Category: Flat World

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Did You Know? 2.0

Just noticed that Karl Fisch from The Fischbowl blog has had his “Did You Know?” presentation updated to a newly revised version, thanks to some internet collaboration from Scott McLeod and a guy called XPlane who helped with the Flash animation.

Karl originally created this for his own school’s use last year and, as it mentions in the presentation, it was originally destined to be shown only to about 150 people.  However, it was shared on Karls’ blog, the edublogosphere picked up on it and pretty soon it had been distributed to over 5 million people.  Yes, we live in exponential times.  Watch it.  Use it.  Share it.  Go start some conversations…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/pMcfrLYDm2U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The full story on this presentation can be found here.   Thanks for sharing Karl.

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Eight Random Things

You may recall that a little game of tag went around the edublogosphere sometime last year. In this game, many edubloggers were called upon to list five little-known facts about themselves and then tagging the meme on to five more bloggers. It was a fun exercise to help share the love, and a good learning experience in getting to know more about tagging your posts for Technorati.

It seems that round two has started… Jo McLeay just tagged me for a similar meme that’s floating around the edublogosphere at the moment. Jo posted a list of Eight Random Facts about herself, and tagged eight more bloggers to help pass along the idea, incuding myself. So here goes…

  1. I spent 4 years at Art School in the early 80s, and majored in Screenprinting, Photography, Multimedia and Film/Video.
  2. In the 80s I was in a band called The Jellybabies and for a few years we played regular gigs in lot of pubs around Sydney .
  3. When I was 8 years old, I won the TV Times Sesame Street drawing contest. First prize was an above-ground swimming pool.
  4. I drove a cab in Sydney for three years, from 1987 to 1989. I also worked in the Taxis Combined radio room for 8 months calling taxi jobs on the air.
  5. I entered a rally car in the 1988 Wynns Safari (now known as the Australian Safari). It was one of the most incredibly hard but fun things I’ve ever done.
  6. I have two children; Alex, 15, and Kate, 12. They are fantastic kids and I love them heaps.
  7. This year I will run my first ever City to Surf event.
  8. And for the last 8 months, I still feel that Life Is Not Designed Accidentally.

So there you go. Eight things. Eight very random things. And I’m just noticing how many times the number 8 occurs within them. Weird huh?

So, now I believe it is my turn to tag some folk to see if they keep this going… Let’s see…

Simon O’Carroll, Neil D’Aguair, Jess McCulloch, Steve Madsen, Bryn Jones, John Pearce, Paul Wilkinson, James Farmer

There ya go guys and girls. Tag, you’re it. Have fun.

Oh yes, here are the rules, just in case you weren’t sure…

  • Post these rules before you give your facts (or after…)
  • List 8 random facts about yourself
  • At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
  • Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

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Move those Laptops

My school bought a few class sets of laptops recently. The whole point of having laptops instead of another computer lab was so they could be used more flexibly around the school, but the obvious problem was how to store and transport them from room to room.

I’d seen classroom laptop trolleys on the market but none of them seemed to be exactly what we were after. The main laptop trolley maker in the Australian market appears to be PC-Locs from Western Australia, and although their products look ok, in my opinion they are hugely overpriced for what they are. For our 15 laptops we would have had to buy their 20 bay model, and at just over $5000 each they seemed outrageously expensive! I’d had a number of conversations with them on the telephone, but they were pretty firm on their pricing and there was no way I was going to pay that sort of money for a few pieces of welded steel and some rubber wheels, so this was a business deal that was clearly never going to happen. I even rang them on a couple of different occasions because I was so incredulous about the price and doubted that I was getting the correct quote for the unit I was looking at in the brochure. I was.

So I started to shop around to see what other alternatives existed. I found a company in Ingleburn in Sydney that made a pretty basic unit that housed only 10 computers. It was nearly $2000 and of course it didn’t fit our 15 units anyway.

I even considered making my own… I mean, I can weld, and how hard could this actually be anyway?

Then I decided to try turning to the wisdom of the crowds… I dropped a question to the OzTeachers forum asking the following question…

I was wondering if anyone on this list has any experience with portable laptop trolleys? We have a three class sets of 15 laptops and I am interested in a trolley system to share them between classrooms. So we need to get three trolleys…

I have looked at some of the products from PC Locs in WA, and although the products look ok the prices are completely over the top IMHO. Their 20 laptop trolley retails for around $5000 and seems outrageously expensive to me for what it is… (a few pieces of steel welded together and four pneumatic wheels! I’m oversimplifying I know, but I just can’t see $5000 worth of parts, labour and profit margin in it.) http://www.laptoptrolleys.com/

I saw another one from a company called Process Systems from Ingleburn in Sydney that was cheaper but looked really clunky, plus it only held 10 computers. http://www.process-systems.com.au/computer_trolleys.html

An american company called Loxit makes a nice looking unit, but they have no pricing on their website and they have not returned any of my emails to date. http://www.loxit.com/

Are there any others out there that you know of?

So, my question is do any of you use laptop trolleys, and if so what brand/type did you go with? Do you find them a useful method for storing, transporting and charging bays of laptops? Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? Where do I find a good one at a fair price? How can I find a good quality product that does the job I need without having to take out a second mortgage, sell a kidney or promise my first-born child to the devil?

Any ideas?

I got a number of replies from people, all offering suggestions about their trolley experiences, and some even offered to sell me theirs because they really didn’t like them too much. From what I could see, there were not many alternatives on the Australian market.

I thought there HAD to be a better solution at a reasonable pricepoint so I kept looking. Eventually, through an online contact, I found a guy in Hong Kong called Marco, whose company made a very nice looking unit. We swapped a few emails and he sent me some photos, and we negotiated a price we were both happy with. It was a bit of an exercise in faith when I went to see our school business manager to tell him I had negotiated a deal with a guy in Hong Kong, but he went along with it and we now have two very nice laptop trolleys that are exactly what we were after and at a price less than half what the PC-Locs people were asking. I’m very happy with the deal, and the trolleys are really well engineered and well made.

Lessons learned through this experience….

  • Hold out for what you really want. Don’t compromise.
  • It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
  • The wisdom of crowds can open new doors for you.
  • Sometimes you just have to trust people.
  • There is a real business opportunity in well made, reasonably priced laptop trolleys!