Portable Apps for Technology Teachers

An analysis of various portable applications available for use on Windows

machines.

By Judson Birkel

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 1

Table of Contents About This Project: .....................................................................................................................2

Why use portable applications? ...................................................................................................2

Why not go with cloud apps? ......................................................................................................3

PortableApps.com – A great resource for Portable Applications ..................................................5

(Web Browser) Firefox – Portable ...............................................................................................6

(Web Browser) Google Chrome - Portable ..................................................................................7

(Office Suite) LibreOffice/OpenOffice – Portable .......................................................................8

(Password Management) Keepass/Password Corral - Portable .....................................................9

(Notes) CintaNotes – Portable ................................................................................................... 10

(Education) Mnemosyne – Portable (Flash Card Memorization Tool) ....................................... 11

(E-mail) Mozilla Thunderbird – Portable ................................................................................... 12

(Media Player) VLC Player – Portable ...................................................................................... 13

(Screen Capture) PicPick – Portable .......................................................................................... 14

(Video Recording) CamStudio – Portable .................................................................................. 15

(Audio Recording/Editing) Audacity – Portable ........................................................................ 16

(3D Modeling/Animation) Blender – Portable ........................................................................... 17

(2D Vector Graphics) Inkscape – Portable ................................................................................. 18

(2D Raster Graphics) Gimp - Portable ....................................................................................... 19

(Java Development) Eclipse – Portable ..................................................................................... 20

(Text Editor/Programming Development) Notepad++ - Portable ............................................... 21

(Games/Typing) TypeFaster – Portable ..................................................................................... 22

(Game) Battle for Wesnoth – Portable ....................................................................................... 23

Ideas for future programs (or other programs to check out) ..................................................... 24

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 2

About This Project: This document is a 4 week project focusing on finding portable apps and analyzing their use and

impact in the classroom. The majority of the apps can all be found on the PortableApps.com

website (http://portableapps.com/).

In my first year of teaching I realized quite quickly how every student’s technology resources at

home are different. I taught 2 programming courses and due to some students being unable to

install software on their home computer (largely due to parents being super afraid of possible

virus downloads) and others not having programs that I had always viewed as computer “staples”

(staples as in food staples, not paper staples), I felt like I couldn’t assign any computer

homework to my students. On some occasions in the classes I taught, our servers would go down

making it so that students couldn’t gain access to their personal student files and therefore had no

way of accessing past programs we wrote and couldn’t save new programs to their student

folder. I realized a few months later that if all students had access to a personal flash drive

containing portable versions of any software they needed, this could greatly help improve the

ability my students had to do work at school or at home and to always be able to access their own

files.

This project is not made to create those flash drives for my students, but rather to be a collection

of potential education applications that could be used on these flash drives. I’ll discuss my

thoughts on the application, what commercial products they resemble, pros and cons, where to

find the application, and the classes I’d see them being most useful in. Not all of the software

mentioned are ones that I’d use often (I wasn’t impressed with CintaNotes or CamStudio), but I

can definitely see them as being useful to teachers or students in technology classes.

Why use portable applications? As a teacher, it may seem odd, at first thought, the idea of even needing portable software. Every

day you use the same computer, and even when you work from home you typically have access

to the same programs. So why would you need portable applications?

Portable applications are not for everyone, and this document is as much for students as it is for

teachers. As teachers we often overlook the fact that not all students have the same software on

their own computers and for this reason, if students are given computer homework that they can’t

do at home, teachers are setting them up for failure. Portable applications, however, help to level

the playing field. They won’t help all students (as some just plain don’t have a computer at

home), and they won’t work for all classes (as there’s plenty of software out there that doesn’t

have a free alternative). But for those students that do have computers at home and are in classes

where there are OpenSource or Freeware portable applications they can use, that opportunity to

do homework when they otherwise couldn’t have could mean the difference between failing a

class and acing a class.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 3

But let’s not ignore the potential that portable apps could have on teachers as well. Teachers do

typically use the same 2 computers every day (work and home), but making not only files, but

also applications portable could help streamline tasks and if a computer malfunctions or the

network goes down (and isn’t all school work saved on the network... No network = no teacher

resources), then you still have all of your work, notes, lessons, etc. saved and ready to be used on

a different computer.

Portable applications also work well for professional development, when you need to visit

another school and demonstrate something but are not sure about the applications already present

on the computers at the school you’re visiting. Downloading and installing software for a single

demonstration is tedious, but sliding in a portable flash drive that already has the program you

need ready to go can make a world of difference.

I suppose the simplest answer would be to just get a single Laptop and use that and only that

(this way you have portability and access to any software you want without needing to search for

“Portable” versions. But once again we run into problems. If the laptop is work issued it

probably comes with a contract that discusses repercussions that will occur if you’re caught

doing anything non-work related on it. If it’s not work issued and it’s your personal laptop you

probably can’t just plug it in at work and be good to go due to Network restrictions, not having

the software set up to monitor student computers, etc. A Portable flash drive with portable

applications is really the best alternative.

Why not go with cloud apps? Cloud Apps are amazing with the capabilities they have to provide so many applications online

for free, but the 3 primary concerns I have with storing everything on the cloud are:

1. What happens when your network goes down?

2. What about privacy and security?

3. Not every piece of software has been made available on the cloud, and those

that are typically don’t run as well (usually due to network lag)

As an educator, I’ve had experiences where I relied on the school’s network to work when I

needed it to only to find that the network dies for 24 hours when I need it up and running (true

story). If the network dies when you are teaching about programming and you lose access to files

and software, you’re kind of out of luck and have to “wing it”. With a flash drive and portable

apps, as long as your computer has power, you have the software you need. If the power goes out

you’ll still have to wing it, but there’s no other choice in that case.

Privacy and security don’t seem too important to an educator most of the time (student private

data being the exception) because who really wants to steal information from a teacher? But

there is at least one bit of information I’d want to keep off the web for security purposes, and

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 4

that’s my passwords. Something about having my passwords just a URL and a password hack

away from the entire rest of the world sends shivers down my spine. The other concern, focusing

on privacy, is that many of the free websites an educator would use make your information

available to the rest of the world, whether you want them to or not. Simply by posting work onto

certain websites you essentially agree that your work is now public domain. To some, that’s

wonderful, but to others, that’s a huge concern. Storing on the web is one thing, making it

completely open and available for everyone is another.

I had a neat opportunity to use a ChromeBook recently. Neat, fast little device. Excellent little

laptop for the average person who spends 100% of their computer time online (side note, none of

the following portable apps will work on the ChromeBook due to it not supporting .exe files).

ChromeBooks rely on users being able to do anything they need to do online. Some Apps have

even been develop to work offline (which is great for those times when you know you won’t

have internet service). Many OpenSource apps have been made available in the Chrome Apps

store, but often they’re watered down versions of the same software. Some apps can’t convert to

the cloud, so they’re hosted on a server and you essentially remote access a computer to gain

access to specific apps you need (Gimp and Inkscape are 2 examples where the Chrome Apps are

actually remote access apps that focus on gaining access to just those pieces of software). This

would be awesome if network speeds were faster, but because they’re not, there’s often a slight

lag which can be very annoying when dealing with drawing programs.

As awesome as cloud apps are, I believe the only way to have software with me everywhere I go,

usable on any (windows) computer I use, accessible whether I have internet or not, and still

maintaining as much privacy and security as possible is to go with portable apps.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 5

PortableApps.com – A great resource for Portable Applications In my quest for portable apps I came across this website – www.portableapps.com – which

focuses on providing a list of portable versions of some of the most widely used Open Source

applications available. Not only does it provide a great list, but it also provides an application of

its own that helps organize the apps and provide a nice user interface for quickly accessing those

apps.

This would be a great resource as the primary icon in a flash drive with pre-loaded software. The

application can be used to download new apps (rather than going to the website itself) and

provides notification when an update for an application is available. Like all the software

available on the website, this

application is free for use.

Most of the applications that I

searched for were already

accessible from this website

and downloadable with the app,

so, as you’ll see, almost all of

the URLs are from

portableapps.com.

*Important Note: This list is in

no way meant to replace or

duplicate info present on

PortableApps.com. Instead, it’s

here to focus on the teacher’s

perspective on how to use some

of these apps in the classroom.

PortableApps.com has many

more tools, most of which

could be used in some

educational environment to

streamline teacher or to

increase student engagement.

This list is just a set of

applications I’ve had

experience with and found to be

very useful in the classroom.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 6

(Web Browser) Firefox – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Mozilla Firefox is a great program to have on your computer whether you’re a teacher or a

student. Everyone has their own web browser preferences and not every website is fully

compatible with every web browser. For this reason I recommend having a few different web

browsers available wherever you go so that if one browser is supported by a website you can just

try one of your other browsers.

As of January 2014 Firefox was the 2nd

most popular web browser taking up roughly 1/4th of the

“market” (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp). For this reason it’s

important that web developers consider how their website works on a Firefox Web Browser.

This program would be used extensively in a web development course to ensure browser

compatibility. The program allows for the Firebug to be added as an add on thereby allowing

students to examine their code in Firefox.

Students and teachers are also able to store their bookmarks on Firefox portable allowing for

mobile bookmarks as well.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 7

(Web Browser) Google Chrome - Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Google Chrome is another great program to have on your computer whether you’re a teacher or a

student. Everyone has their own web browser preferences and not every website is fully

compatible with every web browser. For this reason I recommend having a few different web

browsers available wherever you go so that if one browser is supported by a website you can just

try one of your other browsers.

As of January 2014 Chrome was the most popular web browser taking up roughly ½ of the

“market” (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp). For this reason it’s

important that web developers consider how their website works on a Chrome Web Browser.

This program would be used extensively in a web development course to ensure browser

compatibility. Chrome comes with an “inspect element” option similar to firebug’s which makes

it great for analyzing a web page.

Students and teachers are also able to store their bookmarks on Chrome portable allowing for

mobile bookmarks as well. Since Google Apps are Browser based you can add apps to your

browser for ease of access and could even focus on using specific apps for your class (such as

keyboarding apps).

*Important Note: Most web developers know that web pages do not show up on all web

browsers the exact same way. For this reason, when doing web development, it’s important to

pay attention to whether or not there are noticeable changes with your website on different

browsers. For this reason I, personally, recommend that every student have 3 or 4 different web

browsers available to them to be able to see how their website looks. Internet Explorer, Safari,

and Opera are 3 other browsers that can be very useful to a student web developer.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 8

(Office Suite) LibreOffice/OpenOffice – Portable Download page for LibreOffice: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable

Download page for OpenOffice: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable

LibreOffice and OpenOffice are free alternatives to the classic Microsoft Office suite. Both

programs are essentially the same (as LibreOffice is a break-off from OpenOffice, they share

much of the same source code and functionality), though as time goes on we’ll see more and

more differences between the two programs.

Like Microsoft Office, both suites contain a Word Processing program (comparable to Word), a

Presentation program (comparable to PowerPoint), and a Spreadsheet program (similar to Excel).

Additional programs also come with the suite, but those are the three major programs.

Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are somewhat compatible between the different

suites, so if a document is written using Microsoft Word it can usually be opened using

OpenOffice Writer without too many problems, though it’s not uncommon for there to be major

problems with tables and fonts (when the fonts aren’t in both suites).

These programs are commonly used in writing, personal finance, computer literacy,

communications, and leadership courses, though they can be used in far more courses than just

those.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 9

(Password Management) Keepass/Password Corral - Portable Download page:

Keepass and Password Corral are both portable password management programs. Both store

information in encrypted databases, require a password to access the passwords, and allow the

user to group passwords together (work, school, home, sidejob, etc.). Whereas I typically try and

focus on just one tool at a time, this time the tools are basically the same with the exception that

one is simpler and the other has more options (which actually complicates the program).

Password Corral is the simpler of the two because when you create a new password you only

have about 6 lines of information to fill out (name of location, username, password, url, e-mail,

and description). It’s great for people who want a simple system without all the bells and

whistles.

Keepass allows more flexibility by providing options that do all sorts of things that I don’t

understand yet. They’re great for more advanced, tech-savvy users.

These programs could be used by both students and teachers, as we all tend to forget our

passwords. It’s great for helping students and teachers break the habit of using the same

password for everything. The only issue with these programs is that they do require a person to

memorize 1 password (the one to access the program), and if they lose or forget the password

there is no way to retrieve it (or the rest of the passwords saved in the program).

This program really comes in handy for any course that requires multiple login names and/or

passwords. A technology course that focuses on exploring online technologies could make great

use of this as many online websites now require a username and password.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 10

(Notes) CintaNotes – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/office/cintanotes-portable

CintaNotes is a text-only note collecting software. It’s very similar to Microsoft OneNote and

EverNote in how it allows you to have multiple sections and multiple notes in each section, but

the big difference is that you can’t house images on the application. That one feature really

makes a difference between a good note-taking application and a mediocre one. Sadly I couldn’t

find a better alternative than CintaNotes (aside from making your own portable version of

EverNote – which isn’t legal without the developer’s permission).

But, aside from not allowing you to save images in your notes, it’s not a bad application. Where

I’d see it primarily useful in education is in housing recipes for a cooking class (though without

images, food doesn’t sound as tasty), being used to take notes during class, storing important

information such as schedules or passwords (though there are better programs designed for this

and unless your flashdrive is password protected, storing passwords could be a very bad idea),

and saving outlines of lesson plans (though this would probably be better done using OpenOffice

Writer – Portable). One excellent feature present in CintaNotes is the ability to tag notes for easy

searching later on.

Alternatively, if you’re not needing the organization that CintaNotes offers and are looking more

for simple digital sticky notes, PNotes may be the program for you.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 11

(Education) Mnemosyne – Portable (Flash Card Memorization

Tool) Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/education/mnemosyne_portable

One of the best strategies for learning material is frequent repetition. We usually accomplish this

with Flash Cards (which is why so many college programs in medical and chemical fields have

such huge stacks of flash cards in the college bookstore). Mnemosyne is a very basic method for

card memorization. Cards are stored within a database and you can switch between databases

easily to focus on different subjects.

This program provides the opportunity to create and edit flash cards, specify the type of flash

card (front to back, back to front, or dual flash card allowing the program to randomize which

side of the card is shown), allows you to declare how easy or hard the card was (thereby allowing

the program to decide how soon to throw the card at you again), and you can import/export card

stacks thereby allowing you to share your cards with others or use cards others have already

made.

This program could be very useful for helping students memorize vocabulary for any class.

Teachers often have a hard time figuring out what to do for the first 5 minutes of class when

they’re taking

attendance, handing

out graded work, and

preparing to teach the

lesson. If teachers

have enough

vocabulary, they could

easily have students

work on memorizing

vocabulary for 3-5

minutes at the

beginning of class.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 12

(E-mail) Mozilla Thunderbird – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable

Have multiple e-mail accounts and blog feeds connect to one central location. This program is

similar to Microsoft’s Outlook program, though it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that

Outlook has (such as the calendar and to-do lists).

The program is simple to start and allows for IMAP and POP3 e-mail retrieval. I used my

Hotmail account with IMAP which allows me to sync my changes between Thunderbird and

Hotmail. I was impressed that within about 20 seconds of setting up my account I had already

gained access to all my folders and messages. After setting up my e-mail I was also able to set up

my RSS feeds and my Chat for Google Talk. With each of these I’ve only set up a single

account, but this would be a great program for when you’re managing multiple e-mails, RSS

Feeds, and IM services.

Students may not need this program much since they typically only have 1 e-mail address, aren’t

familiar with blog feeds, and usually stick to texting, but it could be a great tool for teachers who

have work e-mails, personal e-mails, etc. The primary benefit this has over Microsoft’s Outlook

is that Outlook is not portable and all e-mails are viewed on a single device whereas this program

can jump from computer to computer because of its portability. Cause let’s face it, sometimes

while at home we really need to check our work e-mail (sickness happens).

(In the above image all e-mail addresses, names, and folder names have been replaced by a gray

box. RSS feeds are at the very bottom of the list of folders and are, therefore, unseen in this

image.)

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 13

(Media Player) VLC Player – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable

When not teaching and helping students, it’s often important to find some way to drown out the

rest of the world in order to focus on work. For me that includes a set of songs I can listen to that

I love, drown out distracting noises, and yet are not distracting themselves. Typically I’d pick

iTunes for this, but iTunes is not portable (At least, not from a website I’d trust to download

material from. Maybe in the future, iTunes?). For that reason I had to search for a portable

alternative and found VLC player. This player is relatively new to me, so I’m not super

experienced with it and don’t know if there are better alternatives. (alternatively, many people

have said good things about Joomla, though I haven’t tried it myself)

To me, a portable media player is not meant to carry around all your media, but rather, a

selection of music for the purposes listed above (prevent distractions and improve focus). VLC is

nice because it allows you to play many formats (including video for those people who know a

movie so well that they can work while listening to it and know exactly what’s go ing on without

being distracted... For me, that’s the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies). Adding a music

folder with 20-100 songs you love to your portable device and using this app will provide you

with enough focus to suite your grading needs.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 14

(Screen Capture) PicPick – Portable Download page:

As far as simple screen capturing goes, Jing is a great tool, but it’s not portable which is what

we’re really trying to go for here. As a good portable alternative, PicPick is really great. It has

many capabilities that are far above Jing, but at the same time it lacks some of the capabilities

that Jing has. For example, Jing is docked on your screen all the time (as a little sun icon at the

top, bottom, or sides of your screen), so screenshots are always a click away. PicPick, however,

is an application you have to find and open every time you want to take a screenshot. On the

other hand, Java’s image editing/annotating tools are far below PicPick’s. But again, when it

comes to portable, Jing loses (because it’s not portable).

Screen Capturing is important for teachers and students. Teachers use them for answering

student e-mails, creating lesson plans, showing end results of assignments, etc. Students can use

them to show a teacher what he/she is struggling with (assignment-wise, or lesson-wise).

Students could also use screen capturing for a writing or technology course in order to create an

instructional document of some kind.

PicPick also has additional tools useful to students in a web development course such as the

ruler, color picker, and cross hairs (which are useful for finding specific coordinates of a web

page).

PicPick states, upon opening the program for the first time, that it’s only for personal use (which

kills any potential to use

it for business purposes

and possibly even for

educational purposes).

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 15

(Video Recording) CamStudio – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/camstudio_portable

It’s always helpful, when teaching computer courses, to be able to create short videos that

demonstrate how to do something on the computer. Cam Studio is a nifty program that allows

you to do just that. Not one of the best products of its kind, but you can’t really argue too much

with free. This product is somewhere between Jing and Camtasia in its capabilities. Jing has the

ability to capture up to 5 minutes of recording and to save it as a swf file (a flash file), and

Camtasia allows you to choose multiple formats to save, has no limit in how long a video is, and

even allows you to edit the video. CamStudio, on the otherhand, appears to let you record as long

as you want in many formats, but doesn’t have video editing capabilities. (I am not sure if there

is a portable version of Jing or Camtasia)

If, however, you save your video as an

AVI file you can load the video to video

editing software and edit to your hearts

content. AVI files are editable with the

Windows Movie Maker software (though

I don’t believe that software is free

anymore).

Personally, of all the OpenSource

software I’ve tried, this is so far the least

impressive to me, but it does have great

potential and could be extremely helpful

for teachers.

This software could also be used by

students to create video tutorials for each

other for a computer technology class,

digital communications class, or a

broadcasting class.

Important Note: CamStudio does not allow you to use a web cam to record yourself, so if you

want to do that you might be better off trying Camtasia.

This version of Camtasia does have some odd quirks with the mouse.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 16

(Audio Recording/Editing) Audacity – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/audacity_portable

Audacity is a great program for audio recording and manipulating. This is an excellent program

for teachers to use to provide audio commentary during a lesson or to provide announcements for

students to listen to at the beginning of class or while at home.

This program is also a great one to use for a broadcasting course of some kind. The course I’d

typically teach this program in would be a podcasting or Digital Communications course.

Students can create audio interviews, record music, splice music, overlay music, record

themselves singing, etc. Fun student projects could include creating a radio advertisement,

interviewing a family member about a favorite memory, doing a news report on a favorite

teacher, “chipmunking” a song through pitch change, running a “Karaoke” recording to get

students to record themselves singing to karaoke and then taking the singer’s individual

recordings and putting them together to make a choral version of the song.

This program provides functions that allow you to change your pitch, tempo, and add echo.

There are loads of other functions as well, but the program doesn’t provide additional

instruments, so it’s not really a replacement for a program like Garageband, but for simple voice

recording, it’s pretty nice.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 17

(3D Modeling/Animation) Blender – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/blender_portable

With all of the amazing 3D Animation movies that have come out over the last 10 years, it’s not

too surprising that a frequently asked for course in high schools is 3D Modeling and

Animation. Our students are creative and they want to show it. Maya is a free program for

students, but incredibly expensive otherwise, and the student edition has legal restrictions that

don’t allow students to be able to use anything made in a student edition for profit. Blender, on

the other hand, is a great alternative and is frequently used in many high school 3D

Modeling/Animation courses.

Blender is pretty complicated, as is Maya, and takes a while to get used to, but once a student or

teacher becomes familiar with the tools the program becomes very powerful. If a teacher or

student has had experience using Maya in the past, Blender allows you to change the settings to

match what you’re used to with Maya.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 18

(2D Vector Graphics) Inkscape – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/inkscape_portable

Inkscape is a great program for any Graphic Design courses. Inkscape is a vector graphics

program which means that rather than saving every pixel in an image it only saves points, line

segments, colors, and other information that is needed to reproduce the image. Though this

means that images don’t have the same type of details as a raster image, it also means that the

file size will be smaller (typically) and that it can be resized without distorting the image.

Teachers won’t use this type of program very often (unless they’re teaching a graphics design

course of some sorts), but students in a graphics design course could learn a lot about design and

creativity through this program.

A comparable (and probably better) alternative would be Adobe Illustrator (which is super

expensive and not portable).

The portable version of Inkscape does have a slightly changed layout, and this may be something

that can be changed to make it match the normal Inkscape layout, but I’m not sure how.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 19

(2D Raster Graphics) Gimp - Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable

Gimp is the free Photoshop alternative. Unlike Inkscape, Gimp deals with Raster graphics

(meaning every pixel is saved). Gimp is a great program for manipulating images as well as

creating images from scratch. Students in a photography class or a graphic design course could

make great use of Gimp.

Gimp is most often used, like Photoshop, to touch up photos. Using some of the basic tools in

Gimp you remove backgrounds, place individuals in a scene they weren’t originally in, remove

skin blemishes, change skin tones, make an individual fatter or thinner, etc. For this reason Gimp

would also be great in an Advertising or Communications course for discussing how the media

is communicating to us and how to create effective advertisements.

Though Gimp is usually used to manipulate photos, you can do some are activities with the

paintbrush and some of the other tools as well – as shown in the image below.

Paint.net is another great 2D Raster tool, but I was unable to find a portable version made by the

creators of the software or by portableapps.com.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 20

(Java Development) Eclipse – Portable Download page: https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-standard-432/keplersr2

Java is my programming language of choice (because that is what I’m most familiar with).

Eclipse is, in my opinion, the leading Java Development Environment available (though many

others would argue Netbeans is better, and for their purposes they might be right). Source Forge

provides a portable version of Eclipse which makes programming in java easier because your

files and programming environment are carried to any computer with you. Students in a

programming class can carry their course work from school to home, or to the library, or to

grandma’s house, and as long as there’s a computer to connect to, they should be able to do their

java homework.

One issue with programming in Java is that Java needs to be installed on every computer. There

are work arounds with this and one is to use another application that can run a program in a java-

contained environment. JPortable is one of these apps (which I have not tried out yet) that should

allow a student or teacher to use a Java-less computer and still be able to program and run a Java

Program. If this is the case then JPortable and Eclipse would be a necessary pair on any

programming flash drive.

One powerful feature on Eclipse is the ability to change preferences which can adjust how the

program should be formatted. When a particular keyboard shortcut is pressed the entire

document can be reformatted to match the preferences (length of indents, location of brackets,

etc.). This is a lazy person’s way of tidying up code and though it shouldn’t be used frequently

by students, it is a nice way for a teacher to clean up messy code for increased readability.

*Note about this program. Nothing

about this program suggests that it’s

portable, however, you don’t actually

install the program onto your

computer. You can load it onto a flash

drive and create your workspace on

your flash drive and, as far as I can

tell, you’ve just manipulated your

Eclipse to be portable. I’ve used

Eclipse in this way for some time and

have not noticed any issues with it.

*Image was a version of Tetris I was

working on to use to teach students

basic programming skills.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 21

(Text Editor/Programming Development) Notepad++ - Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/development/notepadpp_portable

Notepad++ is my favorite text editor for general programming and web development. It’s a

great pick for programming HTML, CSS, and other web languages (javascript, python, JQuery).

When other programming environments built for a particular language aren’t available,

Notepad++ is a great substitute, and it’s also fantastic for showing students how to program in

Java without Eclipse and how to run a program from the command line.

Notepad++ (not to be confused with “Notepad” which comes pre-installed on most computers) is

a glorified wordpad program allowing you to do basic text manipulation and editing. Notepad++

is in no way a Word Processing program, so it’s not an adequate replacement for Microsoft

Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer.

Notepad++ recognizes the language you’re programming in (based off of the file extension) and

it will change the text to highlight or underline errors in the code, reserved words, comments, etc.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 22

(Games/Typing) TypeFaster – Portable Download page:

TypeFasterPortable is a nice program for encouraging students to use the home row method of

typing and to improve their typing speeds. The interface contains a keyboard so you can see what

keys your fingers land on as you type, a screen showing the text you need to type with the actual

text you type below, incorrect letters are red, and sounds let you hear when you make a mistake.

The program would be excellent for a keyboarding class, computer literacy class, or a general

technology class. I could even see this program being used for a 5 minute starter each day in any

technology class, where the students come in, sit down, and take the various typing tests while

the teacher takes attendance and prepares to start class. Progress is saved for future use.

One of the great features of the game is the ability to edit and create new lessons. This allows the

user to add bodies of text to type to further test the individual. Progress can also be viewed to see

what letters the user struggles with the most and new practice modes can be made based off of

those keys.

I could see teachers using this program as well, simply for the keyboarding practice and to try to

work on accurate finger positioning.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 23

(Game) Battle for Wesnoth – Portable Download page: http://portableapps.com/apps/games/wesnoth_portable

The majority of students who enter a programming or technology class express a desire to learn

about game development. Many schools even have courses specifically dedicated to game

development and many programming courses are now including units on graphical user

interfaces (a.k.a GUIs) and moving objects around a screen. For that reason I think one of the

best tools for a student is a decent game that can easily be dissected to discuss how it works. This

is difficult for many of our modern games that are so enshrouded by high level graphics, 3D

perspectives, and artificial intelligence that is too advanced for the average high school student.

Battle for Wesnoth is an enjoyable game that has decent graphics while still allowing students to

be able to make intelligent guesses about how the programs work. After playing the game for a

little while students are easily able to break down the basic rules of the game, the functionality of

how players move and how terrain affects movement and defense. Students can easily break the

game down into objects (Object Oriented Programming) and assign attributes to those objects (A

character has attack values, defense values, a number of times they can hit, the number of moves

they can make, etc. A tile has the number of moves it “consumes”, an x-coordinate, a y-

coordinate, etc.)

Though recreating the game would be above the expectation for any high school course it can be

a great tool for teaching problem solving, thinking about elements to incorporate into a game,

and help students be able to come up with ideas for their own games.

Portable Apps for Technology Teachers 24

Ideas for future programs (or other programs to check out) The following list comprises of additional programs that would be nice to explore to see if there

are portable versions that would be useful for educational purposes.

- Calendar program of some sort (preferably one that comes natively on Thunderbird rather

than as a plugin – which I couldn’t get to work on the portable version).

- A program I was recently introduced to, but unable to really dive into yet, was Phrase

Express. This program comes in an installation version and a portable version. It replaces

text as you type key patters (for example, ~sig could be typed, then automatically

replaced with your signature, or ~DA1.#1 could automatically be replaced with a pre-

written message listing the requirements for an assignment). A quick way to write

frequently repeated messages.

- Youtube Downloader

- Prezzi

- Linux Operating System – Jumpdrive

- CutePDF

- Dropbox?