Friday, September 09, 2005
ALEKS Plug-in now on Math Dept. Laptops
In preparation for the Math Dept's weekly use of the ALEKS online math curriculum with their new iBook laptops, I installed the new ALEKS plug-in with the assistance of my Technology I class on the 40 iBooks in the laptop carts.
The previous plug-in had been installed with the original image, but the new version, 3.4.7, came out this week and was recommended for the new version of the ALEKS program.
Four iBooks would not open the browser, and they would not download it either, so I reimaged them off the Kangaru firewire hard drive. Three iBooks worked perfectly after that while one would not recognize the firewire port.
I'm assuming the original image must have been corrupted during installation since both the browser was not able to be installed and the firewire port was not able to be detected. I was able to image this particular machine off my server, however, and the problem was resolved.
The previous plug-in had been installed with the original image, but the new version, 3.4.7, came out this week and was recommended for the new version of the ALEKS program.
Four iBooks would not open the browser, and they would not download it either, so I reimaged them off the Kangaru firewire hard drive. Three iBooks worked perfectly after that while one would not recognize the firewire port.
I'm assuming the original image must have been corrupted during installation since both the browser was not able to be installed and the firewire port was not able to be detected. I was able to image this particular machine off my server, however, and the problem was resolved.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
ALEKS Online Math Curriculum
Today was the first day of testing for all students with the ALEKS online math curriculum.
All students will be assessed by the system prior to the implementation of the program in the math classes. Labs A, B, and C were booked to test three teachers' math sections for a two-day period. All math teachers will be booked in to the lab for a two-day period with all classes finished by the end of next week. Students who do not complete the test in this time will finish their testing during the regular ALEKS schedule.
All students logged into their Spurgeon XServe account with their names and ID#s. After logging in, students opened a browser, and logged in to the ALEKS program. Using the same log in IDs for the ALEKS program as for their XServe accounts helps to avoid confusion for the teachers and students.
This procedure for initial ALEKS testing allowed the immediate creation of server accounts for new students. If the student did not have an account, I created one at that time, with the subsequent ALEKS account created afterwards.
Testing went very smoothly, and now all students have been oriented as to how to log in to their server accounts, how to open a browser, how to open a web site, and how to use the ALEKS online system, all in only two 40 minute sessions!
Math teachers will use the laptop carts to use ALEKS, with each teacher reserving the carts one day per week. Four math teachers will continue to use the traditional eMac labs.
All students will be assessed by the system prior to the implementation of the program in the math classes. Labs A, B, and C were booked to test three teachers' math sections for a two-day period. All math teachers will be booked in to the lab for a two-day period with all classes finished by the end of next week. Students who do not complete the test in this time will finish their testing during the regular ALEKS schedule.
All students logged into their Spurgeon XServe account with their names and ID#s. After logging in, students opened a browser, and logged in to the ALEKS program. Using the same log in IDs for the ALEKS program as for their XServe accounts helps to avoid confusion for the teachers and students.
This procedure for initial ALEKS testing allowed the immediate creation of server accounts for new students. If the student did not have an account, I created one at that time, with the subsequent ALEKS account created afterwards.
Testing went very smoothly, and now all students have been oriented as to how to log in to their server accounts, how to open a browser, how to open a web site, and how to use the ALEKS online system, all in only two 40 minute sessions!
Math teachers will use the laptop carts to use ALEKS, with each teacher reserving the carts one day per week. Four math teachers will continue to use the traditional eMac labs.
