| NTI’s
Dragon Burn CD/DVD Utility
by Mitchell
Levine
Simply
having hardware doesn’t necessarily benefit the user. Although
this might seem like an obvious truth, it unfortunately doesn’t
always hit home until it’s too late. The investment in technology
made by our schools over the last several years, while being
the first efforts towards a laudable goal, will do nothing
by itself. Educational benefits are only available if all that
hardware can be made to do something worthwhile.
For
example, having an entire class outfitted with state-of-the-art
(by education standards) laptops is quite unlikely to do much
more than equalize access to very expensive typewriters, if
the entire class can’t be coordinated. Interactive technology
in the classroom won’t really lead to interaction unless a
teacher and her class are on the same page: Sharing assignments,
demonstrating skills, and simplifying the day by eliminating
drudgery like scoring tests by hand.
While
it would be nice if every school were able to provide an 802.11a-grade
wireless LAN that stretched from one end of the district to
another, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Until
that day comes, parents, teachers and students will have to
share files the old-fashioned way – through storage media.
Floppies, however, are rather limited, especially given today’s
extensive multimedia files, and ZIP disks much too expensive.
The most practical ones, CDs and DVDs, while capacious and
well-supported by education’s favorite hardware manufacturer,
Apple’s standard options, have traditionally been plagued by
poorly executed software applications, an alphabet soup of
file types, and generally bad documentation.
NTI’s
Dragon Burn provides what seems to be the first truly workable
solution for the institutional use of CD/DVD burners available
for the MAC OS environment. Just listing all the various file
types and standards the program can handle would probably take
more room than this section can handle, a godsend for design
and digital editing classes that must negotiate the potpourri
of them those specialties inevitably require.
Other
features will be comfortable as well, including support for
multiple burning – which teachers that accept work or give
and grade tests by digital means will undoubtedly appreciate.
One clever feature I’ve actually not seen in another application:
Support for multiple document interfaces. With this in place,
it’s actually possible to create and edit layouts while burning,
an excellent time management proposition for the busy AV department.
The
product is really too feature-rich to give a complete listing
of its potential. I highly recommend that any classroom instructor
leading a design or editing specialty program, teacher implementing
an enterprise program communicated through CD/DVD, or, most
especially, an IT manager/consultant at any large school get
the full product details from the company themselves, which
can be done at their site, www.ntius.com.#
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 1588, New York, NY 10159.
Tel: (212) 477-5600. Fax: (212) 477-5893. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2003.
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