Happy Holidays to you and yours this season. Now that I have some time off from school, I hope to bring my blog back up to speed. No doubt that some people out there got some cool gadgets for the holidays and are wondering what they can/should do with them. I will be posting an article about great apps and rooting methods for those who are interested. It is also important to recognize that many people are not fortunate enough to have access to the latest and greatest tech toys. There are many organizations out there that will recycle and re purpose your old machines to provide technology to those in need. Often these groups are at community centers and consist of a group of volunteers rather than big box companies who offer recycle programs. This is because these companies cannot legally give away recycled electronics. The community members are not bound by the same laws but do their best to insure privacy and confidentiality when wiping old machines and distributing them. So please, I urge you, when you are thinking about upgrading you technology, think of how you can re purpose your old machines to benefit others in the community who are less fortunate then you.

Now, back to educational tools, LifeHacker released an article about note taking apps for mobile devices and since that is a repeating theme in my blog, I figured I would re post it HERE. I also recently attended a conference for educators in the Twin Cities called TIES and will post up some great info on that experience.


So happy holidays and I look forward to getting back into blog mode. Leave me with comments or suggestions if you feel the urge! Always nice to get feedback and to see that someone is following :)

Happy Holidays!

This weekend I attended a professional conference about how to implement linux effectively in a classroom and district wide. It was a great experience and I met a lot of like minded folks while there. One biology teacher in Minneapolis has taken on a personal crusade to use open source material in the class and I admire his work immensely. I highly suggest you look at his blog and see all the great work he has done. Follow this link HERE to check it out! I have several papers to write for finals so I will be taking time off from this blog, but I hope to return in early January and beef it up with lots of good information.

Affordable Educational Progress in hardware

**Edit**

It has been a long time since I posted anything and this piece has been a work in progress for quite awhile. Although I hate releasing anything that isn't finished, for the sake of getting a post out, I am going to release this article as is. Links to youtube videos about the stories will be included at the bottom of the page as well.


One great thing about technology is that it constantly progresses in a relatively short amount of time. Phones are shrining and becoming more powerful, laptops are shrinking and becoming powerful netbooks and netbooks are transforming to become multifunctioning touch screen tablets. The progress that we have witnessed over the last five years has been utterly asstounding! One thing that hasn't been progressing as quickly though is the digital divide that students experience. Technology is great and can be a very useful tool but it is of no use if a student cannot access the internet let alone own hardware (computer of any variety). As educators we must recongnize that technology usage is quickly becoming a standard in the work place and in everyday life. We must urge our students to become 21st centuary learners with the use of technology while being mindful of the gap that exists. What role must we as educators take in ensuring our students are provided with the proper tools and environments to suceed in this movement? What role must our district take in this situation? Over the last five years I have witnessed few attempts at closing the digital divide. Government has proposed to issue subsidized interent to low income families, but what good is that if they don't have a computer? Even if they get an old desktop or laptop from a garage sale or friend, will that have the necessary hardware to access a broadband connection? What variety will the government provide for low income families? Will dial up be an option? Do they provide the modem and the instructions to properly install it?
Aside from the internet access situation, what is being done to make sure that hardware is easily accessable to low income students and families? Libraries offer internet connections and hardware for usage, but what about transportation situations and costs? If a student cannot afford to travel to a library and invest the time to use the facility (basic economic oppertunity cost) what good are these locations serving? A lot of low income families live in rural areas where internet isn't even available! But I regress, lets look at the availabity of hardware.
An affordable desktop computer can be obtained brand new for $250 dollars or less from online realiters like newegg. These computers are low energy using and allow the user to do simple tasks like surf the web and word process. They do not however include monitors or speakers and in some cases, keyboards or a mouse. These are essitional tools for this type of computing and without them, the user is powerless.

So what would be a good alternative? A laptop/netbook that has the processing power to do tasks, keyboard and mouse pad built in? It is true that prices have been dropping in lower level hardware over the last several years, but how much are consumers really willing to pay? What about the extremely poor groups of people in 3rd world countries? A non profit organization had a vision to address this issue and it is known as one laptop per child. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child The goal was to keep costs at $100 US dollars or less, but hardware costs and production made this near impossible. The trend of tablet computing has also geared the project into a different direction. Are tablets the new solution for cheap technology intergration? Are they going to take over as the new computing power house? An article from the UK publication, The Guardian reports that, "IDC's forecast, if correct, would mean the media tablet market was 17.5%, or slightly less than a fifth, as large as the PC market in unit terms. But that indicates explosive growth compared to 2010, when 18m tablets shipped, or about 5% in unit terms compared to the 347m PC shipments. Apple had an 83% share of tablet shipments in 2010, IDC says." This is a trend that the tablet market is growing and quickly since the release of the ipad in September 2010. That was only a little more than a YEAR ago! The market for this type of computing is taking almost a fifth of sales away from the desktop which has been around since the 80s! That is remarkable and a trend that cannot be ignored. What good are tablets though? Can you use them as a main method of computing? Well. . . . that area is still fuzzy. It comes down to what you NEED to do with your table. Word processing is an option, but it might not always be convienant or cost effective. If all you want to do is surf the web, read, watch videos, etc then yes a tablet is perfect. Personally, I loath having to try to work process for great length on my tablet due to formating issues and the lack of multi tasking capibility. I try to use it as my main portable school device and so far it works. Is it perfect? God no, but there are enough things that work that still make it a better choice than a laptop. I do have a desktop at home for powerful computing tasks, but with constant advancement and a growing market, who is to say we won't be there in another few years? India recently release the idea of a student tablet. That is itself a remarkable idea, but what makes the story powerful? The price tag is only $40 US dollars.

Google Talk Tech on One Laptop per Child

India's Tablet (The price jumps around depending on what news source you get it from)

Well it has been a long time since I have posted anything so I am just going to give an update and the top apps I use on my tablet and what I use them for in context. This will be brief! If you want more information on them, leave a comment or search for them in the market place.

• Amazon App store- 1 free app everyday, why wouldn't you have it?
• Dropbox- sync files from desktop to tablet
• Yahoo and ESPN Fantasy Football- If you're into that kind of thing. . . 
• Google+ - Google's attempt at social networking
• FTPServer- easily transfer files from desktop to Tablet via Filezilla
• How to Tie a Tie- duh
• Pandora- Streaming music
• Pocket Cast- Manage podcasts
• Pulse- News catcher and Rss feed
• Tiny Shark- fork of Groove Shark, music streaming
• Tune in Radio- Stream local radio stations and other services
• Google voice- voice mail on my tablet
• Google Translate- Practice your language skills
• Blogger- edit my blog
• Google Docs- limited capabilities but able to edit a google doc
• Freenote- Note taking software
• Office Suite Pro 5- Word processing
• Folder Organizer- Organize Apps by category and create widgets 
• Twitter- Follow me as rastacalavera or stpowderhorn
• Netflix- Stream TV shows and movies
• Stumble Upon- Waste even more time
• Dolphin- REALLY good web browser
• SeekDroid- Security
• aDownloader- Torrents
• XBMC Remote- Remote for xbox media player on my desktop
• Weather Bug- Weather updates
• Soundhound- Song identification
• Wifi File Server- Transfer files via web browser on wifi that is not my own

I have lots more apps installed but these are ones I use CONSTANTLY and would be very sad to lose. I hope to do more reviews to apps as I find time in my schedule, but I think for now this space will become an area for interesting tech related stories and little things like this list. 

Hooray for college!

Freenote Review

Day 1-3 of free note usage:
I was met with great frustration while trying to write with a stylus on the screen using the English three line method. The main problem was that I was placing my hand on the screen as as I was writing, the "ink" would shoot from my word to the last location of my palm. I soon learned to tip the tablet on my lap or against some books so that I could write easily without touching the screen. The hand writting does take some getting use to espically with how large to make your words and what lines to use. The first picture that I have attached shows an arrow pointing down to a dotted line. This is where you want to write your sentences and distinguish your capital letters from lower case (picture 2). For letters that normally drop below the line, like j,p, and q, you should continue the letter below the dotted line. This would also apply to cursive characters (picture 3). Once I knew how to properly write using the program I was very excited!! I soon realized though that this was just the tip of the ice berg for my problems :( Often when I write, I tend to pause to make sure I spelled something correctly or to think longer on an idea. The program will only wait so long until it tosses whatever is in the box onto the page. This is inconvienent if you haven't written a full word because you can't line up the characters. For example if I write, Hello my name is Mitch and I have an itch, but pause and really write, Hello my na  me is Mitch and I ha ve an itch, you would have to completely delete all the characters of the incorrect words. na, me, ha and ve all count as a single character, not individual letters. The same goes for the rest of the words. Anything written in the box is treated as a single character, so if you make a spelling mistake while writing, you have to wait until it is "placed" on the page, then delete it and re-write it

Day 4-5 of Freenote usage

Besides the character issue, there was one other feature that caused me great frustration. When you do an extensive amount of writing the "writing area" overlaps what is written or what is currently being written. In my screen shot I have a full page of text but my cursor is placed at the bottom where the newest words will appear. The "writing area" is located in the middle of the page and obscures what I wish to write! See picture 4 for an example of this frustration. Even though this was an issue, I came up with a solutiong that works pretty well! When you get close to the center of the page where the overlap will occur, hold down enter to increase the page length. This will allow you to scroll up to where your input is located and keep the "writing area" below so overlap is not an issue!! Figureing this out made me very happy and changed my opinion of the program considerabily.

There are many other great features in Freenote, like the ability to resize imported pictures or images that you draw and adding audio notes. There is a bit of a learning curve to the program and some settings may have to be tweek'd before you see the results you want, but over all this is a fantastic program!! I would reccommend this to anyone who has a tablet and wants to try writing on it.

Schedule for next week, I review another note taking app called Tabnote. This will be a micro review because I hope to find another app to do as well!

(I apologize if the pictures are our of order or mixed up, i am learning how to blog in mobile format as well as at my desktop)

Sorry I have been ignoring you blog, school is really getting in the way of my hobbies. Recently though, I had the chance to create a video for my educational psychology course! I love story boarding, filming and editing. It truly is a passion of mine and I take every opportunity I can to do it. I had a great script and shot order lined up but I ran into some pretty heavy obstacles.

The main issue was my computer. I thought my desktop was pretty good considering I got 4gb of ram and a single 3.2Gh processor but evidently that isn't enough to prevent plagues of video lag. It would honestly take me 3 minutes to jump between takes and splitting a scene was a nightmare. Trying to do anything fancy, like captions, music or transitions KILLED my performance. At one point I had to start from scratch because the program I was using corrupted my entire film >:(

Another large issue was the editing software I was using. My only option was windows live movie maker 2011. I have used movie maker in the past and its enough to make an ok film but the 2011 version is GARBAGE!! They took away many key audio features, like narration, and made my editing process a night terror.

Long story short, my film fell far below to where I wanted it to be. I have to turn in what I could muster but my 4 hours of shooting, 3 hours of sound editing and probably 6-8 hours of editing were pretty much for nothing.

Looking back on this, I have decided to teach myself to edit using a new program. I did some digging on free software out there and here are some links to suggested programs.

SAVEDELETE.COM
DOWNLOAD.COM
SOURCEFORGE.NET

If you are interested in reading my script, I will include a google doc link to public space for your viewing pleasure.

KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING YOURSELF INTO BEFORE ATTEMPTING A PROJECT LIKE THIS!!!! If I could do it over again, I would have used my University's editing machines in the library and forced someone to teach me how to use them.

Script
Bibliography

Review on Tabnotes (available on the Android Market Place for $0.99 or a free trial)

Today I will be reviewing another note taking application to further my quest to better integrate touch screen computing in the classroom. The program reviewed today, Tabnotes, is very similar to Freenote. Let me lay out the things I loved about Tabnote first, then I will talk about the items that annoyed me and finally I will finish up with the similarties between Freenote/Tabnotes and decide a winner! Let's begin!

One great thing I love about Tabnotes is the ability to organize your notes into actual notebooks. This allows you to neatly seperate out your classes from one another and makes it difficult to mix up or lose your notes. You can pick from a variety of covers for each notebook and can write on the front of them as well. (see image 1) Another great aspect is being able to create an unlimited number of pages in each notebook. You don't have to worry about writing too big or taking up too much room because you can always create a new page. There are also a variety of page templates to choose from! There is a wide ruled notebook page for handwriting, a few different types of graph paper, to-do lists, sticky notes and a whole lot more! (see image 2)
The writing tools Tabnotes provides are a pencil, pen, eraser, shape drawer, and a color/thickness selector too. (Top of image 3)

Dislikes: Compared to Freenote, there are lots of limitations. You cannot insert pictures, sound files, you cannot take pictures directly....the list goes on and on. Neither of them allow opacity control over the marker function. This would be handy if you want to highlight something in your notes. Both of the programs output your notes in .jpeg or .png which is understandable but a little inconvenient.

Similarities between Tabnotes/Freenote: You can easily control the writing area so you never have to worry about obscuring your view. Similar concept to Freenote except that there is no time limit for writing so you can pause whenever you want for as long as you want and not have to worry about the program putting down an unfished word. It also records each character individually instead of in bulk like in Freenote.

And the Winner is................Freenote!
I really like the fact that in Tabnotes you can create notebooks, easily control the writing area and edit individual characters, but you can work around these issues and have more features in Freenote. Also the stylus is more responsive in Freenote than in Tabnotes (although my finger worked better in Tabnotes). This is just my opinion and would love to hear other reviews or thoughts!

Writing area before deletion

Character Deletion

Introduction

Welcome to my first attempt at creating a blog! I don't know how well it will go due to my busy schedule but I will try my best :) I guess I should get started by telling you what I plan on doing with this little corner of cyber space huh? Well I hope to show case great educational software that I have tried personally for more than a couple hours. Any software I try will be used for at least a week in a real world setting before I post opinions. I want to do this so that I can accurately give advice on the material and what really did and didn't work.

Right now I am a senior in college and have had a fair amount of experience with technology in various settings. I started my freshman year like most kids, undecided major and a "kickass" laptop! It was a dell latitude running windows XP, I don't remember much of the specs other than it was slower than syrup on fly paper when I tried to multi-task. I didn't need it for much, mostly just paper writing and powerpoint making, but every college kid wants to have gigs of music, lots of videos, games, etc. Soon I decided that my laptop would no longer due ( I did get a blue screen of death during finals week and lost some very valuable material) so I up graded to a sony Vaio  running Vista. I HATED vista but loved the computer. It could do everything I needed it to do!! It never slowed down or gave me any guff (unless I wanted to launch a program that needed to be right clicked then "run as admin" lol). The only problem? It weighed a ton and sucked to carry around everywhere. I started using it more as a desktop than a laptop which got me to thinking, do I really need a laptop? The answer was YES even though there were computers on campus I could use if I was caught in a pinch. The reason a desktop could not be my only computing device was that the boot times on the campus computers were over 7 minutes and once in the desktop environment it ran super sluggish. Also, if I was working on a group project, there could be no vocal communication around a public computer because they were in "quiet" work zones. If I traveled to another person's house and had something digital I wanted to show them I sure as hell wasn't going to bring my desktop and I often lose flash drives so the laptop had to stay. Late into my sophomore year I started using linux on my laptop and other open source technology (I will do a separate more in-depth post on this later) and found that I enjoyed that environment more than Windows. After dabbling in linux for a spell, I heard of these tiny laptops that ran linux called "netbooks". I did some research on them and decided that I needed one to solve my portability issues. I purchased a Asus 1005HA Eee PC off craig's list for fairly cheap ($200-250 I think) and was super excited.

This is the little guy right here!

It came loaded up with XP and tons of bloat software but I blasted that all away within a week and loaded it up with Ubuntu 10.04. (really the timeline of events went like this; Jolicloud, Ubuntu, Netbook remix, Ubuntu, Mint, then finally settled on a dual boot with Ubuntu and Mint) The netbook is the perfect solution for every college student. It can do everything a laptop can do but weighs way less! Plus all the girls ask questions about it because "its sooooo cute :P". I will admit that when I first purchased it I was very worried about not having a disk drive. I went out and bought an external for $40 I think and carried it around with me. After about a week or two I stopped carrying the disk drive. After another month I regretted buying it because I never used physical media anymore! All of the class material was online, my music I downloaded, games were all digital and any files I couldn't get I just had people put on flash drives for me. I loved the freedom!

I now had one laptop and one netbook........something had to go. There were times when I wished I had a little more power out of the little guy but I hated using my laptop as a "desktop" when I needed that power. I sold my laptop and bought a physical desktop to keep at home to do serious computing and carried my netbook with me to school. It was a match made in heaven!!! I could start writing papers at school and then email or dropbox (more to come about this FANTASTIC software later) them to myself so that I could work on them with the desktop and big monitor screen. My netbook became all business and the desktop became business/pleasure. I did all my gaming and videos on the desktop and had some music on the netbook with maybe a few low key games. The crucial thing was being able to work on the netbook at school and then come home to the big screen if I didn't finish. 

I love technology and am constantly looking to advance and soon enough I started looking for the "new" netbook. Tablets were just starting to take off about this time. Ipad was on everyone's radar but it didn't have a market niche excepted for rich people who wanted a cool way to check their email. I HATED it. People were saying it was going to be great for schools because you could read and write on it!.......Write? Sure you could "write" on it but it wasn't graceful or refined and as for reading? FORGET IT. If you are like many students who constantly look at computer screens, you start to get fatigued after awhile. I could not imagine having to look at an Ipad all day at school and then come home to stare at it for another couple hours trying to read assignments. As far as I am concerned, e-ink is the only method for digital, long term reading that anyone should use. (Again another topic I will cover in detail) So needless to say I wasn't sold on the whole tablet idea.......yet. Time passed and I was happy with my netbook/desktop arrangement but tech news would not leave the tablet alone. Advances were being made both with hardware and software and I could no longer avoid the topic. I wanted something that could be portable and practical in a school setting, so what good would a portable monitor be without a keyboard? There was no way I was going to return to the days of hunting and pecking to type papers, I needed a keyboard!! Then Asus, they guys that made my awesome netbook, had a brilliant idea. "Why not make a high bred tablet/netbook?", Asus asked. Enter the TRANSFORMER!!! 

Asus Transformer. Pic via google search

As soon as I saw this I thought, "Yes! This is what I need! This is the future of netbooks! The kind of cool feature of a tablet and the functionality of a full size keyboard!!". The Transformer ran Android Honeycomb 3.1 as an OS and I had no idea what Android was functionally. I have a flip phone so I have yet to experience a smartphone experience and had 0 hands on time with Android. I was so blown away by the idea that I would have purchased any OS just to try my hands on this technology. I tried pre ordering it, no luck, I tried ebaying it, no luck. I thought I was sunk. I had followed this product from the rumor stage to the release date and now I had no way of getting it. Well I finally did get it late June 2011 and have been using it ever since. From here on out I will be letting you know how it works in a function setting and whether or not it makes sense to own one. 

I will also be review software on windows, linux and android (don't have a mac and I don't recommend anything I haven't personally tried). This is my first attempt at a blog so bare with me if you stumble upon this or if I beg you to look at it :)