My Mac On Windows: VMWare Fusion

I have been looking for a great virtualization software to run Windows in Mac OS X.

I want to run ArcView 9.2 on my Mac. I had heard a lot about Parallels, so I tried it. It worked fairly good, but it crashed once too often.

I decided to give VMWare Fusion a try at the recommendation of a technology director in another school district. I am so glad I did. It is easy to work with and has not crashed at all. In fact, it is much easier for me to work with. I really like it.

So if you are having issues with Parallels or if you are just looking for a good virtualization software to run Windows in Mac OS X, I would suggest looking at the Apple web site to see what they say about VMWare Fusion.

Our district purchases it from Valcom at about $32 a copy.

It is easy to install, to run, and gets along with my Mac like The Dog, The Cat, and The Rat. (You gotta love YouTube for this gem).

Keyboard Illumination Problem Solved

I was getting so irritated at my MacBookPro keyboard because in low light conditions, I could barely see the keyboard. I had the illumination turned on in the Keyboard Preference, but it hardly worked at all. My keyboard was barely lit up. Grrr.....

A little research led me to a great program, Lab Tick. I quite like the way I can set the keyboard preferences to illuminate in low light conditions--and have it stay that way.

Let's take a peek at the preferences Lab Tick allows us to set:
I created three shortcuts which allow me to dim, brighten and toggle Lab Tick on and off. If you are having issues with your keyboard illumination, you may wish to look into this program. It is the only thing that has worked for me on a consistent basis.

Thanks Lab Tick. What a great little program!

Attending a class~~at home! I love it.

Tonight I am in class--at home--with 35 other people from around the world. Australia, Argentina, Chicago, California, Pennsylvania, and many other places.The class is an open professional development class taught by Darren Draper & Kelly Dumont (in Utah) and Robin Ellis (In Pennsylvania). We are using a wikispace page as our central location. The instructors used a tool called UStream for the video and they embedded a chat stream using Meebo so we could communicate.

Later we broke into groups of 6 people and collaborated via Skype and Google docs to create a presentation using the Google presentation tool. I have no idea where my fellow collaborators were physically, nor did it matter. We just created the presentation together. I later found out one of them was in Australia. I kind of thought she typed with an Australian accent. : )


You know how there is always one person in a group who makes things a bit difficult for everybody? Well, we had an uninvited guest who entered our chat room. This became rather irritating, giving us all concern about using an open chat room when teaching with Ustream. So we will need to find a way to block those who want to just create problems.

But even with the troll (real term, not my opinion) it was fascinating collaborating with people from around the world.

Fenway Park and Coors Field

Lately I have been using an educational version of ArcView, called ArcExplorer, for my GIS projects. While the full-blown professional GIS program, ArcView is a fantastic program, it does take time to learn. Arc Explorer, on the other hand, is so clean and simple, with practically no learning curve. The students seems to pick up on ArcExplorer very quickly.

A great way to begin teaching ArcExplorer is with the baseball activity. Who can resist the Boston Red Sox or the Colorado Rockies?

We discuss a few vocabulary words, then dive into the maps and tools. We learn to open files, resize, zoom in, zoom out, pan, and measure sections the map.


Our first activity involves simple measurement. We measure around the bases. We determine the shortest and farthest distances a batter would have to hit the ball in each stadium to make a home run.

Then we use reasoning skills to determine what time of day the satellite image was take based on shadows. Next choose where we would like to sit in each stadium to be out of the sun. We estimate the number of parking spaces in various parking lots. Lastly, we turn layers on and off to see the effects on the map.We finish up with a few fun facts about each field. Did you know for example that Fenway Park was built in the Fens area of Boston? That it opened around the time of the Titanic disaster? Did you know that a ball hit in Coors Field travels an average of 9' farther than at sea level? The air is thinner at Coors Field (located in the Mile High City of Denver), reducing the resistance on the ball, alowing it to travel farther.