I am in the process of switching from a very old 15″ MacBook Pro to a new 16″ MacBook Pro. One issue that I am having is spacing. The new screen density often means that the primary center column of websites appears to be smaller. For instance, this website has a center space of approximately the same width as each of the sides. Some educational video sites have huge black boxes around the videos in full screen instead of making the videos fill this large display. I assumed that the actual video files are too small to look nice on the screen, but they are fine when projected onto a wall display (with the same black boxes, but the actual videos take up more inches). I thought about simply changing my display’s scale, but the display system preference says that scaling the display could impede performance. I am enjoying a blazing fast computer that is not over-heating after an hour’s use, so I will just have to get used to things looking a little different.
In other news, my substitute teaching is going well. I am enjoying the balance of being semi-retired while helping my old school and making extra income. I still need to find the time to fix many things here, but those fixes will happen. Substitute teachers do not work summer school, so I will have plenty of time on my hands in a few months.
Finally, my school has purchased new interactive white boards to replace obsolete and broken-beyond-repair devices. I use a combination of these and my old iPads from when I was the technology teacher. I had donated my iPads to the school for the next technology teacher, but five months later they were still in the packing box, so I was given permission to take them back. About half of my students like it when the substitute teacher brings in iPads, which was about the same number of students who liked using the computer lab and my iPads when I taught full time. Some things never change.
Jeanne Stork, Special Education Instructional Technology 