Earlier, I wrote about a program that works on your Mac, PC, or Smartphone that securely keeps track of all your passwords. This week, the NYTimes published an article that expands on what I wrote about, and discusses a few other options a well. Hopefully, one of these will keep you from using the same password for your email, your bank, your computer, and your insurance provider.
ZDNet recently published guidelines to help students (and teachers) get the most out of their smartphone or tablet batteries. Some are obvious, like dimming the screen, but the rest are also worth following to help you squeeze out that last little bit of juice.
There’s an App for that, too. As the NYT recently featured, Kindoma lets you and your kid read e-books together on your iPads – complete with video and audio of each other as well as being able to point to specific words or pictures. Clearly this was designed for the distant parent or grandparent, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be used with your distant child. However, if you were instead the distant teacher, and wanted to read to a whole class of students – who might also be separated from each other – I’d take a look at Nearpod and, together with Skype, interact with the class.
Have you ever wondered whether your students were actually reading the material you’ve assigned them? Have you ever asked to see the notes they’ve taken to gauge whether the text is even worthwhile? The New York Times just published an article about a new eBook system for textbooks that lets teachers track their students’ “engagement index.” This CourseSmart index reflects how long and how frequently the text has been looked at as well as the number of notes that have been taken – although not the quality of the notes nor even the quality of the text.
Do you like encouraging your students to work out problems, draw diagrams, or answer questions in class? How about assessing what your students know in the middle of a lesson to see how well they understood what you were trying to convey. I was recently invited to participate in the Apple Education Leadership Summit and was trained on a number of apps designed specifically to extend upon existing educational workflows. One app that I was impressed with was Nearpod – which allows a teacher with an iPad to present images, slides, videos, (etc.) from their device to a classroom of iOS devices (or website) and also wirelessly to an Apple TV. This is interesting in and of itself, but what is unique is that the communication is bidirectional and students can take quizzes, complete surveys, respond to questions with text, or even draw pictures – which are then collected by the teacher’s iPad – and then can be shared back to the class. The results are then tabulated on the Nearpod website where they can either be viewed or exported into a spreadsheet, and then into your grade-book (or program).
There are a few places where I’d like the system to be expanded, including having a virtual “pointer” to highlight specific parts of an image or slide, and a “presentation mode” where the tabulated quiz results are not displayed on the Apple TV, but otherwise this app seems very well thought through.
In the education sphere, the debate continues between whether an Interactive Whiteboard (Smart, Promethean, etc.) is better, or worse, than a teacher with a mobile tablet whose display is projected on a screen. Another technology that has the potential for being a game changer is being developed by Leap Motion. What it is is a small device about the size of a USB hub that sits in front of your monitor and maps the space above it. When you stick your hands or a pencil into that space, their presence and gestures are translated into movements on the screen. If you have ever seen the movie “Minority Report” where Cruise manipulates the images around him by waving his arms, you have some idea of the technology.
Developers just started receiving the early beta units this past week and it is clear that the technology is still very young. However, I feel like this reviewer does, that if the technology could be polished and miniaturized – similar to the way the iSight camera transitioned from a clip-on camera to a just a dot on your screen – then the days of mice, trackpads and fingerprint smudges on your screen might be numbered – not to mention Interactive Whiteboards.
Do you work with your Mac in a public or insecure location (like the school library)? If you use an iPhone, you can now force it to go to sleep when you walk away using a new Bluetooth App called Keycard. 9to5Mac just reviewed the product and gave it a passing score – with points off for the relatively high price (over 5 USD). Essentially, you pair your phone with your Mac and when the pairing is lost, your Mac goes to sleep.
If you don’t use an iPhone, Salling Clicker might do the same thing for you it they supports over 300 different mobile phones – but not the iPhone. Also, Clicker brings a host of other functions to the table as well.
The regular news channels are filled with information about the new iPad – which is actually what Apple’s calling their new device. Just “iPad.” But, unless you’re very interested in the latest technical specifications there’s not really too much that’s different between this version and the previous one – except for the screen. Therefore, if you aren’t too bothered about the technical side of things, all you really need to know is that this iPad is “Bigger, Better, Faster, More – especially the screen,” and you can stop reading.
Ah, you’re still reading. OK, so, what is the most important information to know about this new device? Well, there are actually 3 parts to the new release, the iPad itself, the newly released operating system (iOS) and some new Apps that run on it. And, I’ve intentionally mixed them together in my list below.
Has a battery that lasts the same 10 hours as the iPad 2.
Has built-in voice dictation (AKA Siri)
Now has an unbelievably high-resolution “Retina Display” screen – so high that even text looks smooth at any size.
(In fact, the screen has over 1,000,000 more pixels than a 1080P HD TV screen)
iPhoto is now available for the iPad (and costs a whopping $5)
Has faster processors (main processor and graphics processor)
Also has twice as much RAM to hold all that video data (not to be confused with storage – ie. not 16 or 32 GB)
Has more antennas and faster ways to connect to the Internet and to other iOS devices (4G, LTE).
Is slightly thicker and slightly heavier than the iPad 2.
Has a camera that has been completely redesigned (autofocus with face detection and video image stabilization)
Overall, it’s been highly revamped to give the user a more fluid, high-resolution and faster experience – with the highlight of this model being the new screen.
After yesterday’s announcement of Apple’s new iPad one would think that it would be the first thing I write about. Nope. While it is interesting, I will write about that later. What I think is even more interesting is a little, quietly-announced application called Configurator for schools and businesses. This App will let users simultaneously set up and manage many iOS devices (iPads, iPhones, etc) from a central location. Also, the description states that the App will let the manager “Check out a device to a user and restore the user’s settings and data on that device” and then “Check in a device from a user and back up the data for later use, possibly on a different device.” All in all, this is one application to keep an eye on – and once I get a fleet of iPads to test this on, I’ll be sure to write more.