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CTV Toronto - T.O. school board votes to ban cellphone use - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television

In an all-too-typical example of how educational bureaucracies have their monitors stuck firmly up their USB ports, the Toronto District School Board has voted to ban the use of cell phones on school premises. Why use what may be the most prolific, cost effective, efficient, accessible, and appealing multimedia communication tool that technology can offer to educate our young when we can ban it instead?

The rationale given by the TDSB for this ban are threefold, according to news reports (Toronto students banned from using cellphones in schools). Cell phones are:

1) disruptive,
2) tools for cheating, and
3) causes for privacy concerns.

Josh Matlow, the trustee who introduced the (Josh Matlow - News), actually said,

"Let's get on with this! Let's not debate something that's a no-brainer ad nauseam. If we do that, what are we doing?"

(Note: Guillaume's solution for providing EPG, an electronic program guide, no longer works - though it's not his fault! Please visit our Programming eyeTV: A Work-around for Canadian Users posting for another solution.)

Teachers need TV. After all, what else is there to do with all that vacation time?

However, apart from simply crashing on the couch to regenerate the brain with degenerative pre-recorded drivel, there can be also an educational purpose to setting up a digital TV recorder on your Mac. Many great video resources are available on YouTube, however, in the inimitable wisdom of many a school and/or Board policy, these resources are regularly and uncritically blocked from access within the school network. There are, however, a number of solutions including TubeSock, QuickTime Pro, iShowU, ScreenRecord, iTunes, Mac the Ripper, Visual Hub, bit Torrent, P2P, and eyeTV that can allow you to store video resources, downloaded from the net or ripped from DVDs for use in the classroom. (Very important note: Please check your own country's "Fair Use" laws about copyrighted material used for educational purposes. Learning to make license plates in prison is no fun. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada has a pamphlet called Copyright Matters outlining the status of "fair dealing" and "educational exemption". "Fair Use" is a doctrine in the U.S.A. that allows broader use of the copyrighted material than Canadian "fair dealing". This and tax deductable mortgages are two wonderful American ideas that Canadians have yet to embrace. )

So, assuming you and your posse of legal advisors believe you would like to proceed, read on...

Elgato's eyetv hybrid television tuner can be set up with Mac mini for a, relatively-speaking-in-a-conspicucuous-consumption-consumer-driven-western-capitalism-socitey-way, decent Mac-based DVR ("Digital Video Recorder") solution.

• save time from surfing aimlessly through the cable tv line-up by having preferred shows recorded, and conveniently ready to view
• skip brain-numbing, mind-warping ads
• record, edit and archive useful resources for teaching (of course, only where copyright allows this reproduction)
• save money

In short, the pros:

• the quality of the recordings, displayed on a 42" plasma, are acceptable
• pause tv works like a charm
• the integrated software, EyeTV 2, is reasonably intuitive and stable
• software is stable and reliable (so far)

Cons:

• no built-in support for tv program guide in Canada, making setting recordings manually as the only option (unless you use the solution below)
• a ground hum from the cable connection (though this is almost certainly a fault of our cable connection, and not a problem with the EyeTV hardware)

Here, however, is the key to making EyeTV work in Canada:

EyeTV EPG Proxy

Guillaume Boudreau, at Pomme Pause, has kindly provided a download and instructions for setting up an EPG proxy (don't ask me what that is - it just works!) to enable the EyeTV program guide for Canada.

I can't say enough kind words about this gentleman's work.

Did I also mention that he has provided his hack free of charge?

I have faith indeed in human-kind again... when I'm not watching my EyeTV.

We're all keen to learn more about how to improve our personal productivity with a Mac... except, possibly, Michael Dell.

Where better to get some tips than from the mothership herself? Apple has a useful archive of tips on using the features of OS X worth perusing.

One particularly useful tip for educators, other than "quit teaching and go into business", is using the character palette to allow students to find special characters by simply holding down various keys, like the Option or Command keys, and seeing a live keyboard on the screen show the characters.

You can access the Character Palette by Edit -> Special Character in OS X built-in apps, but a better way for schools is to have the students turn on the checkbox in System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu, and leave it easily accessible at all time under the flag in the Tool Bar.

And, hey, just remember, you're all special characters to us...