TBLOGICAL

I remember the first time I heard Bill Daggett speak.  It was probably ten years ago when I was beginning my job at an education service center in Arkansas.  One of the upcoming innovations he discussed was a “magic pen.”  He described this as a computer in a pen.  My first thought was that if such a pen were already invented, I’d buy one!  I was about to return to school for an administration certification and thought how much easier such a pen would make my life.

Fast forward seven years.  The magic pen was a reality and I had my first experience with one.  It was not favorable.  I was on an audit team that was piloting the use of a digital pen to upload observation data.  The pen doubled our work!  First, we took classroom observation and interview notes on regular paper; then, we had to rewrite everything on special paper provided with the digital pen.  The problem was aggravated by kinks in the software.

Given that negative experience, I was in no hurry to try out later versions of the magic pen.  My attitude changed, however, at the NECC 09 conference.  I was trying to recall something the keynote speaker had said when a friend of mine whipped out his digital pen, touched it to paper, and out came the speaker’s voice!  This magic pen had not only captured the text but also the audio of the presentation.

Now that is a computer in a pen.  I bought one and love it.  It helps me never miss a word and records everything I hear, say and write, as well as providing links between my audio recordings and my notes.  It has become a life saver in our board meetings.  It is very helpful for clarifing motions and makes taking minutes simple.  Our content specialists use it in demonstration lessons with teachers to model student interviews.

And new functions keep coming.  Recently launched apps help you with such tasks as translating phrases into other languages, checking facts on all sorts of subjects, listening to classical music, and even playing a guitar.  I look forward to continuing to learn more uses for my “magic pen!”  (Oh, in case you were wondering, mine is a “Pulse” pen by Livescribe; view it and other brands here.)

“…one cannot have too many flash drives laying around…” So, rather ungrammatically, say the folks at Legit Reviews. I disagree.

The other day I was looking for one particular file—one that I had not used in a very long time. I don’t know why, but I had a hunch I’d find it on one of the flash drives I carry in my briefcase. Being a quasi-organized person, I keep them together in a zippered document carrier recycled from a long ago Hawaiian Holidays vacation. I unzipped the pouch and dumped the contents on the table.

Among the technodebris that tumbled out were eight flash drives of varying hues, shapes, and sizes. First, there were the “twins” that are so hard to tell apart. These were among my very first flash drives. While they look alike, one holds more data than its sibling. When they were infants, close inspection let me see which proclaimed itself the 512 MB and which the 1 GB, but years of handling by greasy fingers erased those labels. Now, a little sticker on one of them lets me tell them apart.

Next, there are four branded freebies. Two of these are co-branded; they say TICAL on one side and CUE on the other. One is strictly CUE. The fourth is from our friends at EdTechProfile. All hail from the point in time when flash memory got so cheap that non-profit and state-funded projects could afford to buy these little gadgets and give them away as promotional items.

Then there’s Big Stick. Unlike the four branded freebies, it was born well before flash memory got cheap. It holds 8 GB and cost an obscene amount which I could only justify because I needed it to do backups of my humongous Outlook pst file when I was on the road. Last, there’s the PNY Attaché. An orphan of sorts, I don’t know where it came from or why I have it.

Methodically, I inserted each drive in turn into my USB port and searched for the file. Each time I did not find it, I demonstrated my fastidious attention to detail and made sure to click the “Safely remove hardware” icon before pulling out the drive. Wouldn’t want to lose any data, for goodness sakes. Of course, I never found the file and still have no idea where the heck it is.

What I did learn from this experience is that a person can, indeed, have too many flash drives. I also got an idea for a neat little applet that needs to be invented, if it hasn’t been already. You plug in your flash drives and it instantly identifies the particular drive, indexes its contents, and adds the index to a master catalog. Next time you want a long forgotten file and you don’t know which flash drive it’s on, you just check your “Flash Drives” catalog and it says, “It’s on Twin #2 you forgetful fool.”