Recently I purchased a few stylii for our iPad pilot at my school and have been paying close attention to their durability and overall usefulness in the classroom. One of my initial favorites the Just Mobile AluPen Stylus unfortunately already lost its nib. Thankfully the support at Just Mobile is taking it back to replace/repair the stylus. After my email to support the company sent me a video to try and replace the nib my self but I had no success. Just Mobile responded after that with a request for proof of purchase and then sent me a RMA number and off the stylus went to be fixed. I'll let you know what condition it is in when I get it back from them.
Below is my original post and thoughts on the Just Mobile AluPen Stylus.
This post is a continuation of my search for an iPad stylus that would be a good fit for elementary age students. My school is conducting an iPad pilot and we are researching different apps, accessories, and configurations that help us use and deploy the iPads effectively and efficiently. Over the next few posts I will be discussing the styluses I have looked at and tried. Most of the products I am reviewing are new to me and have not been tested over the long haul of the school year. Therefore I am just giving my initial thoughts and feelings on these products. In most cases these products were bought from Amazon and I have tried to provide links to each item.
The stylus has a heavy, solid feel, of sturdy construction. The chunky styling is reminiscent of the thicker pencils young students use. It has a good length and grip for precise control. The stylus nib is thicker than most which makes it more difficult to write/draw thin lines. It feels very comfortable in your hands.
So after 8 weeks of use in a 6th grade classroom and two days in a 2nd grade classroom the rubber nib of the Griffin fell off and was lost in the classroom. I am guessing I would downgrade my initial rating of the stylus to reflect the fact that the durability is not what I would have expected for stylus at that price point. My original post about the stylus is below.
Original Post December 2011
This post is a continuation of my search for an iPad stylus that would be a good fit for elementary age students. My school is conducting an iPad pilot and we are researching different apps, accessories, and configurations that help us use and deploy the iPads effectively and efficiently. Over the next few posts I will be discussing the styluses I have looked at and tried. Most of the products I am reviewing are new to me and have not been tested over the long haul of the school year. Therefore I am just giving my initial thoughts and feelings on these products. In most cases these products were bought from Amazon and I have tried to provide links to each item.
The Griffin stylus has a nice weight and texture to it. The length is slightly short for my adult hands but would be good for primary age students. The texture is nice because you don't feel it sliding in your hands as you use it. The stylus nib is a hollow rubber which flattens the harder you press on the screen. I do wonder how durable the nib is over the long haul and abuse of student use.
Recently I had to recover some files from a friend's harddrive, this seems to be becoming a trend. I was able to mount the drive in Mac OS X 10.7 using my Universal Harddrive adapter from OWC but I wasn't able to copy files from the drive as a group because there were frequent errors with individual files. Since I wasn't able to use finders copy I knew there had to be a way to force copy files from one location to another. Essentially I knew I needed to tell the computer to copy all the files it could from the drive and ignore the rest. Lucky Terminal came to the rescue. After a quick consult with another friend, I was reminded of Terminal's functionality in copying files but all skipping file with errors and moving onto the next file to copy.
This week on iDig Video: Audio Rules! Guest Jeremy Iverson, a techie on the latest Indiana Jones film that shot in Connecticut , joins our discussion on audio. Learn some simple tips & tricks so the audio quality in your videos will sound much more professional! Also – use films like “Lord of the Rings”; ”The Hurt Locker” in your class for students to discover discover innovative ways to incorporate audio into their videos. In Hot Topics of the Week: Adobes new “Primetime” with its end to end video publishing solution. Listen to the audio here
Just in case you missed yesterday's announcement, I am participating in a new series call "iDig Video." The latest episode was recently published and can be found here.
This week on iDig Video: Preview of this new series focusing on video in the classroom. Segments include: “hot topic of the week” – with a discussion of the update to Final Cut X. Also – the potential impact of SOPA and PIPA laws on use of video in the classroom; and, using mashable trailers to show how movie scenes can be altered in incredibly creative ways.
Recently I have been invited to join a friend of mine to create a podcast series on using digital video in the classroom. The podcast series is part of the EdReach.us network and is called iDig Video. EdReach.us is a site where innovative educators share what they are doing in the classroom and share resources with others.
iDig Video will focus on how teachers can use video as a teaching tool, current hot topics of videos in the classroom, and good video clips that we use to teach with ideas of how you can use it yourself. Jonathan and I will also be inviting guests on the show to share their ideas and tips with you as well. We will also be asking our listeners to share their ideas and tips with us and other listeners.
Our first show just recently posted to the EdReach.us network and is also available on iTunes. You can find out more about our podcast and the EdReach.us network here.
Recently I finally made the update to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on my home computer. I use the mail app frequently because sometimes it just is the easiest way to look at all my email and RSS feeds in one place. One of the new features in mail is the "organize by conversation" feature which combines all your emails into a group so you can easily follow along. This is great for emails but it also does it by default for RSS feeds, essentially grouping all the posts from a single day into one group. Luckily there is a simple fix for this, I was just too lazy too look for a while. All you need to do it highlight the mailbox or RSS feed that you want "non-grouped" and under view in the menu bar you can uncheck "organize by conversation." It is as simple as that.
Earlier this year I wrote a post on how helpful Live CDs were in recovery some data from damaged harddrives and erasing them. The CDs also came in handy when the OS on the machines was damaged as well. This past weekend I had to help a close friend out who had the blue screen of death and thought it would be nice to revisit this post. As an aside most Live CD are also updated on various schedules so it might be time to download an updated version of your favorite Live CD.
May 2011
Recently I have been doing some cleaning out of computers for family and friends. Sometimes its a good trade off, against having to help out doing manual labor or such. I'd much rather click a start button and watch as the computer does all the heavy lifting than rake a yard full of leaves.
The tasks that have been keeping me busy recently have been removing the data from four older PCs and then wiping the hard drives so the computers could be safely disposed. Now as many of you know, I am a Mac guy but know my way around a PC enough to get the job done. The intended goal of this project was to remove all vital documents and move them to a USB flash drive.
The fun all started with the owner of the computers saying all of the computers most likely had viruses and at least two computers wouldn't boot-up past a blue screen. So I took one of the towers that was supposed to be in the best shape and started there. I removed the hard drives from the others and left them for disposal.
Easily enough I was able to get that one booted up and copied the files to a flash drive quickly. After that I scanned the flash drive, removed infected files, and transferred them to a new computer. Once I had removed the necessary files I began the fun process of wiping the drive. To accomplish this task I used a Live CD called the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) and program called Darik's Boot and Nuke. UBCD offers as many free diagnostic and utility programs that it can on a single CD which is great. This gives the options and flexibility you need to diagnose and address issues of the computer that isn't working. Check out there website for a full list of programs and applications contained on the CD.
The live UBCD allowed me to boot directly from the CD drive of the computer and load the Darik's Boot and Nuke program to provide a nice and easy way to clean the hard drive to which ever degree of security I chose, which if you really needed it there is a 35 pass option and more. Now the full UBCD wasn't needed for computer one and I could have gotten away with just copying the files and using a Live CD of Darik's Boot and Nuke, which you could find here, but it is a nice all in one package.
The other drives posed more of a problem. First there were the older style PATA drives so there wasn't an easy connector to hook them up to my MacBook Pro, so I just used the first tower and swapped the drives in as I worked with them. This seemed the easiest solution but I would rather use something like this in the future a universal drive adapter. The drives powered up fine, but as the owner warned me I couldn't get past the start up screen. This is where the UBCD came in handy. Since I had no way to just browse the PATA drive I still need to get it onto a external hard drive or USB stick. Fortunately, UBCD has a few options to clone drives that worked great. I used the HDclone option that worked very well for me with most of the drives copying to the external drive in about 45 minutes. With the information on the external drive I was able to transfer the uninfected files off and make a nice and tidy flash drive full of the documents requested by the owner. With all the information off the drives I then wiped them and the computer is now able to be disposed. Though for maximum security the old hard drives should be destroyed because it is really hard to put all the pieces back together then. I chose the 10 lb. sledge hammer method after the original owner didn't want the drives back.
Some other pieces of software that I came across during this process, some of which might come in handy one day are listed below. Who know when I might have to recover an accidentally deleted file or a lost partition?
