Category Archives: Lick-Wilmerding

Sep 02

Adding Film To Minimize Glare On Large LCDs

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We installed a 50″ LCD with built-in speakers in a very tricky and bright classroom to try and allow easy projection capabilities for the teacher and eliminate the always problematic use of normal projector systems. Three of the walls of the shop are fully windowed and the room is bright no matter what the weather. There are workstation islands through the space, so having everyone have to move to a part of the studio to see a presentation or demonstration was never ideal. This is a classroom envronment, so we really need to have everyone in the room be able to connect with what is happening on the screen no matter where they are in the room.

Pictures of the Glass Studio space.

As you can see, lots of windows that can make it tough to project anything. After hanging the LCD we noticed, that the glossy screen (common on most large LCDs) still created an issue because it picked-up on the glare through the windows when it was sunny or overcast. The mirroring effect of the windows and space outside the studio was impossible to ignore. Relocating the display was not an option. So, I tried to find something standard that would provide anti-glare. But, there is really nothing ready-made on the market that I found to buy through my channels that could work with something as large as a 50″ display to cut the glare and not possible damage it in the process.

Enter Photodon.

Photodon (http://www.photodon.com) is one of the few/only to have film that will work to address the issue on large LCDs or TVs. I called them and Mary Ellen was super-helpful. I went back to get an exact measurement of the surface area of the screen and gave her the dimensions. They cut it to the specs I gave them for the Samsung LCD we recently put in there. When we got the film in, it fit perfectly. But – If you think putting a protective screen on a phone or iPad is tough, try doing it to a 50″ LCD! We took our time and stayed relatively patient throughout to get a great result with minimal blemishes on the contact of the screen to the film.

Before and After Shots Of The LCD

The result has made the LCD absolutely visible throughout the space of the studio with windows and all. The film was reasonably priced and well-worth the investment to really make the LCD functional in that space now. Very happy customer. If you are dealing with glare issues on your large LCD, TV or digital signage I suggest you give these guys a shot.

Apr 19

Using Dock Cleats As Cable Managers In Classrooms

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Powder-Coated Dock Edge Classic™ Cleats

When it comes to computer cabling in classroom environments, no matter what you do for the long runs, you usually a mess on your hands those final few feet to the faculty equipment.

No matter what you do in your school classrooms to handle cabling for faculty, there is that final length of cable for audio and video to projectors, interactive boards and audio that usually is a total cluster. Then, add-in the multiple uses and people in the rooms doing a variety of different types of presentations in different locations in the room and you compound the issue.  In our case, we had long cables running from the projector and speakers and the length connecting to faculty laptops has always been a nightmare to deal with. They sits on the ground and constantly get kicked around, removed, lost and/or damaged. It also just looks bad when you come in and see a pile of cables you need to rely on for a teaching session.

In addition to adding cable management from the projectors and speakers in the room through putting then behind the walls (if you can) or going with cable tracking to conceal and secure cables, you still need some slack to allow teachers to setup in the space in different locations. Because you want to leave some slack, but it can stay unorganized. All strict cable management systems from the usual vendors are really geared to hold the cabling in a fixed position. This doesn’t work for that final few feet from the wall you want for the teacher to be flexible with depending on their material and hardware use.

I found nothing great out there in the cabling vertical market intended to handle this sort of scenario. But, there are many solutions out there for dealing with situations LIKE this on boats with rope, which is why I looked to solutions with rope management and found that dock cleats could be a perfect solution. Different materials and environments, but very similar form and function. After a talk with L-W Visual Arts teacher, Robert Sanborn, who happens to be extremely knowledgeable of boat hardware and interiors, I found out that I should head down to West Marine and see what they have that could work for VGA and other rope-like cabling we deal with in schools.

DockEdge Classic™ Cleat in White Finish

West Marine had many different types of dock cleats but the Dock Edge Classic Cleat models seemed to be the best one to use in my opinion because it was lightweight, sturdy and seemed like our walls could handle it without too much trouble. Going through the check-out, the cashier asked if I had a boat (which we do not.) After briefly explaining I would be using this in a classroom, he smiled pretending to understand and was happy to sell whatever to me for whatever reason. Sidenote: If you have never had the chance to go in and look around store that carry boat supplies, I highly recommend it. There is a lot of really cool equipment and tools for boats but have so many other applications as well.

After We are getting a bunch in and will be installing in every classroom as we can in addition to normalizing the cabling runs with boxes and tracking. The have white and powder-coated models. We will get a mix of both depending what we can continue to acquire from vendors. I prefer 8 1/2 inch model (PN#2508W-F) as it provides enough spacing for decent extra length from the wall to take into the room for a table or desk use presentation.

Besides working quite well to tether the last few feet of a VGA, audio and USB cable, the cleat provides relief on the cable run itself to the rest of the run when it is pulled from the desk or table with the equipment. It stops the pull to the rest of the cabling in the track or behind the wall while still providing organization.

Lastly, it is also pretty fun to say you are getting a piece of equipment for your classrooms of your school from Bass Pro Shops (as they sell this model as well!) But, there are many places on the web you can order them from if you don’t have a local boat shop in your area. Depending on which sizes you get, the pricing ranges from $10-$30 or so.

Boating Dock Cleat in Lick-Wilmerding's Room C

Mar 10

BYOI (Bring Your Own Internet) and K-12 Students: Perils and Opportunities

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Nothing New

Mobile internet connectivity is nothing new.

Back in the 1990s, many of us were running around with Ricochet modems and PPP connections on our fat heavy laptops maybe getting 19200 bps around the streets of San Francisco. For New Year’s Eve 2000, I was shelled into email on my Palm V with my slick/expensive OmniSky wireless modem cradle while champagne and fireworks were all-around me near the Ferry Building so I could email by CEO right after we rolled-over to the year 2000 and prove we were okay for Y2K. We were.

After Y2k, and onward, smartphones like the Handspring Treo (later Palm Treo) really started to provide constant connectivity for email and simple web-browsing. Blackberry was in there as well. But, the mobile viewing of the internet and the speeds that one could achieve via the device itself or using a phone as a COM port or USB port ‘tether’ was never that great enough to provide such a wide-spread movement akin to the migration to the mobile phone we have seen over the last few years from the traditional ‘land-line’ POTS phones.

But that really seems to be changing now. With beefier smartphones and more complex handheld computers with robust operating systems that power them mainly from Apple, Google but also from other vendors like RIM, HP and Microsoft, we are starting to see the real likelihood of bringing all the internet you need with you for all your devices. For the average user, this can mean some wonderful freedom and flexibility. For the technology directors of K-12 schools, this means a lot more to worry about and evaluate. The main perils and opportunities I see relate to content filtering, equity and new possibilities for learning.

Content Filtering Efforts

The whole concept of being able to control the content students have access to via network content filtering will fade away. All of us who have chosen to implement content filtering know the limitations, false-positives and other perils it can generate, but still do it as a way to try and protect the school from content that adolescents might mistakenly or intentionally pull into the school environment and cause harm to others in the process. Right now many in my school have smartphones and will most certainly be flipping-on their iPhone Hotspot or Android Hotspot to use personally or to allow their friends to connect. Helping students take breaks from technology and gaming will become even more difficult than today. If students don’t need to go through you and your network, then they don’t need to understand or respect what your school is trying to setup as a learning environment. For lower and middle schools, the dilemma of unleashing the internet on students at all is also something that the school decides on.

I think this sort of shift will makes school administrators in the independent school world go one of two ways. Either they will embrace it like many 1-1 schools do now when looking at the folly and flaws of attempting content filtering combined with their sense that students can self-regulate or go down the road of further clampdown of technology through limiting access in a way to try and protect the school environment and culture. I think the real solution is somewhere in the middle and directly dependent on how your school values technology supporting the curriculum.

Absent of content filtering, many schools allow full access to the internet. Even though content filtering is quite problematic, it is a useful tool in the dialog or helping students understand what is appropriate in a the school environment and many independent school administrators move forward on that tenet. But, now with the BYOI concept, this mechanism will not be available for the school and schools will need to adapt usage policies and culture.

Equity of Student Body

All independent schools focus on their culture and what it means to be at that school. Honor codes, community and a sense of equity for all students at a basic sense, is quite common throughout all independent schools. Diversity of background is something that that many schools, like mine, cherish for the learning environment. But, I see this kind of shift in the portable power of information as something that can potential harm such focus on the creation of equity between students in schools.

Again, this is nothing new but perhaps just the nouns have changed. Used to be (and still is) some students have resources from their families to have cars, nicer clothes, take vacations to exotic places, etc. while others do not. I think this expanded sense of internet connectivity and ability to bypass the network structure of the schools for those that ‘have’ will be the new noun. School admin spend a lot of time and effort creating an environment where all students can thrive and have equal opportunity. This kind of differentiation – some students with the ability to go where they want whenever they want vs. those that cannot because they don’t have the tools and resources could really add another barrier to teachers and admin in schools. In a public school setting, the effects ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ will be even more severe. I can also see how different forms of ‘cliques’ of hotspots could manifest based on student groups access to information.

Equity in some form with technology will have to be addressed in schools that are ‘laptop’ schools or not. Also, just making sure every student has a laptop doesn’t address it anymore than giving a laptop (or any tech) to a student and assuming they know how to use it or will use it effectively for learning.

New Opportunities For Learning

I just mentioned a couple of perils of the the current shift and future acceleration of students bringing their own internet to schools, but I can also see a great deal of opportunities in this for the schools. There are many to think about but I can see a few examples right now. For schools in urban environments like mine, field trips to museums could be now structured with immediate online resource on works the students are looking at. Students could use social media tools for something productive related to their course while they were traversing the art or history.

In addition to augmenting class outings, students can use their mobile internet devices to coordinate with others in the area on projects in real-time. They can update their digital portfolios with content they are interacting with and creating immediately. There are many different models right now for distance learning and as that continues to evolve, mobile internet can allow schools to connect with students in rural areas not supported by wired broadband.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are many ways this new shift toward BYOI can go but understanding that it is either happening at your school today or will be happening and accelerating in the future means you have to think about how will affect your schools mission, culture and technology structure. With all new innovation there can be wonderful opportunities and possible perils. The one sure peril for your school would be to ignore or gloss over the fact that students are going to be increasingly empowered with their own access to the internet whether you are ready for it or not.

May 15

Digital Signage In Schools

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When I took up the task of trying to find a nice system for displacing paper-based bulletin boards in my high school’s foyer, I looked at a lot of solutions out there. I also asked around to see what others schools were doing. The types of setups people were using ranged from an old PC or Mac running Powerpoint on a display to provide scheduling and events for students and faculty to doing crazy VGA over ethernet to expensive displays. The top of the line solution was much to expensive and you still only had video and the fun of dealing with the craziness of cabling.

But, then I found MediaTile. Their systems are geared towards advertising and using their portal, the tile can communicate across the internet to get the data feeds you want for it. We got the 42″ model and set it up on our wireless. We have been running it now for over a year and did have some hardware issues, but MediaTile support went above and beyond to correct them and we are talking about power supplies, so what can you do?

We are looking at getting a few more around campus now that are internal trials seem to be positive. We also recently had a member of the Faculty at Lick-Wilmerding start to do some Adobe Flex/Flash development for a better, more interactive way to show our rotating block schedule which can really be difficult for everyone to understand and be aware of daily. The MediaTile system is currently and Windows-based system running their Adobe Flash-based MediaTile Player. We have it taking RSS feeds from our Whipple Hill Podium website News so we can keep our information unified and not have to post the all the same information in multiple places even though it is great to optimize screen images for the MediaTile for students and Faculty in a different way than we would for our website.

All in all, the lack of cables and overall slickness and network-connectivity the MediaTile digital signage system gives us is great and has become critical to our day-to-day operations. When we change the schedule or need to alert students to events, this is a great tool. The update time to the tile is not immediate, but that is due to the way the system checks-in for updates back to the home-base @ the mediatile.net portal. But, the time between the send and live on the screen is minutes so it is more than adequate for what we need.

More recent pics of our signage

Lick-Wilmerding High School Digital Signage Pic1

Lick-Wilmerding High School Digital Signage Pic 2

Mar 10

lickwh.at – The best URL Shortener Lick-Wilmerding Has Ever Seen!

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Just launched a URL shortener service primarily useful for Lick-Wilmerding Alums, Students, Faculty and Staff.

http://lickwh.at

It is a play on the famous/infamous “Lick What?” saying seen around campus for years on sweatshirts and t-shirts. It is open to the public to use and would certainly be a little different than the other generic ones out there if you decided to use it. It is just a little side project, but fun to use so give it a try if you want.