June 6, 2012 Temperature

Wednesday morning cool temps

Back to Work After the Holidays

Hope your first week back from the Christmas Break was fruitful. Here is another excellent iPad app for creative teachers with iPads. 

"Millennia ago, all you needed to get a point across to your buddies was charcoal and a cave wall or a pointy stick and some sand. Now, we sit for hours crafting passive-aggressive emails to make a point that once was communicated with an arrow and a grunt. There’s beauty in that simplicity. Let’s return to it."

image source: http://blog.evernote.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/skitch_ipad_screens4.png 

The iPad 2 is a great tool with a cable connected to your data projector with the Skitch app. The iPad 2's mirroring feature allows teachers to use maps, diagrams, scanned pages, document, pdf and annotate and highlight important points. Students can share their mastery of concepts with a quick presentation using Skitch on the teacher's iPad. Nothing new in this strategy. However, when teachers can post this illustrated lesson on their wiki or in their digital locker for students that missed the lesson or for review before the EOG this helps students and even parents. In the classroom, Apple has a device called Apple TV that wirelessly connects the iPad and a data projector, interactive white board, or a classroom HDTV. They use AirPlay which is a slick feature of iOS on the MacBook, iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone. This seamless integration is what makes it a classroom tool-- when the wifi works and your battery is not dead. Students can create presentations using this "tactile annotation"tool. Skitch is also available for MacBook.

To share the Skitch documents, Evernote can be used. Evernote is another app teachers like using to share learning and organize their digital library of documents.  

Read more about Skitch for iPad on Andrew Sinkov's blog post http://blog.evernote.com/2011/12/21/skitch-for-ipad-is-here/

Continue the conversation on Twitter by following @cmshelpdesk and Like my "Central Middle School Center for Digital Learning" Facebook page.

First Sunday of December

I have not gotten in the spirit of the season. Maybe it is because I have not helped put up any decorations. So, on my todo list I am informally listing: pray, eat, take a nap, go to a party, and move tree out of storage room.

It's the first Sunday of December.

Really?

Already?

Remembering a Friend

This made me laugh and sad at the same time, Virginia Lee Batten (right side of video), retired Cafeteria Manager at Central Middle School and long time friend lost her battle with cancer. I enjoyed many conversations with her over our love of country cooking. Each time I eat a plate of collards, grits, or go in the cafeteria at school, I look for her. I will miss her. 

R.I.P.

Looking at Blogger, Again

October 2004 seems like only yesterday. However, that was seven long years ago. I have be using Blogger on and off since that first post. I have not posted to my Blogger blog since in end of April and was pleasantly surprised to see there has been some changes to the way things work. In my last post, I was looking forward to the upcoming changes.

Schedules, location, and a clean text editor. The editor is very Google Doc like in design and feels like the +Google site too. This is great. Now, it's time to dig a little deeper and see what other features they have included in this update.

So far, I "like", "+G" what I see.

New Blogger Coming

I don't use this very often, but Blogger is talking about coming out with changes. We will see if it makes using Blogger worth the effort. Other social websites are so easy to post to from my Blackberry, and many other folks read what's on those sites, Blogger is like painting an oil painting on the wall of an abandoned building-- no one looks at it.

A REAL Power-Lunch

P021711PS-0705, originally uploaded by The White House.

This is what I call a Power Lunch.

I like this one

IMG_5856, originally uploaded by mdb0769.

Picking the best instructional strategy is almost as confusing as picking out the perfect pumpkin. How do you make that decission?

Fraser Speirs - Blog - The iPad Project: How It's Going | Diigo

Fraser Speirs - Blog - The iPad Project: How It's Going

iPad and Polarized Sunglass Don't Mix

While traveling during the Labor Day weekend, I discovered something about the iPad. I have a pair of aviator polarized sunglasses that I am fond of wearing. Bausch & Lomb are famous for darkly tinted lenses and they are comfortable. So, what does that have to do with an iPad?

Well, I had to think for a few seconds before I understood what I was observing. I taught physics early in my teaching career and remembered the hours spent trying to demonstrate the concepts of optics to high school students. Polarization of white light is a complex concept to master. But, while reading a webpage on the iPad in the bright sunshine made me thank the writers of the science curriculum.

I would have probably blamed Apple for building a defective device. When I rotated the iPad from the landscape orientation to the portrait orientation, the iPad screen when dark. Hum! Was there something wrong with the motion sensor in the iPad? Was the battery defective? Was the screen leaking? None of the above!

It was basic physics. When two polarized lenses (my Bausch & Lomb shades) and the screen on the iPad are oriented at 90 degrees from each other, light rays are blocked by the lenses.

Sent from an iPad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(Photography)

iPad Running Windows 7 and Word?

The complaint I heard loud and clear from a parent about having Apple computers was "why a Mac"? He was quick to point out that the hospital where his wife worked used only PC and his CAD software was PC only. Schools are facing horrible budgets and still must not leave any teachers or children behind. What if you could actually run serious number crunching programs the school already owns, and edit videos on whatever computer or device available. The iPad has it limits but lots of potential with creative IT. I have changed my mind about using the iPad. After watching a demo from the folks at Citrix, my head is spinning. Their cloud computing solution looks promising. I am not sure about how it would perform with 600-700 devices trying to access it at one time, day after day. Using a server based portal, learners could fire up their iPad, iPhone, MacBook, netbook, or even legacy or refurbished PC desktops, and wirelessly launch Word, Excel, or CAD software. Take a look at this video and with a little imagination, think about how a state-wide initiative could deliver software solutions to the classrooms and run on whatever device the student has available. Droid phones, Blackberry, and Windows based phones. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2pvN4eGKTk

Maybe instead of the school buying/leasing computers, we should instead invest in cloud computing solutions. Then, allow the kids and their parents decide PC, MAC, smartphone, netbook, tablet, or android. My biggest concern, is that does not address the digital divide. Who will help those kids in homes with that still do not have any of the above?

Snow Melt

I am testing to see if this blog post will include this picture. I have have several students with Blackberry smartphones and Droids and such. One educational use would be to post stories about sports events, classroom projects, and even video clips to illustrate what they are learning.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

Snow! and Stuff

Snow cancelled our family and friends plans to move out the contents of a relative's apartment this weekend. We probably could have made the journey, but it was too risky. On the news last night, we heard a report of a major highway accident along the road we would have needed to travel. So, we realized we had made a wise decision in "scrubbing" our travel plans. This week will be a busy one.

I am very excited that the school I work at will be a total 1:1 laptop school soon. Our 7th graders are in their second year of implementation, and this school year we added 7th and 8th grade. Classroom carts will be rolled out this coming week.

Back to School

Time to iron the white shirt, put up my short pants, and t-shirts. It is time to go back to work.

iWorks Numbers Training

As our middle school students reach the point in their science fair projects where they need to create data charts, our 6th graders learned to use Numbers on their MacBooks. Some teachers asked for step by step instructions for their students and others took a different approach. Instead of direct teaching how to use Numbers, many of our 6th grade teachers teamed up students and spent class time exploring how Numbers works. These student learning communities utilized online tutorials and Help documents. They also accessed posted documents on their student wikis to teach themselves how to use Numbers.

My vision of supporting teachers is to provide teachers with just in time support, links on teacher wikis to resources, face to face instruction of students, and whole class instruction. The key is flexibility.

John Blake has shared a video with you

Hi there.

John has shared a video with you: 1 to 1 Laptop Learning Initiative

His/her message:
This is a video highlighting our Central Middle School Laptop Learning Initiative, Whiteville City Schools, Whiteville, North Carolina-- where we are "empowering learners for a globally interactive future".

Sincerely,

John Blake
Technology Facilitator

http://animoto.com/play/rkIMhsXwvFH79uODoenGSw?from=share

If you like it, why don't you try creating one yourself? It's free and really simple, so head over to our site and give it a try:

http://animoto.com

We look forward to your visit! Sincerely,

The ANIMOTO Team

Glogster

How I Resize Photos on My MacBook Pro

A: Here are several Photo Resizing Strategies I use.

1. Email resizing: In iPhoto, it is easy to select several images and click on the email icon. When Apple Mail launches, a window pops up and asks what size you want to send the images as....using that menu, I select small and compose the message. After that, the images resolve in the message, and I select all the images, then control click and select Save Attachment to the desktop. This is how I do it.

2. Export: You can export photos from an album or your entire iPhoto library to send them to others or import them into other applications.
Read more--; http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1100
If you opt to use this iPhoto Export feature, I here's a clearly written site: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=294 This is a excellent "steps page".

3. Third Party Apps:
Picasa
The newest photo editing tool I have found that has a great free collage creating tool is Google's Picasa 3.0 Beta for Mac. My students like it too. It has built-in templates to modify the layout and auto scrambling of the images. Picasa has a few other great features like photo effects and photo slideshow movies with basic titles and captions. It is very easy to use. 6th graders just turn it on and go with it.

Resize!
This app is a simple program designed to resize a folder of pictures in one step. It's faster and easier to use than generic graphic programs... and it's free! http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16845/resize!

Comic Life
Bruce Ketcham, middle school history teacher and coach has been using Comic Life to create photo collages and add hip looking titles. His photo collages are mostly from his sports teams. I would love to be able to take these to a commercial photo processor and have posters made for the kids-- need to sell some bottles or aluminum cans I guess to make some extra cash to cover the cost. Comic Life integrates with iPhoto and images are re sized to fit the boxes or panes in the templates in the comic strips when you drag and drop the photos, they pop right in place. Titles can be quickly added with a variety of font styles that can be customized in a snap. Comic Life is not free, but is just a wonderfully flexible tool, I highly recommend it for laptop using classrooms. Students and teachers can invent ways to use Comic Life that are sure to dazzle and amaze the none believers.

Snow Closes School

 Feb. 4, 2009. This a collage I made from photos taken on our snow day this past week.