Adrian Laws from Riverina TAFE has written up a fantastic entry about what he is doing with rfid Learning Table and also built his own Kiosk to house his Learning Table System. Awesome stuff and well worth a click to read about!

www.learningkiosk.com

Dan

In August I had a workshop for rifd Learning Table at Riverina Institute of TAFE. A group of ten teachers spent the day learning about RFID and Learning Table, before taking the Learning Table kits Riverina has purchased and putting them to use various teaching sections. It was a great day and a fantastic group of teachers. I noticed today that some pictures from the day are now posted here:

http://ltmentors.riverinainstitute.wikispaces.net/Workshop+20th+&+21st+August+2008

 

Thanks to my hosts Jacqueline Bates and Bronwyn Collins and to the wonderful staff of Riverina who attended the workshop. :)

 

I hope to have more news about the outcomes from this workshop soon.

rifd Learning Table gets a mention on the web again. Developing a program to introduce an ICT product which helps people with disabilities engage with learning and training. This project is being conducted in Tasmania.

 

Pretty cool. :)

New York has now become the second state in the country to offer RFID-embedded driver's licenses. Following Washington State's lead last year, the radio-frequency identification (aka RFID) licenses will be offered at a $30 premium over the standard driver's license. The benefits of the RFID license include their ability to do double-duty as a driver's license and a U.S. passport for those who frequently enter New York from Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean (of course, you will still need a "real" passport to enter the state from other international destinations). Authorities say that only an ID number, no personal info, is stored on the chip. Regardless, as some embedded chips may be read from a distance -- and not necessarily a direct line of site -- authorities in New York will still offer standard licenses for those on the paranoid side... or they can run out and purchase an RFID-blocking wallet. Thanks for the tip, Yash!

One of our customers had a requirement for a more portable version of rfid Learning Table. While they went about procuring a suitable UMPC for running the Learning Table software, Alex Bell who is a NECS technician and myself tried to work out what was the best way to make a suitable slimline enclosure.

Now while I say “we” it’s really a case of me “imagining’ what such a case might look like and Alex actually having the skills to make one.

We are fortunate to have Alex as he always seems to have the tools and not inconsiderable skills needed to make pretty much any electrical or hardware component we need. In this case Alex went into a CAD application and designed us a new slimline case. Here is an early CAD drawing of it.

This is the first batch being cut on the mill.

And here is the final product.

It includes a modified circuit board that lowers the height of the final unit even more and a special shortened USB plug, that features an L shaped plug, to make it easier to tuck the cable around the back of the UMPC.

Of course this design will work just as well for Tablets, Laptops or the new Asus EeePC's as well.

Here is a side profile. The reader is approximately 6mm in height.

Thanks Alex and job well done!

We are currently working out final costings for these units, but expect these to be made available in our catalogue in the next month or so. If you have any questions about these, please feel free to drop me an email.

Marcus Ragus a teacher from TAFE Tasmania, was one of the early pioneers of RFID as a tool for vocational education in Australia. He has started up a new web site called situated learning where he talks about their experience with RFID and more recently with rfid Learning Table.

Well worth a look!

www.situatedlearning.net

Some organisations have a policy of testing any new software in a virtual PC, before they deploy it on their networks and looking forward, many applications might permantly run in such a configuration. We are pleased to say that rfid Learning Table works just fine in a Virtual PC space as you can see below and indeed, we run it like this often, when building and deploying interim builds for testing.
We use and recommend VMWare (www.vmware.com) which supports virtual USB ports, so even the reader works fine in this environment. :)

Simon Brown a teacher of Stone Masonary has blogged with an update on his use of rfid Learning Table here. It's always great as developers to read these kind of stories, so if you have one to contribute or have blogged your experiences with rfid Learning Table, then please let us know!

Dan

http://cafechat.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/learning-table-in-the-classroom/