I am reblogging this older post because it is still relevant. We still have to go into the future sharing ideas. The blog still exists and has proven its worth over the years, as has ZNET. They keep you up to date with information and how things are changing but in an interesting way which often focuses on real life contributions of technology. The post which caught my eye in the first place was about the cross over between the analogue and digital world and how vital that is to develop. Digital paper notes written with an electronic pencil can be a powerful tool in he real world, as can tablets and smart phones. It is hard to keep up with everything which is positive because we get bogged down and distracted with the negative. More attention to the incredible achievements and breakthroughs might restore the balance?

500 words into the future is a ZNET blog by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe. They do a lot to demystify technology in the real world of hi tech because they both write authentic posts about what they are actually thinking and doing as high tech people. It might be as practical decorating the Surface tablet as well as working out how to keep it from slipping off your lap if you have short legs to looking at what the market is and could be doing and then, the sorts of real life situations which occur requiring hi tech input and thinking. Digitising the undigitisable one page at a time is a post that meant a lot to me as a teacher. I was looking at how this person with a lot of technical knowledge was solving a critical paramedic problem so that ambulance staff could manage the onboard assessment of patients and thereby give the patients a better chance of correct treatment as soon as they got to hospital. This is the stuff life is made of and the sort of thing students need to realise . It’s TeFL Domain 4 – Connecting their learning with the real world. After a couple of minutes of reading you can see how important technology, problem solving, logical thinking, collaboration, communication, literacy and networking are. You can read any of the posts on this blog and come to a realisation of how important technology is in the world and when the information is taking you 500 words at a time into the future then you can feel as you read it that you belong there. These two make technology very accessible but also very authentic.

I have been playing around with Windows 11 today. I really like the GUI. Somebody with a sense of design and artistic talent has created an interface which is stylish and easy on the eye. It is not like Windows 10 where there is a mess of text, images, boxes, web searches, weather and who knows what coming at you. This is a classy, professional interface. In search you can find anything you want without all the extraneous hoo ha Windows 10 tends to offer. I had to use it because the Windows 11 installation had taken my personal folder on the desktop and “hidden” it. It was in the quick launch sidebar with a cloud next to it and then some of the other folders which had been in that personal folder were separately in quicklaunch and then one of the folders which had been in my personal folder had my whole personal folder in it??? I only found that out by using the search bar to find a folder I knew should be there. I sorted it all out and backed it up and am happy now. It meant I got a tiki tour of the Windows 11 interface. I went on the net and some webpages like this blog and ebay would not load. I cleared my history and cache, installed the updates and it’s all good now. In the end I think this is going to be really good. I need it to stabilise and get its updates done and then I think it is going to be easy to use. I love the new version of Paint. I really like how neatly the whole interface is and it makes it very functional. I did have my laptop keyboard going for 5 seconds. I am just using a plugged in keyboard and there is no problem with that.

I have Windows 11 on my laptop! It took two hours and I followed these easy instructions. When you get the first installation screens there is an option to turn off updates. Make sure you do. Also check you are not downloading updates for Windows 10 when you are trying to install the Windows 11 upgrade. It hasn’t fixed my keyboard problem, which is a shame, and my laptop is running slower than on Windows 10. I expect that to improve. I love the look of it so far and I like the start menu much better. I shall have a better look over the next few days and keep you posted.

I am sharing this video because it might help you with your keyboard nonsense. I did get my Windows 10 keyboard working by removing the keyboard in Device Manager and reinstalling it. This video gives you a registry hack which I tried to no avail. I did download a driver and put it into System 32 and got the driver update to search for it. My keyboard was working again. I turned off my laptop and it is gone again. I have tried every tip and trick I can find. I can get it to work but then the spacebar, b, v stop working. The keys are clean. At this stage it is just crazy. I shall persist. It would be so silly if I have to plug in a keyboard when I know this one works…when it feels like it.

Image : Unsplash Aryan Dhiman

It is easy when you know how. I am on an Acer Windows 10 laptop. The keyboard is not typing certain letters or spacebar. I fixed it then it unfixed itself and I have tried everything. Then my desktop vanished. That seems to have been restored by using the Windows D key combination and right click on the desktop and View. The instructions are here on Windows Central. I have just typed this on the touch screen keyboard in the taskbar. My laptop doesn’t have a touch screen. Hoping to find a keyboard fix soon!!

Image: AI Freekpik

We live in a world where those who know willingly share their knowledge and their tips and tricks for running technology better. It adds to safety, security and peace of mind. Scott Merrill repairs computers. He has seen it all. He knows what we are getting wrong and he knows how operating systems can serve us better. In this video he goes through some Windows settings so you can understand where to find them and how to set them to benefit yourself and your computer. Settings are a must visit on any device or app. Go through them methodically. See what they can and cannot do. You cannot learn it all at once. Videos like this help you know it better and you do have access to good videos like this. Use them.

I’m reblogging this because it is how I felt when Vista came on the scene. Windows 11 doesn’t seem to be quite as offputting but there are people who have a litany of complaints as I did with Vista. In the end it all changed and it will with Windows 11 too. You just have to grow through it all. In the end, I have realised how much I have learned and changed through these Windows upgrades and changes. I can do and be more and Ihave certainly become more flexible in using technology. Adapting isn’t always easy when you are busy, but it makes you learn and grow. Just do it, I say. Windows 11 has been around for a while. It is remarkably unnoticed. Time to look and learn, maybe?

I was prepared to give Vista a whirl and I was prepared to look upon it kindly. I was prepared to go with the flow, move with the times and show my flexibility. Were you? Most people weren’t and I know from the stats on my other blogs that very few people have migrated from XP to Vista. I did because my new laptop and my new desktop came with Vista. In many ways it can be good. Visually it is very appealing but in the long term that is not enough to sustain you. Firefox has made lots of updates since Vista and now Firefox is not as good as it was and one of the biggest problems is the lack of accuracy with the inline spellchecking which used to be perfect. I think it , too, was more stable without Vista. At the moment it won’t play Real Player videos consistently. Vista is putting me through the third reconnection of my new printer at the time. It keeps reinstalling it. The last time Vista played up was because I had the gall to cut and paste my own recipe which I had made up from my blog and print it through my printer so my friend could have a copy. Vista thinks it is onto you for cheating or something and stuffs things up. It lost my sound when it thought I had pirated my own copy of my own music and then I get dopey messages because I run French stuff in Australia. How dare I. Yahoo is not much better. You go onto French Yahoo to find French things which are on French sites and it tells you to go back to your own country. Same if you try and go to American Yahoo…sends you back to Australia. So Vista mania has started to run through all sorts of things. The intention is to be helpful and to keep you honest but in practice it is just plain annoyingly stupid. I am so over Vista at the moment. XP was great…stable, easy to use, great at providing help and I am so glad we kept it at work. Vista is really in your face. My Office 2007 came with One Notes but when I needed Access and had to change my copy of Office I lost my One Notes because that was a different version. I did actually like One Notes and would have really appreciated keeping it but it had taken me so long to get the computer to recognise the new version I had loaded on I was too exhausted to try and do anything about losing OneNotes. Vista makes it all so hard. Doesn’t mean to…but now I am cranky

Image: Freepik

This post is reblogged from earlier.

I want an interactive cube template for thinking which could also be used for presentations. Presentations are just thinking out loud in public. I want 9 squares on the cube and the option of adding more squares so it could be 4×4 and I want the squares on each face of the cube. Then I want it to be like Rubrik’s cube so that I can twist the cross sections and bisections. If I have sets of ideas on each side of the cube, that gives me the potential to mix and match ideas, challenge my thinking and have a chance to really grow my thoughts. It can look at ideas, theory , practice, images , video links even. I have looked and there is nothing. I have seen some nice Powerpoint templates for cubes which you can animate but they are not exactly what I want. I found this lovely flower template which I have started to play with and it is really nice but I can’t rotate it and I can’t do the cross section twisting. Imagine looking at characters from a novel or play on each side of the cube. Imagine looking at a book from 6 different angles. Imagine learning vocabulary or gathering specific expressions for a specialised piece of writing. Imagine collecting steam punk ideas. Project building. I could do a lot with an animated cube for thinking. 3D, 21st century, where are you?

This video is four years old and Jody Bruchon made an update, but this first video got well over two million views and thousands of quality comments. Mr. Bruchon has experience and knowledge. He has lived through technology developments since Commodore 64s and he repairs and upgrades computers. He has got a few things off his chest in this video and if he is thinking these thoughts , they are worth listening to.

I am still tidying up my Windows 7 computer. Is this my computer? Is my Windows 10 computer my computer? Is my Linux computer my computer? I did lose access to iPad apps a couple of years back. I had downloaded them and had been using them for a long time. Then one day they were gone. I thought there must have been a glitch. They were no longer available in the iStore. Vanished forever and yet, I had had them on my iPad. They were audio apps which I used them often. Gone. That was when I first really became aware of my not having the things I thought I had. I get the bit where the new operating system can’t run older apps. They are still there, though, and they can still be used on older systems. The world does change but things disappearing off my phone, computer or tablet won’t ever be acceptable.

I am sitting here on the Windows 7 laptop I have been improving. It is going pretty well. It is not going to run everything but it has its uses. One of the things I have on the laptop is a Toshiba app to show me if I am being eco friendly or not. Isn’t that the way to go? Let people do what they do with the equipment they have but help them and the world be a better place? Let me listen to people like Mr. Bruchon who have made me think. He just sat down on his computer and shared his thoughts so we could engage and take notice. I don’t have to agree or disagree. I can sit, listen and think about it. He is worth listening to. I don’t want things on my computer or tablet not to be mine. I can’t live like that. Renting software is not an option because we use a lot of software and so it is costly if it is subscription based. I can live with upgrades and changes and the world moving on. We do need to keep thinking and talking. We need to work together. Pie in the sky? Maybe, but I think it is better for everyone when they share ideas and solve problems together.