No, I haven’t saved money by switching to Direct General Auto Insurance.…. But I do have the opportunity to spend 1000 bogus George Washingtons on software for my classroom. One THOUSAND buckaroos, and I can purchase anything I want. Ok, okay, I can hear you saying, “She’s THAT excited about fake shopping?”
Well, yeah.
Sad, isn’t it? Well, not really! Kinda cool, actually. In my graduate class, we were given a fun scenario: “You are a classroom teacher with one internet-connected classroom computer. Your principal has just come to you with the offer to purchase one academic software program for your classroom, and price is not a concern.” (Later, the instructions allow the software to cost up to $1000.) We have to justify our purchase, explaining how students will learn by using the software we select. In addition we were given the following companies’ website addresses to research and choose our purchase:
Academic Superstore
Journey Ed
K12 Software
I am not currently teaching, so I decided to pretend that I am a middle or high school media teacher – or computer software teacher. Yeah. With one classroom computer. It could happen. I certainly hope I’d have more hardware available to me in real life, but I am creative and resourceful, and I set about my task with gusto and imagination.
I immediately jumped at the opportunity to shop with other people’s money – whether it was with virtual money or with real money. And, I knew what I wanted to “buy” before I even went to the sites – ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 5 MASTER COLLECTION (CS5): Powerful, sleek, second-to-none in the graphics and multimedia software world. I mean, this software suite includes EVERYTHING – photo editing, illustration, animation, page layout, website creation, sound and video editing software, plus fun extras that assist the user in operating all the programs together:
| Adobe Illustrator CS5 | Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended |
| Adobe InDesign CS5 | Acrobat 9 Pro |
| Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 | Adobe Flash Professional CS5 |
| Adobe Flash Builder 4 | Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 |
| Adobe Fireworks CS5 | Adobe Contribute CS5 |
| Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 | Adobe After Effects CS5 |
| Adobe Soundbooth CS5 | Adobe OnLocation CS5 |
| Encore CS5 | Adobe Bridge CS5 |
| Adobe Device Central CS5 | Adobe Dynamic Link |
I had visions of students manipulating photos with ease and creating illustrations to show their knowledge of science concepts. I had images of my students editing videos and developing slideshows and multimedia presentations for their history reports. I could see my students animating geometric shapes in order to show their knowledge of fractions. I dreamed about students constructing book jackets, story boards, and Digital Book Trailers. I could hear their poetry readings queued up to original illustrations to bring their words to life. I saw students setting up websites to display their works. Without a doubt, this software would be an integral, quotidian, and indispensable resource and tool for my students. Every subject of their day could be accentuated with the use of this Creative Suite. Gone are the days of book reports and lengthy research papers. My students will be achieving the highest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: “morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts” (Wikipedia). All for the very nice price of $898.95 (plus $17.50 Shipping and Handling).
YAY! *Happy Dance!*
Wait… there’s more to my assignment… I read on… oh… yeah… our instructor threw a bug into the assignment…. So… at least I THOUGHT I knew what I wanted… He added that we do not have the funds to upgrade our hardware on our computers. So with this dandy news, do I have a computer capable of handling such a huge program? So into my computer’s innards I dove…
This week’s chapter of Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom focuses on hardware for educators. Wow, when I read the chapter, I found out just how little I really knew about hardware. I am pretty versed in software applications, but I really never understood the whole bit/byte/kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte/terabyte thing. In addition, I knew that computers had something to do with binary numbers or something, but I wasn’t sure what that was all about. In our text, I read that computers are digital processors if data, and powered by electricity, which has only two states: on or off” and are “represented by electronic circuits using two digits; 0 is used to represent the electronic state of off (absence of an electronic charge) and 1 is used to represent the electronic state of on (presence of the electronic charge)” (Shelly, 202-203). I decided to look a little deeper into binary numbers and I found this little worksheet on this website, which has other activities to help explain computer “think” to our students. What does all this mean? It means that computers, as complex as they seem, are basically made up of groups of binary (on/off) values that, when combined together in all sorts of groupings, can represent the 256 characters of our alphabet, numbering systems, and punctuation marks which are familiar to us (Shelly, 203).
(Kania)I kept reading the text, and I discovered that it contains a plethora of computer terminology – most of it I knew (Motherboard, Memory, Input Devices – keyboards, scanners, mice, etc and Output Devices – Printers, Monitors, Speakers and Headphones) but others that I didn’t. I can never remember which is RAM and which is ROM and do I need a lot of both all the time? And, what’s with all the DVD+R or DVD-R, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW, etc? Can’t we all just get along? The chapter was somewhat tedious to get through, but I kept getting little “ah-HA!” moments when I finally understood that any rewritable kind of memory is called Flash memory (Shelly 209) and that the abbreviation for a Blu-ray disc is BD (Shelly 237). And this website gives a good explanation of what the difference is between a disc and a disk. (My coworker said he saw light bulbs popping on above my head while I read the chapter.)
I was also fascinated reading the section on fax machines. How they work has always been a big mystery to me. I envisioned a fax transmission being similar to "Wonka Vision" - how Mike TV gets transferred across the room, in a million little pieces, to the television in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.
So… with all this hardware knowledge swimming around in the upper recesses of my head, I investigated my work computer. I use a DELL OptiPlex 760 CPU, running Windows XP Professional Operating System, version 2002, Service Pack 3. It has an Intel (R) Core (TM) 2 Duo CPU Pentium III Xeon processor, with a speed of 2527 MHz. The local hard disk capacity is 148.95 GB, of which I have used just over 43 GB. The capacity of RAM is 2 GB. I have a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels with a video card by ATI Technologies (ATI Radeon HD 3450 – Dell Optiplex). (I also have 3 monitors, which are linked by the DisplayLink Graphics Adapter and DisplayLink Mirror Adapter.) In addition, I have a CD reader/writer drive, which reads / plays DVDs but does not allow me to write to a DVD. I have ports for a microphone and multiple headphone/speaker jacks, and 2 USB ports in the front of the CPU tower, 4 in the back, and one in the keyboard. I also have the standard ports like a firewire port, ports for input devices like a keyboard and a mouse, and interfaces for networking and modems. The computer is pretty old and running somewhat ancient software, and now I am nervous….
HOWEVER…
Before I get too hopeless, I check out the specs for the software I am seeking. (Please! Please!) Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection (CS5) is a big program… with big requirements…
*GULP*
… wait… for Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effect, Windows Vista or Windows 7, 64-bit edition. UNCHECK.
So…. Do I purchase the software?
YES! Of course!
My computer can handle almost every feature of the software. I realize that it can’t handle Adobe Premiere Pro and certain parts of After Effects and Photoshop, so those parts I won’t use. However, it is such a dynamic and vast program with so many educational uses and possibilities, that it is certainly worth the money. I purchase the software because it is definitely a great value, and when will I ever be given $1000 again? Most likely, in the future, I will be getting a new computer, and I can uninstall the suite from the old computer and reinstall it on the new one.
This was a great lesson for me because it taught me all about the hardware that I am using as well as how to match my current hardware with a complex software suite. That was valuable to me because sometimes I buy a program and hope it works when I install it. Now I know exactly what to do and what to look for when buying software.
Incidentally, I found the following website extremely useful in this week's lesson: Computer Hope. Not only did I explore some helpful computer troubleshooting solutions, I also looked up html language so that I could change colors of text, make a list with bullets, and make a table without borders. I even was able to fix last week's post that was accidentally double-spaced and hard to read. I also found this site helpful: Moms Who Blog.
As the weeks go by in this class, I am encouraged that I realize that I am definitely getting my Master's degree in the right field: Instructional Technology, with an Educational Technology focus. Blogging, and reading my classmates' blogs has made this class more interesting and engaging. I was dreading this week's lesson on computer parts and hardware - thinking it would be boring - and whatever would I write about? - but, as you can see (and congratulations if you've made it this far - I am almost done, I promise!) I learned a lot on the subject. I look forward to implementing all I've learned this far into my subsequent lessons.
Until next time, keep your disks backed up and your software up-to-date.
~ Christi S
PS: (For all you binary fans out there:)
01001000 01100001 01110110 01100101 01100001 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01110111 01100101 01100101 01101011 00100001
(Translation: Have a good week!)
References:
Kania, C. (1997). Real programmers code in binary. Retrieved from http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~cjbs17/Graphics/realProg.gif
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. (2011, February 16). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
Muir, D. (2001, June 25). An introduction to binary and data representation. Retrieved from http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~cjbs17/computing/binary.html
Shelly, G.B., Gunter, G.A., & Gunter, R.E. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology.
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