alastair.turnbull

I thought I would share some practical advice and tips, and experience.

We have an OS X server. When an camera is attached to download photos, it only goes into iPhoto on that laptop. On a recent trip with my class (27 P5s) I took over 130 photos. I wanted each laptop to see and have access to them quickly. Yes, you can put them into a Public folder where all can see them, but the transfer time is very slow. Initially I copied them to a folder on the desktop using the laptop where they were in. Because all the laptops saw a common desktop, when logged in as the same user, this folder was gradually appearing on all the laptops, as I wanted. But oh so slow, 2 or 3 photos a minute. So the answer, of sorts. I put the original folder from the desktop onto a Firewire drive and went round each laptop, 16 of them, transferring them directly on to the desktop. By the time I was nearing the end of this, this folder was appearing on the ones I had not been to and I had to ‘replace’ as it was starting to be in existence on the desktop, via the wireless network . Eventually all laptops had the photos on the desktop.

Why did I do this? Because the children were using Comic Life and needed to access the photos quickly. It took time but was worth it. The children enjoyed using Comic Life. From an academic point of view there were literacy skills, Direct Speech, and from an ICT aspect they were learning to use a new application. They were showing me and the class how to flip the ‘bubbles’ and to change the colour of the font. A mutually beneficial experience for the teacher and the children!