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Yesterday I talked about an activity in class that should have been easier than it was.\u00a0 My students captured the screen to a file and used the pictures to create a tutorial.\u00a0 Normally, capturing the screen is trivial in OS X.\u00a0 Press Command-Shift-3 and a graphic is saved to the desktop.\u00a0 But these computers are in a lab where files are not permitted to be saved to the desktop.<\/p>\n
At first I thought the files would be saved to a different location.\u00a0 The computer made the familiar “click” sound when I pressed the capture key sequence.\u00a0 Those files must be somewhere on the computer.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 No where.\u00a0 I called tech support services and found out the screen capture feature was disabled and I would have to use Grab (a program that come with OS X) instead.<\/p>\n
This little problem was minor.\u00a0 There was another way to complete the task without installing extra software.\u00a0 The down side is that none of my students are going to know the quick way to capture the screen in OS X.<\/p>\n
The sad thing is that we do this to students all the time.\u00a0 The Windows side is much worse.\u00a0 To start with, all the computers are setup with Deep Freeze.\u00a0 This magical program “refreshes” the computer after every boot.\u00a0 Someone can install spyware, delete critical files or even format the hard drive and after a reboot the machine returns to its original configuration.\u00a0 In my opinion, this is one of the greatest educational software titles available.\u00a0 It makes it possible for almost any problem to be repaired by simply rebooting the computer.<\/p>\n
The problem comes when the original configuration isn’t properly setup to handle the flashbacks created by Deep Freeze.\u00a0 Every time our lab computers start, the virus program says the virus definitions haven’t been updated, there are icons on the desktop that haven’t been used in more than sixty days and none of the patches for the OS have been installed.\u00a0 Any time Adobe Acrobat is executed, the “do you want to update” message appears.<\/p>\n
The students must also be trained to save files on a USB drive instead of the hard drive because all the files saved on the hard drive are lost during a reboot.\u00a0 Saving to a USB drive is something they should already be doing, so I don’t consider the Deep Freeze features to conflict with normal use at all.<\/p>\n
Here is where things start to fall apart.\u00a0 Many of the keyboard shortcuts have been disabled to prevent modification to the OS.\u00a0 I cannot use Windows-R or Windows-E.\u00a0 Files cannot be saved to the desktop, even though they would be deleted after a reboot.\u00a0 Also a “default” user is automatically logged in when Windows boots and all the “save as” options point to a folder so deep in the directory structure no one ever finds a file saved to the default location.<\/p>\n
I could go on, but I think my point is clear.\u00a0 School computers tend to be so “locked down” that normal procedures\u00a0are exceedingly difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 At the University we have it better than most K-12 schools.\u00a0 We can get to Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube and blog sites.\u00a0 I understand why these measures are in place, but something has to give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I talked about an activity in class that should have been easier than it was.\u00a0 My students captured the screen to a file and used the pictures to create a tutorial.\u00a0 Normally, capturing the screen is trivial in OS … Continue reading