Two Years with IPads and Counting

Wow, what a whirlwind it's been lately.

Just to recap a few things, here is what my last year has been like:

1. Fall 2014- Learn about realignment (junior highs are becoming middle schools, 6-8, and my 9th grade job is in jeopardy)
• No details about how the alignment will work only that non tenured teachers can't do anything until late may after 3 rounds of interviews for tenured staff. We will have to wait for outside postings to the district.
• Students recieve IPads, deployment is horrible, no filtering on the school wifi so engagement in content is minimal due to gaming and social media.
• Staff not allowed to confiscate Ipads because students "need" them in every class.

To touch on these few points, I was stressed. I was teaching a new curriculum to 8th grade students while trying to implement all these new technology mandates by our district. I really wanted students to see purpose in the Ipads rather than just an expensive toy the school gave them.

This was super hard. I was the bad guy for taking the Ipads away even though the kids "needed" them. Other teachers would call and demand that I return it to the student and I simply refused. There was so little being inforced that I wanted students to know that I was serious when I said they can't be messing around on them in my class. After about two weeks of pissed off staff and students, kids finally understood that I was serious and the big issues stopped. I'm glad that I was able to take control eventually, but I think that the school should have done more to empower and support teachers.

Now that I had kids' behaviors on the Ipad under control, I needed to find away to integrate it into my curriculum. At first, there was really very little that could be done. Not every student had the app Noteability, and the school's software distribution model was awful. I was annoyed, kids were annoyed, it was not good.

    2. Winter 2014-Still uncertain about job security, planning wedding for the  
        spring, getting more comfortable with schoology and finding a routine for
        students and Ipads.

• Things were starting to click now for me and the students. All kids had the noteability app and we were learning how to use it together. It was pretty awesome, and I see the potential it has as a notebook replacement. 
• We started having weekly quizzes in schoology and I learned how to properly scaffold questions, got better at using different question types and organizing my materials.
• Biggest issue with Ipads now is the camera and social media. There was a lot of drama and was left unresolved (not touching that one again, just glad it's over)

    3. Spring 2015- Interview for a new job, get married and finally am
        comfortable with the LMS and Ipads.

• Personal life got super busy but I made it work.
• I finally feel like I know how to integrate the Ipad and schoology into my classroom in a way that makes sense. I like it, my kids like it, everyone is happy now. 

• Even with this new sense of accomplishment, I am still angry at the building administration and the district. I can't fathom how poorly planned and implemented this whole thing has been. This has been a VERY expensive undertaking and it should have been done with more care and caution. My classroom is an exception, not a norm and the Ipads are wasted in 80% of the students' other classes.

• Interviewed for a new position still in the same district and got it! I'll be dropping down from 9th grade to 6th grade (yikes!! scary age difference but I'm excited about it)

    Summer 2015: Hangout, spend time with family and start stressing about
                              school in early July.

    Fall 2015: Ipad deployment has gone much better this year. Students have
                      access to apps better as well!

• Really noticing the difference in maturity and attention span. Very difficult time planning and staying within my (expected) expectations. 
• Biggest issue with Ipads is just forgetting them at home and charging them. Video gaming is starting to become a big distraction as well.
• Having tons of fun in lab settings with students and challenging them to apply skills. Critical thinking and application is going to be a focus for me and the kids this year!

    Winter 2015: Ipads and schoology are great! My classroom is 100% paperless,
                          which is a good starting point for students and myself in terms
                          of technology integration.

• I've realized that the Ipad is a replacement tool for me this year and not so much an augmentation. I want to teach the skill of appropriate technology usage so that they will be more successful as they move through our school. 
• Students use the Ipad as their notebook/textbook for my class. My goal is that they get use to it as a a tool so that when they get into 7th and 8th grade where a lot of material is independent, they won't get too distracted.
• Biggest issues are still charging the Ipad and bringing it to school. When they break, the turn around time for a new one is about 4 weeks but that maybe happens to 1/30 students.
• School blocked social media but still has game domains allowed. I don't know why but apparently filtering needs to be done at the district level and not by building. (They really don't make this easy. . . )

Spring 2015: I'm trying to have kids be more independent on the Ipad and
                      schoology.

• I'm going to try some self paced learning using completion folders. No idea how well this will work.

Well, that's a wrap for now! I just wanted to get everything out in a timeline format for my own writing purposes. Now when I talk about some different topics later, you'll know my thinking and context behind it. We are going to be switching our grading system this summer (I'm kind of glad about that) but it won't be super convenient. 

I've been getting about 1-3 side jobs a month with Ne.IT which has been fun as well! If you haven't seen the page, check it out!

Latest and Greatest

What's New?

I got really bored this past summer and started a mini company called NE.IT. It's just me offering my skill set as a technology enthusiast to anyone who wants to pay for it. I created a website you can check out if interested! I remember I have this blog from time to time but forget to add to it. Check out the site, let me know what you think and I'll be back this summer to add to this blog.

 

Cheers! 

Ipads in the school and how education is becoming a business

Well I've been teaching for two years now and I've experienced a lot of change in s short amount of time.

First, my school went digital. What does this mean? Well every student for an iPad and teachers received no training on how to use ipads efficiently in the classroom. Students were suppose to be restricted to a "school app store" but very quickly found methods to get around that and download anything they wanted to. As a school, we had a very lose digital contact that administration did not enforce and that our tech department did not implement well. It was very rough and hopefully the experience will be better next year.

My personal thoughts on the transition are that ipads are replacing the notebook and saving the school money on printing. They are a replacement, not an engagement. The cost of entry for them and the cost of the networking upgrades are probably way more than the printing costs so I would be interested to see the longterm return on them.
     The school needs to have a logical plan for when students break the rules on the ipad. It needs to be followed by everyone. One of the big issues currently is if a teacher takes the device, the student maybe unable to do work on their next class.

Our school also got a learning management system (LMS) called schoology. It is actually s pretty good platform but the school is not training us effectively on it and is demanding that we learn how to use it on our own time so they don't have to pay us. That is crooked and unfair in my opinion. Other than that, I like the tool very much.

So very briefly, that is what has been going on. I'm very scared at how education as a whole is being treated like a business and less like a place of learning. There seem to be more and more administration and people of power who make demands with no realistic understanding of what it's like to be in a classroom trying to teach 36 kids with different learning abilities.

I will try to add more to this blog this summer and will hopefully start my masters in a little over a year.

Coming soon, an overview of my first year teaching and the move my school is making towards iPads and a paperless environment.

Back From the Brink

Wow its been a long time since I have posted here! So much has happened since my last post, let's get a little up to speed on events:

1. Taught at a Junior High for part of the fall
   
2. Taught in Ireland for the remainder of the fall semester
   
3. Obtained my Teaching License
   
4. Got an IT job for the summer
   
5. Landed a full time teaching job for this fall.

Aside from strides made in the education sector:

1.  Created an Ubuntu Server
   
2. Installed Open Suse on my personal computer
   
3. Installed Ubuntu on my Android Tablet
   
4. Sold my Android Tablet
   
5. Purchased a Raspberry Pi

Where Should I Go From Here?

I like blogging when I have the time for it, and I don't think anyone really reads this so I will update periodically with my ramblings from time to time. I will re-post/link to stories that I think are interesting and run some features myself. I think I am going to step away from the Tablet realm for a while seeing as how I no longer have a device, but I want to explore Chromebooks. The school that I will be teaching at is piloting a program using these devices and I know relatively little about them.

As always, I will strive to emphases on advances with Linux and Education and include some tricks and tips along the way.  

Moving forward

I will be teaching at a middle school this Fall for eight weeks before travelling to Ireland to teach for another eight weeks. I am getting very excited for these opportunities and the chance to see how technology is implemented in each of these classrooms. In my last placement at a High School in Duluth, I was a little spoiled by the S.M.A.R.T boards they had and was a tad disappointed at the resources available at my new location when I briefly previewed it. The classroom was low tech, but full of energy and opportunity so I don't think it will be hard to succeed.  Still little information on Ireland other than I have purchased my tickets and am going no matter what at this point.

As far as specific technology advances in the educational realm, I checked out Edubuntu recently and may be installing it as the dedicated OS on my Uncle's laptop for his two children (7 and 5 years old). I would love the chance to introduce them to open source opportunities at such a young age. I can remember my curiosity with computers when I was younger and with the availability and accessibility of these Ubuntu forks I think they will have many pathways to explore if they so choose.

Khan academy has some interesting news. Recently, they launched a computer science channel and are giving people the oppertunity to explore programming. Check it out here! The programs they use are free (although in the video the teacher is using a python program for windows, for debian users or other linux distributions there are other alternatives) and the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward the lesson makes it possible for any person to learn at their own pace. I have started the first lesson and will record my progress in this blog in the future hopefully :)

Seems like tablets are always in the news these days. Here is my prediction, Ipads will be initially dominant in the school systems but eventually android or some other unknown OS will out compete apple for the educational market. I think that the cost of the machines, ease of student integration and app purchases will drive this market and who ever can meet these needs will be the winner. I am pushing for android or open source alternatives like the Vavaldi Tablet, but with the recent price drops for high quality android devices, it is very possible that these will win the race. I believe this because students could become more familiar and comfortable with these devices due to their availability. A parent who wants to get a child a tablet will most likely spring for the cheaper device. Why get your teenager a $500 Ipad when a $200 Nexus or Kindle Fire can meet their needs? They are at a higher risk of breaking/damaging the device or getting it stolen so why would the parent heavily invest in it?

Ok, enough ranting and raving, I have got to get some coffee in me and then head off to my first teach workshop before the school year at my middle school.

How to Run a Java app in Linux

Greetings everyone! I know it has been awhile since I have written anything and I am sorry for that. The good news is that I am working on two great stories and they are proving to be more difficult than expected. As I finish them, they will surface so rest assured that they are coming!!

Now, onto the main event-Running a java app in Linux!!

There are many great java apps out there and if you are lucky enough, they will run without a hitch. This is usually the case if you download them from the software center or the author of the app includes a well written README that includes installation directions and some trouble shooting for newbies. If this ins't the case, you are left with a .jar file in your downloads folder. Question is, WHAT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS FORMAT AND WHAT DO I DO WITH IT?

To be brief, a .jar, .tar or .tar.gz are package folders that have been compressed. For those fimilar with windows, this is similar to the infamous .zip and or .7zip and other variations. The key is to understanding how to open and compile them in the terminal (very similar to the command line for windows users). The terminal is a scary place for non experienced users because everyone is use to the GUI that the OS presents us with. The GUI refers to "General User Interface" which are the nice things you see on the screen. Now for lack of a better, educated explanation, everything the typical user sees on the screen is a gui and the processes behind them are run in terminal space. It is possible to do all of your computing needs from a terminal and in fact, a select few in the linux community choose to spend the majority of their time in this minimal environment. 

 This is the Desktop GUI

 Package Manager GUI

Software Sources GUI (PPA locations etc)

"So the terminal is the command space is the command center of the computer, fine, but I still don't know how to use it" is what you might be thinking at this point. Luckily, you can get terminal work done easily and quickly using forum posts where others have had similar issues. I was able to find relatively similar posts to my problem and find a solution!

Case and Point

I wanted to find good mind mapping programs similar to inspiration. Inspiration is a great piece of software that is very helpful, but it costs money. I am a poor college student and prospective teacher and lack the funds to be fortunate enough to support the developers so I looked for an alternative. A great website to look for such alternatives is called alternativeto and it pointed me to a program called VUE. This stands for Visual Understanding Environment and can do similar tasks to inspiration and prezi. "Great!", I thought, "Two birds with one stone. A mind mapping application with the ability to be a non linear presenter." I clicked on the download now button and saw that it was available for mac, windows and linux. "Perfect, its cross platform!", was my first thought. I grabbed the linux package and was ready to go until I saw the scary .jar extension.

Now I have been using linux for a number of years but an still in many shapes and forms, a newbie. I have dealt with .jar files in the past, but I am waaaaaaaaaaaaay rusty on the topic. So what do I do? Google searched "how to install a jar file in linux" which brought me to a vast amount of page hits. I found some great sites that explained to me what a jar was, but I needed to install it! I used two main resources to solve my issue. To actually find a command to launch a jar I looked at linuxforums.org which had information I needed. Now I could launch the program, but I didn't want to open up a terminal window every time I wanted to use it. VUE has a support forum and I found an easy way to set it up with a pretty application icon and launcher here.

When someone in a forum posts terminal commands, they are generally in a window that you can copy the text from. For instance, the command that I needed was:

java -jar something.jar

This command let me open the terminal and run the application. I had the jar file on my desktop, so to run it I did this:

cd Desktop

This changed my directory from the home directory to the desktop. Capital letters are important, so when someone posts code, do it correctly!!! Also, take notice of folder names and file extensions. Now I ran the code:

java -jar VUE.jar

Notice that something.jar was replaced by the file extension of the program. Hooray! I was able to run it, but I didn't want to do these steps every time I wanted to use the program. So by going to the VUE forums, I found how to create a .desktop extension. 

Now I won't lie, I don't know anything about this. Don't know what it means but I have an idea of what it does, so I was able to try several times and finally make it work. The key lesson, DO NOT GET FRUSTRATED! Part of using linux is collaboration and effort on the users part. I collaborated to find the code to run what I wanted, now it was up to me to set it up. The poster had the command:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/vue.desktop  

so I copied and pasted it into the terminal. (****Note: when pasting into terminal, ctrl+v does not work!! You must use ctrl+shift+v to successfully paste in text)

Upon entering this code, a simple text editor opened up with a lot of mumble jumble that I didn't understand:

[Desktop Entry]  

Encoding=UTF-8  

Name=VUE  

Categories=Office  

Exec=java -jar /home/rohn/bin/VUE.jar  

Icon=/home/rohn/Pictures/Images/Downloaded Icons/vue.gif  

StartupNotify=false  

Terminal=false  

Type=Application  

Comment=Visual Understanding Environment Application  

StartupWMClass=tufts-vue-VUE  

I did however see the familiar command I learned earlier that actually launched the application. So what did I do? I evaluated where the poster had their files located and set mine up in a similar fashion. The execute command was looking at this person's home directory then in the bin folder and then at the jar file. So all I had to do was place the file into a folder and tell the command where to look for it. EASIER SAID THEN DONE! For frustration sake let me tell you how to do it. 

Open up your file explorer which should look something like this:

Now you need to navigate backward towards the root directory which looks like this "/" and you do that by clicking the back arrow next to home. The following screen should look like this:

Now find your way into the "usr" folder. Once in there, RIGHT click on the "bin" folder and choose to open as administrator, depending on your settings you already may be the admin, but if not, then you must do this or else you will not be able to copy anything into it. Once you have the "bin" folder open as the admin, create a new folder called VUE.

UPDATE : In New Versions of Linux Mint, you need to select run as root

I have circled the new folder I created in yellow so you can see what it looks like. Now open up the folder and place in the jar file.

So close to being done!!!! Final steps to make it look pretty.

You can close all the windows now if you want so that you aren't feeling overwhelmed (don't close my blog though) and open up a terminal. Type in that little code from above to create a .desktop file for VUE.

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/vue.desktop  

You will see the previous user's information, but now it is time to enter your own. Here is what mine looked like:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=VUE
Categories=Office
Exec=java -jar /usr/lib/VUE/VUE.jar
Icon=/home/kyle/Pictures/vue.gif
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Comment=Visual Understanding Environment Application

Notice that I have it pointing to the usr/lib/VUE/VUE.jar area. This is because of our previous step with creating a folder and placing the jar file in said folder. If you do this successfully (replacing "kyle" with your user name) then you should be able to find VUE in your office applications. Now, there may not be an icon for the application. If this is the case, you can download one and in the "icon" tell it where to look. Notice that mine is in home/kyle/Pictures/vue.gif yours could be set up anyway you want by putting it in a location and telling the computer where to look.

Well that's it! Now, this was done for the application VUE but in theory it could be applied to any jar file that does not install nicely. Hope you enjoyed this brief tutorial and hopefully it helps you and others in the future!

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 :)