Are the iPad Mini and other smaller tablets good for Education? Not if you are Budget Constrained

That may sound strange, after all many are proclaiming the opposite because smaller tablets cost less. With the announcement of the various devices - iPad Mini, Google Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and even the Kindle Fires - it seems like an excellent time to get more technology into the hands of students, cost effectively.

In reality, a budget constrained K–12 school district (in the U.S.) needs to keep in mind an important fact - small form factor tablets are not certified for the online testing that will be required in two budget cycles - the 2014–15 school year.

Currently, 25 states are part of SBAC, and 22 (plus the District of Columbia) are part of PARCC. These two organizations have chosen to release the same minimum hardware requirements. The minimum screen size? 9.5 inches for all devices.

I reached out last week to a state of CT official connected to SBAC asking about the smaller screen sizes, and received this as an answer (paraphrased since I did not ask if I could quote him): the smaller screen size technology was purposefully omitted when the new requirements document was written because of potential psychometric testing issues. This may change but for now the minimum screen size is 9.5 inches.

I did ask for the next requirements document to specifically address the smaller form factor. But the bottom line is, if your district is constrained in the amount of new technology it can purchase, don’t even consider it until and unless this sized device can be used for testing.

Comments are Off on this blog

Why would I turn comments off on a blog I rarely post to and has never had a comment?
I read this post by Matt Gemmell, and liked what I read: Comments Off
So I decided to accept comments by tweets or email. Please NOTE the text at the top right of the sidebar ————————————————————>
“Please tweet feedback instead of commenting
[best clicked when reading individual post]
Or email chris [AT] denesha [DOT] com”
Anything really cool that others tweet or email will be added as Edits to the original blog entries.
thanks,
chris

[edit] 2018-10-19 Comments turned back on

Thank You QuiteTall for your post!

It was the top Google hit when I searched on the error I found in my Console system log, and did the trick. Thanks!

I Found This Useful: Error message in OSX Console - Can't create kext cache under / - owner not root

Looks like an interesting blog, from someone using OSX (like me), interested in security (like me), and who has a Synology product (like me) - and this is just from reading his last few posts. I think I'll Follow! :)

chris

[edit 5/27/2011 11:40 AM]
in case the blog ever disappears, the command I needed to run on the root of my OSX drive, to fix the fact that I was the owner, was:
sudo chown root:admin /

Protecting 4410 from malware Win32/FakeRean

Thank goodness for FBWF! A user caught this malware over the weekend, and the majority of its effects were mitigated by a reboot.

However, I'll need to lock out more than just HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, since as Microsoft explains, this one also takes over HKCU\Software\Classes\.exe, and \exefile or \secfile.

The randomly named file it installed was cnb.exe at %AppData%, and it was set to launch every time you ran any executable. Sneaky!

I've decided that I need to keep the user's registry excluded with FBWF so it can be updated and retained - Acrobat Reader loves adding things to the registry (those files again are NTUSER.DAT and NTUSER.DAT.LOG). So just before I'm ready to create an image, I'll
1) elevate permissions for my one user account to administrator
2) login as that user and get into regedit
3) right click the following key and change the user's permissions to Deny
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
4) add the following three keys since they don't normally exist, and change the user's permissions to Deny
HKCU\Software\Classes\.exe
HKCU\Software\Classes\exefile
HKCU\Software\Classes\secfile
5) lower permissions back to Power User

Hopefully this, along with denying write permissions to the root of %AppData% (Documents and Setting\username\Application Data), will greatly reduce the malware my users are catching.

chris

Make sure your Mac always has these folders

I realized Friday, when I was finishing my Leopard image for the Ad Layout designers, that there weren't any messages in the console! No system logs or anything.. I also noticed weird files showing up at the root of the system volume, some with no names (must have been spaces) and some named like '%B0%B1' and other weird naming structures. They looked like temp files of some sort, but they weren't plain text.

I use the awesome Carbon Copy Cloner to create my Mac images after they are configured - I save them as disk images for later imaging to an empty partition on the destination Mac. I had been working on this particular configuration off and on for a couple of months - taking an image after substantial work so as not to lose it. (Good thing, too, since I needed to roll out my build Mac quickly one day two weeks ago and grab another one to work on. :)

I must have something mis-configured in my CCC settings.. so I installed a fresh copy of Leopard and immediately imaged it, then blasted that image back. Same symptoms - I've definitely got something wrong.

I'm slightly obsessive about having a clean system, although I try not to break anything with my cleaning! In this case, I took the suggestion from this Knowledge Base article about what additional folders I could exclude from my new image, and added a custom entry after communicating with CCC's developer at this forum post. The first three lines are the suggestion, and the fourth is my addition:

- Library/Caches
- /Library/Logs
- /private/var/log
- /private/var/folders

It turns out that the folders 'log' and 'folders' weren't being copied at all, which makes sense. However these are located in a locked down area of the system, where you need to issue commands with sudo - OSX couldn't create the folders! Thus no system logs, and no folder for certain temp files and caches, including a system font cache.

So I adjusted my entries to copy over the folders but not the contents, and my Mac image is much happier (and I am too!). The new entries look like this:

- Library/Caches
- /Library/Logs
- /private/var/log/*
- /private/var/folders/*

chris