Kevin Brookhouser

Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth. The obnoxious Back-to-School signs with their patronizing chalkboards and apples are up. I hated those signs when I was a kid, and I hate them now. Come to think of it, I can't stand most of the imagery associated with my profession. After 15 years teaching, I've never used a chalkboard, and I've never had a student bring me an apple, and that's a good thing.  When I was a kid, the silver lining to Back-to-School season was called a Lamborghini Trapper Keeper. For some kids and parents today, Back-to-school shopping means shopping for a gadget that can help them organize their school work. Everyone is talking about the iPad, but at $199, The Nexus 7 is a compelling device for those in schools like ours that are encouraging students to Bring-Your-Own-Device. It's great, but it's not perfect. Pros Speed   This thing flys. It goes from Sleep to Web in less than 8 seconds.  Size   The seven inch screen size is r...

I'm in my second year teaching English in a classroom with a cart of ten netbooks running Windows XP. I am so grateful to have them, and my students use them at least every other day. However, as an aging operating system, XP runs slowly and is much more complex than we need. The start time is long and we have varied success connecting to the wireless network. On the recommendation of Colin Matheson , an IT specialist at Carmel Unified School District, I installed Ubermix. Ubermix is an all-free, specially built, Linux-based operating system designed from the ground up with the needs of education in mind.  I downloaded the image file onto a separate machine and formated the image onto a USB stick following these instructions . The process wasn't as easy as I expected. I noticed that the install would hang after it said it would take about five minutes to install. So, I did what any sane person would do in this situation. I asked a teenager. In this case, Nils, who is lau...