Storing the Mobi for the Summer

I just wanted to send this information out to people who have an eInstruction Mobi. Teachers should remove the rechargeable battery from the pen when it is not going to be used for an extended period of time such as the summer. To do this, locate the little square button on the back of the pen just above the 2 silver rings. Use a key or something to press the button in a bit. Slide the pen apart and you will expose the battery. Take the battery out and store it in a place that you will remember, at room temperature. To place the two pen halves back together, align the inside ridges in the top half of the pen with the slot in the bottom front half of the pen and slide them together until you hear the pen click.

When school starts again in the fall, open the pen and insert the battery with the positive icon facing towards the tip of the pen. Charge the Mobi and the pen for a full 12 hours before using it.

It’s also a good idea to remove the Mobi rechargeable battery as well when not using it for an extended period of time. To do this, turn the Mobi over and use a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screw. The rest is easy.

Replacing The KWIK Mobi Battery & the Mobi Pen Battery

Some of you have had your Mobi now for a couple of years so at some point, if you haven’t already done so, the batteries will have to be replaced. There are two batteries that will eventually need to be replaced. The Mobi pen battery is $4.00 from eInstruction and the part number is IW-A-629-039-000. It's a GP (Gold Peak) 1.2 volt battery. To get to the battery, locate the square little button on the back of the pen just above the 2 silver rings. Use a key or something to press the button in a little. Slide the pen apart and you will see the battery. I have also found that if your pen is not working and you have definitely charged it, you might just need to take this battery out and use a pencil eraser to clean the contacts. When you are charging the Mobi and the pen, be sure you see the little pen charging icon. This is a little square with a line at an angle through the top. If you do not see the little square constantly filling and emptying, then the pen is not being charged. It is very possible to charge the Mobi and not charge the pen. You may just have to push the pen down all the way into the pen slot of the Mobi. You also may just have to turn the pen around a bit in the slot. In any case, be sure you see that the pen charging icon is displayed.

The KWIK Mobi also has a battery of course and eInstruction charges $35.00 for it. The part number is CB-A-629-038-000. eInstuction also charges $5.00 for shipping and handling. The KWIK Mobi battery is accessed from the back. Use a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screw and then you can remove the battery cover. It is a rectangular shaped lithium-ion 3.7 volt battery. Just be sure that the gold color contacts are facing towards the upper left corner when placing it back in the battery compartment. Again, be sure you see the Mobi battery icon constantly filling and emptying when you are charging it.

Workspace Memory Errors

I’m writing this blog because a few teachers have come across this error message when using Interwrite Workspace. It’s a memory error and it looks like this: “disk full while accessing user\Interwrite Workspace\IW Autosave.GWB”. The reason the teacher is receiving this message is because their H drive is full. By default Workspace auto saves the workbook every 5 minutes. If the teacher’s H drive is full, the program has no place to save the file. There are a couple of things you can do. First of all, I would ask the teacher to clean out their H drive. That should probably be done anyway. The second thing is to open the Workspace program, click on the small triangle in the top of the main toolbox to bring down the menu and choose preferences. In the options tab, you will see the auto save section near the bottom of the preferences window. The default is to auto save every 5 minutes. However, you can disable it and solve your memory error. Of course you would need to save the workbook to a location of your choice. The 3^rd option is to create a folder on your C drive and set that folder as the “GWB Folder”. Workspace will auto save there and you won’t have the memory errors anymore. Create the folder on your C drive first. Open preferences and the “options tab”. Be sure the “default GWB folder” is selected. Click browse, navigate to the folder you created on the C drive to save the Workspace files and select it. Then click ok to close the preferences window.

Working With Textblocks In Interwrite Workspace

When working with text blocks in Interwrite Workspace I noticed that the length of the text lines were fixed to a short length. This happens whether or not you type the text or paste it in. I called eInsrtuction to ask if there was something obvious I was missing. The eInstruction representative noted the problem but did not have a solution. By playing around I found how to increase the width of the text block. Double click the text block if you are not in the text edit mode. Place your cursor on the right side of the text block. The arrow will change into a short left/right arrow. Drag the text box to the right to make it the desired width. This alone will not make the text box wider. You have to then click the right edge of the text box to make the text box stretch to that width.

The icons in the textblock window starting from the left are clone text, split sentence into words, change color, font name, font size, bold, italic, underline, left justify, center justify, right justify, bullet list and the onscreen keyboard.

I hope this helps someone.

Interwrite Workspace Layers and The Right Click Tool Boxes

Let's take a look at the layers in the Interwrite Workspace program. You can have up to six layers on one page. You can also rename the layers by clicking on the edit layer icon (page icon with the pencil below layer one). One way to use layers is to have an image with items you want the students to identify on layer one for example. You could then create another layer where students would be able to write their answers. This could be layer two. The third layer would have the answers already typed out and in the right places. This layer would be hidden at the start which is easily done by clicking the green check mark to the right of the layer name. After the students write their answers, hide that layer and make your layer with your answers visible.


You could use layers to show before and after pictures. For example you could use the camera tool to grab before and after images of New Orleans from Google Earth (use the history slider). Place the images (centers aligned) on different layers. Click the green check to hide and reveal the past and present images.

Did you also know that you can right click on any object on the Workspace page to bring up the action and tools toolboxes? The actions toolbox has undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select all, order selected entities, rotate selected entities, group (if you select more than one object), ungroup, move to background, export entities, and add files to gallery. The tools toolbox by default has the selection tool, the pen tool, freehand shape, freehand text, multi colored pen, picture pen, highlighter, eraser, type text tool, shapes, line, stamper, zoom, undo, redo, clear tool and the mouse mode. If you chose “preferences” from the menu and click on the “customize toolbar” tab you can drag and drop the tools you want in the tools toolbox. You can also remove tools you don’t want to appear in the tools toolbox by dragging them out. You will have to name and save the scheme.

Many teachers create and use PowerPoint presentations in their everyday teaching. While in Workspace you can choose file “open” to open a 2003 or 2007 PowerPoint presentation. Each slide in the PowerPoint becomes a page in the Workspace file. Separate objects on the PowerPoint slides are separate objects on the Workspace pages and can be moved or manipulated as such. You can also open PDF’s in the Workspace software so that they become Workspace pages as well. Of course your original PowerPoint and PDF files remain unchanged. If you create a Workspace presentation, you can also export (from the file menu) the Workspace file as a PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG, Bitmap, GIF, TIFF, PNG file or as HTML.

I hope this helps you use the Workspace software more effectively in your lessons.

Application Failed To Initialize Properly 135 Error When Opening The Workspace Software

Have you ever loaded the latest version of the Interwrite Workspace software or CPS and received a "Application Failed To Initialize Properly 135" error when you tried to open it? The only thing you can do is click ok to terminate the program. This happened to me when I was out at a school and I wanted to pass this along to help others out. To solve this problem, I installed the "Microsoft.Net Framework 3.5". In our district, it can be loaded through the AICP. The program opened up and worked fine after that.

When you shutdown your computer, you sometimes see an option to "install updates and shutdown". You should choose this option. If you just choose shutdown, you may miss those important updates. This may happen more often than you think. I hope this helps.

Battery for the Mobi

I just wanted to share a few pieces of information about the Mobi. First of all if you need a battery for the Mobi pen, you can buy it at Radio Shack for $5.99. Their catalog number is 55027736. It's a GP (Gold Peak) 1.2 volt battery. To get to the battery, locate the square little button on the back of the pen just above the 2 silver rings. Use a key or something to press the button in a little. Slide the pen apart and you will see the battery. I have also found that if your pen is not working and you have definitely charged it, you might just need to take this battery out and use a pencil eraser to clean the contacts. When you are charging the Mobi and the pen, be sure you see the little pen charging icon. This is a little square with a line at an angle through the top. If you do not see the little square constantly filling and emptying, then the pen is not being charged. It is very possible to charge the Mobi and not charge the pen. You may just have to push the pen down all the way into the pen slot of the Mobi. You also may just have to turn the pen around a bit in the slot. In any case, be sure you see that the pen charging icon is displayed. I have also noticed that leaving the Mobi in your car (in the cold) the day before you want to use it is not a good idea. I did this the day before I went to a school to do a training and the fully charged Mobi and pen did not work the next day. I hope this helps.

Updating the Firmware of Your Mobi RF Receiver and the Mobi Wireless Tablet Manually

In order to update the firmware of the Mobi, you have to go about it a bit differently than is posted on the eInstruction website. They will tell you this process if you call their Tech Support number. eInstruction is a very good company. There are two hex files they will email you with instructions that are similar to the steps I have listed here. This is a more detailed list of the steps needed to complete the manual update of the Mobi receiver and the Mobi tablet itself. The steps are not long or complicated but they should be done in order to have a good connection between the Mobi and the receiver.

Ok, here you go. Proceed as follows:

1.) Open the eInstruction Device Manager.

2.) Plug in the Mobi RF receiver.

3.) Right click on the Mobi icon in the Device Manager and choose properties.

4.) Press the shift and control keys at the same time.

5.) Click on the update Mobi tab that appears.

6.) Click browse and open the hex file that ends with D.

7.) Update the firmware.

8.) The Mobi will restart automatically.

9.) Remove the RF receiver and connect the Mobi to the computer using the USB cord.

10.) Now repeat steps 3-8, except browse and open the hex file that ends in F.

You will need to call eInstruction Technical Support 888-333-4988 to ask for the 2 hex files. They will email them to you.