Too good not to post!

I know I dropped this blog, but I just purchased a Macbook Air. What a dreamy machine. Sure I love the iPad I used for the last year, but for a my work flow this is so much better. It's small and light enough that I slip it into my regular folder. It is also good enough on batter that I do not need to bring my adapter around during the day. Finally it runs OSX. I've been windows now for so long I had forgotten about the way it feel. AAAAhh it's so good to be home.

Time to focus on other aspects in Education

It's been a great run. I've learned and shared much about technology and our small school in Northern Alberta. However, times are changing. I'm off to work in the town of Myrnam as the principal of their k-12 school. I'll miss writing about technology, but I just will not have the time to do it justice. Thanks for checking in, and perhaps we'll visit again on a blog about administration???

Apps for Schoolwork. The ones I actually use!

iPod touch and iPhones are rapidly becoming useful tools for education. Here are a few apps that can help you be successful on your educational journey here at BRHS.

• Homework Organizers
• myhomework - an excellent homework organizer - FREE!
• Science
• TCT Lite - good and free Periodic table of elements - FREE!
• TCT Full - a full featured Periodic table of ellements - $0.99
• Units - a simple unit conversion app - FREE!
• Mind or Concept Mapping
  These could be used to build your weekly concept maps. You can then upload them or email them to me directly.
• SimpleMindX - fast concept mapping tool I use the free version.
• Total Recall - a few more options for concept mapping. I find it a bit clunkier though - FREE!
• FlashCard or Review
• Mental Case Classroom Edition - a fantastic flashcard review tool. I am not beginning to publish all my notes and also reveiw question sets onto this platform. You can find links to these sets in the appropriate unit areas. This version is FREE!
• Mental Case - the full version also ties in with flashcardexchange.com. I do post several exercises there for work to and I would encourage you to build your work there as well. Then you can download into this full app for review. Full Mental Case is $2.99

There are many, many other apps. It's good to do some searching online to see if anyone has reviewed them. Apple as an Apps for student page too. If you find a great App, please let me know at jonathankonrad@gmail.com. Thanks.

Digital Life or Citizenship .... Do you have yours organized?

Christmas break is a wonderful and needed rest for educators everywhere. It always helps me clear my mind and be able to focus again on the daily challenges in the classroom.

This break I found myself pondering the question of a digital life. OK, that's not quite the concept, but it will have to do. I am wondering about just how much ownership, awareness, and organization students and teachers give their online life. Sure they understand and manage their Facebook identities, but what about all of their work and leisure online?

I would like to help teachers and students learn to manage or balance their digital needs easily. What are those needs. Here is my list of essential digital needs;

• File Storage - a place to keep everything
• photos - flikr or picasa, or ?
• video - youtube.com
  
• documents - dropbox.com or box.net or MS Skydrive or Google docs or ?
• Sharepoint
• Moodle ePortfolio
  
• Authoring Applications
• Google Docs
• Zoho.com
• Sharepoint
  
• Communication
• Gmail
• Windows live
• Zoho.com
  
• Moodle
• Sharepoint
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Organize
• Google calander
• Windows Live
• Zoho.com
• Sharepoint
• toodledo

Each of these needs must be met regardless of hardware or software currently in use. They can have a robust offline component, but they MUST have online access across a variety of devices from phones to ipods to the PC. Ideally they should be personally owned and managed, this questions Moodle and Sharepoint for most of the work. No doubt these services will be accessed for specific course work, but the point is how are students and teachers managing all of their digital life and taking ownership.

The last piece to the puzzle is how are the students and teachers creating a PLN. For students this is most likely to be on Facebook, but teachers should consider using that for personal interaction and using something like Twitter for professional chatter.

This is a large topic and deserves much more than this short introduction. However, I am tired of students and teachers blaming others for why they are not using the digital tools we now have. They should not be able to blame the school for poor file access or organization or communication. They are expected to bring paper, pencils, binders, calculators, and such to class and to have these at home. Why not digital tools?

VMWare Player rocks

I know, I know, it's like sacrilege to recommend a proprietary product when there is a good open source player in the field (VirtualBox), but wow, the new VMWare player is solid.

I've installed it on Ubuntu x64 and Windows 7 x64. Each did so with no complaint. Then I created an x64 guest on each with the other as the OS. So I have Ubuntu 9.10 x64 as host with Windows 7 x64 as guest and vice versa. Everything everywhere runs as it should!

It's so good that I prefer doing this to rebooting into the desired OS. I just run one, and if I need the other it boot it with VMplayer. All for free. The best thing for me, in addition to simply working, is that it recognizes USB without issue. This makes using USB drives possible. Something that has always been flaky on VirtualBox and ultimately has prevented me from using Virtual Technology seriously.

But now it all works. I should say it does not support 3D acceleration in most setups, so VirtualBox has it beat there. However, if you just want to try an OS, or have one around for that specific app at work. This will work. I've never used a more stable virtual environment and that is saying a lot. I can remember the SoftWindows for Mac back in the day. Yeah ... I'm that old :)