Thursday, August 28, 2014

Make Your Classroom Truly Interactive with ClassFlow

When I walk into a school and see that they have interactive whiteboards, I am always intrigued to hear how they actually use them in class.  That conversation generally begins with "Well, I don't really know how to use it..." or "I never got any training..." or "I'm sure I could be doing other things with this..", it really isn't any different at any school.  Sure, there are those who go out of their way to design neat, interactive lessons with their interactive white boards -- but they tend to be a handful at the most.  What we usually end up doing is giving them a tutorial on how to use the whiteboard, and then dive into their curriculum.  What are they teaching?  How?  And how would they like to?  And more-often-than not, we end up with a teacher who really just wants their students to be invested and involved in their learning process.  And they tend to not care if the interactive whiteboard is involved.



Enter ClassFlow.  Now, ClassFlow isn't specifically an interactive whiteboard application -- but it *is* an application that gets your students involved and interactive with the lesson in multiple ways.  You can, of course, use your interactive whiteboard with it -- no sweat there.  And -- it will juice up that lesson, too!  Do you have a Promethean ActivBoard?  If you do then you *must* see ClassFlow and ActivExpression working together - video at the bottom of this post!

Want to see ClassFlow with ActiveExpression?




ClassFlow allows you to design interactive lessons that bring your students into the lesson via an iPad iOS, Android or Windows 8 app.  The ClassFlow Student App is completely free for the students to download, and the use of the web app and tablet apps allow you to create lessons and unify your classes easily, with a few clicks.  It allows you to receive real-time student progress information through a combination of interactive and differentiated assessments.

Sound interesting?  It is!  Here's how you get started (for free by the way):



ClassFlow is a fantastic new platform that any teacher looking to create lessons that are not only interactive, but exciting and become something that students look forward to!  Below is a video that goes over some of the features of ClassFlow.  You can also click HERE to get started!



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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and 
The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Tech History: The World's First Useful Handheld: Atari Portfolio


In this week's History of Technology, we are reaching out to one of my very favorite technology companies of all time: Atari.  Today, we think of our candy bar like cell phones as simply normal, but in the 80s no one was pioneering smaller technology like Atari.  And in 1989, they brought two fantastically powerful portable computing devices to market that could have -- with the proper push and marketing -- changed everything.  As it stands, they started the ball rolling and others picked it up and ran with it.


The one we are talking about today is the Atari Portfolio.  The Atari Portfolio was a palmtop computer that was originally developed by DIP Research Limited in Surrey, UK.  Atari got a hold of the design and licensed it from DIP, what came from that is what is pictured above: Portfolio.  This remarkably light, slightly smaller than a VHS cassette sized palmtop computer sported an Intel 80C88 processor smoking at 4.9152mhz (the 152 is very important) and ran DIP-DOS 2.11.  DIP-DOS was mostly compatible with MS-DOS 2.11.  It had no trouble transferring files back and forth from just about any PC including .BAT and .INI files.  So, anyone who knew a little bit about batch file programming could write a batch file that would make their Portfolio behave just like their PC at home.  The pint-sized powerhouse also sported 128k RAM with a 256K ROM that included pre-loaded utilities like a calendar, contact list, text-editor, spreadsheet and other useful utilities.  The screen was a monochrome LCD that sat at 240x64 which could display 40 characters across and 8 lines down.  And... what was really cool is that most MS-DOS text based applications would run on the Portfolio!  The compatibility was mind-blowing for 1989!

One of the best features of the Portfolio was its expandability.  You can see a slot on the side that allowed for adapter cards that did a lot things, including expanding storage.  And on the other side you could plug in adapters so you could use things like printers, modems and various other peripherals.

The Atari Portfolio made an appearance in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when John Connor was at the ATM.  He used a Portfolio to hack the password using an adapter that attached to an ATM card.  He also uses it to retrieve the keycode when at Cyberdyne systems later int he movie.  In the early 90's DIP was sold off and the resulting sale produced products like the HP Jornada and the mini Sony Vaio lines of handheld computers.


~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Teaching Programming in Class AND in the CLOUD!

Being an educational technology professional, I end up teaching technology classes more than other subjects.  Sure, I've taught history and english -- but it is a more natural progression to be teaching a subject matter that is nearer to what you do every day than, say, the implications of the Dredd Scott decision on the Civil War.  While I can certainly go on about that, it isn't what I end up teaching.

** side note: my students will tell you that I have a particular knack for finding a way to work in history to my technology classes.  That, and waffles with bacon.  I love waffles with bacon. **




But one of the biggest challenges I've run into was finding an easy-to-use, easy for students to access, device and network independent method for students to write and debug code -- and be able to do it no matter what language I was teaching!  One of my biggest criticisms of programming over the past decade (or so) is that programmers do not learn the art of coding, they learn how to use a specific environment (Visual Studio, Borland Studio, Eclipse, etc)  I found something great and I wanted to share it with you, it is called Compilr.  Compilr is an online (device independent, yes, read that as "works on iPads") code editor and sandbox that allows students to write code from anywhere, anytime.  All you need is your device, and an Internet connection.  It works on iPads, iPhones, Windows, Windows RT, Android and Google Chromebook devices seamlessly.  It even includes (new) support for touchscreen interaction (which is way neat).  And, as an added bonus, if you are teaching advanced coding with a GIT repository -- you can just put that info in and BAM - import those projects.


What is really nice about 
Compilr is that it not only allows you to write your code, but it allows you to test and debug it -- all online.  When I first tested this with my Java classes, we have issues with some external libraries and even some basic ones.  But that seems to have been ironed out in the newest incarnation (now owned by Lynda).  And what's more -- it supports a gaggle of different programming languages natively!  Including C, C#, C++, Objective C, Objective C++, Fortran, HTML, Java, Javascript, Pascal, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual Basic and x86 Assembly.  Click here for more information on their platform support.  

Sound awesome?  Well it gets a better!  Tired of saving code on Dropbox or a USB drive?  No more -- Compilr serves as a central repository for all your code and allows you to create and share groupings of code for classroom activities!

Want to hone your skills on your own?  
Compilr includes access to many tutorials and videos on coding in various languages!

Compilr goes a long way to achieving the cloud-based programming platform that almost every programming instructor has been longing for.

~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Monday, August 18, 2014

Tech History: The World's First Smartphone: IBM Simon

One of my favorite things about teaching is wowing students with how old I really am... I love teaching computing and social technology history in my classes.  So, about once a week I will take some of that history and inject it here with a post about little known or just interesting tech history!

Did you know that IBM made and marketed what we today as the world's first smartphone?


Its true!


It was called SIMON.



In 1943 Thomas Watson, the then Chairman of IBM, said that no one will have a computer in their home, "there is a world market for maybe five computers," the company is often likened to a big, wooly, behemoth that could not get out of its own way fast enough to lead the true computing revolution.  IBM is known for having great ideas, and poor execution of them... from mainframes, to servers, to computers, to operating systems -- they had some really excellent products, but couldn't get consumers to buy into them.

Add to that list the SIMON PERSONAL COMMUNICATOR.  The 8 inch tall, 2.5 inch think, 18 ounce brick was first released on August 16th, 1994 and was available through Bell South Cellular.  The cellular phone sported a 16mhz 16-biyt Vadeem x86 compatible microprocessor with 1MB of storage and 1MB of RAM!  It came with a charging staition and 2 NiCad batteries. The display was a monochrome, backlit 4.5" x 1.4" display.  The SIMON sold a whopping 50,000 units in its lifetime and retailed for $599 with a two-year contract.


Although no one referred to it as a smartphone (that term didn't come into common use until around 1997), this device features a phone, address book, send/receive fax application, e-mail, cellular pager (pagers were still popular), calculator, stylus-sensitive notepad, ran a touchscreen interface (called Navigator) over the top of Datalight's ROM-DOS.  It had a 2400-baud Hayes Compatible modem for data, and 9600 fax modem built-in.

One of the most interesting features of the SIMON had was it's ability to plug an analog phone line into it to make phone calls in areas where cellular coverage did not exist at the time.

Was this a device that was simply ahead of its time?  Or was it really just not that great?  Either way, the IBM SIMON goes down in history as the world's first mass-marketed smartphone!
~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Changing a Lost OS X Administrator Password


It happens every so often that you walk into a tech office and no one knows the password to the Macintosh OS X server or workstation that you need to use to do what you have to do.  Or let's say you just bought that Macbook at a yard sale and you get it home and the password isn't what the guy said it was... What most people don't know is that changing the administrative (or any) account password is easy-as-pie.

Back before Apple stopped putting their OS on CD/DVD, you could boot off the DVD and go into the Password Reset Utility.  You can still do this with OS X 10.9 if you happen to have it on a USB drive ready to go, but many (even us in IT) don't have those handy... you can do it without that!  


Here's how you accomplish this amazing feat of hackery...

The first thing you need to know how to do is boot into Single User Mode.  This is the key to any such operations.  To do this on any Macintosh, turn on the computer -- as soon as the screen turns that grayish white color hold down Command-S.  Hold that until the screen turns black and starts to list out the UNIX style list of things that are happening.  This will dump you at a command prompt.  The look of this prompt can vary.  But we can go from here... do not let these UNIX-style commands intimidate you.

On ALL versions of Max OS X start with these commands to check and mount the file system:


fsck -fy

mount -uw /

From here the next command(s) differ based on the version of OS X that you are working on.  Apple moved some things around over time...

For OS X v10.0-10.7.2:

passwrd username   -- where username is user that you are changing the password for.

For OS X 10.7.3 and later:

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
passwrd username   -- where username is user that you are changing the password for.


Don't know the username?  Hey.. it happens!  Not every Mac has admin on it -- in fact, many do not -- so there may only be one account and it might be auntjennie.  Here's how you find out what accounts are on the computer.  At the command prompt:

ls /Users

This will give you a list of all the users that are on the computer!

Using this information, you should be able to get into any Macintosh based computer running OS X without destroying any data!



~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Installing Windows 7, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012 Server from USB Flash Drive



One of the greatest frustrations of anyone who works in IT is needing to burn a DVD and not having one!  In the Mac world, we just throw OS X on a USB flash drive using Disk Utility and it is easy to install it, update it and what-not.  But in the Windows world, it is a little bit more complex than that.

But here's how you do it...


First, you need to have an operating system that has "diskpart" on it.  I've found that most of the "Professional", "Business" and "Enterprise" versions of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 have it.  You also need at least a 4GB USB flash drive and an ISO file of the operating system you are trying to install.  NOTE: Not all USB flash drive can be made bootable.  If this does not work on one brand, try a different one.

1. Insert your USB stick
2. Drop to a Command Line as Administrator.  If you aren't an Admin you can Control-Click on the Command Prompt Icon and select Run As Administrator to make this happen.
3. At the command prompt type: diskpart
4. At the diskpart prompt type: select disk <#> where the <#> is the number in the disk list.  If you don't know what number your USB drive is type: disk list
5. Type: clean
6. Type: create partition primary
7. Type: select partition 1
8. Type: active
9. Type: format fs=FAT32 quick (this formats the drive)
10. Type: assign (this assigns it a drive letter)
11. Type: exit
12. Mount the ISO of the operating system you are trying to install, then copy the entire OS to the USB drive.

Now you should have a bootable USB flash drive that you can install your OS on.  Go to the target machine, and make sure to boot off the USB stick and you should be set! I've used this to install Windows 8, Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 2012 Essentials.


~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Building an Effective Website for Your Church

One of the things I always look at before I head out to a new organization is their website.  The website (or even lack of one) says so many things about an organization.  It can say "we are technology aware", "we know we need a website but that's it" or even "what's this web-thing again?"... No matter what it says, I make note and make sure we talk about it while I'm there.  And once I've gathered enough information about the organization, I can have a conversation about their website and who they want to reach.  This article is meant to summarize some of the top things that we talk about when discussing how churches build and utilize their web presence to best serve their congregation.



Know Your Audience
Before you can even start to discuss what content goes on your website, what images you want to show and how awesome your logo is going to look -- you must know your audience.  Who are you trying to reach?  Are you serving your current congregation only?  Are you trying to reach new congregants?  Are you trying to expand your mission and tell people about it on the web?  Is your goal to inform people about things that are happening in your church?  Is there a tie-in to social media needed?  Until you understand who you are trying to reach, you can't plan how to reach them.  Once you have that...

Plan
Before you being any project (and building a website *is* a project) you have to have some degree of a plan.  One of the wonderful things about a website is that it is flexible.  Unlike working with print media, you can very easily build a page on a site -- not like it and change it!  Or deploy your website, then decide that you didn't really hit the target with a portion of it and then remedy that.  So while we always say "Plan, plan, plan", understand that the plan is fluid.  It can (and likely will) change!

But, once you have your audience, decide how you want to serve them.  Are you trying to reach new families?  Then a website telling the world who you are, what you do and how you do it might be great.  Are you informing your congregation?  Maybe you need an events and information section.  Are you expanding your reach?  Maybe you need something more interactive with lists of small-groups, an ability to sign up for missions, groups or events right on your website.  The possibilities are endless.  But you should have an idea where you are going before you get in the car.


Who Does What?
Even if you contract with someone to help build your website, your church is going to have some responsibility in the construction and execution of your site.  And it should.  You should never simply turn over the keys to a third-party and say, "Make the magic happen".  You will need to be able to at least have a say in the graphics, images and logos that appear on the site.  Have a hand in the way information flows from one page to another on the site.  Be able to provide and assist in the writing of the text on the pages, as well as any organizational information that needs to appear -- think Pastor's Message, Youth Ministry Description etc...  And have one or two people who love to proof-read!  You can't over-estimate the value of good proofing!

Living, Breathing Entity
For most churches these days, their web-presence needs to be a living thing.  It needs to change and stay updated in some way.  It is worth considering how you will go about this.  Are you contracting that out?  Do you have someone on staff who would be good at updating?  Or maybe there is a ministry that could step-in and handle the duties of a would-be webmaster.


Content Suggestions

  • Think about an active BLOG either from the Pastor or another leader within the church.
  • Photos!  And lots of them.  Make your church look inviting!
  • Leader bios: people like to identify with the people who run the church.  Make it look open, friendly and inviting!
  • Social Media inclusion: Do you tweet?  Facebook?  Instagram?  Maybe you should... you can include these things on a section of your website.
  • Newsletter:  Don't have one?  Think about getting one... and putting a link on your website to sign up.
  • Small groups: most churches have small groups and ministries at their heart.  And your website is a great place for people to read about them and decide which one(s) is/are right for them!
  • Do you have a school associated with your church as a ministry?  Perhaps they need their own site...


~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Google Announces Date for Google Classroom!


Teachers and administrators alike have been awaiting the news that Google just dropped --- a launch date for Google Classroom!   That date is August 11th, 2014!

Beginning on August 11th, all Google Apps for Education customers (it's free kids - why don't you have it?) will have full access to the Google Classroom environment.  This means that any teacher in your Google Apps for Education domain will be able to create or join a class, invite students and post assignments!

The Google Classroom is designed as an integrated part of Google Apps for Education that will allow teachers to create, interact and collect assignments all online -- and in the familiar Google Apps environment.  It does this by interacting directly with Google Drive and creating Google Drive folders for each assignment and class automatically for you when you create assignments.

Administrators can enable or disable Google Classroom in their Google Apps Administrative Console for the entire school or even specific departments -- just like any other Google App.  Google says they are continuing to grow and develop the product, and that input from teachers and administrators is key to the growth of Google Classroom.

To get started, users would go to the Google Classroom URL (http://classroom.google.com) and tell Google if you are a student or a teacher.  The Classroom Help Center is a great resource that Google will continue to develop for students and teachers to go to get help and answers when needed.  In addition to that, Google has launched the Classroom Forum for peer-to-peer question and answers!


~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Saturday, August 2, 2014

New Google Apps and Google Docs Updates for Your Classroom!

Google has recently released a new set of fantastic features that extend your Google Drive and Google Apps experience.  I've taken a few minutes and listed them out here for you, so you can be ready for them before classes begin in September!


Google Docs Updates:
Edit Microsoft Office files in Google Drive

My favorite new feature is the ability to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files -- natively!  Because sometimes people send you files and you need to be able to open them, make some edits, and send them back. If they don’t use Docs, Sheets and Slides it can be a challenge. With the latest update from Google Drive, this is no longer an issue because both the web and mobile apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you edit Office files—without conversion—so you can now edit and send back files in their original format.  Sweet!


Suggested Edits



This new feature is great for collaborative work on Google Docs. Before, when you share a Google document with your collaborators and grant them the editing rights they can edit anything in it. But with "Suggested Edits" you, as the owner of the document, can control this editing process by allowing collaborators to make only suggestions which you can either accept or reject. This new feature is not available on Google Docs for mobile yet, but look for it in the near future.

Google Slides Updates:
Widescreen Format
Google now allows a widescreen view of presentations. Now when you try to make a new presentation you will have a widescreen where you can get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image. You can also change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu. Widescreen presentation are a good fit for TV or monitor.

Editing the Master Slide


This functionality allows users to change customize the theme of their presentations as they like. can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to a specific font, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.  This one is one of those things that you'd pull your hair out about and just decide to use PowerPoint instead -- kudos to Google for finally adding this.


Edit, Crop and Add Borders to Images



With this new feature, users can now customize and edit images they use in their Slides. Before this update, users were limited as to what they can do with images they upload to their slides, now Google makes it easier for anyone to crop, edit, apply shape masks, and add borders to their images from within the presentation.  This is a huge time-saver for anyone who works heavily in Slides - and adds some real power to the application when comparing it to PowerPoint.

Slides is Now Available as a Mobile App
This one is pretty simple -- now you can use Slides on your Android and iOS devices!  Again, Google is making a good effort to make the weakest application in the suite more usable.

Google Apps Admin Tool
Admins can now restore a given user’s deleted Google Drive files for a specified date range. This helps ensure that, if a user accidentally deletes important files, those files are not permanently lost. The feature pertains to files that have been emptied from the Trash only. Files still in the Trash can be easily recovered by the user.  This is a great feature to enable true versioning in the Google Drive file system.

That's my quick and easy round up.  Hope this helps you prep for the kids coming back! (And yes, they are coming back!)

~~~
Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of TimeTowering Pines Volume One:Room 509The Star of ChristmasPhiladelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!