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--- Forwarded Message from Derek Roff <[log in to unmask]> --- >Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:18:29 -0600 >From: Derek Roff <[log in to unmask]> >To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: H1N1 Swine Flu and Keyboard Kondoms I've done some experimenting with plastic food wrap and keyboards. This "Keyboard Kondom" approach seems to work. A piece of plastic wrap can be wrapped around a keyboard in a few seconds, and it remains in place acceptably for the duration of the student use. The students don't have to be very careful about the way they wrap the keyboard, and bunching the extra underneath the keyboard on each edge, or on just two edges, works fine. Simply draping the plastic wrap over the keyboard, leaving the excess on the table surface, also worked OK. Sometimes the wrap shifts during usage, in this case. Different weights of wrap that I have tried all seem to work OK for the keyboards that we have. I've gotten acceptable functionality on both the aluminum Apple keyboards and the plastic third-party Arabic keyboards that we have. Wrapping the mouse with plastic wrap is a little more problematic. We have only optical mice, and they _will_ track when wrapped in plastic. However, the mouse no longer glides over the table surface, and the feel is terrible. With care, one can trim the wrap closely to the shape of the mouse and wrap it around the top and sides. This works better with the thinner plastic wraps that I tried, but it was too much trouble. The best and simplest approach was simply to take a 8" x 12" piece of plastic wrap, and drape it over the mouse, just letting the excess lay flat on the desk surface. 8" x 8" is better, since there is less excess wrap to deal with, but requires trimming the width of the wrap, which takes time. With the wrap draped in this way, it is comfortable and easy to use the mouse. If there is an excess of wrap under the heel of the hand, the plastic wrap may grab the table if the student rests the weight of their mouse hand on the table. This can be solved by draping the mouse so that the plastic wrap just covers the base of the mouse at that back end, and all the excess length of plastic is at and beyond the finger end. The plastic wrap disables the scrolling ball on the Mac Mighty Mouse. However, I was surprised that scrolling still works partially on mice with a large, ribbed scroll wheel. It is easy to scroll downwards. The wrap bunches slightly, and then springs back when finger pressure is released. I could easily scroll down a web page or word processing document. On the other hand, scrolling up works poorly, if at all. In mmy testing, less clingy, heavier plastic wrap works better on the mouse. All the wraps that I tried worked well on the keyboard. I think we will offer this "Keyboard Kondom" option in our labs to any students who are concerned with touching a keyboard or mouse used by another student. We will see what level of student interest there is. We will continue to offer hand sanitizer and sterilizing wipes, and our student-staff will wipe the keyboards several times per day. Derek Derek Roff Language Learning Center Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885 Internet: [log in to unmask] *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives at http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A0=LLTI Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) ***********************************************