Members of Tech Crewsaders Alex Byun
Josh Cho
Morgan Yi
Anno Chang
Josh Gong
Nathan Cheung
Chris Garcia
Justin Chung
Patrick TomHon
Chris Kim
Lillian Sheng
Seongwoo Choi
Jay Lee
Michael Kang
Web Khewsubtrakool
Jimmy Yuh
Michael Mussel
Won Hee Cho
ET Launch At the beginning of August, SFHS launched the Educational Technology Team with nineteen members including Mr. Hamm as the advisory teacher. Our help desk is located to the far left of the High School Library as you come in through the entrance. All students and faculty are welcome and there are usually two to three ET members there to help you out on any tech-related issues. Lastly, we, as members of the ET Team, urge all teachers to come get help as soon as possible if any queries or problems arises. Charging Stations Launch As our first step towards the promotion of the ET team, we have launched the Charging stations, which are located next to the vending machines on the first floor of the High School Lobby. The main objective of the Charging stations is to prevents us having to carry heavy laptop s around the school when it may be running low on battery. Each Station is in the form of a safe; therefore security will not
2/Tech Crewsader NOVEMBER
be a problem when charging your laptops. One big problem that we, the ET Team, have been facing is the constant complaints as to why there is no charger inside the Station. As a result, we have summed up three points to respond to those complaints. First of all, due to security reasons we did not include chargers because we were unable to guarantee that the chargers would stay in the Stations for the long run. Secondly, due to cost restraints, it is absolutely impossible to buy or replace lost or broken chargers. Lastly, students at SFHS use different models and brands of laptops, therefore resulting in different types of chargers meaning that it would be impossible to track every single charger down and purchase them. And finally as a reminder, the Charging Stations are there for everyone to use; students and staff.
Logo Competition We would also like to thank all that participated for the Logo Competition. We have received well over 20 submissions of great quality, For us to narrow down our choices was truly a difficult task for all of us, because all of them were just un believably good. Thus in concluding of premiere edition we would like to congratulate Chris Lim on her amazing logo submission that won her the new iPod Nano from none other than Apple.
Lillian Sheng Writer for the ET Monthly magazine and ET Researcher/ Specialist
“Innovate wildly” was the message that kicked off the Google Apps for Education Summit in Singapore that I attended earlier this year, and it is this message I have passed on to the Seoul Foreign School Tech Crewsaders as we have begun our journey into the world of educational technology. So far this year I have been fortunate enough to work with a group of eighteen very talented and hard working students who have
poured their hearts and souls into establishing the first ever SFS student tech leadership team, The Tech Crewsaders. This magazine is one of many student driven initiatives that aim to serve the near 1500 student, staff, and parent SFHS community members. When the publications team presented me with this document I was blown away. This was not the first experience of its kind while working with this amazing team as The Tech Crewsaders continually exceed my expectations and have truly trans-
formed how we incorporate technology into Seoul Foreign High School. Enjoy the first edition and look out for more.
Brian Hamm, B.Ed, M.Ed Educational Technology Integrationist
As an editor of the first ever Tech Crewsaders Magazine, I am proud to say that for the past 3 months after launch we have worked very hard to get this first edition out to the community of SFS. I hope that if you are reading this magazine you have an interest in our work and are prone to accepting new ideas and techniques to help aid you. From this day on, we, the ET publication team, will bring you the most interesting Tips and Tricks, and new information about the technology that we see everyday in our community. While enjoying the pages, I would also like to draw attention to the top
corners of each page. There you will see rectangular boxes with filled colors in them to show the complexity of the topic. The Magazine is ordered into levels of ascending complexity, with the colors going from a light shade of blue to a deep red. However for me, I hope that you will have the chance reading at least some of the pages in this magazine to get an idea at what we are like as people as well. In conclusion, I wish the best of luck to you, the readers, whether faculty, teachers, administration, or students as you read this, and only view it in a perspective of a first try
at a new publication in SFS. There will be mistakes, and there maybe errors, but we will always thrive to improve from our first edition onwards. Thus we the writers and editors of the Magazine, will always welcome any suggestions or fixes, even to old editions!
Cheers and Many Thanks Dhira Web Khewsubtrakool Editor–in-Chief of the Tech Crewsader Magazine
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/3
The Importance of
SHUTTING DOWN ...once in a while at least
By Lillian Sheng Why is it so importance to shut down your computer when you can just close the lid and be done with it? The answer for this is two words: “longevity” and “reliability”.
Mac/PC System Files are still being used. Shutting down allows the computer to correctly close all running programs and update the registry as well as any other data files or caches attached to the program. If you always allow your computer to sleep and never properly Shutdown in Days or Months these may end up not working correctly and may become corrupt. Furthermore, without shutting down at least once a day, your computer components (ie. Hard Drive, Processors, and etc.) inside will eventually fail. Early signs of such problems are audio malfunctioning, display not connecting, inability to connect to SMART boards, USB ports not working.
Before you normally put your Mac/PC to sleep your computer has several files open, even when you do not have any windows open. The majority of them are temporary files, but even so, such that the
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The correct way to shut down a Windows PC is to click on the “Start” button. What you do next depends entirely on how Windows is set up on your PC. You may have the option to “Shut down” on the pop-up menu, but if you do not, then click the little arrow near where the Shutdown option would be and select it.
The correct way to shut down a Mac is to go to the Apple menu and choose “Shut down…” Sometimes when prompted by an Installer program to restart, the program will present you with a Shut Down option, which will generally occur after installing in a new update from Software Update. On some Macs, you can press control-eject and select “Shut Down” from the window that pops up. On other Macs, you can press the power button and choose “Shut Down” from the window that pops up.
Fixing Power Bugs Hard Drive Failures? Missing audio is one of the biggest problems facing most of the student body lately as well as teachers in their classrooms. The story behind these issues is very simple: they mostly occur because of power problems. They could occur if there was a spark between the audio connector and the laptop. The connector may have been improperly pulled out while computer was sleeping. In truth, like Edison use to say, “there are a million ways things can go wrong.” The Fix is very simple on Macs, but a little harder on PC. The first step to fixing this problem is to properly Shutdown the computer while plugging in. Following these instructions has proven to be the best method in fixing such a problem for both the Mac and PC.
Broken Projector Connection is another issue in classrooms everyday. Again, the reason for this is improper disconnection while the computer is asleep. Sometimes when hurrying out a classroom to go to another, you may be tempted to slam your screen down and immediately pull the dongle out afterwards. This is a very bad habit. Many problems can occur from this even un-fixable ones: permanent malfunction of the connector ports of the laptop, Graphic Card Crash, and eventually short circuiting the Circuit board inside your laptop.
Hard Drives in colloquial terms, are basically CDs and motors on steroids. The Disks inside of these Hard Drives spin at around 5400-7200 rounds per minute. That’s around 120 times a second. They spin endlessly while powered on and even sleep modes, thus the reason they deserve a mention on this page. Every Hard Drive on Earth has a life expectancy that very well varies through each user scenarios. In perfection conditions of no movement, containment , and a chilled temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius, they could in theory last for around 600,000 hours. However in real life that is impossible. From past experience these spindling motors could last up to 3 to 4 years tops if taken cared of very carefully.
Best Practices however includes properly pulling out the dongle before closing the lid of your laptop and avoiding plugging in a projector while the Laptop is sleeping or the lid is closed But If Things Do Go Wrong the best way is to Shut Down Both the Monitor and the Laptop . Then re-start the Laptop followed by the Projector/Monitor. In extreme cases if that fails as well, try to test the connection with another dongle at hand, or call us at ext.670
However due to their moving nature Hard Drives will die if dropped, shaken, overheated, there is inconsistent power, a power surge, a malfunctioning battery, or the loss of power, and the list just goes on. But fret not, if you had never shaken your laptop violently, or shut it down occasionally, and never dropped it more than perhaps twice, then you're good to go for quite some time. If NOT occasional Backups are recommended.
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/5
DRAWING Ways to Hold the Pen:
INSTALL
The tablet pen is actually very smart in its own rank. With Photoshop, you select any brush and the program will analyze the angle of the pen and apply it to the canvas. Like painting in real life Photoshop automatically adjust
6/Tech Crewsader NOVEMBER
the size of the brush according to every movements you make. You can also use both ends of the pen, and using the back end also allows erasing as well.
TABLETS
BY: Dhira Web Khewsubtrakool
LATION ON MAC:
And enjoy!
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/7
bitly is a utility that allows users to shorten a long URL, share it, and then track the resulting usage. For example, you can shorten this link: https://www.facebook.com/sfhsTechCrewsaders
To:
It's much easier to include the link in an email or Twitter post without it breaking or taking up space. To see how many clicks that link has gotten and explore other info, simply append a plus sign to the end of the url:
http://bit.ly/sfsetfb
http://bit.ly/sfsetfb+
Gain collected data on how many clicks there was to a link, the location of the clicks, where the links were clicked and much more statistics
Visit : https://bitly.com/
Views all your bit links in one place
By creating a bitly account (highly recommended), you have the ability to also save all of these bitlys that are created into different collections, to share with students and friends.
Contains all your bitlys and you may be able to search for them here 8/Tech Crewsader NOVEMBER
BY: Dhira Web Khewsubtrakool
COPY AND PASTE YOUR LINK
Once you have copied your link into the box on the top right a window will pop up with a small bit link circled in Blue. Copy it by clicking on it (CMD+C/ Ctrl+C Equivalent)
Customize Links & Sharing
If the shortened link is still too hard for you to remember with all of the CAP letters and the lowercases, you can change it yourself by clicking
CUSTOMIZE
a custom address that you would like to use. Regarding sharing you could also send it to friends via email or Facebook.
This will allow you to enter
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/9
Using the Cloud With
GOOGLE CHROME By: Seongwoo Choi
By signing in to Google Chrome, the cloud offers you many features of convenience that affects all of your devices with the Google Chrome Browser. These features include the following that will be synced to all devices with Google Chrome:
Chrome Apps
Extensions
Themes
Autofill
Passwords
Open Tabs
Bookmarks
Settings
History
To sign in make sure that when you first installed your Chrome browser, you entered your GoogleAccount Login. If you do not remember that you signed in already or not, follow the steps: 1.
Open Google chrome
2.
Click the menu Button
3.
Select Sign in to Chrome
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Useful Extensions & Tips PINNED TABS Pinned tabs allows you to always keep a website on the tab row permanently throughout your browsers in different devices and computers: 1.
Fine your favorite tab
2.
Right-Click
3.
Select “Pin Tabs”
4.
To Unpin right click it again and select “Un-In Tab”
Turn Off the Lights With one click of the lamp icon you’re the content around your videos on any website with videos will blank and dark out, leaving you with a page that is only focused on the video content.
Clearly This app allows you to clear up all the clutter in the sidebar action for articles, newspaper articles, and day to day content on the web. You can modify these articles and highlight things with the highlight function in the sidebar and also change how the pages view. You may export the document as well to Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, and email.
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/11
B
y:
L
illia
Keeping n
S
he
ng
Updating Mac OS:
UPDATING THE OS
our anti-virus software; we all understand that it can prevent a virus from taking control of our computer or deleting our data. More importantly not only does your Operating System need updating your applications also need updating such as the Adobe Creative Suites. Updating these applications is the only way to gain performance out of them .
Even though some may think that updating software and Operating Systems are only a waste of your precious work time, there are actually some very good reasons for you to update.
Updating Windows 7:
For example, they offer better security patches to your computer to prevent viruses, fix bugs that can cause lags, and improve stability overall, and even feature enhancements. Overall it is one of the best ways to keep your laptop healthy and up-to-date. Just for clarity by updating, we do not entirely mean upgrading to the new Operating System, like from Lion to Mountain Lion or from Windows 7 to Windows 8. UPDATING SOFTWARE All software updates, although seemingly trivial, can offer protection against a variety of vulnerabilities. Most of us will readily update
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UPDATING GRAPHIC DRIVERS If you are an avid gamer or one who likes to use any of the Adobe Software Suites either for Movie Editing or just Photography. Updating your AMD or NVIDIA chip is a key in brining out the true potential of these laptops , Macs, and Desktops alike. TIPS WHEN UPDATING
Most of the time it is highly recommended that you keep updating perhaps once every two or three weeks. However, during these updates it is advisable that your computer should be plugged in rather than on battery.
Updating Other Software UPDATING THE GPU DRIVER:
Depending on the Brand of your Graphic Chip Updating through windows updater should be Sufficient if not on the desktop right-click and select either of the two. Mac users only needs to update by using the method on the last page. IMPORTANT: While Updating GPU Drivers you shouldn't be doing anything else
UPDATING Other Software: Most software on both Mac and PC has a generic way of updating itself. Most of the times it is found by clicking on the help section of the application and is filed under Get Updates or Updates...
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/13
Optimizing Yo
For the Adobe Creat
This is the brain of your computer. Computers may have one or more CPU chips, and each chip may have multiple “cores” or processing units embedded in a physical chip. Generally, more physical cores means more processing power, which means the software runs faster. Alongside physical cores is “Hyper -Threading”, which allows a single physical processor core to appear as two virtual cores to the operating system, this allows for “multithreading”. Thus allowing software to take advantage of more cores even though they may appear to be virtual. A less direct measure of computer power is the speed that the processing unit runs at. A higher “clock-rate” allows for faster computation. However, new generation processors often can perform more work at the same speed, meaning a new chip with a lower clock rate might still run software faster than older ones with a higher clock rate.
when multi tasking with multiple programs. However be careful, with more CPU power you must complement such power with more RAM in order to take full advantage of the CPU. There are two ways in finding out more about your CPU. By right clicking on the taskbar of Windows and choosing Task Manager> Performance. You will be able to count how many cores (boxes) there are in your system. To know the clock rates of such systems you could go into My Computers Click> Properties For Mac , click the Apple icon and press, About this Mac. All Adobe applications especially Adobe Premiere Pro utilizes as many cores as available in media encoding. Usually for normal workflows we recommend an i5 processor and definite any i7 will be great for other tasks.
Overall, the more cores you have on your computer or your laptop is usually directly proportional to the performance you will receive
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To put it bluntly, more RAM is always useful. Simply put, RAM allows you to run more applications simultaneously. Programs require a certain amount of memory to run; having multiple programs running at the same time requires more memory. When one’s computer overloads the memory, the computer will begin to respond oddly to mouse clicks and typing. RAM helps alleviate these problems. The benefits of RAM (in more simple terms) are as follows: RAM, compared to other options to boost computer performance, is incredibly cheap. Upgrading from 4GB RAM to 8GB RAM should only cost around $40-$50 and to 16GB should be double such amounts. Anything more than those prices, means you’re being scammed! In today’s technological age, you’re bound to be running more programs. When you’re low on memory your computer will start to freeze up and display “low memory” messages frequently.
Adding RAM will alleviate this problem. Multiple programs ranging from games to video editing require a great deal of memory. If you handle large graphic files, video editing, spreadsheets and you’re experiencing either lag or speed issues, more RAM will help. RAM, in summary, is one of the easiest ways to boost your computer’s performance. If you want to run large games or run programs such as the Adobe Creative Suite, having 4-8GB of RAM would be recommended. In fact, today, 4GB of RAM is often seen as the bare minimum; you’ll do much better with 8GB of RAM. If you cannot install more RAM due to a lack of space on your motherboard (within your computer), and you’re still unsatisfied with the amount of RAM you have, you should get a new computer.
our Computer
ative Suite and More
Today’s video cards and display systems contain their own specialized processing units, capable of rapidly executing a specific set of commands for manipulating and displaying images. GPUs often have hundreds of cores built for parallel processing ,instead of 4 to 6 cores in CPUs. With hundreds of cores they are truly exploited for the use to maximize performance in games, manipulation and of Large Images, and HD resolution movie editing, at some times higher than 1080p , such that of 4K resolution. Another important thing consider when selecting the Graphic Cards selection is to be aware of the amount of VRAM it contains. The larger the images, for example 20 mega pixels, editing can be done faster than the norm. Moreover there are also different speeds of VRAM, the faster it is the better .
The Apple and Microsoft and Apple in Graphic Processing, are NVIDIA and AMD. However when working with Adobe, NVIDIA will produce the best editing experience. This is the result of the strong partnership between NVIDIA and Adobe has a strong partnership to developed optimized solutions to take full advantage of the numerous cores within the GPU. On AMD side, with no optimizations only your CPU is used, and making your system less responsive. Nevertheless, to take full advantage of NVIDIA’s optimizations, you must regularly Update your Computer, Adobe Applications and Graphic Drivers when possible.
There are two parameters to think about when considering disk drives and other storage devices: size, and speed. Size—stated in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (a thousand gigabytes, abbreviated as TB). The more storage you have, the more data you can keep. Some media types are small and you can keep large hours of data onto a relatively modestsized drive. However, as you start to move into Higher resolution such that of 1080p+, 4K and more camera, you will need correspondingly larger drives.
need to worry more about the speed of the connection you’re using, with fiber channel being the fastest, followed by Thunderbolt, USB 3, FireWire 800, then USB 2 (please don't use the last one). There are several components that affect a drive’s transfer speed. One, whether they are SSDs or Spindle Hard Drives. For normal usage in Photoshop and audio editing, hard disks are perfect for the job. However if you begin to work with larger file sizes, like Videos and High Resolution Images. SSD’s are better for faster load time
For internal storage connections, most computers use a variation of the SATA standard, which is very fast. Once you start connecting to external drives, you
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/15
OPTIMIZA
CORE ADOBE
BY: Anno Chang Adobe Premiere Pro An important feature in Adobe Premier Pro that can enhance the playback processing (how smoothly your videos play) is the Mercury Playback Engine (MPE). What the engine does is that it utilizes all of the advantages of the CPU such as multi-threading, multiple cores, and virtual cores then optimizes the best uses for them whilst having live video playbacks. The speed change in optimization really depends on how efficient your CPU is and the amount of RAM. This is a built-in engine within the software so there is no need to manually turn it on. An additional setting in Premier Pro, providing that you have the necessary graphic cards, is the Mercury Playback Engine with GPU acceleration. If you have an NVIDIA graphics card that support CUDA, this can accelerate your rendering speed up to eight times, enabling the software to add more effects and transitions in real-time renders or previews. To select this setting, simply go to Project Settings, and then change the Renderer (Under Video Rendering and Playback) to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA). This setting, combined with the speed of your storage unit, can greatly vary the rendering speed of your video playbacks. The program is heavily dependent on your storage unit, so in order to increase the frame rate as well as the play back speed, you need a fast hard drive with high rotation speeds. The adobe website suggests a combination of four 7200RPM drives. A more expensive alternative is to depend entirely on Solid State Drives.
16/Tech Crewsader NOVEMBER
Adobe After Effects Like Premier Pro, After Effects takes advantage of the CPU power available on the computer. Unlike Premier Pro, you can choose specific settings for your computing needs under preferences. You can change the number of cores the program will use and the number of cores reserved for other background programs, and even allocate a certain amount of RAM for the program to exclusively use and work with. After effects takes account of all cores, (Virtual, and Real) including hyperthreading technology, utilizing all CPU processes possible. If you want to increase the rendering speed, both real time and production, you could upgrade your RAM capacity to a higher one, such as from 8 GB of DDR3 to either 16 GB or 32 GB where possible. Another consideration is the capacity of VRAM, as the more VRAM you have will increase the capacity of 3D images and video the program can work with. Just like Premier Pro, CUDA- enabled graphics card can enhance the performance and the rendering speeds of After Effects. All GeForce cards supports this option. However, if you consider using Quadro Cards, more acceleration can be gained by using them. This is because both Adobe and NVIDIA spends millions of dollars and years of research to fine tune these cards in every details possible to gain the most from them. However, if your computer does not have such cards, it will simply work with only the CPU cores and the RAM that the user has allocated. Thus
your computer may often face overload when working with large file sizes. Photoshop Like all other programs stated above, Adobe Photoshop also makes extensive use of the CPU. All Photoshop features are faster on a multi-processor system. Some features, such as Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) processing, Lens Blur Filers, Radial Blur Filters, and other types of filters gains advantage while running on multiprocessor systems, resulting in a smoother editing experience. Most of the effects and editing tools require multiple cores, due to the intricate nature of their algorithms. Like After Effects, Photoshop also uses the Mercury Graphics engine, which can be enhanced by faster GPUs and higher RAM capacity. This can be further enhanced through the use of Open-GL graphic cards, which can accelerate the processing speeds when you are making edits on Photoshop. Photoshop uses RAM to process all the images. When there is an inadequate amount of RAM to work with during edits or processing the images, the program uses the hard drive or the designated device the program is connected to in order to process the images. It is recommended that you use a higher RAM capacity, or use fast drives such as SSD or thunderbolt drives when working with bigger images and more elaborate effects, to maximize the run speed.
ATION FOR
E PROGRAMS Optimization Control Panel forAdobe Premiere Pro & After Effects CS6 Access this Panel by After Effects>Edit>PeferencesMemory & Multi Processing
Adjusting RAM amount dedicated for Adobe
Adjusting amount of Cores for Adobe usage in rendering
Optimization Control Panel for Adobe Photoshop Access this Panel by Adobe Photoshop>Edit>Preferences>Performance
It is recommended that you don't add more than 75% of what you have
NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/17
Recover Hard Drives TEARDOWN
Step 1 : Un-Screw Everything
Step 2 : Open it UP
Step 3 : Remove the Power Connection to the Battery
Step 6 : Plug it into the Adapter
Step 5 : Un-Plug the Data Connection to the Lap-
Step 4 : Un-Screw the Hard Drive lock down
HDD TO USB 3.0 ADAPTER
SCEWDRIVER
18/Tech Crewsader NOVEMBER
s from Dead Laptops COPY
Formatting Hard Drives on Mac:
There are different ways to transfer your data from a bare Hard Drive onto a Mac or Windows machine efficiently:
1.
Search in Spotlight “Disk Utility”.
2.
Select the hard drive from the left hand side then press erase.
3.
In the options below, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for best compatibility within Mac devices.
Data from a Mac Laptop: Only connects to a Mac device. If you connect it to a Windows Machine chances are it will not be visible. Secondly, to gain the most speed out of your drive you should use the Thunderbolt connector as most Mac Devices don't support USB 3.0 yet.
4.
Finish formatting by naming, Pressing Erase Below ,and you’re finished.
Data From a PC: (To a Mac) You can read and write to PC drives. The bare drive will be READ-ONLY. To fix that you must reformat that Bare Drive after ALL FILES HAVE BEEN REMOVED We recommend that you copy it to a PC first then to a Mac Formatting Hard Drives on PC:
Data From a PC: (To a PC) Easy as Pie. No Issues At All!
1.
Go to My Computers.
2.
Right click on the Hard Drive and select “Format”.
3.
Don’t change any settings. Unchecking Quick Format may be a better decision if you have time to give.
HDD TO THUNDERBOLT ADAPTER NOVEMBER TECH CREWSADER/19