The trouble is, not everyone knows that you can easily and freely turn office documents into PDF files. Typically, it’s assumed you need some (expensive) professional software to create PDF files. For example, you could get Adobe Acrobat Pro or Distiller. Not cheap options, and not for the average user.

I was reading the NJEA review that I got in the mail today, and they listed Zamzar as a great resource because, among other things, it can convert documents to pdfs. While this is true, you don’t need an online service like Zamzar. There’s another free option: Open Office.

Within the entire OpenOffice suite, you automatically have the option to save a document as a pdf file. If you create a handout in OpenOffice Writer, you can have a pdf file instantly by hitting the PDF button. If you want to share a presentation, you can open your Impress file and save it as a PDF. It’s built into the OpenOffice suite, in part, because OpenOffice is about using open standards to share information… PDF is an open standard. “.docx” is not.

I still wonder why more schools don’t turn away from expensive, licensed proprietary options when there are perfectly good open source alternatives available. For some students (i.e. graphic design, photography), you’ll want a PC or a Mac that can run the Adobe Creative Suite. For just about everyone else… Ubuntu, OpenOffice, and any number of open source alternatives is a perfect solution. I’d say something like 90% (or more) of students would be perfectly served by a purely open source system.

But it does allow you to open those proprietary file formats (i.e. *.docx, the Word 2007 files). This is a great solution for people that would otherwise be running old versions of Office and don’t want to or can’t install the compatibility pack. One problem that I’ve seen, though, is that people accidentally use the native Open Office file format (i.e. *.odt). This is all well and good in a world where everyone uses the *.odt file… but a lot of people using MS Office won’t be able to open it.

It’s easy enough to save a file as a Word document in Open Office, but it makes life even easier if you set Open Office to do this by default. Here’s how.

Open Up the Options Dialog

First, you’ll need to open up the “Options” menu. You can do this in any form of Open Office (i.e. Writer, Calc, Impress) – it doesn’t matter which part of it you’re using.

Click on the “Tools” menu and then choose “Options.”

Go to Load/Save -> General

On the lefthand side of the Options menu, you should see a bunch of choices – from “OpenOffice.org” at the top to “Internet” at the bottom. The various menus here let you set a lot of options about how Open Office functions.

Look down the list until you see “Load/Save.” There’s a + icon next to it, indicating that you can expand the list and see more options. After clicking on the plus icon, choose “General” from the new list of menus.

Always Save As…

Look to the bottom right for the drop down menu titled “Always save as.”

This is one of two related menus. To the left, you can choose a “Document Type” – i.e. text document, spreadsheet, presentation. By default, text document is selected. The “Always save as” menu lets you choose which format Open Office will use when you create a new text document.

If you want to be compatible with non Open Office users, you probably want to change this to a Word document. Click on the drop down menu, and choose “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP”. Now, all of your Word documents will be save as .doc files.

You may want to do the same thing for Spreadsheets and Presentations, so that both OpenOffice Calc and OpenOffice Impress use the old Microsoft Office format.

The system monitor was showing a weird amount of RAM, but it definitely wasn’t the max (512mb).  When I opened up the bottom of the laptop (where I figured the memory modules should go), I only saw a slot for one memory module.

Weird. I thought in the manual, it said that you could install two memory modules (up to 256mb) for a total of 512mb. So where is this extra memory module?

After digging through the documentation some more, I figured it out. There are two locations for you to install RAM, one on top of the motherboard and one underneath.

The easy to reach place is on the bottom of the computer. Look for the circle labeled “M,” and remove that screw. You can now slide the cover out of the way, and you should see a spot for one RAM chip as well as the built-in modem. When you look in the documentation for how to install a memory upgrade, this is where it sends you.

The other place is more of a pain in the butt to get to. But, it’s certainly do-able once you see the proper instructions.

First, you’ll need to remove the keyboard. You can find the official Dell documentation here.

Next, you need to remove the EMI shield. When you look under the keyboard, the EMI shield is the piece of sheet metal covering the left half of the opening.  Follow the instructions found here in the Dell documentation.

Now you should see another slot for a memory module, the fan (with the processor underneath) and some other random stuff. Install your memory module and carefully put the machine back together.

I’m not 100% sure, since I got this machine after it had been used (and presumably upgraded), but I think the spot underneath the EMI shield is where the original RAM is installed. I found a 64mb board there. The other place was probably empty when the laptop shipped, and that was intended for regular memory upgrades. That would explain why it was so much easier to get too…

Anyhow, now my Dell Inspiron 2600 is running a bit smoother with 512mb of ram (instead of the previous 320mb). When the computer is at rest, Ubuntu is chewing through about 150mb of RAM, leaving 350mb available for applications. For a machine this old, that’ll just have to do.

In the future, I may disassemble the computer again and take some pictures for a more formal write up. In the meantime, use the official Dell documentation. In this case, it’s your friend. The important thing is to note that there are two locations for the memory to go. Although this is stated in the documentation, it’s not very well highlighted and I skipped over that bit of information the first couple of times I read the section on adding new memory.

Now I just need to get a USB wireless dongle working, and this will be all set for use in my classroom. Woot!

I love collecting old computers for use in my classroom. I just found a handful of unused (but not so old) computers in a computer lab at school. They were Dell Optiplex 270′s – Pentium 4, 2.8 ghz, and 1gb of RAM.

Can you believe that the tech coordinator was thinking of tossing them now that we got new computers (which aren’t much better)? To follow up on that post, I built myself a new machine (Core 2 Duo, 2.8 ghz, 4gb RAM, 1gb Video Card) at the end of the summer for $500 (+$100 for a 19″ widescreen LCD monitor). /frown

But hey. Her loss, my gain. I now have four shiny Dell’s in the back of my room. If I can re-arrange things and get the furniture situated, I’ll have 12-14 decent computers connected to the internet in my own classroom. That’s a regular Social Studies classroom.

Back to the topic at hand, though. My mom wanted to help me in my crusade to collect as many old-but-useful computers as possible, so she spread the word at church. One of her friends had some old laptops she wanted to get rid of, and I became the owner of three new-old Dell laptops. Two of them seemed salveagable, but the third was a bit too old even for my taste.

I got one of them working quickly without any trouble. I installed xubuntu and took it into school. I still need to install the extra RAM that I purchased and get the USB wireless adapater working, but until then it’s sitting on the counter, plugged into the network with an ethernet cable and working fine. One of my students in particular loves to work at that laptop, and I can’t figure out why – because it’s the oldest and (relatively speaking) slowest of all the machines in my room.

Installing Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 2600

The other useable machine, though, is a Dell Inspiron 2600. It seems that the graphics card in this particular Dell Inspiron is trouble, and it’s (not so) tough to get a Ubuntu install to work. I tried the latest install CD, and I got a blank screen. Umm… uh oh. What do I do?

After some research, I figured out my best bet was to install Ubuntu 8.04 (instead of the latest, 9.10) on the machine. I got a bunch of information from the Ubuntu forums, and some really helpful insights from this post on apfrod.

I burned a new image of the 8.04 Hardy Heron alternate install to a DVD and popped it into the Dell. It booted into the installation, but there were freaky lines across the screen. I ignored them for the moment, and the installation went otherwise smoothly.

When I was done, the computer booted to a blank gray screen. Eugh. I turned the computer on, saw some text and the grub loader, saw a splash screen, and them BLAM. Gray screen. Hmm…

So, I followed the suggestion I found on apfrod and specified a display driver in the xorg.conf file.

To do that, I first booted to the command prompt. To do this, I hit “Escape” while the computer was booting. That let me choose to boot into recovery mode. From there, I told it I wanted to go to the shell prompt.

At this point, I navigated to the /etc/X11 directory. You should be able to do this by typing

cd /etc/X11

I edited the xorg config file by typing

nano xorg.conf

Following the instructions in the apfrod post I changed the following section:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

to

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "UseFBDev" "true"
Driver "i810"
EndSection

I rebooted the computer and low and behold… it worked! The gui loaded up perfectly, and I started downloading/installing updates.

Woot! Another working computer for my classroom.

For the last two years, we’ve had some version of an autorun virus floating around on the old macs.  When you plugged your flash drive into the mac, it would write an autorun.inf file and a hidden .exe file onto the flash drive.

Now, we’ve upgraded to PCs with Windows XP.  It only took a few months for the entire network to become infected.  I think the tech coordinator may have quashed the virus in the media center computers, but I think it’s still alive and kicking in my classroom.  Unfortunately, due to the user permissions she set, I can’t effectively clean it off my computer.

Instead, I follow a ritual in cleaning the files off my flash drive. If you’re facing a similar problem, check out the quick guide I wrote for Associated Content on how to clean an autorun.inf file off your flash drive. It shows you how to delete the files from a command prompt as well as how to write a batch file to automatically delete the files with a simple click of the mouse.

School is back in session, and already I here teachers and students complaining about these incompatible file formats. Students who have new computers at home bring in their .docx Word 2007 files, and they find that they can’t open them on the computers in the school’s media center. Doh!

Teachers, to, have this problem when students e-mail in or otherwise submit papers in this new format. If you’ve upgraded to the latest version of Microsoft Office (which costs a pretty penny to get legally), you’re golden. Otherwise, you might be staring at a file you can’t open and grade.

What to do? Building on what I said last December, here are three solutions to your problem…

Ditch Microsoft Office – Get OpenOffice

My first piece of advice is to ditch the expensive, proprietary Microsoft software altogether and start using OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a free, fully-functional, open source office suite.

It comes with a word processor (Writer), presentation software (Impress), spreadsheet program (Calc), drawing program, and database engine. It’s more or less a free and legal replacement to Microsoft Office.

The newer versions of OpenOffice also have the extra benefit of being able to open all the latest files from Microsoft Office 2007. You can open a .docx file, read it, and (if you want) save it in a different file format (.doc, .odt, etc). This works great for Word documents, although OpenOffice is not as good at opening/converting Power Point slideshows. The information is retained, but much of the formatting is lost in the conversion.

Get the Compatibility Pack from Microsoft

If you really want to stick with Microsoft, but don’t want to upgrade to the latest version of Office, you can get a compatibility pack from Microsoft.

This compatibility pack will update your older version of Microsoft Office and allow it to open up the new, .docx and .pptx formats. I’ve had trouble installing it on my official school computer, though, because it wants me to have administrator access (which my log-in account does not). Our one tech coordinator is also over-whelmed with trying to service 200+ computers, so she can’t do it.

As a result, I stick with OpenOffice on the other desktops in my classroom and open the new files from there.

Convert It Online

A third alternative is to use a service like Zamzar to convert the files for you.

At Zamzar, you upload the file to their server and let them do the conversion. After a short while, you will receive an e-mail with a link to the converted file. If you have a lot of files to convert, this can be burdensome, but it’s perfectly useable for one or two files.

In addition, you can use this to convert older incompatible file types to newer ones. For example, I had a few students who had Microsoft Works at home, which uses the .wps file format. This wasn’t compatible with the Microsoft Word on my school computer or the OpenOffice Writer on my other computer. With Zamzar, I was able to convert it to a .doc file and open it.

Pick a Standard File Format

There you have it. Three alternative methods of opening and/or converting .docx files so that you can read them.

The simplest advice I have, though, is to tell your students to use a standard file format! The simplest format to use is .doc – Word 97/2000/XP. This is compatible with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer. As long as the file is in this standard, universally recognized format, you won’t have trouble opening it.

Or, better yet, have them write up their document on Google Docs and read it online.

It turns out that Acer got busy, and they just got around to calling me to wrap up the promotion – about two and a half months after I received the unit.  I need to call them back on Monday to provide some feedback on my experience and make arrangements for the netbook they sent me.

My opinion?  Awesome.  I love the netbook.  I wrote up a review – with educators in mind – on Associated Content.  Check it out.

The arrangements?  I plan on buying it.  No doubt.  Now that I’ve used it at school and at Rutgers, I couldn’t imagine not having this nifty little toy.  So much better than my old, large, desktop-replacement laptop.

These new mini laptops, usually called “netbooks,” are designed with office productivity and internet usage in mind. They aren’t burdened with too much power, which keeps them efficient and cheap.

Sounds to me like these are a good candidate for use in the classroom. I’ve been thinking of testing one out, and now thanks to Free Technology for Teachers, I’ve got the perfect excuse to do that.

Acer Netbook Promotion

Acer is currently running a promotion where you can test run a netbook for 30 days – no strings attached. Acer of course is trying to get you to purchase a whole slew of the computers for your school, but you aren’t obligated to purchase anything and you don’t need to pay anything up front to participate.

I spoke with a representative from Acer last week, and I signed up for the program. Initially, I thought they might only be looking for tech coordinators – since they make the purchasing decisions – but it was not a problem that I’m just a lowly classroom teacher. [Note: Only one person from each school can participate, so it would be a good idea to talk to your tech coordinator, just in case they were thinking of joining the program.]

Besides getting to test out the laptop, there are two other reasons to join the program.

$200 netbook. The Acer netbook normally sells for $400, but at the end of the promotion you can purchase one unit for half price. I haven’t checked out the details to see if I can purchase it personally (and thus not have it be school property), but I’m hoping that’s the case.

Chance to win a free set of Netbooks. Participants can win either a full computer lab of Acer desktops or a classroom set of Acer netbooks. Your chances of winning are pretty slim (4 prizes over all), but why not give it a shot?

Tiger Direct has a couple of Netbooks (include the Acer offered through this promotion) on sale for $300. The Acer and the Sylvannia netbooks are both currently $300, although the Sylvania looks slightly better (faster RAM, bigger hard drive) but it comes with Ubuntu (a Linux OS) instead of Windows.

I’ve also heard talk of a new netbook coming out from Asus that will cost $200. Supposed to be released sometime in 2009. Hmm… that could be interesting.

But have you looked at what WordPress created for you yet? Do you think it looks a bit, umm, ugly?

If you don’t, then I’m here to tell you: It’s ugly.

Luckily you can make it look much prettier with absolutely no web design experience. Even if you do know how to design web sites, choosing a pre-designed theme from WordPress is much quicker than fiddling with the design yourself.

Changing Your Site’s Theme

The appearance of your WordPress site is based on a theme. WordPress provides its users with several dozen free themes to choose from.

To view these themes, go to your Dashboard and click on the Appearance button on the left-hand menu.

This will bring up the Theme Browser. At the top of the page, you’ll see the theme that you are currently listed. The rest of the page is a list of available themes.

Take note that that is only the first page of the available themes. There are five pages worth of themes to pick from – a total of 60+ themes! Not bad for a system that’s 100% free and completely point-and-click.

When you find a theme that you think you like, click on the picture. This will bring up a full size preview of your site with the new theme.

Does it look good? If so, click the “Activate Theme Name Here” link in the upper right. Otherwise, click in the X in the top left and keep looking. There’s bound to be something in there that fits your tastes.

Not All Themes Are Created Equally

When choosing a theme, there are a couple things you should keep in mind.

Sidebars Are Important. Some themes don’t have a sidebar – they just have a list of posts going down the center. This would be ok for a very simple site, but a sidebar is a very useful tool when it comes to navigating your site. I’d think twice about picking a theme that doesn’t have a sidebar on the side. (Note: Don’t worry about what’s in the sidebar. You can change that later)

Wider Is Not Better. The main content area shouldn’t be too wide. About 500px (what you’re reading now) is a good size. Anything wider will make your lines of text too long – and reduce readability. This is especially a concern if you work with students that struggle with reading.

Text Formatting Is Important. Pick a theme because it’s readable, not because it’s cool. Pay attention to the color of the text and the color of the background. Something like “Cutline” (featured in the screenshot above) is very simple, but it’s also very readable. Again, you’ll want to pay special attention to this if your students aren’t great readers. If your site is difficult for your students to read, they just won’t use it. Lose-lose situation.

Play Around. Find Something You Like.

There are a lot of options, so the only way to find the right one is to play around a bit. Take some time to try out different themes before you move on to the next step.

You may want to ask your students for some input. Remember that they are the ones that are going to be reading it regularly! At least we hope so…

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You know how finicky these filters can be. I was a tad frustrated earlier in the year when I noticed that CNN was blocked – streaming video is no good. For a while I was able to access Q1043 and stream the radio station, but that’s now been blocked.

Oddly enough, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both available – but the actual flash movies in the pages are prevented from loading. /sigh.

All in the name of safety, though, right?

Today I came upon a new frustration. I was grading some papers in the library, and I read a take home test that a student had typed up. I noticed some weird formatting – a tell tale sign that something has been copied and pasted – so I went over to the computers to check it out.

When I typed in a phrase from the paper, the phrase appeared on a page from Example Essays. I tried to click through to see how much was plagiarized and bam! Blocked page.

I can see the point in blocking this type of page from students. But, as usual, I’m a bit curious as to the effectiveness.

In this case, the student could easily have accessed this page at home and plagiarized the information. While I, the teacher, am trying to grade papers at school during my prep, I am prevented from accessing the information necessary to know whether the student is cheating or not.

This wouldn’t be half as frustrating if teachers had override accounts so that they could bypass the filter altogether. Who are we trying to cage in, anyway? The students or the staff?