Kyle M. Smith

Data Notebooks App for iPad

kylemsmith — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:31:54 +0000

If you are a K-12 educator, this is a great app for you to check out! Around a year ago, our school district was able to partner with SAS, in North Carolina. Specifically, with their education development division. The group focuses on building software for K-12 education and releasing it for free. A few of our administrators and teachers began to work with a group of developers to build a Data Notebooks app for K-12 students using iPads. Want to check it out? Do so here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sas-data-notebook/id555351275?mt=8

Slow Mac? Try This!

kylemsmith — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:41:35 +0000

Is your Mac just slowing down more and more? Have you considered quitting your applications, rather than just closing windows? Check this video out for a quick way to free up some system resources.

Get your Gift

kylemsmith — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:31:15 +0000

Did you receive a gift read on Amazon’s Kindle app or device? Learn how to use it here!

Need an Amazon Account?

kylemsmith — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:28:49 +0000

Ready to start reading books on your iOS device or Kindle device? Check this video out to get started with creating an Amazon Account.

iTunesU Expansions

kylemsmith — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:19:59 +0000

iTunesU Expansion for Teachers

iTunes U is now open to any instructor who would like to create private courses for their own students. Instructors can sign up for iTunes U Course Manager, create courses, and invite students to enroll. New instructors can create up to 12 courses with up to 50 students per course, and they receive 20GB of space for their course content.

Instructors can also affiliate with their institutions and submit their courses for publication on their institution’s iTunes U site. Affiliation provides instructors with unlimited courses, enrollment, and storage.

With iTunes U Course Manager, instructors can now:

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Use the new roster to manage student enrollment for their private courses. From the roster they can share the course enroll code or shortcut link with their students and approve which students can enroll in their course.

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Send a request to affiliate their account with your institution. This will allow them to submit courses for publishing on your iTunes U site.

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Make copies of their courses by clicking Duplicate in the dashboard.

For more information, see iTunes U Course Manager Help or read the Course Creation Guidelines.

iTunes U Public Site Manager

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The reports manager page now displays activity by country as well as top collections and top courses.

For more information, see Using the reports manager.

With the iTunes U app, students can now:

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Take notes while listening to an audio track or watching a video from a course. Notes are saved to a specific time in the audio or video for easy reference.

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Use the new search feature to search within posts, assignments, notes, and materials.

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Share their iTunes U courses using Twitter, Mail, and Messages.

To download the iTunes U app, visit the App Store.

Content Filtering: Inside and Outside the K-12 Network

kylemsmith — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:39:24 +0000

For those of you that don’t know, I work at a public K-12 school district in Indiana. We’ve had a fair amount of success with our one to one project. Simple translation; every child has their own device to use in the classroom and at school. This has worked out wonderfully for our school community. Not perfect, but this project has potential to be truly great! Our K-6 grade students each receive iPads while the 7-12th grade students receive Macbooks. Pretty sweet eh? It is the visionary leadership at our district that makes this possible.

One of the challenges we faced during the 2011-2012 school year was content filtering. Specifically, the challenge was what to do with devices when they leave our school network? Is it our responsibility to filter when they leave the school network? The law (CIPA) doesn’t specifically define what happens off the school’s network. CIPA only defines what happens on the Internet access circuit funded by the FCC’s erate program for schools.

I need your help, especially if you are a K-12 educator, administrator, board member or IT person. Could you respond to this post by leaving a comment? Here’s what I am interested in finding out:

1. Does your school allow students to take iPads home?

2. Does your school attempt to filter these devices when they go home?

3. If yes to #2, what are you using to make that happen?

I appreciate your time in your response. Thank you!

A Better Browser

kylemsmith — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:26:34 +0000

Switching to Google Chrome has been a great move for me this week. I think it can be your best move yet! First, let me say that I am Apple biased. I own at least two Macbooks, an iPad and an iPhone. I haven’t tried Android devices or the even the new Google Nexus 7 tablet. If you have resources to let me review or try out these devices, let me know! I was getting a bit frustrated with Safari. It is a great browser, simple and user-friendly. I am frustrated with the overall speed of loading pages and content. Part of my challenge is, I like to several pages open up in various tabs on startup. So, I expect a lot! In order for me to be most productive, that’s the way I like it.

Being an iCloud subscriber, I really like the fact that bookmarks in Safari sync between all of my Apple devices. This was the only reason I was sticking with using Safari. Google has had Chrome sync for Google Apps subscribers for awhile now but there wasn’t a great way to get this information to sync to an iPad or iPhone. This past week, Google release the Chrome app for iOS devices. What a great move this was! I have now switched my Internet browsing completely to Google Chrome. All of my bookmarks on my Macbooks sync with Chrome on my iPhone and iPad. The speed of loading pages with Chrome is much faster. Even on the iOS devices, it blows Safari out of the water. Visit the app store, try it out and let me know what you find. You won’t be disappointed.

Cloud Storage Wars

kylemsmith — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:58:29 +0000

Lately I’ve been looking at two cloud-based file storage and sharing services; Google Drive and Dropbox. Both platforms offer a 100% web-based environment with synchronization capabilities to your local computer. Meaning, a folder is created on your computer that houses an “offline” copy of all of your stuff. Both services also allow you to share your stuff, or invite people to share/access your stuff. Great! Google Drive offers 5gb of storage space, while Dropbox offers 2gb of storage space. Dropbox allows you to refer friends and as a result your storage capacity will increase based upon how many successful referrals you made. Not a bad idea either. Both services now have apps for your iOS devices so you can access your files. The mobile apps for both services are great for viewing your stuff, but when it comes to editing they both seem to equally fall short. I’m convinced that this capability is just a matter of development before it is available.

Ultimately I chose to move everything to Google Drive. Here’s why……Google Drive allows you to open files within the Google Apps platform. You can do this from any computer with Internet access without having to have Microsoft Office or another productivity suite installed to access your stuff. Sharing within Google Docs is also a bit more user friendly. You’re not waiting for someone to accept or respond to an invitation you sent out. The content is just simply shared with the second person’s Google Docs account. I’ll just wait for the update to Google Drive that allows editing to occur right within the iOS app itself.

TechCon 2012 – Summer PD for Educators

kylemsmith — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:10:04 +0000

This summer, Garrett-Keyser-Butler Community School District will be hosting TechCon 2012 for K-12 educators. This event is August 13th-August 15th. The best part….it is free for K-12 public educators in the State of Indiana, lunch is even included! Speakers include many of our own teachers, Will Richardson, Meg Wilson, Dr. Holly Ludgate and Dr. Julie Mathiesen. Presentations include My Big Campus, Google Apps for Education, Professional Learning Networks and Mass Customized Learning. If you’re interested in seeing the agenda for the three days, please visit http://gkbtechcon.com for more information. If you’re out of state, the cost is $150.00 per person.

Can you use this Stuff?

kylemsmith — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:58:09 +0000

I recently attended the ISTE Conference in San Diego, California this past week. One of the sessions I attended shared several resources. I never knew that Creative Commons existed in a website form that it does. Visit http://www.creativecommons.org to reference this posting. Often times, when I am in process of organizing/preparing a presentation I “borrow” content to cover my shortage of creative thought! Have you ever conducted an image search on Google and just used an image you found in a presentation? What about copying and pasting text from a PDF or website? Creative Commons allows you to search for content in several different areas of the Internet to really make sure it is legal to use. If you are a creator, this place is great for you too! It is an EASY way for you to get your content out there and license it for use. This cuts down on emails, phone calls, mail asking “can we use your…..” Check it out, there’s a lot of great resources out there and yes we can all share……even legally too!

If you’re ready to just get started……visit http://search.creativecommons.org

This is a great tutorial video on the Creative Commons functionality and search tools, courtesy of New Income University. Check it out: