Chris Hamady

Good news. My blood pressure is coming down from an all time high. For nearly three years now the administrators of the school that I work for, Toledo Central Catholic High School, have had to deal with little to no cellular signals in our building. Why? Because some tech junkie (me) that loves revolutionary technology (iPhone) talked them into getting the iPhone which necessitated that they switch from Verizon to AT&T. In our building, owners of Verizon handsets consistently have more bars and better coverage than those of us on AT&T. Let's not fixate on the fact that the most revolutionary cellphone/mobile device in the world is hampered with what others have described as "…a marriage of convenience and necessity." See: http://technologizer.com/2009/06/09/atts-network-problems-arent-just-in-big-cities-anymore/

We've all heard that AT&T is working on improving and "fixing" this situation by enhancing their infrastructure, but realistically we can't ignore the reality that since the original iPhone was released in 2007, those of us at CCHS either couldn't make a call, couldn't receive calls, or dropped calls consistently from our AT&T-based iPhones.

While it would have been better for everyone if AT&T had come into Toledo, done an assessment and put up more towers, this would have cost AT&T large sums of money. Like many corporations affected by the recession today, AT&T had to come up with a fix that limited the impact to their bottom line. In an effort to quickly fix situations like this, AT&T has released the MicroCell. See: http://www.att.com/3gmicrocell

The MicroCell is an ingenious device manufactured by Cisco for AT&T. Essentially, a MicroCell is a miniature cell phone tower around 10 inches tall that you can put into your home, workplace, or business. You connect MicroCell to your pre-existing broadband internet service such as a cable modem or DSL router. Once configured and activated under your AT&T phone's account, the owner of the MicroCell can assign up to 9 more AT&T phone numbers as authorized users of the device. It functions nearly identically as any other cell tower though the device is limited to 4 simultaneous calls or 3G data connections. A friend's or another authorized phone's usage of your MicroCell counts against their calling plan, not against the calling plan of the owner of the MicroCell.

Our MicroCell was purchased from a local AT&T store for $149.99. There are no monthly charges or activation fees. Let's talk about setup.

Before physically setting up the MicroCell, AT&T requires that you to log into your current wireless account, and "activate" your MicroCell by providing things like:

*MicroCell serial number
*Location address for e911 service
*Authorized user phone numbers

Unfortunately, I couldn't log into AT&T's website as they were still dealing with the recent iPad 3G hacked account issues. See: http://www.slashgear.com/ipad-3g-email-list-exposed-by-att-hack-1089218/

The next day I was finally able to begin activation (after calling AT&T because the website was STILL down). Once that process is complete, setup should be as easy as connecting your MicroCell to your broadband connection and plug in the included power cable. I say "should be" because we will have more on this issue later.

The first thing you will see is the power icon light up solid. The internet connection light will blink as the MicroCell tries to negotiate its DHCP assigned internet address from your cable modem or router. Once the internet connection is established, the GPS light and 3G light will begin to blink. GPS?

Unless the MicroCell can lock onto a Global Positioning Satellite signal or one of AT&T's cell towers, it will not function. Let's go back to that issue I mentioned above. I'm curious as to what makes AT&T think that GPS signals will penetrate a building when cellular signals will not? If I can't get cellular service into my building, how can the MicroCell lock onto one of AT&T's towers? This was the most maddening thing I have dealt with in some time. The GPS light just blinked on and off, over and over again. The user manual says that one should wait 90 minutes before contacting tech support. So I waited and waited. Then I called AT&T (again) and asked for help:

So here is what AT&T says to do to fix this situation- put the MicroCell by a window. I know what you are thinking. If my MicroCell is by a window, and it covers a diameter of 5000 square feet, nearly half of my coverage will be outdoors!

I literally spent hours on the phone with multiple AT&T technicians trying to get them to hard code the GPS coordinates into their database to remove this restriction. The last technician on this day that I spoke with said that I should leave the MicroCell connected for 24 hours and that he would call me back the next day. He did not call me back the next day.

Two days later I moved the MicroCell into an office with a window, called AT&T back (yet again) as it still wasn't working, filed a case number with another technician and hung up the phone. Thirty seconds later the MicroCell was working! We are now covering a large portion of the front lawn of our school but more importantly, we are now covering most of our administrative offices with a high degree of success.

Approximately 30 minutes later I received the first of three separate phone calls from various technicians at AT&T letting me know that the MicroCell should now be working and that I can call them back if I have any more trouble. Here is a picture of your iPhone once it connects to MicroCell:

I found a number of resources that some of you might find useful if you want to deal with this GPS issue in other ways:

http://forums.wireless.att.com/t5/AT-T-3G-MicroCell/Is-GPS-lock-required-for-MC-to-work/m-p/1943122

http://www.gilsson.com/garmin_gps/antennas/mcx.htm

I want to make one more point that I think needs to be made about my experience with AT&T. Every customer service representative and systems engineer that I spoke with at AT&T was extremely nice, polite, and easy to deal with, but ultimately they were all mired and restricted by an incredibly non-customer-friendly set of horrific rules, regulations, and procedures that create what I feel is the worst customer relations nightmare that I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with in my entire life. In my opinion, AT&T has the potential to be the premiere wireless carrier in the United States, but only if they hire usability experts and design experts to tear apart and rebuild their entire customer experience.

In conclusion, the end result is that the MicroCell is successfully installed, our administrators should be able to consistently use their iPhones inside of our school for the first time in nearly 3 years, and my blood pressure is slowly returning to normal.

CH

UPDATE:
1:00 PM 6-22-10 After functioning normally for two days, I came into CCHS only to find that my iPhone will no longer connect to the MicroCell. Currently on hold for 10 minutes with AT&T tech support. Put on hold at 20 minutes so that the technician can contact the consumer data support team. AT&T is telling me that they want to replace my MicroCell. Lovely. 2:00 PM 6-22-10 I reset our broadband router and the MicroCell is once again working.

The schedule of presentation sessions for the Creativity and Technology Integration in Innovative Education conference is now available at http://catiie.centralcatholic.org.

Please contact me if you would like more information.

CH

This year our school began to stream school events live over the internet. We chose to use http://www.bitgravity.com as their streaming platform is incredibly easy to implement and use, provides exceptional video quality, and it scales extremely well to large numbers of viewers.

The only problem that we were facing was due to the fact that BitGravity is an Adobe Flash-based encoding/delivery platform, we can't stream live to Apple mobile devices like the iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone. This is what we did to solve that issue. First up, the press release:

PRESS RELEASE

"Central Catholic High School is excited to announce that on Wednesday, May 19th at 7:00 PM, this year's commencement event will be streamed live over the internet in two exciting formats. In addition to using our BitGravity content distribution network that provides unbelievable video quality and clarity to our computer audience, we will also be streaming via the Stickam network to Apple iPhones, iPod Touches, and even the new Apple iPad!

If you are interested in watching CCHS's commencement via the internet, computer owners can access the stream right from our homepage at:

www.centralcatholic.org.

Apple iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users can download the free Stickam application from:

http://tinyurl.com/cchs2010

Once you install the Stickam application on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, simply search for centralcatholic on the Stickam viewer app and you will be able to stream our video feed live to any of those mobile devices.

We are very excited to be able to provide multiple commencement streams ensuring that we continue to be, One Connected Community.

Thank you and we hope that you enjoy this important event."

END RELEASE

So now that we had a solution, let's look at what we had to do technically to make that happen. Stickam's platform is free and only requires that you create an account with them in order to stream live. Both BitGravity and Stickam require that a FireWire DV stream be sent to a computer that encodes the stream and uploads it to their content distribution platform. Our problem was that our DataVideo SE-800 video switcher only has one FireWire (DV) output port that we already connect to a MacBook that encodes for BitGravity. The SE-800 also has analog A/V outputs (RCA composite ports).

We purchased a Canopus ADVC-55 Analog to Digital Media Converter. This device takes S-video or composite video in and outputs DV over a FireWire interface. Our plan is to send the SE-800s DV out to the BitGravity encoder MacBook and send the SE-800s analog A/V outputs to the ADVC-55 which will then send DV to a second MacBook encoding and delivering the video stream to http://stickam.com/centralcatholic

So far our tests have been very positive. I'll be uploading some screenshots here comparing each stream as soon as possible. A production workflow is available in PDF format HERE. (For those of you interested, this workflow was created using free mind-mapping software called MindNode for Macintosh.)

Lastly, I even tested the Stickam app for iPhone this past weekend and used it to broadcast live video of my daughter running in her championship track meet. Her grandparents watched the stream live and were amazed that I was only using a cell phone to send them the feed.

So check out the Stickam app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. If your school is currently using a Flash-based video encoder for your commencement, this app may give you the capabilities that you need to reach even more of your alumni.

CH

I've been to numerous technology and education conferences/workshops in the past 10 years, too many to name. Each time I visit one of these conferences I find a great deal of innovative technologies (both hardware and software) that are being used in schools and classrooms, but I never seem to find enough exceptional presentations that specifically focus on academic content standards being met in a creative project that takes us on a journey from lesson plan to assessment.

A lot of these presentations say things like, "you can use this technology to do this" or "you can use this technology to do that." What the teachers and administrators in our school are looking for, and I believe others are as well, are presentations that detail specific projects that list each step in the classroom from the project design, to implementation, to assessment of the project's effectiveness at delivering specific academic content standards.

Enter CATIIE. CATIIE stands for Creativity and Technology Integration in Innovative Education. Our school, Central Catholic High School, is about to announce a new annual conference. From the conference website:

"This conference specifically focuses on and delivers presentations that demonstrate curricular best-practices in creativity and technology integration. These sessions will take real-world educational objectives and standards, and show how these are being delivered to students using lessons that incorporate 21st century skills and exceptional creativity."

I am very excited by the opportunity to help create a conference that is specifically tailored to provide professional development to teachers that are committed to integrating both creativity and technology into the delivery of their curriculum. If you know of any projects that "blew you away" in their design, implementation, and effectiveness at delivering technology and/or creativity infused learning, please ask those teachers or technology integration specialists to consider sharing them with others via our CATIIE conference. Please note that we would love examples from all subject matter areas (math, language, social studies, etc).

Thank you.

CH