Day 4 - Audio, Searching, & eMail

Our accreditation self-study blog (A-R)

I needed to clone a blog today... Long story - a Blogger blog can only have 100 authors. We have 120 faculty members. Added teachers whose last name begins with A-R to the original blog. Needed a clone blog for teachers whose last name starts with S-Z.  Now there's something that requires a computer (and a lot of patience!). I'll be honest, I didn't even try it on the iPad version of Blogger. I worked on it at school yesterday (on a Windows machine), was successful after some time, but cloned it to the wrong Google account (I HATE it when I do that!), went home to fix it, and realized that the .xml files don't play nice on Mac. Went back to school, found a bug in the cloning process that took me way too long to sort out. It's done now. Needless to say, I "cheated" for the first chunk of the day. I've been working with our esteemed music tech teacher, Anna Mase, to commission a student to write a catchy little jingle for the CECA/CASL conference next year. She sent me Jake, who wanted a hint as to what I was looking for. I told him I really liked the jingle for the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Of course, Jake had never heard of the Brian Lehrer show. It's not so easy to find the tune online. So I told Jake to come by at 10 and we'd listen to it live on air together. When Jake didn't arrive a ten sharp, I downloaded the app to the station, streamed it live, and recorded a snippet of the jingle on my iPhone. I could have done that on my computer, but it was easier on my iPad. Still working with Anna Mase on another project. We need a song for our school's learning expectations - a catchy music video that will help all members of the learning community remember them, be able to recite them and incorporate them into their personal learning culture. We met with the student who is leading the project, Chris. We went over the nchsneasc13.info website, the blog (above), our Core Values and Beliefs (CBV) statement, and our learning expectations. They wanted shared notes from our meeting which included the CVB statement and expectations. I had sidelined a project of making posters of this for every classroom (I am co-chairing our accreditation self-study). Two birds; One stone: I decided to make the poster and in Google Docs, on the iPad. I gave up quickly, moved to a computer, and ultimately to Word. When I liked what I had, I exported it to GDocs, added the notes, shared it with Chris and Anna, and cloned a note-less version for the poster. In short: not easier on the iPad. I could have tried it in BE Write HD, but uploading it to Google Docs would have been a problem, as I have it synced with my personal Google account, and switching isn't so easy. Pages...well...not impressed. If you are typing a document, fine. But fine-tuning formatting is much harder. With great ease, I located and emailed an article to our Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and instruction (she needed it in a hurry, and it took no more time on the ipad than on a computer). Yay! Also needed to set up trials for LexisNexis and CQ Researcher. Did both on different browsers - can't even remember which ones I used. I couldn't tell the difference. That was smooth. Tried to upload a post to edWeb.net - just a quick link to a survey. No luck there. No hyperlink option available, and when I just embedded the URL in the text, it was kicked out when I uploaded the post.

I sent an email from the wrong address. On a computer, I can change the sending address from a GMail account (once it is configured to do that). That is not an option in either the Google browser or the GMail app. One other difference between the Google Browser and Gmail app - in Google, you can toggle between accounts, whereas you cannot in GMail. I downloaded Photoshop Express. We'll see what that's like next week. I'd like to try to make a logo or symbol for this blog, and I guess I am going to have to do it on the iPad. I tried once again to copy and paster cells from a spreadsheet. I used Numbers, GoDocs, Google, and CloudOn (new free Windows cloud product for iPad) to no avail. It is simply impossible to manipulate spreadsheets on an ipad. Maybe I will try graphing next week. There is no spell check on BE Write HD. UGH! Apps acquired:

• CloudOn
• WSHU
• WNYC
• Adobe Photoshop
• BlogPress

Day 2 - Spreadsheets (part II), & Blogs

 Had to use a Windows desktop a few times today!

In response to a few conversations about spreadsheet input on the iPad, I tried using Spreadsheets in different browsers:

GoDocs: It's pretty slick (but it ought to be at $4.99!). It pulls up your entire GDocs inventory Presentations, PDFs, Docs, Spreadsheets, etc.) - something you can't do in Google Mobile, unless you switch to the Desktop version. You can open resources in GoDocs or in another application - that's where this would have been helpful yesterday, because I can pull my spreadsheet up in Numbers. Input there is quite zippy. But once I work on it in numbers, I have no way to export it back to into GoDocs or Google Docs from the iPad. My only export options there are email, print, iWork, iTunes, iDisk (very confusing - does that still exist now with iCloud? I turned it off and the only place it still comes up is in Pages, Keynote and Numbers - Apple needs to resolve that soon!), and WebDAV - honestly, I have no idea what that is. So once I am done with my spreadsheet, it is no longer shared - one of my primary incentives for recording student preparedness in the first place was to  give real time updates to all seven collaborating teachers. Once it kicks into numbers, they loose access to my updates until I save it, store it locally somewhere, upload it back to GDocs, and re-share it with my colleagues. Given that, my solution of opening all the rows for editing before the class enters the room seems to be the simpler solution.  

Other "Open in" options include Side by Side, Docs to Go, and Good Reader. I will try those at some other point, but not today.

Of course, this was all so worthy of documentation that I opened this blog :-). Yesterday, I pledged to post my updates in the comments field, but that won't work. I want to embed images, screenshots, audio, video, etc... so I opened another bog, and I will link these posts to my Bibliotech.me blog. 

So I worked on Blogger from the iPad. I learned some great things. I bought two apps - iBlogger ($.99) and BE Write HD ($.99). iBlogger was a waste of money - it is an instructional resource with tutorials. The Blogger app itself (free) is not yet available in an iPad version.

I really, really really liked BE Write HD (very bad name) for creating posts. I can play with fonts, formatting, images, drawings, etc... It actually offers the content creator more options than desktop Blogger. The one thing I couldn't do was to embed images in the text (like the one above). In this tool they have to be separate, as far as I can tell. Another problem is that it doesn't expect users to have several blogs, so it randomly picks one rather than give you the option. There may be something I am missing there, but I posted my day one post to the school's NEAS&C blog by mistake - had to go grab the code, repost it to the correct blog, then go an delete the original post. 

I tried editing posts. You can't really do it through a browser. The post comes up in code, but it isn't the usual HTML, which I could handle. I can't make heads or tails out of what appears on the screen. You can edit in the Blogger app, but it is tiny (for iPhone), and you can't "save", only publish - which is a drawback. Drafts seem to show up in HTML, whereas published posts appear in natural language. You CAN select which blog you wish to work on, which is helpful. Absolutely zero formatting options. You can take or embed an image and that is it!

iPad plus: You can take a screenshot, open it in a drawing app, mark it up and drop it back into your photos. Much easier and cheaper than SnagIt!

One problem with using a keyboard, is that the iPad often forgets to pull up its own. It seems to assume that yours is on hand all the time (which it isn't). 

That's it for today. I had something to say about browsers, but I'll save it for tomorrow. Here is your cliff hanger: Dolphin...

Apps acquired:

• iBlogger - .99
• Blogger - free
• GoDocs - 4.99
• BE Write HD - .99

Day 1 - Data, Printers, Spreadsheets

Finishing up My Personal Wellness instruction with the Freshmen. Using iPad to record student preparedness for the lesson. Entries for all 343 students went into a Google Spreadsheet. Entering data into a spreadsheet is a lugubrious process. The only feasible strategy: Turn on  editing for all rows in that class (14-27 students) before they arrive in class, then circulate the room entering each student's information on his/her respective row and click "submit" for each row as you go. It's clumsy, but it beats walking around with a laptop, and it is easier than a phone.

The upside? If we did this for each student for each of the 24 My Personal Wellness lessons, picking one indicator as a measure for performance for each lesson in the unit, we would have an incredibly rich performance baseline for our entire freshman class on a wide range of skills ranging from writing, to following instructions, to web design, to spreadsheet entries, etc.

My iPad is not configured to a printer. I don't know if this is something we have explored at the district level. I put in a work request to address the issue. During class (still MPW project with freshmen), due to ongoing printer issues in the labs, approximately 15% of students were unable to print their bibliographies (created in GDocs via EasyBib). I asked those students to share their work with me so I could print it. Obviously, I had to use a Windows machine for that.

I received an email inquiry for a list of NEAS&C committee members, grouped by standard. The information is  on the NEAS&C website. Each standard's page includes a list of members in four columns, but the request specifically stipulated that the information be delivered in a spreadsheet. On a computer, it was a simple enough task to execute, albeit with a fair amount amount of manipulation - copy names from website,  paste in spreadsheet, drag specific names that dropped into columns 2, 3, and 4 into the first column, then sort each column. But on an iPad, it is a lot more complicated. I considered doing using Google Spreadsheets, but then I remembered that you can't paste across columns. So I tried Numbers, and for just a minute I thought I couldn't paste at all, but then I remembered that you have to paste in the function field, rather than the cell, and, of course, that won't allow you to paste across columns either. I quickly realized that would have  to use a desktop to fulfill the request.

Apps Acquired:

• Outline - OneNote Notebook (someone tweeted this)
• ImagePro - Google Images (was looking for a smiley face emoticon)
• PicSearch - Google Images (but then I dumped it for above)