The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
This week IÕm off to Boston to speak at another teacherÕs conference, and having spent so much time in them lately, I find myself lately spending a lot of time thinking about airports and airplanes. So far this summer IÕve been through San Antonio, Denver, Chicago, Winnipeg, Minneapolis and Edmonton. Airports are amazing places to me. Thousands of people to coordinate, hundreds of planes from across the globe and piles and piles of luggage have to get from one place to another with out missing a beat. Amazingly, in all of the flying that IÕve done, IÕve never lost a single piece of luggage or been more then a few minutes late to get somewhere on more than a few occasions. But when you throw in todayÕs hysteria over security, youÕve got an intense environment where not a single piece of data can go missing. IÕve found over the last several weeks a few things out about travelling with all of my stuff. First of all, IÕve actually had to learn to leave a few things behind. IÕve been travelling with two laptops (a pure geek thing, I know) and all of their cords and adapters, but this week IÕve had to actually separate from one of them and leave it behind. So my first rule of travelling is to figure out what you actually do need and what you donÕt need. Adapters and recharging plug-ins for computers, cameras and iPods are all fine, but do you really need the plug-ins to transfer pictures to your computer? Does your firewire cord have to go? The snaky mess that cords turn into in a suitcase, never mind the ease of losing them, should give you some time to think about this. Second is the question about customs and security. Some people have been having trouble getting over the Canada-U.S. border with all of their equipment. Did you know that border officers in the U.S. have the right to go through your laptop looking for questionable or dangerous content? IÕve seen a few people stopped in the last year and it seems like it is taking forever. ItÕs not really clear what they are looking for, whether it is copyrighted information, pornography or something else, but you need to think about the stuff that might be on your devices before you cross the border with them. A third thing to think about goes directly against my first rule: Do you need more adapters? This is especially true of airline and voltage adapters. For most laptops, you are able to buy a small adapter that lets you plug your laptop into the armrest of your airline seat. If you are only jumping somewhere a few hours in the air, this isnÕt really much of an issue. You can usually do what you want on your computer and still have some battery life left. But on longer flights, this isnÕt a bad plan, especially if youÕve got small children travelling with you. If you can plug in your computer, your kids are free to watch a movie or two on a long flight, keeping them, you, and all of the other passengers on your plane much happier. Along with this goes the problem of having adapters for wherever you are flying to. The U.S., of course, uses the same type of plug-in and voltage that we do in Canada, so you should never have any issues flying there. But as soon as you are beyond that, heading to Europe or the far east for example, you will absolutely have to do some research. You will probably need both an adapter that changes the actual look of your plug-in, altering it from the two-pronged plugs that we know into a three-pronged or a box plug, or something completely different. Many places in the world have outlets that look different than ours. As well, you may need a voltage adapter. Not every place uses the same voltage of electricity as we do, so simply getting an adapter and plugging your computer in may just fry it without one. Do your research before you fly. So as always, my advice to you is to do some quality planning, think about what you need or donÕt need. As well, do some research ahead of time to make travelling with your gadgets painless. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
