Hi. My name is Thomas Hartley, a tech director for a K-8 district in Southeastern Wisconsin. Jim Klein asked me to be a guest blogger and I couldn’t be more excited to share my experiences and resources with the Ubermix Community. I hope you enjoy reading. If nothing else please check out the resources at the bottom of the page - in the spirit of open-source - what's mine is yours :)My Ubermix Story:
Shortly after graduating from Beloit College five years ago, I entered my teaching career as a hybrid K-8 computer instructor and technology integration coach in a rural lake community school in southeastern Wisconsin. Last year, I was promoted to the position of district technology director, along with teaching.
The first change I made as technology director was to halt our district’s switch to Chromebooks. We had always imaged our student laptops with Windows 7 and were switching to Chromebooks to make laptop management easier. I agree with many of Jim’s reasons for sticking with a full desktop OS, as opposed to the web-based restrictive Google Chromebook model that has become popular in educational circles over the past few years. I saw Windows as a difficult OS for students to manage without administrator rights and malware was a common problem. Instead, I asked the school board to approve Ubermix 2.0 as the 1:1 operating system. Their only concern is a common one, “Can the laptops still do everything they can on Windows?”. To paraphrase my answer: “Windows cannot do everything Ubermix can!”
Our district has 3 Windows labs, a Mac lab, and iPads for classroom stations. Often times schools go with one OS and forego the great things offered by each! Obviously Linux is the best :) but applications like Kodu are a must when teaching young children programming. After a year, I can honestly say Ubermix met every student need of our district with the exception of specialized Wisconsin State testing software. Our teachers preferred testing in the labs rather than the 1:1 devices, so this was not an issue. (We did not do Smarter Balance- in which case ubermix is compatible)
After one year of using ubermix, I have no complaints. I have plenty of ideas which I send Jim’s way and often find implemented in the next ubermix changelog. This year, my tech department only had to repair hardware failure and laptop breakage rather than dealing with virus-ridden laptops needing a lengthy Windows re-imaging process. Middle school students like to sit on laptops, leave pencils when closing lids, and expertly drop them in ways to break their laptops in the most peculiar ways :) Ubermix allowed us to focus on repairing laptops swiftly without being kept busy with OS-related issues.
In my next post, I will discuss how we made the switch from a Windows only school to a 1:1 program using ubermix. After a couple years of creating custom images, I will include some tips on customizing your image. Below are a few resources that would be useful to anyone in a K-8 setting. I've also included my changelog for my 2015-16 ubermix image.
In my next post, I will discuss how we made the switch from a Windows only school to a 1:1 program using ubermix. After a couple years of creating custom images, I will include some tips on customizing your image. Below are a few resources that would be useful to anyone in a K-8 setting. I've also included my changelog for my 2015-16 ubermix image.
Resources:
DESKTOP & WEB RESOURCES (This is money! Credit to Rachel Ryan Hartley & Our entire Staff for using these resources & helping compile them into one place.)
WCSCOMPUTERS (My “Learning How To Learn Website”, tons of resources & a technology skills scope and sequence for a K-8 district)
Any opinions in this blog post are solely my own and not that of my employing district or administration.
Follow Me on Twitter: @hartleytek
- Added onboard on-screen keyboard (for touch devices)
- Updated synaptics touchpad to latest upstream and patched for proper palm detection
- Updated Inkscape to latest upstream
- Updated Pinta to latest upstream
- Added thermald for better battery life and thermal control on fanless devices
- Improved disk setup on initial install on Win8 devices
The newly included 3.16 kernel and graphics server include a raft of features including new Kepler GPU support, improved Intel, NVidia, and Radeon graphics support, improved touchscreen and detachable keyboard support, and enhanced support for gaming controllers.
Since many new devices offer touch support, ubermix 2.2 now includes the onboard on-screen keyboard by default, as well as other enhancements to improve the experience on touch-enabled devices.
Inkscape was also updated to version 0.91, which includes an entirely new renderer and over 700 bug fixes. Expect significantly faster rendering of complex images, and new and improved measurement, text, and color tools.
Pinta gains new add-in options, redesigned shape tools, and more flexible layout tools.
Enjoy!
Photo Credit: shioshvili via Compfight cc
The secure browser is used to administer the Smarter Balanced formative and summative assessments to all students in grades 3-8 and 11 throughout the State of California, and is quite a pain to install according to the "official" instructions, so having it as part of the ubermix ecosystem should make it significantly easier for schools and districts in CA to deploy.
Installation Instructions
The CAASPP Secure Browser and its dependencies are well over 50 megabytes, so if your school is starved for bandwidth, you may want to plan accordingly.
GUI Method:
- Click on Activities, then select Synaptic Package Manager under Administration.
- When the Synaptic Package Manager window appears, click on the Reload button to update the package list for all of the online software repositories.
- Once the reload is complete, use the Quick filter box to search for "secure-browser-ca". Once it appears on the list, click on the checkbox next to it and choose Mark for Installation.
- Click on the Apply button, and Synaptic will download and install everything you need.
- The CASecureBrowser6.5 icon should appear under Internet in the Activities menu. If it doesn't appear immediately, don't panic - it will after a restart.
- Press ctrl-alt-t to open a terminal
- Type sudo apt-get update to update the package list for all of the online software repositories.
- Type sudo apt-get install secure-browser-ca to install the browser.
- The CASecureBrowser6.5 icon should appear under Internet in the Activities menu. If it doesn't appear immediately, don't panic - it will after a restart.
Leaders in education technology from a number of U.S. States met at the California Education Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) annual conference in Sacramento, California last week to to learn about the latest tools and strategies for infusing technology into the classroom. With over 900 decision makers in attendance, the event was one of the largest CETPA has ever put on.
I was lucky enough to be able to speak on Friday, and one of my sessions was the "Ultimate ubermix Panel 2.0", which brought together an illustrious team of ubermix leaders to discuss their ubermix-based learning initiatives, including (from left to right):
From the program:
READ MORE
I was lucky enough to be able to speak on Friday, and one of my sessions was the "Ultimate ubermix Panel 2.0", which brought together an illustrious team of ubermix leaders to discuss their ubermix-based learning initiatives, including (from left to right):
- Brad Grumbles, Coordinator of Curriculum, Assessment, and Instructional Technology, Panama-Buena Vista Union School District
- Dr. Mike Vollmert, Director of Technology, Rio School District
- Andrew Schwab, Chief Technology Officer, Union School District
- Larry Rego, Director of Information Technology, Hillmar Unified School District
- Jim Klein (me), Chief Technology Officer, Las Virgenes Unified School District
From the program:
Looking for something more from your student devices? Want a 1:1 solution without limits that is easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage, and best of all - free? Join the conversation that features a panel of five education technology leaders from all over California as they share and discuss their experiences with deploying and using ubermix in their school classrooms, labs, and their 1:1 laptop deployments. From old-timers who have been using ubermix for years to newbies who have recently deployed as many as 6000 devices (in a single summer!), participants are sure to gain powerful ideas for learning and get all of their questions answered. Join the free software revolution for student devices that is bringing powerful tools for learning into the hands of thousands students all over the world!We had a great crowd and awesome conversation!
For those not yet ready to give up on bulky, clunky, and slow Mac OS, ubermix 2.02 makes it easy to setup a side-by-side, dual-boot installation of ubermix and Mac OS, without losing any existing data on the Mac OS side of the installation. Be sure to check out http://wiki.ubermix.org/page/Apple_Mac for details and instructions.
The version 2.02 release also introduces ubermix lite, a trimmed down version of ubermix for older hardware. First off, ubermix lite is a refactored, 32-bit version that will run on older Intel and AMD hardware that don't support 64-bit, like older Asus EeePCs, Acer Aspire netbooks, and desktop systems from the mid-2000s. It's launcher shares much of the design language of full ubermix 2.0, however does not require any sort of graphics acceleration, making it fast and light on older systems. And its memory footprint is smaller, making it a better fit for systems with 1Gb or less of internal memory.
When you are ready to get going with either ubermix on your Mac or ubermix lite on your older hardware, head over to the Download and Install page to grab the latest version.
- Open a terminal by selecting "Terminal" from "Activities:Accessories" or pressing ctrl-alt-t on your keyboard
- Type "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-wallpapers*" (no quotes) and press the enter key.
Once complete, close the terminal window, right click anywhere on the desktop, and choose "Change Desktop Background" to see all of your new choices.
Just a few samples are below. Enjoy!
- Built on the latest underpinnings from Ubuntu, version 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr)
- Broad hardware support, including the latest tablet and hybrid devices
- 64-bit kernel and applications, bringing support for larger memory configurations and applications
- Modern, easy-to-use interface with plenty to love for novices and power-users alike
- A larger base of more than 80 powerful applications, including greater opportunity to code and learn to code
- Significant improvements to the installation and customization options, providing greater speed, flexibility and performance for large deployments
- Across the board refinement of all ubermix-specific customizations, making this the most powerful, reliable ubermix ever!
It is important to note that ubermix 2 might not run well (or at all) on some of your oldest hardware. For example systems with just 512Mb of RAM and/or a video card lacking acceleration will struggle. And if a system is so old that it is only 32-bit capable, ubermix 2 will not install. While an ubermix 2.0 "lite" is currently under consideration, for such applications, ubermix 1.x is still available, will continue to receive updates through version 1.6, and will be fully supported through the end of 2015.
Also, please bear with us while we update our site and documentation - there is much to go through! We should have everything up to snuff in short order.
If you are ready to give ubermix 2 a go, head on over to the Download and Install page for instructions. And if you need help, be sure to check the wiki and forums.
Thank you to the entire ubermix community for all your support and encouragement! A big thank you to Andrew Schwab, Mike Vollmert, Larry Rego, Thomas Hartley, Bob Henderson, Urko Masse, David Hicks, Jason Ricker, Gary Hampton, and the entire Inyo County tech team for your help and support with development and testing. You're all awesome!
