The Royal Treatment

  
The IN2100 EP with the LiteShow II Wireless Presentation Adaptor

InFocus senior manager of global marketing, Martin Flynn, said that InFocus will be providing over 50 DLP projectors — IN35, IN35W, and IN37 models, along with LiteShow II Wireless Presenter Adaptors, which will be used during the sessions at T3 Conference in Dallas, February 29th through March 2nd. In addition to sponsoring T3, InFocus will be presenting at the event as well. I hope to catch the presentation and give it The Royal Treatment.

More on the LiteShow II in an upcoming post — it seems to be quite a hit.

 
InFocus
Learn Big IN2100 EP
Starting at $599 for SVGA, $749 for XGA, and $999 for WXGA  The Learn Big IN2100 EP series from InFocus uses DPL technology from Texas Instruments, featuring BrilliantColor and 2,500 lumens, making them bright enough to operate in high ambient light situations. Lamps have a life of 2,500 hours, making them economical for classroom use. Technology leaders will appreciate that these projectors are filter-free. The IN2100 series is offered in SVGA, XGA and WXGA resolutions. The Work Big series is also available for meeting and conference centers. Easy-to-use menus and new remote control capabilities make the Learn Big and Work Big series good education choices.
www.infocus.com

I reviewed a pre-production model of the TDP-EX20U extreme short-throw projector by Toshiba a few months ago, and had a few questions. I mentioned this to my contact and I quickly got a chance to talk with Jane Poon, projector marketing manager for Toshiba. I’d met Jane earlier at one of the shows I covered and remembered a very pleasant talk with a very knowledgeable person. Anyway, during our phone conversation, Jane let me talk with her about the TDP-EX20U, breaking in from time to time with a question or a prompt for me. In the background I could hear typing. I kept thinking — they really want to hear what I think. Now, that impressed me. At the end of the conversation Jane asked if I’d like to see the production model when it came out. Well, that was a no-brainer. The chance to compare pre- and post production models is quite interesting to me.

The image above it the production model. I was amazed how quickly it set up and how easy the menu controls worked. It recognized both PC and Mac laptops, although I had a little trouble with figuring out how to get my higher resolution laptop to show at its higher resolution. It kept reconfiguring to a lower one and my Web pages didn’t show up the way I’d created them. I tried reconfiguring my laptop display property setting without any luck. I’m going to try it again, because I may have missed something on the initial set up. Our Web developer had no trouble after resetting her MacBook Pro, and the University Business Publisher (our sister higher education publication) had no trouble with his PC in our conference room. I’ll figure it out — I’m trying not to blame everything on running Vista, although I was running XP while reviewing the pre-production projector. Hmmmmm. Ah, I’ll try it again — look at the menu options closely – and actually read before clicking through the set-up.

The projector is large and comes in a big carrying case, so it’s not something you’d use for travel. I was impressed at how close to the wall or screen I could place the TDP-EX20U. Great for presenting without worrying about shadows. I can see it being used in media centers, meeting rooms or for group gathering places — in an auditorium for instance, or a Board meeting, and possibly a lecture hall.

As far as noticing any differences… I really didn’t note any — that pre-production model was pretty much on the money from the start. Although, I did enjoy seeing it again.

Toshiba’s TDP-EX20U is priced at about $1,599.

The TDP-EX20U projector features DLP Brilliant Colors technology, 2,300 ANSI lumens, integrated wireless functionality for sequential presentations, and remote network management and multimedia capability. This portable projector has manual focus and short projection capabilities that can produce a 60-inch image from just three feet, reducing eye glare and shadows. It features XGA 1024 x 768 native resolution, a sharp contrast ratio of 2,000:1, and PC-free USB thumb-drive presentation.
www.toshiba.com

Grant Woods, AVerMedia marketing communications manager shared a new contest for educators with me at FETC in Orlando. Teachers are challenged to submit their best document camera lesson plans to AVerMedia — using any document camera. The best lessons will be chosen and the grand prize winners will be awarded a new AVerVision CP300 portable document camera and $1,000. Lesson plans will be judged on creativity, effective use of a document camera in the lesson, and originality. Submit plans at the official contest Web page - www.avermedia-usa.com/presentation.

The lesson plans will also be made available at the AVerMedia Web site for other educators to use as a resource.

According to Woods, this is one way to show appreciation for what educators do with technology, and document cameras are increasingly becoming a part of those daily lessons.

The contest began January 25th and will end April 18th, with winners chosen and announced by May 2, 2008.
The complete contest rules and submission requirements can be found at –AVerMedia Contest.

Peter Rillero and Adaptive Curriculum
  

I met with Peter Rillero, Ph.D., chair of secondary education and associate professor of science education at Arizona State University — www.west.asu.edu/rillero – while covering FETC 2008. Peter shared Adaptive Curriculum’s Science and Math supplemental, Web-based learning activities with me.

We had a good laugh together when I asked to see a specific science lesson on Francesco Redi’s spontaneous generation experiments. That’s the one with the containers of meat — uncovered and covered — and with the maggots and the flies. of course. In Redi’s day, disproving spontaneous generation wasn’t easy, but when I taught it in my life science classes duplicating it just made for a very smelly experiment. Peter was able to show me how students could Simulate experiments using the interactive magic of Adaptive Curriculum lessons — www.adaptivecurriculum.com. The software makes me want to get back in the classroom, tell my spontaneous generation stories again. Although I’d add computer lab trips to let my students test their hypotheses and duplicate experiments like Redi’s. Oh — OK, I’d probably do stinky experiments, too!

CitiDISK HD by Shining Technologies - www.shining.com - is a 10 ounce video hard drive for camcorders. Video transfer to 120 GB (higher capacity soon) CitiDISK is by firewire. It’s so new that pricing hasn’t been determined yet, but  there will be special education pricing available through resellers.

Chris Wang the marketing manager explained that CitiDISK records digital video, stores and allows instant editing without additional or in-between formatting stages making it a great feature to add to school media studios, or for cameras used to record educator best practice lessons, concerts, morning announcements, or sport recording. It’s compatible with HD and HDDV and with almost all video edition software, including Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier and iMovie. The company also has the accessories needed to seamlessly mount the hard drive to the camera (as shown in the images above/ tripod or shoe mount styles). It comes either with an internal battery (life 90-minutes) or external one (life 3-hours) that can be hot-swapped. There are no fans, so there’s no feedback.

I spoke with Linda Beheler, director of communication at TI, about the new TI-Nspire graphing calculator while at FETC 2008. Beheler has been pivotal in helping to set up these math/science educator discussions.

DA editors Royal (left) and K. Dyrli (right) meet Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin.
 

Animal Planet’s - animal.discovery.com - Jeff Corwin traveled from Madagascar to Keynote for Discovery Education at FETC. We met him at a special press briefing before his presentation.

“Our greatest natural resources are the ones that we produce as a species living in this country — our children. They are the ones that will be the future students of our children. These are the ones that will be the next politicians, business people — the people we should invest in,” says Corwin.

Corwin’s interest began with a visit to his grandparent’s house and the capture of his first snake at age eight.  The snake bit him, but instead of fearing snakes, his passion for them grew, and whenever he visited his grandparent’s it involved another snake-search, too. Corwin is concerned about the rapid rate of species extinction on the planet. To put this into perspective, some of the amphibians shared in his earlier shows have now gone extinct.

 Corwin’s did his undergraduate studies at Bridgewater State and graduate work in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts. He impressed us, though, while autographing CDs, by quickly determining  that the crocodile image on a Florida Ecosystems CD, he was asked to sign, was an African species and not found in Florida.

phase-6 Software’s Road to Success

Sometimes the stories and the people behind the products are as interesting as the products themselves. This is true for phase-6 — www.phase-6.com, a software company of German origin, offering software based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. Simply put, it helps students remember in an organized and scheduled manner. What’s interesting is that this software began it’s road to success on a muddy Polish road and with a bumpy bus ride.

Recently, I spoke with phase-6 creator Daniel Gorin about his software. It turns out that when Daniel was traveling through Poland, as a language student, he was carrying his well-organized box of language flashcards when the crowded bus he was riding in hit a bump. Well, the flashcard box slipped from his grasp and reorganized its flashcards onto the muddy floor of the bus. The cards were ruined and Daniel’s trusted flashcard box was history.

Daniel was determined to recreate his flashcard idea, but in a modern way. Within two weeks of the muddy bus incident, he had created the prototype of the software that has become phase-6. In a short time, there was local interest in Daniel’s software in Germany, so he began creating disks and sharing them. Soon, the demand became so great that phase-6 became a full-time opportunity. Now, the software is used throughout Germany.

With the European success of phase-6, Daniel and his business partner Lars Györvari have brought the product to the United States. Already, schools in California, Connecticut, and Chicago have shown interest, or are using the software. I’m told that another large acceptance is now in the works.

According to Lars, “if you believe that there is no single way of learning and acknowledge the fact that students have different abilities and learning concepts, you will love phase-6 – a focused tool that complements instruction and adds another level in diversified teaching systems.”

So, if you’re looking for a scientifically-based flashcard-like software system for students needing assistance with long term vocabulary memory– phase-6 is worth a look.

The Califone 8101 is priced at $148.
 
The 8100 series MP3 players from Califone - www.califone.com are specifically built for students and school use. The 8101 reviewed by DA was an appropriate-sized device for students, had light and sturdy ABS plastic construction, and easy to use operating and navigation buttons. The USB connection was easy, the battery charge was more than sufficient (up to 5 hours), and the sound through the headsets was dynamic. I tried some iPod ear buds in the 2nd headset output, but the connection was different – and only heard sound after some jiggling. Its built-in microphone and easy record and play makes recording voice or lessons easy and fun for students as well. I listened to music that I easily transfered to the 512MB of internal flash memory, although the 8101’s memory slot will take up to a 2GB SD card, so space isn’t a problem. Safety is a big feature for all Califone products, so this MP3 player meets American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association standards with its playback volume set at a mazimum of 85dB.

More…
Califone is also offering an MP3 bundled learning center for $250, with four noise reducing headsets, 4-position jackbox and carrying case.

 Toshiba’s Tecra M8 Plays Bigger Than Its Size.

Stacking up Toshiba’s Tecra M8 - www.toshiba.com

The Tecra M8 by Toshiba is a perfectly priced ($1,200) and substantial competition for the 13” MacBook (white @ $1,200 and black @ $1,400 - www.apple.com) for educators. Our review model was running Business Vista, but it does ship with XP as well. I have to admit that I was a bit leery about Vista, but this little beauty seems to have no trouble going through my paces – writing, photo editing, researching stories.  I’m sort of doing what I was doing in education, but to the extreme. I enjoy the biotech finger-swipe login, the more than 4-hour battery life (I’m forever forgetting to plug it in at work – and amazed that I can get through a morning’s use. Perfect for a lengthy trip, board or faculty meeting or parent conferencing. It has all the Microsoft goodies, like Movie Maker and Photo Editor as well as a 1.3M camera centered above the screen. It doesn’t do its initial boot as fast as the MacBook, but it’s worth the wait.
Our review model came with optical drive, network and modem ports, PC card or Express Card slot, 3 USB ports, RGB monitor port, i.LINK port, bridge media slot (great for transferring images from a media card), wireless on/off switch, and audio volume dial on the side next to the microphone and headphone jacks, a good sized cooling vent on the side, and AC adapter with sufficient cord.