Cleaning Up Before you Backup Your Files

It’s that time of year again, Spring Cleaning your teacher laptop. Each year in the state of Maine, teachers and students that have state issued laptops (MLTI) are required to turn in their laptops during the summer for a re-image of the computer’s hard drive. This is where the state sends new and updated software packages to each school district, so that the local tech team can revamp the laptop for the upcoming school year. Therefore it is important that all teachers and students backup their files prior to turning their machines in for this re-image.

A step that is often neglected in the backup process is the cleanup step. Most people backup all of their files without looking at them and hope to one day go through and organize it all out. Right, that’s why my attic is so well organized too! Cleaning up, or deleting, unwanted files can save time and space during the backup phase and will help you better organize your files. I say this because I have seen some teachers hang on to AppleWorks files for many years, and as far as I know the program doesn’t even exist on one computer in our district any longer. Trust me, it’s worth the time to organize your personal and professional files.

Most Mac users will only need to cleanup/backup their five major folders on their hard drive; Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures. Unless you have saved files to other locations on your hard drive, or you use certain programs like iWeb or Stickies, your files are all located in these five folders.

First things first! Go through your Desktop and Documents folders and weed out unwanted files. Remember to drag these to the trash, but to also empty the trash when you are done to save space. Also, the Desktop is really setup for immediate work on something that is time pressing or used over-and-over again on a daily basis. If you have other files that have not been touched on the Desktop in a while think about moving these files to one of the other four locations; Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures based on the file type.

Cleaning up your Movies, Music and Pictures folders can be as easy as opening iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto to clean them out. This is especially true if when you open your folders, and all you see is iTunes Library, iPhoto Library and iMovie Events and iMovie Projects.

Let’s start with iPhoto. Below is a short tutorial on how to cleanup your iPhoto Library directly from iPhoto. Of course, if you have sub nested folders in your Pictures folder, you may want to manually go through those as well and trash the ones you don’t need.

It’s always a good idea to clean out your movie files as well before you backup your laptop, especially since these files will take up the most amount of room on your laptop’s hard drive and your backup source (i.e. pen drive, external hard drive, or web space).

Since I use iMovie I would want to open iMovie and clean out any projects or events that I no longer need. If I have published videos to YouTube or another online source, remember this is like having a backup of the finished project. The only reason I would want to keep the raw footage, project files, or event files from this project is if I wanted to re-edit the project in the future using these same clips. If I just want to watch the final video again, deleting the files in iMovie saves a lot of space and you can direct your audience to your YouTube channel or web page that you have published the finished video to this year. This saves a lot of space before you backup your Movies folder. Below is a short tutorial on how to cleanup your unwanted projects and events in iMovie.

Another file type that can take up a bit of room is your music files. Especially if you have a fairly large iTunes library. I find that I sometimes download songs from the Internet for school projects that I really don’t need in future years. For this case, it is a good idea to delete these songs, or song duplicates, from my iTunes library before I backup my Music folder on my laptop. Below is a short tutorial on how to remove unwanted songs, movies, and playlists from iTunes before you backup your Music folder.

You have now cleaned out your five major folders; Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures. There are only a few more things to consider before you backup your laptop before being re-imaged. Do you use Stickies or iWeb? Do you want to save your Bookmarks from Safari, Firefox or Chrome? What about any programs that you added to MyApps this year?

If you use Stickies you will need to either copy and paste the notes into another program and save the file to your Desktop or Documents, or you can actually save the Stickies Database and export it to your Desktop or Documents before you backup. Remember, this is only if you need these notes for future use. If you use Stickies for quick reminders, you may not need to save them, but if you have important information stored in a sticky note such as your Internet subscription passwords, then you will want to back these up as well. This short tutorial explains how to do that.

Do you use iWeb for your school web page, or have you used it for part of your web page? If it was a one time project, the web site will not disappear until you delete it yourself, or you leave the district. However, if you are using it and wish to edit it again in the future without recreating your iWeb page, you will need to find a small little file called the domain file and save it to your Desktop or Documents folder before you backup your laptop. In this short video tutorial I will show you how to find the domain file and save it to your Desktop for future use.

Do you rely on bookmarks when you are navigating the web? Well, then you will probably want to save these bookmarks for next year. I personally can never remember the link for the HelpDesk Ticket system, PowerSchool or our School’s Web Filter site. Therefore, it’s important to save these bookmarks and export them to your Desktop or Documents folder before you backup your laptop so that you will have them this summer or next year. In this short tutorial, I will show you how to save your Bookmarks from Firefox, Safari or Chrome and export them into a file for your Desktop. You can them import this file next year to re-establish your bookmarks.

The last thing you may want to consider before you backup all of your files in the five major folders; Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures is to grab any programs you may have downloaded yourself this year to the MyApps folder under your Teacher home directory. This entire folder can be dragged onto your external hard drive or pen drive as well. This way you can drag them back from your external hard drive into your MyApps folder on your freshly re-imaged laptop when you get it back.

I hope this helps before you backup your laptop. If you need help seeing how to backup your files you can watch this short little tutorial on backing up the five major folders; Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures to an external hard drive.

PowerSchool and PowerTeacher

Power School is a web based program that allows us to take attendance and view and publish our students’ grades. It is a powerful tool that we pay a yearly subscription for its services. Many of the York employees used to get to this website by first opening their email program, First Class, and then clicking on the school news conference, where a link for Power School was located in the top bar. This link has been deleted from the news conference, but have no fear you can still get them from here! (Even in Maine)

Skipping the First Class step, and even our local server, may not be a bad idea with all of the issues central office has had recently with our local area network. Since Power School is just a website, you can access it from any device that can access the Internet and from anywhere that you have a signal.

To make it easier on yourself, use your favorite Internet Browser (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc.) and go to the links provided below. Then make sure you bookmark the link to make this step easier in the future. Then you only need to open up your Internet Browser and click the bookmark at the top of the page. You can even make this your homepage when you login as this is most likely your first step in the classroom each morning to take attendance on one of your classroom computers or your laptop. This short tutorial walks you through how to make a page your homepage using Safari. I hope this helps!

Links for Power School/Power Teacher

Parents and Students Login: http://powerschool.yorkschools.org/public/

Teacher Login: http://powerschool.yorkschools.org/teachers/pw.html

Subs Login: http://powerschool.yorkschools.org/subs/pw.html

Downloading Programs to your MLTI Laptop

The state of Maine has some interesting restrictions on teacher laptops. For one, it seems that you cannot add a program to your laptop without an administrator’s password. This isn’t quite the case. It is true that you cannot add a program, or application, to your applications folder on your laptop, however, you can add them to My Apps. This folder is tucked away under the Teacher folder/home directory. Where it gets complicated, is in the automatic default for adding programs to a Mac. Usually when you download a program or an application to your laptop, the default menu wants you to drag an icon (the application itself) to a folder called Applications. This appears to be the only thing you can do in this window, but it would require an admin password. Instead, you can open a New Finder Window, by clicking on File and then New Finder Window. Instead of dragging the application to the Applications folder, click on teacher in the New Finder Window, and then drag the Application from one window, to the My Apps folder under Teacher in the New Finder Window. It will not ask you for a password and you can still drag the application to your dock once it has been placed in My Apps. In this short video, my colleague Nick Shuman from RSU 21, and I explain how to download and install Skype on your MLTI laptop using the My Apps folder. This process will also work with other applications, but we used Skype as an example to share the steps in this process. I hope this helps!

What is Dropbox?

The York School Department has been having many local wide area network issues lately. Students have had a hard time logging into the local network, or retrieving previously saved files that were saved to folders on the local network. In addition, teachers often use groups folders on the local network here in the district to save template projects and lesson plan ideas for students to retrieve and manipulate before saving it to their own network space.

A possible solution is to think to the cloud. Instead of saving to a local network, why not save to the Internet where the files can be accessed from any where in the world where there is an Internet connection. This way students could save files to a class Dropbox, or a team folder online. They could also visit a teacher’s public Dropbox folder to retrieve help tutorials, and template projects to download to their device (SMART Phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer) and manipulate it on their own at their own time. This way we eliminate the entire local network and jump straight to the cloud. This may be the best way to save and restore documents and files when using tablets in the classroom as well since these devices do not even offer a network login option for schools.

Dropbox has been around for a while, but it is one of my favorite online tools for storing files. Its uses are only limited to the creativity of its users. Instead of explaining what Dropbox is all about on my own, I’ll let the guys from In Plain English explain it to you.

This short tutorial shares what Dropbox can do for you, In Plain English.

Imagine having all of the student files available to all of your students even if they are away from the classroom and the network is done. Instead of digging through network folders for each of your students at school, you could be sitting at home browsing the files that have been saved to your public Dropbox folder to review and offer feedback immediately to students. It isn’t the wave of the future. It’s happening right now in the early part of the 21st Century. Are you on board?

Local Network vs. The Cloud

In the York School Department we have a few ways to login to computers across the district. All teachers and 7th – 8th grade students are handed a Macbook from the state each year. These laptops allow the user to login locally to the computer no matter where they are in the world as long as it has power. In the schools themselves, all of our desktop and laptops are tethered to our local network, which means that each user either must login with their network account, or login locally using a generic login.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.networkcablingsolutions.net)

Logging into the local network allows a user to see their files located on the network server from any machine anywhere within the five buildings of our school district. Therefore, if I am at one of the elementary schools and login as “elawson” I can see a file on my desktop that I saved while I was working on it over at the high school yesterday logged into the network. This is great, however, network files are only accessible within one of the five buildings within our district, right now. Had I wanted to work on this file at home, I would have had to save it to my laptop, or a pen drive, to bring home and work on as I cannot get to network folders outside of the buildings. This is just one of the many arguments for saving files to the Cloud (the Internet).

(Photo courtesy of http://answers.yourdictionary.com)

Students login to computers within our schools via a network account too! They will have the same username and password from Kindergarten through graduation at the high school unless they move out of the district. That means all of their saved files, unless they are deleted by the user, will follow them all the way from Kindergarten through their senior year. This could be great for ePortfolio work, but again, these kids cannot access these files at home unless they make some adjustments to make it portable or accessible at home. (Pen drive, external hard drive, CD, email, or Internet storage site)

On our local network, all of the students should have access to a grade level folder as well as their individual network folders. This folder is often used as a repository for lessons, projects, templates, or electronic worksheets that teachers have created and dropped into the folder to use year after year. In theory, every first grader would then have a first grade folder on their dock that points to this location on our network server so that they pull a file from it, manipulate it in some way, and then save their version to their network folders. I say in theory this works every time, because truly it was setup and managed to work for every student, however, this year we have experienced “blips” in the network that have altered this workflow. Either the folders are not readily accessible on the dock or students or staff have received error messages stating that they do not have permissions to access these folders. Reconnecting to the server can work at times, but it is a hassle especially for our earlier elementary students.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.memecenter.com)

A solution, or work around, to this network issue could be to save all of these network files to the web. This way instead of trying to access a folder on the network, the students are accessing a page or folder on the Internet (The Cloud). This gives students and staff access to these files from anywhere in the world that they have access to the web. I could pull down a document to my smart phone while at a conference, or to my laptop while sitting on my couch at home. This gives universal access to everyone. Not just students and staff of our buildings, but also to the rest of the world that may visit this page. But shouldn’t we be sharing some of these great ideas and lessons to the world anyways? My moto as a classroom teacher was always, “Why reinvent the wheel if you could beg, borrow and steal from another educator?” Well, it’s time to give back too! Posting our lessons, templates, projects and other technology rich activities to the web allows parents, students, teachers and interested people all of the world a chance to use and collaborate on our material. In this model, students could login locally to any device (desktop, laptop, iPad, phone, etc.) and download, upload, or manipulate material and send it back via the web. It isn’t as closed as our local network, but maybe that’s a good thing. I have witnessed that students produce higher quality content when they see  that their work will be published to a more global audience. I would assume that educators feel the same way. I wouldn’t want to publish mediocre work to the web where everyone could view it. The cloud could really open up the doors, windows and walls of our school district and promote global collaboration too!

Embed and Download Videos from the Internet

Scenario 4 – I found this great movie on the web last night that I’d like to share with my students. How can I make sure we can view it tomorrow without worrying about blocked sites, inappropriate suggested content, or network issues?

I hear this question all the time. Thankfully YouTube is not blocked in our elementary schools in York, because this truly can be a great educational resource when the teacher is doing the searching. It is however, blocked in many school districts around the country. Network issues, slow bandwidth or connectivity can be an issue when trying to present a video as well. Luckily there are a few things you can do as long as you plan ahead.

Many websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto and other digital presentation sites allow users to share a presentation. This doesn’t just mean that you can copy a link and email it to somebody. Many of these sites also offer an embed code. An embed code, is a bunch of HTML language that when formatted correctly translates into the YouTube movie, or Animoto presentation that you saw. (Don’t worry, you do not need to know anything about HTML coding in order to use this feature.) The great thing about the embed code is that it allows you to stream this video from a website you own or author. That means as soon as somebody visits your site and clicks on the play button, it will play (stream) directly on your web page. This is especially great for teachers. The site YouTube may be blocked in your school, however, streaming a video on your own web page may be the answer. (At least make a case to your tech. administrator.) You can also eliminate the recommended videos at the end of the video you’re sharing that could lead to inappropriate content for younger eyes in schools. Below is a quick tutorial on how to embed a YouTube video into First Class web page builder and iWeb.

Sometimes due to network issues, blocked material, or lack of Internet connectivity, adding a video to your web page just doesn’t work. In these cases you need to save the video to your computer so that you can view it off-line. There are some great ways to save a video. From a YouTube page, you can simply type the word “save” before the words YouTube in the long URL address (i.e. http://www.saveyoutube.com/3leh3408%#$). This will send you to another web site that will allow you to download a YouTube video in several formats.

Another great web site for saving videos from web pages is zamzar.com. Zamzar allows you to paste the URL address into a window, and convert this into many different media formats. Better yet, it will email you when it’s done and ready for you to download.  Savevideo.me also allows the user to do this with some videos from different web sites. DiscoverEducation.com also allows users with subscriptions to save their videos directly to their computer instead of just streaming them from their web site.

Saving videos from the Internet can be extremely helpful when you have a presentation to give. You can then drag the video into a Prezi, Keynote, Hyperstudio, or PowerPoint presentation. It also allows a speaker or educator the ability to share the video without the use of connecting to a network or the Internet. So, if you have the time to plan ahead, you may want to try one of these strategies above. We hope this helps, and if you have any comments or advice, please do not hesitate to share them. We’d love to hear of other ways you have found to share and download videos from the net.

Lesson Links to Speed Up Navigation

Scenario 3: I found this wonderful website that I want my students to go to tomorrow in the computer lab, but it has a lengthy URL address. It will take them half of our lab time just to type in the web address. What do I do?

This happens quite often. There are a few simple tricks that you can do in order to speed up student navigation online for lessons in the computer lab or in your classroom.

First, at the beginning of the year, I would suggest having all of your students set their home page in two different Internet browsers. That way if one doesn’t work, you have a backup plan ready to go. For instance, in York we often use Safari and Firefox as our two main search engines, however, this also works if you use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator as well. I would have my students enter the lab on one of our first visits of the year and have them open up an Internet web browser, type in the URL address of the school, tech integrator’s page, or teacher’s home page. From there they need to set this page as their home page before they start navigating around. This will enable them to open up the program again in the future and be right on the page they need to be at to get started. A short tutorial video for setting your home page in Safari is below.

Secondly, it’s important as an educator to think hard about this home page. You are trying to make navigating easier on your students and eliminate steps, or clicks, that students will have to make in order to get to the site you intended for each lesson. I’m not saying that navigating the web isn’t a skill we should teach our students. In fact, this is becoming more and more important, but we all know that time is limited in the lab, and sometimes you just want the students to get to the site quickly. If you are a teacher that often updates their web page, creating links on your own web page may be the best logical choice. A tech integrator’s page, or school page, is a good choice, but it can still take multiple clicks to get to the page or content that you want for each lesson, and if the home page does not have a link to the site you found last night while surfing, then you are out of luck. Best advice would be to add a couple of links to your own teacher web page before each computer lab lesson, or a lesson in which students will need to navigate the Web. This way it is only one or two clicks away for them.

Lastly, bookmarks are a great way to teach students about keeping track of web sites that they will need to visit over and over again. I would create a link on my teacher web page if I want the entire group to navigate to a single web page for the lesson, however, if the group is in the lab for research, collaborative small group projects, or RtI practice, it may be wise to teach them a quick mini-lesson on bookmarking. This way individual students, who have individual needs, can navigate to their pre-selected pages quickly by clicking on a bookmark.

In a school district that has a Wide Area Network, having the students set their home page and adding bookmarks will follow them to whatever device they login to using their network account. In other words, a 4th grader at Coastal Ridge Elementary School will have access to his bookmarks and home page when they move up to the middle school in 5th grade. Or if the student goes to another school for after school activities, they can login to a computer in that building, using their network login, and they can still access the links and bookmarks they need to continue to work on their project. We hope this helps. If you have any comments or suggestions we would love to hear from you.

Projector and SMART Board Issues

Help! The SMART Board isn’t working?

Well, that’s usually the call, or email, that I get as a teacher is trying to teach a lesson in their classroom, the lab, or for a special event. When I get that call, I know that I have to go there in person to see what the real problem is so that I can better troubleshoot the issue. This week, our trouble shooting group, at both VES and CRES, discussed diagnosing a problem to better understand how to solve the issues behind it. Below are mini-scenarios that we came up with, along with some possible ways around the issues. We hope this helps!

Mini Scenario 1: I get a blue screen, a black screen, or my SMART Board keeps checking inputs and cannot seem to find my computer. What do I do?

This is very common. In this case, it really isn’t the interactive white board that is the issue. It’s most likely something do with the cables connected to the projector. Check the VGA cable at both ends, and the VGA adapter if you are on a Mac (sometimes called a dongle.) I also find that unplugging it, if it was already plugged in, and checking for dust before you replug the VGA adapter back into your laptop or desktop computer helps. This often is the fix for a blue screen. A black screen usually means that the projector input is set for something other than the computer input you are looking for. The last person to use it may have hooked up a VCR/DVD player to the board and used a different input. Using the projector’s remote you should be able to toggle between inputs and make sure you get the right one.

Mini-Scenario 2: A display is showing on the projector screen, or white board, but it’s just the background and doesn’t show what is on my laptop. Now what?

Mirroring an image is when you mask your view on your laptop, or computer, to the view on the projector. In other words, what you see is what you get on the board. Most of the time teachers want this to be the case. To mirror your image on a Mac, click on the black apple in the upper left hand corner and select system preferences. Click on displays in system preferences, and while you are plugged into a VGA adapter, you should see three tabs on the top of the display window (note you will only see the third tab while you are plugged into a VGA adapter for a projector or SMART Board). The middle tab should say “arrangement”. To mirror the image, click on the arrangement tab, and check the box in the lower left hand corner to mirror displays. It’s that simple!

Scenario 2.5: So why would you ever want to un-mirror the displays?

Good question. We talked about that in our troubleshooting group. Let’s say you are going to present a movie that’s of descent length, or share notes like a morning routine or message up on the white board. If the display is mirrored, you cannot use your laptop until the activity is completed without interfering with the assignment. However, if you have unchecked the mirrored display, you can drag the movie, or document, to the right of your laptop screen off of the monitor and you will see it appear on the projected image up on the projector screen or white board. Now you can share a movie with the class on the projector, or SMART Board, and still be able to check email, take attendance or plan out another lesson on your laptop without fouling up the student lesson.

Mini-Scenario 3: I can see the picture fine, but when students go up to the board they cannot interact with it. Either it’s way off from where they touch the board, or it doesn’t register at all. What can I do?

First thing is to take a look at the little light in the bottom right corner of your SMART board. It should be a solid green. If the light is red, reconnect your USB plug from your laptop to the white board (the one that has a trident looking symbol on it). You should see the lights flicker across the marker tray on the SMART board and eventually the light should turn to a solid green. You will then need to orient the board.

To orient the SMART Board, hold down both the buttons on the marker tray (right mouse click and keyboard buttons). After 5 seconds you can let go and make sure you touch the center of each little target on the board to re-orient the SMART Board to your display.

If the light is green, but blinks, it’s a software issue. Sometimes you can find a little file called SMARTBoardServices and double click this file. It doesn’t appear to do anything, but it sends a signal from your computer through the USB plug to the board and usually fixes itself. Otherwise you will want to call a member of your school’s tech team. They may have to reinstall your SMART software, drivers, update the firmware on the board, or upgrade to a newer version of the software. This usually requires an admin password.

As always, we hope this helps and if you have any comments, questions, or advice, please leave us a reply so that we can discuss it at our next meeting. Cheers!

Login Issues

Scenario 1 - Help! I went to the lab today and none of my kids can login. What can I do?

There are two potential problems here. The first thing to think about is whether this is an isolated problem, or the entire class is having an issue in the lab. If one or two students are having the problem then it’s a whole new set of problems then if the entire class cannot login.

Logging in to the network means that users (students and staff) use their network logins to login to the server over at central office. No matter which computer they sit at within the district, if they login to the network using their account they will see all of their saved materials, bookmarks and preferences.

Logging in locally means that a user (student or staff) use a local account like training, training to login to the individual machine. The user will not see their saved files, however, they can still open up programs installed on that computer and may still be able to get to the Internet, email and PowerSchool if the Internet is still working. (Note – the network is York’s network, the Internet is Time Warner’s Network here in York. One does not always effect the other.)

Let’s break down the first scenario, when only one or two students cannot login.

If only a few students cannot login, then it’s a good idea to double check that they spelled their login and passwords correctly. It’s also a good idea to check to see if there are spaces after either their username or password. (Sometimes students accidentally lean on the keyboard and type spaces.) Check by clicking with your mouse at the end of either their username or password and click and drag your mouse out to the right. The spaces, if they exist, will highlight a blue space. You can then delete the space, which is not part of their username or password and that’s why it didn’t login, and try it again. Another thing to check is to click on the subtitle of the computer at the login screen. This usually displays the name of the computer, serial number and other information that really isn’t important to a teacher, however, by clicking the subtitle it will scroll between all of the different subtitle options including whether or not network accounts are available or not. A green dot will show network accounts are available and a red dot displayed means network accounts are unavailable. Most likely if the spelling is correct on the username or password, a red dot will appear. Check the ethernet plug (looks like a larger phone jack plug) in the back of the machine to make sure it is connected at both the computer and the port in the wall. Wait a few moments to see if the green dot appears before trying to login again. It may be a good idea to restart the machine or move the student to another computer in the room if the red dot still appears and the rest of the class was successful at logging in.

Now let’s take a look at what you can do if the whole class cannot login.

If none of your students can login, check to see that network accounts are available. Most likely when you click the subtitle that displays the computer’s name, serial number and unimportant information to the average educator, it will scroll to a title that shows a red dot and says network accounts are unavailable. This usually frustrates most teachers to leave the lab and call it quits. Don’t waive the white flag yet! If you came to the lab to open up a previously saved document and work on it, well then you need to come up with another plan or leave the lab, however, if you were going to work with a local program like Kidpix, Clicker 5, Pages, or Kidspiration. There is a solution. You can login locally to the computer. In York, we use the username training and the password training to allow standard users to login to the machine locally. The Internet will still probably work and you can login to PowerSchool or First Class as well with your own username and passwords to check email, attendance and grades.

This allows you to punt, and still get a good lesson from your computer lab experience.

Help! All of my kids were working on their documents and now cannot save!

This time all of your students were able to login at the beginning of class, however, something must have happened to the network, or network accounts that will not allow your students to save to their network folders. Don’t logout or restart the machine as this will lose any information you have worked on in the lab. Call your tech help, or save all of the documents to an external source such as a pen drive, travel drive, or external hard drive. This will allow the users to save their files to your external device. The next time the network comes on you can plug in this device and have them drag it back to their designated folder, or call your tech help to have them drop the file into the students’ folders when the network comes back online.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, comments or feedback, we would love to hear about it below.

Trouble Shooting

Each week, a group of educators will meet in the computer lab for about 20 minutes before school officially begins to discuss and problem solve ways around some common problems that arise within our computer lab. We figured, we might as well share this with the world as well, since our problems may be similar to yours as well. Therefore we will post a weekly blog with a scenario and a problem. Within the post, we will attempt to solve the problem in a number of ways to at least promote problem solving and trouble shoot around the issues to make the lesson once again successful! Please feel free to comment, or offer some advice as to ways that you have found to get around similar problems in your life.