Table of Contents - Vol. 19 No. 2 - November 2002

1. Pearls of URLs
   This monthly item will highlight Internet web sites which are considered "gems" by educators.
2. Notes and Quotes
   This regular column provides information on a potpourri of technological "tidbits".
3. IrfanView - Image freeware you can count on!
   Brian Metcalfe of Technology Education focuses on the wide variety of powerful features of this freeware product. Although Brian admits that he has only a rudimentary understanding of image structure, format and effects, he uses this article to help readers learn how they can save time and effort using this innovative tool. To illustrate the practicality of using IrfanView in classroom settings, Brian describes two different educational projects in which IrfanView was utilized successfully. The following headings indicate the main points in this article to which on-line readers may link:
   • Where can I get IrfanView?
   • Classroom Applications at Queenston School
   • IrfanView Thumbnails
   • IrfanView "Batch" File Conversion
   • Resources
   • IrfanView Slideshow
   • IrfanView Effects
   • IrfanView Scanner Support
   • Classroom Applications at Kent Road School
4. Freebie Favourites
   Brian Metcalfe shares a Microsoft Works travel brochure template.
5. Food for Thought: "Learning to Get Back Up"
   Craig B. Larson shares an inspirational message about the giraffe.

Pearls of URLs

  eduScapes: A Site for Life-Long Learners at: http://eduscapes.com/

  Little Explorers - Picture Dictionary at: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Dictionary.html  

   Microsoft Skills 2000 - Museum of Modern Technology at: http://www.actden.com/skills2K/  

"Bits and Bytes" is an educational publication for the students and staff of the Winnipeg School Division 
Brian Metcalfe - Editor: bitsandbytes@wsd1.org                                              Copyright © 2002 (ISSN 1195-5864)
Last revision date: November 20, 2002                                                              Information has been shared with 420

Notes and Quotes

by Brian Metcalfe - Technology Education

Computer Viruses Make House Calls
It is hoped that all our employees, who use a home computer and do not have up-to-date virus scanning installed, have taken advantage of the inexpensive Divisional employee purchase plan to acquire the NOD32 antivirus software. However, I recently learned that one of our employees was unable to save data to a floppy diskette. After calling Dell support services, the individual was directed to HouseCall at: http://housecall.trendmicro.com  This free, anti-virus web site was able to scan and remove viruses on the individual's computer over the Internet.

What's with the new wheels?
Those of you who are fortunate enough to have a mouse with a wheel between the buttons might want to investigate its use. Sure one can scroll up or down documents but did you know that if the <Ctrl> key is depressed while one rolls the wheel, it is possible to increase/decrease the font size on documents. Internet Explorer browser users will note that when the <Shift> key is depressed, while using the wheel, one can navigate backward and forward through visited pages (just like clicking the Back and Forward buttons).  [Thanks to Darrel Izzard at Kent Road School for this mouse wheel trick.]

Data loss on floppies
Recently our team was contacted by an individual who had lost anecdotal report card information which was being transferred between home and school on a floppy diskette. This individual was using Microsoft Word. Upon discussion, it was learned that the educator was writing anecdotal comments in Word and saving the file(s) directly to a floppy. Please note that at one time, when word processing software wasn't as sophisticated as it is today, one could save directly to a floppy using the File/Save As menu items. About two years ago we started encountering problems on HyperStudio diskettes when users saved directly to a floppy diskette. It seemed that as the files contained more sophisticated data including sound and video, the floppy drive could not reliably save the material directly. We advised educators to save their data to the local hard drive and then copy the resulting data from the hard drive to the floppy diskette. It appeared as though the COPY process was more reliable than the SAVE process when using floppies. Readers who want to transport data on a floppy are strongly encouraged to save the file to the local hard drive. Then use either "My Computer" or Microsoft "Explore" to navigate to the location of the file on the hard drive. One may then click on the file and use Edit/Copy and Edit/Paste menu items to copy the file to a floppy diskette. However Windows 95, 98 & 2000 users can simply "right click" on the file and then "left-click" on the "Send To" 3.5" Floppy (A:) to complete the task. Make certain one always watches to ensure that the floppy drive light is extinguished before removing the diskette.

 Quote of the Month  - "You are richer today if you have laughed, given, or forgiven ... "

Classroom Applications at Queenston School
Last year, I worked with Ellen Donogh, the Teacher-Librarian at Queenston School, who introduced Mrs. Harrison's Grade 2 students to a thematic unit on quilts. This endeavour expanded to include my introduction of the basics of Logo programming to Mrs. Stooke's class of Grade 4 students. We used the MSW Logo educational freeware, available from:  http://www.softronix.com/logo.html
to learn about problem solving, geometry and symmetry. As part of our thematic unit, each child was challenged to use the MSW Logo software in the lab to design a patch which would be "woven" into a "friendship quilt". The Grade 4 students demonstrated their creativity by writing procedures to have the Logo "turtle" draw a symmetric pattern. Each black and white pattern was then captured using the MSW Logo and saved as a bit-mapped image.

During the next class, each of the Grade 4 students worked with a Grade 2 partner. The older children helped the younger ones retrieve their black & white patch and repeatedly select a colour and fill a portion of the "patch" using the Windows Paint program. Once the children in the team were satisfied with the coloured patch, they added their respective initials to the patch and it was saved centrally.

Ellen wanted to celebrate the creativity of the students by showcasing the patches, arranged in a quilt pattern, on the Queenston web page. Unfortunately, each MSW Logo-created patch had been coloured and saved as a bit-mapped image. Such BMP files could not be directly integrated into an electronic quilt on a web page without proceeding through a conversion process.

In IrfanView, like most image conversion programs, one may select the menu items of File/Open and locate the appropriate bit-mapped "patch". Once the correct BMP patch is loaded into the image manipulation pane on the left and visually verified, one may select the File/Save As menu items and convert the image to either its corresponding GIF or JPG format. Although the process is relatively simple, it can be quite time- consuming if one needs to repeat this procedure for each child in a class of 25 students. IrfanView however makes such procedures so much more efficient through the use of "thumbnails" and the "batch" conversion process. 

IrfanView Thumbnails
Having the ability to see one's gallery of images without having to "Open" each file is a powerful, time-saving step that is afforded in IrfanView. To view one's images as thumbnails, one must begin by loading an image into the left-hand image manipulation pane using the File/Open menu items. When an image is displayed (as above), click on the File/Thumbnails menu items to view all images in that folder in a gallery on the right side of the screen.

IrfanView users can now open a particular image into the left-hand image manipulation pane by double-clicking on its corresponding thumbnail. Also one may use the traditional Windows folder hierarchy display and click on any folder to open up any images in the thumbnail gallery. One can also select a variety of thumbnail displays by selecting the  Options/Set thumbnail options menu items. However, the ability to preview images without having to open them up individually is one of the many time-saving benefits of IrfanView.

IrfanView "Batch" File Conversion
The problem which confronted Ellen Donogh and I at Queenston was how could we quickly convert the 25 logo-created patches from the bit-mapped BMP format to their corresponding GIF image format so they could be displayed on a web page. Although we could load each BMP into IrfanView's left hand image manipulation pane and save the resulting image as a GIF, we did not want to repeat the process 25 times. It was the "batch" processing utility that is built into IrfanView that saved us considerable time. 

To accomplish this task I created two folders (BMPs & GIFs) on my hard drive using the following directory structure.

1. C:\TRANSFER\PATCHES\BMPs       (Input directory)
2. C:\TRANSFER\PATCHES\GIFs         (Output directory)

Into the first directory, I copied all the BMP patches that the student teams had saved to their local school's server "2Teacher" (T drive). The next step involved opening one BMP patch file from the first directory using the traditional File/Open menu items. In order to invoke IrfanView's powerful "batch" conversion process, I selected the File/Batch Conversion/Rename menu items to bring up the following screen:

As illustrated, one can select each individual patch file and click on the "Add" button to include it in the list of Input files. However, it was easiest to just click the "Add all" button to select all files.

Next lick on the "Browse" button to select the location for the Output directory. I navigated to:

C:\TRANSFER\PATCHES\GIFs

Make certain the radio button beside "Batch conversion" is selected and click the pull-down menu (down arrow) in the "Output format" area and choose to have the BMP files converted to "GIF - Compuserve GIF" format. Next click on the "Start" button to have all the files converted in a "batch" without the need for repeated steps.

Once all the patch files were converted to GIFs, Ellen had the Grade 2 students use Notepad to write a story titled "My Quilt Story". Each GIF patch was assembled into an electronic "Friendship Quilt" in which viewers could click on any patch and read the hidden story behind the patch.

Resources
Ellen found the following two books to be beneficial in this thematic unit:

• "Selina and the Bear Paw Quilt" by Barbara Smucker

• "The Quilt Story" by Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola

Educators wishing to learn more about a quilt thematic unit with Logo-generated patches are encouraged to visit the following sites:

• Themes & Literature Circles - Quilts at: http://eduscapes.com/ladders/themes/quilts.htm

• Queenston School Friendship Quilt http://www.wsd1.org/bitsbytes/0203/bbnov02/quilt/

• Queenston Logo Quilt Samples at: http://www.wsd1.org/quilt/

Classroom Applications at Kent Road School
Last year, Dave Argle's Grade 4 class at Kent Road studied about Japan. In order to demonstrate their knowledge of Japan, each student was asked to create a back-to-back, three panel, travel brochure. Students explored a variety of resources, including the Internet, to help locate facts which would be integrated into the six panels below:

Although such a brochure could have been created using Student Writing Center, Save wanted his students to become more familiar with Microsoft Works. To facilitate this endeavour, I created a two page Works template which students used to create brochures.

In order to capitalize on the students' Internet research time Dave and I prepared a series of bookmark/favourites that provided insight into Japan. Each child was encouraged to search the Internet for relatively small images that could be inserted into the brochure to highlight an important fact about Japan. Students were taught how to acquire images off the Internet (with appropriate credit) and these images were saved to a specific directory on the server's "2Teacher" (T drive). In addition, students were taught how to rename images when saving so that an original image entitled "pagoda.gif" was not overwritten by a different pagoda image. This folder of images became a central depository from which any child in class could select a picture to enhance her/his own publication.

However all the downloaded images off the Internet were either in the GIF or JPG format. Unfortunately the older workstations in the school lab would only accept the insertion of a bit-mapped (BMP) file into the Works word processing brochure template. Thankfully IrfanView came to our rescue.

IrfanView Thumbnail
At the end of a class in which the students were searching for Japan-related images, Dave and I sat down and examined the various pictures that the students had downloaded off the Internet. IrfanView's Thumbnails enhancement (previously describe on page 5) provided us an easy way to examine the images, for example  "samauri1.gif", "samauri2.gif", and "samauri3.gif", to see if there were any duplicates. Furthermore IrfanView's Thumbnails option provided us with information about the actual dimensions of each image in pixels as well as the actual file size so that we could eliminate large images and duplicates.

IrfanView "Batch" File Conversion
Dave and I used the previously described conversion process to convert each of the Japan-related GIFs to a correspondingly named bit-mapped BMP file. When the "Add all" button (shown on page 6) was clicked to transfer all the GIFs to the "Input files" list, we browsed for an appropriate "Output directory" and selected the "Batch conversion" process with a "Output format" selection of "BMP - Windows Bitmap". Once all the GIFs were converted, the process was repeated selecting the JPGs as the images that were to be converted to BMPs.  All the converted Japan-related BMP files were copied to the server's "2Student" (S: drive) and placed in an appropriately named folder (which was set to "Read-Only" status) from which the students could select images to enhance their travel brochure.

During the next class, each student started Works and loaded the travel brochure templates making certain that the View/All Characters option was turned on. As students inserted text or pictures they deleted the blank line paragraph marks and attempted to keep the identifier marks (e.g. ** 2 **) at the bottom of each column so that the column titles would align near the top as shown:
 

Thanks to the multi-faceted capabilities of IrfanView, these two classroom projects were successful and saved educators valuable time. Irfan, your hard work, dedication and willingness to share your programming talents are appreciated by educators world-wide!

Freebie Favourites
Those educators who wish to acquire the Works travel brochure templates that I designed, may download them by clicking on the links below:

	Side #1 of a 3-panel Microsoft Works travel brochure   (brochure1.wps)      [#321]
	Side #2 of a 3-panel Microsoft Works travel brochure   (brochure2.wps)      [#322]

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Food for Thought: "Learning to Get Back Up"

by Craig B. Larson   http://www.motivational-messages.com/inspirationalstories1.html#story21

Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe falls 10 feet from its mother's womb and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over and tucks its legs under its body. From this position it considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its offspring to the reality of life.

In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.

The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.

When it doesn't get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.

Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they'd get it too, if the mother didn't teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.

The late Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.

Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, "I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished and they go to work.

"They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they're knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they've accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do."

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