I'm working on a college course for the Spring Session.
About 150 Students have pre-enrolled. Course tools need to be PA's on a Thumb Drive (Maybe?)...
I want to put the course text as a PDF and all necessary software needed in the course assignments (PA has everything needed) pre-loaded on thumb drives.
That's so they don't have to download and install a bunch of software in preparation for the class or put a bunch of stuff on their computers they may have to just un-install later). Plus it gives them the advantage of the course being portable of course with the added convenience of a thumb drive's' portability.
I know I can pre-load the flash drives (4Gigs ea) with the PA's and course materials on them through a bulk thumb drive promo company.
But now I have a few questions:
Would I be better off just loading all the course material and PA's on a CD and be done with it? (Would certainly be cheaper than using thumb drives). But if I do will the portable apps run from a CD or if they will run, will the programs perform faster or slower than they will on a thumb drive?
If a thumb drive is used . . .
1) Can a security app be loaded on the drive that will allow the new owner to password protect all of the apps and data on the drive when they receive it?
2) I don't want to assume anything so - Can the drive be backed up on an internal hard drive?
3) Can Portable Apps that are set up in a separate folder on a drive or if necessary in a partition on an internal drive, be run from the internal drive folder/directory or drive partition?
Thanks,
Mike
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The only source an individual may acquire PortableApps from legally is here. Redistribution is illegal due to copyrighted logos and etc. The source may be freely distributed but not the compiled executables.
Rather than acquiring the USB sticks and spending the time setting them up and etc your goal could be achieved by giving the students instructions on what to buy, what to download and how to setup the files and material. This approach is less expensive and also less work for you.
BTW The answers to questions 2 & 3 are both Yes.
Ed
It's perfectly legal for someone to install most of the software on a drive (unmodified and unrun for apps like Firefox, etc) and give said drives away.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Now that is a very helpful information for us people working in the educational area!
Working as a trainer and coach in adult education and professional development, I often run into situations where the school computers aren’t set up in a way that course content and all needed apps are available. Usually also school policies forbid changing too much. So it would be a great help if one could hand out prepared sticks (containing course materials and pre-installed, unmodified PAs).
Since many students nowadays bring their own sticks, would it also be legally okay to set up a central "repository" on the school server to have the "standard" set of (unmodified/unrun) PAs and course material available for them to download onto their own sticks?
Reason being that TO’s question #1 is still kind of unsolved, and some students already use things like TrueCrypt containers on their sticks. Those could simply copy the "course package" onto their encrypted sticks/partitions. This would also help enormously in cases where the school only has low-bandwidth internet access: Just imagine 50 students trying to download "their" set of PAs directly from here on a 64 kbit Internet connection … (Yes, I have had such situations!)
The whole password security thing has been discussed here countless times (in various threads) and the general conclusion is:
isn't viable (because of the needs for admin rights for example) then you need a flash drive that has password built into the hardware because software solutions can be bypassed.
a) Use TrueCrypt or some similar software.
b) If option
In other words there's no simple solution.
Ed Said:
After thinking it through Ed, I think you're right. My time could be better spent on instruction like you said than trying to make it effortless for the students. Part of what they are supposed to learn with the course is downloading and installing software anyway.
Thanks for getting the forest out of my way so I could see the trees
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Ed