Blogging Too Far: Top 10 items in the $20 Fix Anything Kit

  • Inspired by my father and his "It will be a cold day in hell before I pay someone to fix something for me" attitude, let me present the teacher's repair kit for broken things.  Everything here should cost you under $20, $10 if you buy from us. 
  • The Teacher Syndicate products are good quality.  They won't arrive broken.  But I can assure you, no matter how much you pay for something, if you leave it long enough in a classroom, it will break, somehow.  Even though you might have only paid a few dollars for something, it might be worth a minute or two of your time to fix up.
  • The best excuse to fix things up yourself is to get them back into action.  If you have five microphones, and every one is being used by students, having one go offline will upset your groupings, it will impact on how the other four are shared.  And heaven forbid, if it was the microphone being used by 'Brendan', you want him back on task as soon as possible, not delegated to carry out your Plan B activity that isn't anywhere near as your Plan A lesson.
  • As a general rule, if you can't fix something in 5 minutes, either toss it in the bin or get it fixed up properly.  Your professional time is too valuable as a teacher to be a low-level fixing-up person.  
  • NOTE:  never try to fix anything electrical that plugs into the mains or plugs into an electrical adaptor.  You're a trained teacher, not a trained electrician.  Respect that people have professions and qualifications for a reason.  
  • So based on my experience, and channeling my father 1000 miles away, here's the fix up kit.

 

 

 

  1. Prevention first - read the instructions.  New stuff usually works in new ways, and will most likely break or not work very well if you don't know what you are doing.
  2. Prevention again - buy some cheap seal up bags and put everything in its own bag.  Write on the bag what's supposed to be inside.  It is SO much easier to manage an iPod when all of its bits are in the same bag (with the iPod in a sock, of course).
  3. Prevention again.  Lots of things we buy are black, which means we can't see them when they are on the floor, so we step on them.  Or put a load of books on them.  Use shiny tape to make your invisible devices stand out.  You'll cut down on a lot of breakage.
  4. Batteries.  Change them.  If you are using wireless keyboards, mice, headphones or anything else with a battery, you need to change batteries often.  At home, you might use your wireless keyboard for 2 hours every day.  The batteries should last you a week or two.  In a classroom, where a keyboard may be used for 5 hours straight, you might need new batteries every day.  It is very easy to forget the intense use products get in a classroom, and we often think something is broken if it stops working.  Batteries are usually the cause.
  5. Clear nail polish. A super product.  If a screw is loose, put a bit of this on it to stop it getting loose again.  In this photo, I opened up a microphone that wasn't working (it took 3 seconds to open).  It was clear that the wires were bare and touching, therefore making it not work.  A bit of nail polish coated the wires.  Problem fixed.  Some people also swear by putting nail polish on the outside of earbuds to close the external holes, to get better sound. 
  6. A butane lighter and some solder.  Most of the time if something with a cable stops working, it is because it has been pulled by a student, and a wire has broken off its solder.  Fixing this is a two step procedure.  Firstly, make sure the wire can't be pulled again.  Tie a knot in it, or superglue it to the internal part of the item, so it can't be pulled again.  Now, get some solder for $1.50 at your local electronics shop.  Practice melting the end with a butane jet lighter ($2 at shops) and then plopping the liquid solder on your broken join (you might have to hold the join in place with a screwdriver or something.  Job done.  Solder isn't strong - it just conducts electricity.  So make sure you stop the break from happening again.  Don't solder anything electrical over 5 volts - just keep it at small accessories that run on very little power.  A bad solder job can cause fires etc if mains power is going through it.  But for broken headsets, iPod cables and microphones, a quick solder will take less than a minute and put the broken back to use before you have to think about a Plan B. You can buy a soldering iron for less than $10 at hobby shops.  You'll get more accuracy for the fix.
  7. A simple screwdriver.  There's nothing wrong with turning off the power to your computer or other item, opening it up, and checking everything is sitting where it should be.  If you can see two things joining, push it to make sure the join is strong.  You're not going to ruin anything, and most of the time if something stops working, it will be a join that was knocked out of place.  My father's hard drive from the computer I gave him 'stops' every now and again.  He was apprehensive at first, but he got familiar with pulling off the cover and pushing everything around a bit.  Problem solved.  He was quoted between $150 to $550 to fix the problem when he took it to repair shops.  We did the repair over the phone.  Done.
  8. Cleaners.  Most devices get hot, and have air cooling vents.  These get clogged up very quickly with dust, which is more common in classrooms than at home. A regular brush over cooling vents can save a lot of things heating up too much and failing.
  9. Superglue!  It should be one of the world's great wonders.  Buy good stuff, not the stuff that comes in ten metal tubes for $2.  Buy our products for $2.50 each!   A tiny bit of glue can fix just about anything broken in a classroom - and this glue sort of melts a thin layer of the plastic that's broken, which makes a really strong fix.  I just fixed my very expensive heavy duty hole puncher after stepping on it (a ghost must have put it on the floor).
  10. Dad, don't use WD40.  We know you think it can do anything, this miracle of modern science.  But it's for squeaky doors and engines.  Not electronics.  Electronics need to stay dry.  They have their own potions and junk, that a teacher shouldn't need to ever know about.  Oily surfaces attract dust and make it stick.  The oil gets hot, the dust gets hot, or builds up so it makes an electrically conducting dusty bridge between two things that shouldn't touch each other, and then it can blow up or catch on fire.  So put that can away Dad.  Really.  And no, it doesn't matter if you have that little red tube thing. 

 

 

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