Archives For Hardware

Education Only 17-inch iMac=$899

kcroy —  March 22, 2009 — Leave a comment

marchenewsAppleinsider reports that Apple will continue to offer a 17-inch iMac aimed for education starting at $899. A March Apple eNews mailing (pictured right) mailed  to education users included an advertisement for the 17-inch iMac along with the 20″ and 24″ models. Apparently the 17-inch is limited to education sales and is not being advertised publicly.  

As our economy works to stabilize and gain strength, and our schools continue to face funding obstacles and setbacks, this $899 iMac may bring some relief.

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Cisco acquires the Flip for 590 Million

kaniap —  March 19, 2009 — Leave a comment
many flip options

many flip options

OK, as a teacher I have a secret crush to admit.  I love the Flip.  I have been a flip owner for about a year and a half now and I am absolutely in love with it.  Whenever I am out and about I have the ability to take a short movie of something I want to show my class.  I have taken video of trolling, NASA facilities, NYC buildings, and even video of my class completing labs.  It is an absolute necessity for teachers.

I personally have the Flip Mino HD.  What an awesome piece of technology.  It easily rests in a coat pocket or pants pocket and has the ability to take a full 720p video to edit later on.  The included software allows you to use one click to upload to youtube or use their included editing software.  I personally like using iMovie 09 to edit my movies so I am unfamiliar with the software.

My wife has my old flip.  The Flip Ultra.  This takes DVD quality video.  The video is very nice and the great thing about this camcorder is the fact that it is powered by two AA batteries.

Now to the news.  Cisco purchased the company for 590 million.  I hope they don’t screw it up.  Cisco seems to be trying to diversify their business with this move and it might be nice to include some of their technologies into the device.  Specifically, I would love to see a small optical zoom device.  If I could zoom in a little bit without destroying the quality I could get rid of my other camcorder.  I would also love to see a SD port to allow for more expansion and allow to slide in a new card when the internal memory gets full.

What cisco does with device is up to them but for me, I hope to see more innovations from a device that I love.

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New iPod Touch Now 'Perfected' for Classroom Use! Awesome!

kcroy —  September 15, 2008 — 1 Comment

Apple released the second generation iPod Touch last Tuesday. This new iPod Touch now contains the one essential feature for making it perfect for education: it now has microphone support!

I have been eagerly awaiting microphone support for the iPod Touch because I believe simplified podcasting creation is essential for educators.  You could of course create a podcast with Garage Band or some other software program and sync the podcast to the touch, but educators need a simple, no-hassle, one-step solution for creating podcasts at the spur of the moment. Now the iPod Touch has it. The iPod in Every Classroom Initiative I started a few years ago is about to get revamped.

Now the that iPod Touch can create podcasts on the fly like all of the earlier iPods, let’s review the other great technological features that really set it apart from all the others as a learning tool for the classroom. First of all, Podcasting should be an essential part of every classroom. The iPod Touch will make that even easier. Microphones for the previous iPod line was around $50 or $60, but this new Touch will be able to use a much more economical microphone as a MacRumors post has demonstrated. The post states that the headphone jack will accept a four rung headset with microphone. Video Podcasts will now be even better on a larger screen. Second, the Educational Apps for the iPod Touch are growing at an incredible rate.  There are currently over 160 Educational Apps at the iTunes Store, and the list is growing every day. One great app titled Flashcard allows any teacher to create a study tool for the iPod Touch. Third, the iPod Touch’s overall concept of durability, battery reliability, ease of use, and cost ($229) make it a great fit for the classroom.  Anyone can pick it up and start using it.  It is affordable enough for any classroom.  It has built in security features for both theft and volume, and it is a hard one to damage.  The “touch” concept makes students addicted to learning. (Teachers control the content on the device.) Last, and by no means least, it has the internet.  Students can access the sites you announce instantly via WiFi.

I am excited about making an iPod Touch in Every Classroom a new focus.

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iPods in the Classroom: Now in Military Combat Zones

kcroy —  September 4, 2008 — Leave a comment

The U.S. Army is increasingly using custom iPods as field translators instead of carrying around bulky PDAs or notebooks.  The U.S. 10th Mountain Division has been using hundreds of iPods over the past year to run a special app known as Vcommunicator Mobile which allows soldiers to effectively communicate in an unfamiliar region.

Vcommunicator Mobile is a special application that allows the soldier to use the click wheel to locate phrases in local dialects that match the situation at incredible speeds. A headset plays an audio sample for the soldier. Vcommunicator also contains video of appropriate behaviors to assist cross-cultural communication. The iPods contain text as well to assist in language learning.

iPods are now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan as learning aids.

Vcom3D, the creator of the application, also has a business and travel adaptations for nonmilitary customers.

The military values the iPods for the portability, ease of use, durability, light weight, cost, and extensive battery life.  The same reasons I like them in the classroom.  The soldiers, like our students, are already familiar with the device and software.

The program has been so successful for the military that they are expanding the use to the 1st Calvary Division and are the program to include iPhone apps for future projects.

The miltary wants results and so do we as wired educators. iPods in the classroom works!

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Apple One to One!

kaniap —  August 25, 2008 — Leave a comment

 

One to One

One to One

My School, Perkins High School is taking its first steps towards one to one learning.  One to One is where every staff member and every student has their own laptop to use everyday both at school and at home.  I believe that this will be the greatest single investment in my school district’s future.  

Our first step starts this year with every teacher and administrator getting their laptops.  Next year we will start handing out laptops to our students.  I can’t wait!  In case you are wondering, the computers are leased and not bought.  This will help with the problem of what do do when it is time to replace them.  They are on a four year turn over and will be replaced every four years.  Not all of the details have been worked out yet but I can’t wait to get my macbook.  

For now I can’t wait to collaborate with my colleagues about teaching methods, and can’t wait to share apple computer apps with them.  I just think it is so powerful for students and teachers to get technology into their hands to use both at school and at home.  I won’t have to sign out labs, instead I will be able to just have students pull out their laptops and we can get to work on many things.

In case you are wondering, we are transitioning away from an all PC school so in the process we are handing out laptops for the time being with Boot Camp and Microsoft XP on them for slow adopters.  Not sure if I will ever use it.

Will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

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Why Windows is not good for education!

kaniap —  July 27, 2008 — 1 Comment
Windows is bad for education.

Windows is bad for education.

Ok, I am going to be Honest.  I hate windows.  That is no surprise.  I have been struggling the past two days with a colleague’s Computer.  It happens to run windows.  It was running slow and poorly so he asked me to take a look at it.  So at first it ran slow, and had poor virus backup.  Once it was updated it ran a little better and all of a sudden it takes about 30 minutes to boot up and I can’t get a mouse or the trackpad to work at all.  It won’t read any CD, not even the boot CD.  I am officially giving up after 48 hours of work and not looking at it again.  

Now why is windows bad for education.  I have a PC at my school that the school provides for me.  I kept track… I was not able to use my computer 18 days of the school year due to technical difficulties.  Some were viruses, Networking issues, One day was even because our grade-books crashed and we needed the bandwidth to run them.  Now we run off a server only so that means that we cannot even run them off the network which is a logistical nightmare.  Not for me of course.

I carry my handy MacBook Pro with me every day to school and run my presentations and what not off of it so I have no such problems.  When I update my Mac I never have to worry about parts of it not running correctly.  I am so sick of windows in education.  Everybody needs to go MAC.

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An iPod Touch in Every Classroom?: Yes, with Education Focused Apps

kcroy —  July 25, 2008 — 19 Comments

I have been promoting the use of ‘An iPod in Every Classroom’ at eTech Conferences and smaller venues for the past few years.  I enjoy presenting the many uses an iPod offers in education,  and the list continues to multiply each year.  What began as a way to deliver audio and video podcasts to students quickly, and more importantly easily, has blossomed into iPods being used to document student readings, interactive personalized quizzes, SAT and ACT practice, PowerPoint conversion, and much, much more.  Oh, so much more, but now the I believe even that glass ceiling has been shattered with the release of specialized iTunes Education Content and now, even more amazing, iPod Touch/iPhone applications focused on education.  Things are about to get interesting.

In an earlier post I announced the release of iTunes University creating a special section for K-12 content.  Educators now have a wonderful library of excellent audio and video podcasts to download and integrate into their lessons for free. Now not only can educators easily create excellent podcasts easily with an iPod, now they have treasure trove of resources.

Twenty-one iPhone/iPod Touch apps are currently in the iTunes App Store with many more about to be released.  The current lineup includes foreign language study, flashcards, math simulations, eBook reading software, anatomy, other specialized science content, and more. Some of the apps are free downloads, others are small fees, and a couple are about the price of a good book.  Students can study flashcards, create their own, or review with interactive quizzes. Some of the science apps and foreign language apps are just amazing by allowing users to have a pocket palanetarium, view three-dimensional models of hydrogen atoms, or record and play back foreign language practice.  As if that weren’t cool encough, the app store isn’t even two weeks old yet.

Certainly more apps are on the way, but what I am really interested in is the ability to easily create my own. I read an article today that Stanford is now offering a class on designing iPod Touch/iPhone application design.  I am hoping that an easy-to-use program for educators to create specialized review lessons, games, and other content will be released soon.  (That is my hope; I have heard nothing. I don’t think it would be that difficult.)

I will be reviewing education apps independently on site, so keep checking back.  If you would like to submit a review on an edcuation app or share how you use technology in our classroom, please send us an email to wirededucator@gmail.com.

Apple is billing this use of iPods in the classroom as Mobile Learning. “iTunes U and Mobile Learning: The road to knowledge is wider than ever.”

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Discmakers… What a Relief!

kaniap —  July 21, 2008 — Leave a comment

Discmakers is something that I most recently have found.  For many years, actually ever since being able to burn discs, I have slaving over my computer manually inserting discs over and over.  As a matter of fact only two years ago I remember burning 300 Discs manually to get highlight film ready for football.  One at a time.  I believe it took me well over 20 hours with four computers burning.  Well those days are over.  I have talked our athletic boosters into purchasing a duplicator to automatically do this.  It came in and I love it.  All I have to do is use my computer to create the first copy of what I need to burn and then all I do is insert it with the blank DVD’s and come back a while later and all of them are burned.  I have added time back to my life!  And it only costs $500.00!  What Have I been thinking all of this time.

About Discmakers…  What a company.  They have been a 5 star service.  I stumbled upon them totally by chance.  I was in Manhattan walking to my favorite photo place when I saw this store called discmakers.  So I went inside.  Inside it was only a sales office.  There was nothing in there to buy but the people working in there were very helpful and excited about what they were doing.  And young I may add.  Then don’t just sell duplicators, they will Burn, package, and distribute any type of media that you would like to produce.  If you would like something to look very good, they are the company to go to.  They do just about everything when it comes to creating CD’s and DVD’s.  I highly suggest checking out their website at www.discmakers.com and if you have any questions just give them a call.

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Next Level of Podcasts: No editing? Wireless? Interactive?

kcroy —  July 18, 2008 — 2 Comments

Apple has recently filed for a patent that may take podcasts to an entirely new level.  The patent unveils plans to include software that combines both a video and audio feed of the presenter with the keynote/powerpoint presentation in one single appealing format. The plans are also designed to emiminate the need for editing and stream the podcasts wirelessy to any number of iPods, iPhones, and Macs.

The filing is basically for an automated content capture and processing system where a live camera feed of a presenter can be automatically merged with a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation to form an entertaining and dynamic podcast that lets the viewer watch the presenter’s slides as well as the presenter. In one example outlined in the filing, the content capture system provides a video stream (Stream A) and an Keynote presentation stream (Stream B) to a recording agent such as a Mac running specialized Podcast creation software. The recording agent then blends the two feeds together based on certain cues and sends the combined feed to a syndication server that would then distribute the video wirelessly as a Podcast to any number of authorized Macs, iPods or iPhones. (From AppleInsider.)

Keynote 08 allows for the presentation/slideshow to be recorded with audio and  exported as a video podcast. Also, a nice software titled ProfCast allows for the capture of audio to be combined with your Keynote of PowerPoint and converted to a video podcast. There is no software that seamlessly and easily allows you to capture both the presenter and the slides as well as audio. The best you could do now may be for a simple iMovie capture using your MacBook but it would not make the slideshow you worked so hard on look very good.

The entire patent includes much more in the way the presenter can interact with the recording through voice, gestures, and laser pointers.  Please note that earlier reported patents such as Podcasts on Demand and  PodMaps have not been realized so there can be absolutely no gurantee this will be a reality.  ( I sure hope it happens, though!)

I am a huge advocate of podcasting. The benefits and uses are numerous. I embrace, recommend, and teach the idea of limited or no-editing podcasts, so this new patent really intrigues me.  My desire podcasts to be as simple, yet effective as possible.  My goal is make it as easy for the teacher as possible to capture an audio or video podcast.  The teacher has the challenge of making  the podcast meaningful.

I really like this patent idea and will be following it closely.  I hope I can update this article soon as to a date of delivery to educators everywhere.

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iPhone Mania

kaniap —  July 17, 2008 — Leave a comment
iPhone 3G

iPhone 3G

Ok so the iPhone 3G has been out for a week now.  My impressions are Wow.  My hands got on a 3G iPhone at my local ATT store here in Sandusky Ohio.  I currently have the first generation and have no plans to upgrade any time soon.  Now from my experiences I can fairly say that this is the greatest phone that I have ever had.  Every where that I go I am sharing my own uses of the phone with others.  As far as uses in education I have many.  I have used my iPhone to show others movies that my class has made, pictures of things that I need to remember, and even to share music with my class and football Players.  I love it and the uses have only gotten larger with the opening of the App Store.

In case you have been out for the last 6 months, the iPhone has oppened its OS up to 3rd party developers to write native applications.  So far I have downloaded 18 different apps that I have been using.  16 of them were totally free applications.  The two that I have paid for are a voice memo application and a game called Enigmo which is a great problem solving game.  Rather than review all of my applications, I will review only a couple and when I see fit I will try a couple more.

Shazam:  Shazam is a song recognition program that I see as the most refined and wonderful pice of software that I have used probably my whole life.  This program is a song recognition software that can figure out what song is playing, the artist, and the album with only a 10 second recording of the music.  I have tried this at home, in the car, and even at a shopping mall.  It has worked each and every time.  If you hear a song you want more information about all you have to do is complete a 10 second recording and it somehow communicates to its own servers and a very short time later (about 5 seconds usually) it will provide you with the song name, artist, and album.  It will also provide you with a link to download the song in some cases if it is available.  Love the app.  Not sure how to use it in my classroom yet but I am sure I will find a way.

Remote:  Ok now this little software company called Apple Inc. even got into the mix and wrote their own app for the phone.  This app takes control of your iTunes Library on your computer and allows you to play through your MAC or apple TV whatever you would like to.  It is much nicer than using the apple remote itself to remotely control your music library.  You get to see the music artwork and browse wherever you would like when you use this app.  The only thing that is not supported by this is cover flow which is more of an aesthetic thing anyways.

Well those are two must have programs that I have been messing with this week.  I hope if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch that you enjoy the software that has been released and please provide be with any apps that seem to help you out.

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