Tech Tips for Terrific Teacher Librarians

Any brilliant ideas on how to manage the machines and the technology in your professional life? Why not post them on this page?

Fred @ Byng - STALKING INSTRUCTIONS, or how to gather information (classes in each block, home phone number etc) on students with overdue books

At Byng, as at all schools, we are able to print a list of students with overdues, and sort them by their block C class. That works fine when distributing monthly reminders, but when trying to track down students, it is sometimes useful to have their full timetable. To make a list of all students with overdues including timetable and contact info (the locator info), I used the following steps:

• print the whole list of overdues in alpha order using Reportsmith.
• open the school locator file and resave it with the filename "overdues-this month".
• add a blank column at the front of the page (insert column).
• put an x (or any other character) in that column beside the name of anyone who has an overdue book (this step takes the most time... get a CS student to do this?)
• sort the entire spreadsheet on column A.
• delete the rows with students who don't have overdues (who don't have anything in the first column)

You now have an alphabetical list of students with overdue books including their contact information and full schedules. If you prefer to call down students in Block G instead of block C, you can now do so easily by sorting the new spreadsheet by that column.

Fred @ Byng - getting the EPSON M129-C receipt printer to use ALL the paper:

I managed to get a library receipt printer to use ALL the paper on the roll (previously, the printer would flash the "out of paper" light, then refuse to print.)

Materials:

1 small (about 5 mm wide) strip of index card.

Instructions:

• Open the printer and remove the roll of paper.
• On the left side of the opening, there is a black plastic sensor that pops out when there is no paper in the printer.
• Use the strip of card to hold the plastic sensor pressed in. Any of the card that is not in the hole with the sensor should be facing the back of the machine so that it doesn't get in the way of the paper roll.
• Replace the roll of paper - voilà... your printer uses the whole roll of paper!

I haven't found any drawback to this method, but wonder if there is any problem when the printer continues printing with no paper. Feedback much appreciated.

Fred @ Byng - Computers will not shut down all the way when using the power button

In order to get a computer to shut off completely, press the power button... right? It should work that way, but on our machines, pressing and releasing the power button used to put the machine into a "low-power mode". To completely turn off the computer, it was necessary to hold the power button in for up to five seconds. This was inconvenient, and often, machines got left running overnight. The next day, students would often ask for help as the machines were "not working".

In order to solve this problem, get the tech person to access the "bios settings" and turn off power saving options. (of course, if you know how to do this, try it yourself!) This will change the way the power button works, and will force the computer to shut off right away when you press it. DeepFreeze saves the original windows configuration, so shutting down this way doesn't damage the system.