Initial Impressions of "My" iPad2

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     On Tuesday I received "my" iPad 2 from our principal.  I put that in quotes because the iPad, like the MacBook Pro I am using right now, is not mine.  The school district owns it and I am being given it to use in my classroom.  Of course this means that there are some responsibilities and expectations that I incur by having this in my possession.  One is that I will use it as it is intended - a tool to improve or upgrade my teaching skills and a way to involve my students, collaboratively, with other students in their class, the school, or the world.

     In anticipation of receiving this tool I had been reading and listening to those people I feel are either experts on using iPads in the classroom or are people who are collectors of information and have lots of good data on iPad use.

     The first place I went to was the Mobile Tech Learning site.  This site, as the name implies, has links to articles on all things "mobile."  Actually, to be fair, I went to that site first but the first place I intended to go to was Mr. Reliable - Cybraryman.   Jerry Blumengarten (Cybraryman)  is a collector and if you need something related to the teaching profession then he's the man to go see.  Finally, I joined the iPads in Education Ning Group.  The great thing here is that these are teachers who are using the iPad and are willing to answer questions and share information.

     On the surface this looks like I only went to three places to get information.  What I really was able to do is access dozens of sites filled with anywhere from great to worthless information.  But by containing all of these in three areas I was able to glean the cream of the crop, so to speak.

     After turning on the iPad and getting oriented to all of the basics (thanks to the iPad 2 manual in PDF form that is available all over the place), I knew that I wanted to have folders for my apps.  I created folders for My Class Stuff,  Social Media, Music, Movies/Videos, Photography, and Books.  I'll concentrate on the folder with My Class Stuff but it really is nice having all of the other apps I have collected in nice tidy boxes.

     Here are the apps I have in My Class Stuff: (1) Clock Pro, (2) Pick Me!, (3) ShowMe, (4) Prezi Viewer, (5) AudioNote, (6) Evernote, (7) ReplayNote, (8) Dropbox,  (9) Splashtop, (10) Google Earth, (11) Quick Graph, (12) Mathemagics, and 4 of the Khan Academy apps - (13) PreAlgebra, (14) Algebra 1, (15) Geometry, and (16) Algebra 2.

     Clock Pro gives me various timers to use with students as they are working.  If you can break the class period into set times for work then the students can, usually, be more productive.

     With Pick Me!, you can put your roster into the app and then students are randomly selected.  There is an opportunity to give each student a thumbs-up or down to show how they did with their answer for later.  This is great for getting a feel for levels of understanding and for making sure that all students are paying attention.

     ShowMe will allow me to use the iPad as a tablet where I (or students) can work on problems, draw diagrams, or myriad other possibilities.  The beauty, as I see it, is that this is recorded and can be shared with students.  I could even work problems at home and share them with the class at night.  And, in conjunction with Splashtop, can be shown on our  Smartboard as it is being done in the classrom.

     The next three apps AudioNote, Evernote, and ReplayNote are ways to take notes and make them available to the students.    They are each different and have plusses and minuses.  I may end up using just one or maybe two but I will end up getting rid of at least one.  And, Dropbox is an app that could be used similarly.  Lots of evaluation this summer will help me decide.  If you have a preference please tell me in the comments section.

     And so, in less than 48 hours, I have a starting place.  What I'm hoping to do over the next few weeks is to hear from people and to read more so that I can update and improve this folder.  Then, as the month of August rolls around I will be able to decide exactly which apps I will be using on a daily basis.  Please let me know any apps you love to use in the classroom.   And let's start being productive.

Time to Rage Quit

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     I was sitting here listening to my son discuss how he plays Call of Duty Black Ops with a number of my students.  They are scattered around the area and he isn't old enough to drive so this gives him access to these guys who are, definitely boys but, leaders in our school.

One of the terms they use frequently (besides noob- tuber and camper) is "rage quit."  It just means to quit the game before the time has expired and usually is stated in a derogatory manor towards someone quitting when they are getting killed.  But it can also just be a way for a player to let the others know they have to go while they are all in the middle of a match.

     Well, this morning I decided I was going to rage quit social media.  In some ways I'm leaving in the standard way - I feel like I'm losing and just want a break.  In another light,though, I do intend on returning after I take my break. (7 to 10 days ought to do the trick).

     So why am I losing the game here?  Well, I teach at a school that many see as the cutting edge in Project Based Learning.  Yet, if I send the teachers links to interesting things I find in the education world I'm just seen as a spammer.  Ironically, the last thing I did (related to social media) was to watch a presentation from ISTE11 that was live-streamed on Eluminate.  The topic, by one of the most passionate people I know in social media, was on being a passionate educator and building passionate classrooms.

     I am passionate about my profession.  And, I am passionate about learning new things and improving my teaching skills.  I also know that there are teachers who are better "teachers" in the classroom than me.  But, how can they ever improve their skills if they are stuck in the past with resources that are not current.  Don't get me wrong many schools would kill for our technology.  But there are an increasing number (100's?)  of schools across the country who are trying more innovative techniques with less technology.

     And so, I plan on going for one whole week without Twitter, without Facebook, without links to ISTE11 that is going on this week.  Ironically I do intend to keep working and so I'll still be using different forms of social media: bookmarking (Delicious, Diigo, LiveBinders), photos( Flickr CC ),  Google Docs,  and others I can't even think of right now.  You see we can't really escape social media.  Not if we plan on living in this connected world we live in.

Some Personal Reading For The Summer

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   I was fortunate, many years ago, of obtaining a collection of books that were my Grandfather's.  Many are old "classics" and some are just cheapo abridged editions of some classics and some non-classics.   Tonight I walked over to the book case and grabbed 4 that I decided that I would read.  I knew nothing more than the title or the author and I inspected them closely before taking them up to my bedside table.

   The first title was "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  Always a fun summer read.  When I opened the cover I realized that it was a bit more brittle than I had hoped and I looked at the date and realized it was from 1896 with a smiling S.L Clemens inside the first page.  In the back cover I found a poem from 1896 that was written for Winsted Connecticut's 125th anniversary.  It's from the paper and on the back they are discussing a Tariff from 1894.  My natural assumption was that my grandfather bought the book new (it even has his signature in it) but, since he was born in 1892, he would have been 4.  Sounds like a mystery to solve.

     The second title "Oil for the Lamps of China" is by Alice Tisdale Hobart (1933).   I have always liked the title.  The inside cover artwork is really nice.  Inside was a Christmas tag to my Grandfather from my Great Aunt Grace.  So, was this a Christmas gift from my Aunt Grace?  I always loved spending time with my Aunt Grace and Aunt May.   The tag was at the beginning of chapter 16 and it makes me wonder if my Grandfather ever finished the book or did he get through the first 15 chapters and then stopped, never to finish.  I'll have to finish it for the both of them. Another mystery.

     The third title "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder (1928) has a date stamp next to my grandfather's name saying 1928 so I assume he got this book new.  Almost all of his books have either his (very) neatly written signature or a stamp of his signature and a date.  He was in banking and I assume he used the signature stamp that he used every day for work.  Wilder.  I had always thought that smart people read authors like Wilder.   That's why I picked the book.  We'll see.  This signature thing isn't really a mystery but it is something worth exploring.

     For the last title I decided on some Hemingway.  I was a big Hemingway fan in high school.  For those who knew me you may be surprised.   But I loved his descriptions of places that were foreign to me.   So, this book?  "Green Hills of Africa."(1935)    I hadn't read it and it has a grass green (no dust jacket) cover.   I'm pretty sure I started reading Hemingway because of my grandfather's many titles by him.  He, (and my Aunt Grace and Aunt May) always had tons of books around the house and I think I developed my love of reading by spending time thumbing through these wonderful books.

     And so what started as walking over to a book case to "see what I might want to read," has become a blog post, a trip down memory lane, and a mini sleuthing adventure.  And, it's only been about 90 minutes since I walked over to the book case.   This process has made me want to explore our ancestry because of all of the questions that have risen in my brain.  Maybe some of my relatives can write in the comments about their remembrances of Raymond Larkin of Winsted Connecticut July 19th 1892 -  August 1, 1971.

WIFI, Should It Be Expected?

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      As I sit here waiting for the Texas High School Project (THSP) School Leadership Institute to begin I am saddened to realize that I am limited to my laptop being an expensive word processor.  For you young folk, a word processor would eelectronikly take what you typed...typed?  Well, that term comes from the times we used type writers to…what’s a type writer?  Oh heck, let me just continue with my post…

    So, I have no wifi here in the main ballroom.  There IS wifi for the presenters I’ve been told.  So, is this a problem with bandwidth?  Or, is this a problem with revenue.  You see the hotel has a package they sell for this conference and, I’m betting dollars to donuts, one tier allowed for wifi access to some people and another (more expensive) tier allowed for all attendees to have access.    

     What really got me was that I was working on my laptop (online) just a few minutes before.  I was only about 100 feet from the entrance to the ballroom.  But, as soon as I walked in I no longer could see the wifi I had been using.  What was funny was that I asked the front desk if I could get access to the hotel wifi even though I hadn’t checked into my room yet and they quickly told me the password (cowboys – “we are in Dallas,” my hostess stated). 

    So, they weren’t afraid to give guests free access.  But, when I crossed that invisible line of demarcation separating the Conference Center from the hotel, I wasn’t good enough to have access.  Something tells me that bandwidth is NOT the culprit.  It all comes down to revenue.  Let’s see how much money they would be losing if they had kept me happy and allowed me access.

 [We fast forward a little over 24 hours....]

    

     Last night I tried to finish this but I couldn't upload the text to the blog.  Without internet access I had written what you read above in Office and I saved it in multiple formats but no luck.  Oh, I was online and I was accessing everything I wanted but I could not get this stinking thing to save in Blogger.  So, I gave up and went up to my room only to find that I couldn't access the wifi in my room.  What really made me furious was I had access in my room but decided to work down at the bar area just an hour or so before.  Crazy!

     And so this morning I tried to access in my room and had no luck.  I went down to the front desk and, as expected I was told to contact the service provider.  They did remove the wifi fee from my tab though.  Oh, yeah, didn't mention that little tidbit.  While in the bar area wifi was free but in my room I had to pay.  That is wrong on so many levels.  Then I headed to my first session (having left my word processor in  my room) and the presenter was disappointed that more people didn't have their laptops with them.  When I mentioned that there wasn't access in the rooms she stated that "there is in this room."  Maddening!

     Now I could go into all of the craziness trying to get access this evening in the dining room (10 feet from the bar) but I won't bore you.  Suffice it to say I am now on and I am going to, hopefully, finish this post and publish it before the wifi gods start messing with me again.

    So let's get back to my question at the top: should wifi be expected when you are attending a conference in a hotel/conference center?  Some of us still don't have smart phones and many of us do not have a 3G or 4G connection to our laptops.  So, some of us would like to be able to access the internet during conferences.  For example when I learned the great stuff about the new procedures for standardized testing yesterday, it would have been nice to pop up a quick tweet with a link to the resource mentioned.  It would also have been nice to go to each of the resources and book mark them for later perusal.  I could go on and on about why I should be able to access the internet. 

    But should I expect to gain access to wifi?  Yes, in 2011 I should be able to access wifi in a conference center.  I can access wifi in McDonalds in the middle of nowhere.  I can access wifi in restaurants and coffee shops all over the country in the middle of nowhere.  So, in Richardson Texas (just outside of Dallas) I should expect to be able to get access and the bandwidth I get should be strong.