation. Later on in the week, however, Mr. Chiocca stopped by again and told us that he simply had to attempt to make a purchase with the account and it would ask him to enter the credit card details. This request could be denied and the account would be all set without a credit card attached to it. In the end, trial and error is the way to go.

But seriously, why not just add an option to not attach a credit card? C’mon Apple, get with the times…

Week 4: Satisfaction Not-So-Guaranteed

Mrs. Scheffer wanted us to do a survey on peoples’ satisfaction with the new iOS 7 update. We used the Twtpoll website to create a short, seven question survey that would help us gain insight on what people thought of iOS 7 compared to iOS 6. Most of the survey was multiple choice, with a few open-ended questions requiring short responses. It was designed to get us detailed information that could be quickly provided without being hassling the survey taker, as surveys sometimes tend to do.

Getting the survey out to the public was tricky, however. We e-mailed the principal of the high school to send out the survey to our entire school but he did not reply for a couple days. In the meantime, we had Mrs. Scheffer tweet it out, and a principal who follows Mrs. Scheffer also tweeted out a link to the survey. Eventually, the principal of our school sent out the link to the survey. We waited patiently to see just how many responses we would get. At the time, we were hoping for 100, max.

Our prediction is that the reception of iOS 7 will not be completely positive. In the halls, and around the Help Desk room, we heard continuous complaints of glitches, bugs, and crashes induced after students updated their iDevices to iOS7. Some people, like one girl who came to us one day of the week, complained how her update to iOS 7 erased all her apps, data, contacts, information, etc. While I personally think that that was just her fault for not restoring from a backup, she did have an iCloud backup and we were able to help her get everything back to the way it was.

Now we wait for the turnout.

Week 3: Teacher Takeover

This week, the students temporarily resolved their issues with iOS7 which yielded to teachers coming in with regular computer problems.

Mrs. Netishen, the junior AP English teacher, came in asking why her online gradebook did not have a scroll bar option that allowed her to scroll left and right to see all the grades she put in. We tried using different browsers but the problem persisted. We noticed that refreshing the page saved progress for grades and that the scroll bar remained for a short duration after refreshing but disappeared once again when she scrolled over. We were unable to find a permanent fix, so we guided Mrs. Netishen to the tech department with the temporary page refresh fix.

Next, Ms. Dowse, the replacement senior Honors English teacher, came in and had some trouble printing from her Google Drive account. Whenever she wanted to print a document, it forced her to download the file and save it as a .PDF. Only after she did this could she print the document. We tried accessing her printer settings, but the right printer was setup as the default printer, so it was not a connected printer issue. Then we tried checking her Google Drive settings but there was nothing there that we could change in order to make the file print immediately without being downloaded to the computer. Finally, we used good old Google to search why this was happening. We found out that this was a new function that Google Drive implemented and that it wasn’t a glitch in the computer or printer system.

Finally, Mr. Chiocca, the English as a Second Language teacher, came in asking why his students were not receiving folders and documents that he shared with them. We told him to double check that the students entered all their e-mails properly and to try signing out of their accounts and signing back in to ensure that Drive refreshed. This seemed to resolve his problem, as he has not return since, and he is in the room right next to ours.

We are just too good.

Week 2: iOS 7 and Bullies

As you may or may not know, iOS 7 came out on Wednesday of last week. For us at Help Desk, this meant a surge of complaints, backup questions, and functionality issues. One girl came in and told us that when she tried to update to iOS 7 wirelessly on her iPad, her iPad just shut down and put itself into factory restore mode. Luckily, she was smart enough to have backed up on iCloud (she didn’t have a computer at home), so we were able to back up her iPad and make everything function for the iOS 7 update. She has not returned since (at least not while we were here) so it’s safe to assume that she successfully updated her software. Another student had the misfortune of having a restrictions passcode set on his iPad by an unknown culprit. All of his apps and web browsers were turned off and he did not know the passcode to turn them on again. In this case, he was lucky because all he had to do was wipe his iPad via Find my iPad and restore from a backup. Had he backed up after the restrictions passcode was set, he would have had to completely re-format the iPad as a new iPad, and his backup would be rendered useless due to the fact that the restrictions passcode is saved in the backup. The rest of the week was less eventful and full of trivial issues such as screen brightness problems and the occasional hardware issue that required a replacement iPad to be requested from insurance. Hopefully week 3 will be more eventful.