Battery conservation tips by Matt Klein

Battery conservation tips by Matt Klein, Small Dog Electronics

• Lower the display brightness all the way down. Doing this will generally double the estimated remaining battery life if you were set to full brightness beforehand.
• Disable keyboard backlighting.
• Ensure that Energy Saver is set to spin down hard disks when possible.
• Put your computer to sleep whenever you’re not actively using it, like when you’re on the phone, in the bathroom, or walking the dog.
• Eject optical disks. They spin almost all the time, taking power, even when they’re not in active use.
• Have lots of RAM installed. This helps prevent excessive virtual memory use (virtual memory is hard drive space that’s turned into virtual RAM. When the computer needs more RAM than is physically installed, it’ll dip into virtual memory reserves, and cause the hard drive to work more than it really has to.
• Use your iPod for music, not the computer; don’t charge your iPod unless absolutely necessary.
• Turn off auto-save features in your word processor. This feature spins up the hard drive all the time, consuming lots of power.
• Don’t keep unused applications running in the background.
• Mute the sound.

It’s not always practical to use your laptop is such a minimal way.

This was originally written for MacBooks. I have deleted Mac-specific tips. - tab

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Let's Share

Introducing the logo for Classrooms of the Future/Moshannon Valley for 2008-09. The logo reflects the principle keyword that should be driving our program this year, SHARING.

35 Tools For Teachers, Tutors and Students

Image via Wikipedia Mashable points out 35 Tools For Teachers, Tutors and Students in this post. Included are five grading tools and six assorted miscellaneous tools.

Also included are references to social networks where teachers can share and communicate with other teachers. There are links to sites offering teaching and tutoring job opportunities.

Here Comes 2008-09!

The state's CFF budget was cut from $90 million to $45 million, so it's no surprise that our 2008-09 budget at MVHS was substantially reduced. We received approximately half the funding we got last year.

Obviously, we will not be able to extend the program fully to 11th and 12th grades as had been planned. We were able to manage our funds so as to allow us to integrate 11th and 12th grade math and English, however. Joining the CFF program for the upcoming school year will be Jon Deemer (math), Tom Webb (English), and Tiffany Cover (English), with Bob Lewis (English) taking the place of the retired Denise McCloskey.

Bob will inherit McCloskey's classroom equipment, while Jon, Tom, and Tiffany will each be equipped with a laptop, an interactive whiteboard, and a projector. Thirty-three new student laptops will be added bringing the total to 96.