Several months ago, the guys over at PollEverywhere wrote a blog post asking “Should we even offer a free product for teachers?” At the heart of the conversation, the issue was that while they wanted to keep free accounts for teachers, people using the service does cost them money. “Considering that we pay the mobile phone companies several cents for each text message, a disturbing proportion of free users (overwhelmingly educators) cost us over $50/user/year in texting fees, and that’s before we spend any time on customer support.” That may not seem like much, but when you start adding up the numbers, it’s a matter of dollars and cents. If it’s free for you, someone is paying for it. And considering the size of many of these Web 2.0 companies, often that ‘someone’ is the founder and/or developer.

The reason I bring this up is that I’m a big fan of free sites. One of my most popular presentations focuses strictly on free tools for educators. I know far too many teachers that make a point to only use free sites. Some do it as a point of pride, others do it due to financial considerations. The trouble is though, if a site isn’t making any money… it likely won’t be around for very long. That’s not good for anyone.

People often ask me whether they can rely on a Web 2.0 site being around for a while. Generally, I respond by telling them to look for a business model. Do they have premium features that people can subscribe to? Advertising on the site? Enterprise level solutions that business can purchase? If there’s a clear indicator for how the site is making money, then they’re probably going to be around. If there isn’t, that’s a red flag to me. Some sites like Wordle I wouldn’t stress about as much. They’re simple enough that I have a hunch that they are just paying for hosting/bandwidth at this point, which can most likely be covered by ads. However, the trade off there is that there isn’t any active development going on there. When was the last time you saw Wordle release a new feature?

Which brings me back to my point. There are some sites that I promote through my presentations and professional work. I do so because I see potential for them and believe educators can get good use out of them. I don’t get a kickback from any of these sites (besides my host, Bluehost) other than a few sites have given me a free premium account. That said, there are several sites that I use on a regular basis that I do pay for. I bought a pro version of Flickr several years ago because I thought they were one of the best sites I’d ever seen for photo sharing and I wanted to see them succeed. I have even given pro subscriptions to friends and colleagues as gifts. I’m a huge fan of Tripit.com and recently upgrade to a pro account. I’ll be honest, I don’t think the features you get for upgrading are even worth the cost, but I wanted to support the company. I love the service they provide and hope that they can stick around. That’s worth a $50 donation from me even though I’m not a fan of their premium features.

There are many sites that have created educational portals/pricing to support the things teachers are doing in the classroom. PollEverywhere is a great example of this because they literally restructured their entire free scheme around the classroom. Prezi created educator specific pro-accounts as well and have publicly stated how committed they are to supporting teachers. Other sites like Glogster and Voicethread have devoted enormous resources to making their sites better suited to teachers’ needs.

But these sites can only keep doing that if there’s money coming in. It’s a bitter pill, but that’s reality. If you love free tools, then you need to do your part to keeping them free. Consider it paying it forward. Don’t do it for every site, and don’t do it for a site you’ve never tried before.  But if you’ve been using the free version of the site and think it’s something you feel is worth continuing to make use of, then consider paying for the premium version.  Even if you don’t need the premium features, do it so that you can hold your head up high and know you’ve done your part to make sure that site is going to be around for the long haul.  And don’t forget, as a paying customer, you usually have a more direct line to the developer’s ear.  Let them know what features you think the site needs, or how it could be better suited to what you do in the classroom.  That same email has a lot more weight when it comes from a subscriber rather than a free user.

I know some of you are going to say that you spend enough on the classroom already, and that the school should pick up the bill.  Fine, then fight that fight.  But if you can’t push that through, I hope that you consider doing something personally.  It’s the only way these tools we love so much are going to be around for the long haul.

In my next post here, I’ll be sharing a new offer from PollEverywhere.  I didn’t write this post to push you over to them, but they do happen to be one of the sites I’m a huge fan of.  They’ve been kind enough to give me a premium account to use during presentations.  However, I’m putting my own money where my mouth is and buying into the promotion as well.  Why?  Because I believe in what they’re doing, I believe in their commitment to education, and I want them to stick around.  If they aren’t your site of choice, that’s fine.  Pick another.  But spend a few minutes thinking about what tools are perpetually on your ‘goto’ list and how you can help make sure they don’t go away.

Because if we don’t support the sites we can’t live without… well, you better be prepared to live without them.

What have you found worth paying for?  Are you willing to pay out of your own pocket to support a site you love?

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Anybody who follows me on Twitter knows that I’ve jailbroken my iDevices. I’m not some kind of crazy renegade or anti-establishment… there are just some basic features that I want to have that Apple doesn’t offer. I know why they don’t offer them. And I respect that. But at the same time, I want to be able to make those decisions for myself and have leaped at the opportunity to stretch the capabilities of the devices just a little bit farther.

That being said, I do understand that most educators feel that they can’t jailbreak. It’s illegal, right? Well… not really. It was never against the law. Apple tried to say it was against the terms of service, but who are they to say what you can do with something you BOUGHT? When I buy a pair of running shoes, Nike has no right to tell me I can’t play soccer in them. In my opinion, nor does Apple have the right to tell me what I can and can’t do with the device. Funny thing is… Federal regulators agree. Last week, the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office basically said that jailbreaking doesn’t violate any laws and is kosher in their book. Big news? You betcha!

Apple can, and does, maintain that they can’t warranty Jailbroken devices, but it’s sort of an empty threat. A simple restore will remove any and all traces of a jailbreak, putting it right back to a virgin state. Quite simply, jailbreaking allows developers access to the full file system available on the iPhone, not just the fenced in sandbox that Apple normally gives access to. This allows people to develop apps that many of us have always wanted on our phones, but couldn’t get through the App store. Some of them are simple, like Whiteboarding abilities (so you can mark up an app before taking a screenshot). Others are more complex, like skinning, multi-tasking, and screensharing with a computer.

Whatever your reasons are, there’s never been a better time to do it. Last night, the jailbreaking fairies released the easiest way to jailbreak your iDevice in quite a long time. All you need to do is visit Jailbreakme.com from your iDevice and move the slider over, and it’ll jailbreak your phone and install Cydia. For those who don’t know, Cydia is like the AppStore, but for apps that Apple won’t accept.

Just to be ultraclear, jailbreaking does not open you up to viruses. It does not break your phone. Neither Apple nor AT&T will know you did it. And if you don’t like it…. just restore. But there are several compelling things that Jailbreaking allows you to do, and I thought I’d share my Top 10 with you. And while only a few of them are compelling reasons to jailbreak, when you add them altogether you get a pretty convincing case.

10) SBSettings (All devices) - This isn’t actually an App, but basically like a shortcut bar/task manager. Slide across the status bar along the top of your screen and you’ll see a pop up menu that gives you quick access to a configurable set of toggles. This allows you to easily turn on and off things like Bluetooth, WiFi, and other handy info, like your IP address, remaining storage and so on. Nothing super fancy, but it saves quite a few clicks. More info here and here

9) Full Force (iPad) - If you have an iPad, you hate iPhone apps. Yes, it’s nice that you can run them, but when you embiggen them they look obnoxious. Fonts are doubled in size, screen is distorted. It just looks awful. Full Force attempts to tell the app to use all available real estate… but with a normal font size. It doesn’t work for every app, but for the ones it does it makes a MAJOR difference. it actually makes them usable without being annoying. The best example of this is Tweetie. There’s still no iPad version of the official Twitter app, but Full Force makes the iPhone version more than just tolerable, but passable! List of apps compatible with Full Force

8 ) GV Mobile (iPhone) – If you use Google Voice on the iPhone, you MAY have bought this back in the day. For a very brief period it was in the App store. And then Apple pulled it. No good reason, they just decided they didn’t like Google Voice. So Sean picked up his app and re-released it via Cydia. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best App based version of Google Voice out there. It still requires an internet connection, but does a really good job of letting you manage Google Voice, including making calls from your GVoice number.

7) Winterboard (All) - It’s hard to give a simple summary of all that Winterboard does. At it’s most basic level, it let’s you skin your device. Backgrounds and homescreens, like iOS4, but oh so much more too. Themes can come with icons for the basic iDevice apps as well as other apps that you may have installed. Battery charging screens, calculator skins, lock screens, unlock sliders, task bar designs… There are even themes that radically change the way you interact with your iphone entirely. You want to stretch it, there’s some really amazing themes you can install. And all that is possible through Winterboard. I won’t get into it anymore, but if you’ve EVER wanted to customize anything visual related to the iPhone, there’s likely a Winterboard solution. More on Winterboard, and a theme gallery.

6) Veency (All) - Ever want to display your iDevice on your computer screen? I did just the other day. I wanted to show a group in Boston my favorite apps and ways to use the iPad… but I was in Chicago. So I loaded up Veency on the iPad and connected it to a simple VNC server I installed on my desktop. Put in the IP address, clicked connect and Voila! My iPad was displayed on my computer. From there, I used Procaster to broadcast my desktop screen with the iPad on it to the people in Boston. Everything you do on the iPad will be displayed on your computer. As an added bonus, you can even control your iPad via your keyboard and mouse. Works surprisingly well, although it does have some lag if you do it in full color. Dropping it down to 256 colors improve refresh speed dramatically. More on Veency.

5) Backgrounder (All) - This is becoming less relevant, but still important. Basically this gives your iDevice the ability to multi-task. And not that simulated multitasking that iOS4 has, but TRUE multitasking. Set it up and you can allow an app to keep running even after you leave it and switch to another. I use this a ton when I’m grading. Open up an assignment, leave it in the background, open up a few web pages including the Moodle Page and bounce back and forth between them without losing my place anywhere. VERY handy. Now, you can get yourself into a bit of trouble with this one. Put too many apps in the background and you’ll drain your battery more quickly and make your device anemic. So just keep an eye on what you have open and close what you don’t need. I haven’t had a problems with it, as you can have it put a symbol on the App icon on the homescreen, letting you know backgrounding is enabled for it. How to use Backgrounder on the iPad

4) Activator (All) - This is more of a helper app than anything else. It provides you with a large list of potential actions, and let’s you assign apps to them. For example, you can set it so that when you triple click the power button, the camera app comes up. Or if you hold in the home screen for a few seconds, it opens up Mail. You could also set it so that if you rock the volume buttons up and down, it’ll open up the phone app. Nothing fancy, but saves taps. And that’s a good thing. More on activator

3) iWhiteboard (All) – I mentioned this one earlier. When you activate it (see #4), it let’s you draw on the screen. You can change colors, marker sizes and grab screenshots as well. And when you’re done, one more click and it’s gone. Couldn’t be simpler. But very useful. Mark up your screen, circle the settings you want to point out to people, or how to use an app… and then grab a quick screenshot. I don’t use it often, but it has come in handy on several occasions.  Such as having Jeff Utecht sign my PDF copy of his book, Reach!   Tips on using iWhiteboard

2) TV-Out (All) - As it stands right now, only certain Apps have permission from Apple to use the video out capabilities. On the iPhone/iTouch there’s a cable with component/composite out, and on the iPad there’s a VGA connector. However, only a few apps have permission to use it! What if you want to display your home screen on a monitor or projector? Well, TV-Out will let you do it, as well as every other app you have. Turn it on (via SBSettings if you want!) and everything you do will be sent out through the projector cable. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best solution out there without going the Document Camera route. Setting up TVOut2 on the iPad

1) MyWi (iPhone) - This is the number one reason to jailbreak on iPhone. It’s 9.99 for the iOS3 version and 19.99 for the iOS4 version… and worth every penny. It allows you to turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot. It takes your 3G connection, bridges it over to WiFi and creates a hotspot that you can use to connect from your laptop or iPad or any other device. You have full control over whether it’s an open hotspot or secure, as well as how many can connect. It also works via USB if you don’t want to broadcast things out. It works incredibly well and it has saved my hide on many an occasion. Even if you just have it as a backup… I’ve used it at conferences, hotels, airports, coffee shops, anywhere that I’ve needed a quick internet connection for my iPad or laptop. Fantastic app and most definitely the #1 reason to jailbreak an iPhone. MyWi and the iPhone 4

That’s it! The 10 best reasons to jailbreak an iDevice.

Except while writing this I thought of one more.

Bonus Reason: My3G (iPhone) - I used to use 3G unrestrictor but am trying out this one right now as a replacement. They both do the same thing though, which is free your phone from 3G restrictions. Ever try to download an App and have the device tell you “You can’t download this until you’re connected via WiFi”? Or want to play a game, but then realize it requires WiFi? Well, these apps just trick your phone into thinking that’s connected via WiFi! Couldn’t be simpler. Of course, what you do with it is your business, but do keep in mind… Trying to download Google Earth via 3G will take a while. Doing a live video broadcast over 3G may be a little choppy. But shouldn’t it be your right to decide that you want a choppy broadcast? The most exciting use of it though…. is 3G Facetime. Imagine being able to do a Facetime chat anyplace that you have 3G! Well, My3G supports that right now. I haven’t had a chance to try it out, but based on twitter reports, it seems to be working fine. Once again, just scale your expectations appropriately. MyWi + Facetime = WOW

And NOW that’s it. Hope that helped. I’m not saying that you should jailbreak your iDevice. But if any of those things seemed worthwhile to you, it’s good to know you have options!

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Last night, I said farewell to some old friends. Aiden is growing older and we’re getting ready to switch him into what was formally the office/library. As I stood there staring at my bookshelves, I realized that it was time to let most of them go to that great library in the sky (the book recycling box in the Target parking lot).

This was not an easy decision for me as Jess will attest to. Many of those books I’ve had for a couple decades. I re-read books often, and a few of those books had been read by me dozens of times (no exaggeration). But in the end, I kept thinking about how nice it is to read books on the iPad and iPhone, and how much I hate carrying around a hard bound book or heavy paperback nowadays. In fact, the only time I turn to print anymore… is during the first and last ten minutes of a flight. Other than that, I tend to grab the iPad and read there. Yes, I still miss the sensation of turning the pages, and I look forward to the day when they add logic for pages to yellow and get frazzled the more you read an eBook (someone will do it, trust me). But other than the sake of nostalgia, it just didn’t make sense to devote a significant portion of a room to books that oh so rarely left the shelf.

And so I let them go. I kept a few of them of course. Any book that was signed by the author got an instant reprieve (yes, Will, that includes my copy of Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts). As did the yearbooks, photo albums and some comic books I’m not quite ready to let go (Is Paul dead? Batman investigates!). And then there were just a few that I couldn’t bear to toss into the pile.

Hickman and Weiss’s first DragonLance book was one of the first large chapter books I ever read. I bought it WAY before I was ready to read it and it sat on a shelf for about 4 years before I finally made my way through it. But that kicked off a love of Sci-Fi and Fantasy that continues to this day.

I couldn’t let go the Westing Game either. I know it’s a kids book, but something about that mystery continues to thrill me. Such a fun book, and one I look forward to passing on to Aiden some day.

I’ve always been a big fan of conspiracy theories, so the Illuminatus trilogy got amnesty. And in a related note, my tattered copy of the Principia Discordia is safe fnord now.

Other much loved books had to be let go. One of my favorite books was my copy of Mario Puzo’s Godfather. A simple paperback, but a fairly early edition. Old enough that the cover, back when it HAD a cover, said “Soon to be a major motion picture!” on it. The spin had long since surrendered and been reinforced with electrical tape, but pages insisted on trying to take flight. Rest in pieces.

In the end, this isn’t me saying goodbye to reading… Far from it. But at this point, were I going to buy a book, I am now confident that I can buy it digitally and always have access to it digitally on any device I own. The kindle alone wasn’t enough to make me that confident. It was seeing the kindle being made available on the iPhone and iPad. When something comes along that replaces those, I’m guessing it will be available there too. Yes, it’s a leap of faith, but I think the time is right to make that leap. While I’m sure there will still be books that I buy in print, that will be the last resort.

Viva la revolution.

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I’ve been resisting buying every case, stand and accessory that has come out for the iPad, although the temptation has been great.  However, I thought I’d share a quick post about the things that I have picked up so far and my thoughts about them.  For the most part, they fall under two categories:  Displaying the iPad and displaying what’s ON the iPad.  Oh yeah, and one other miscellaneous accessory thrown in at the end.

Displaying the iPad

When you first unwrap your iPad, it’s so beautiful that you know you must protect it.  A single scratch is enough to bring tears to the eyes of devoted Fanboys/Fangirls everywhere….  Ok, ok, I exaggerate a bit.  But that said, you will definitely want to invest in some sort of protection.  I personally don’t go for screen protectors.  While it does attract fingertips BIG TIME, that glass feels so smooth I hate to put something that’s going to detract from the experience.  That’s my opinion, but I know many will argue vehemently that it needs some sort of screen protection.  That’s up to you.

However, you will definitely want some sort of case or sleeve.  At first, I really had no idea what I wanted.  But I knew I needed something.  I decided to go simple and picked up the Waterfield Designs Suede Jacket.  It’s $21 shipped, which is about as cheap as you can get.  Basic suede sleeve that feels great, has small loops making it easy to get the iPad in and out of it and can even be used to wipe the screen clean!  No padding, nothing fancy.  Protects the screen and back and not much more.  But it worked quite well as a temporary solution for a few months until I decided what case I wanted to actually invest in.

The other short term solution I invested in was a basic wire book stand from Fellows.  I think it was about 5 bucks shipped.  Once again, nothing fancy, but it let me prop up my iPad when not in use to serve as a digital picture frame.  Also came in handy when using it in the kitchen for recipes.  Not exactly elegant, but highly functional.

Both of those have been retired and replaced by the case that I’m currently using.  After months of deliberation (literally), I wound up settling on the I-Nique Tuff-Luv Multiview Case in Saddleback leather.  What I really like about this case is that it has a flip cover that snaps closed, a decent amount of padding and it leaves all ports and buttons wide open.  However, the best part about it is the stand feature.  Through a series of snaps and flaps, it can be propped open in 5 different positions and it actually locks in.  Unlike many cases which just prop up the iPad, this one is sturdy enough to withstand turbulence, bumps by a small child and minor earthquakes.  That was a must for me.  While you can stand it up in portrait position, it really isn’t meant to.  So far, I haven’t missed that.  However, if you DO need that, there’s a newer model of the same case that is called the Tuff-Luv Bi-Axes that has some sort of a split in the case that allows you to prop it up in portrait mode at an angle.  The case comes in a decent number of leather variations, including faux leather if you like.  Consequently, prices vary.  Personally, I knew that I was going to be carrying this around quite a bit.  I wanted it to feel good and I wanted it to look good.  So I sprung for the Saddleback leather, which unfortunately seems to be unavailable right now.  I can’t tell you how many people told me at ISTE that it was the nicest case they’ve seen yet.  Personally, I agree and recommend it wholeheartedly.

One last thing before I wrap this section up.  Decals   Before I put my iPad in it’s current case, I wanted some way to customize my iPad just a touch, to distinguish it from the others that were out there.  For that, I recommend browsing the decals available on Etsy.com.  There are some really amazing ones there and they’re pretty darn reasonable.  I liked the look of the Ace of Apples, so I picked that one up.  Here’s a few of my other favorites.  And don’t worry, they’re easy to remove when you get tired of them.

Displaying What’s on the iPad:

The two accessories that I’ve purchased for displaying what’s on the iPad screen are the official VGA Dock Connector from Apple and the Point 2 View document camera.

Regarding the VGA connector, it does exactly what you’d expect it to…. sorta.  It will project what’s on  your iPad screen through a projector.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t send just anything through the connector.  In fact, there’s only a few apps provided by Apple that work with it.  The Videos, Photos and YouTube apps will display media through the VGA connector, as well as the Keynote App (when in Slideshow mode).  Safari will only output video content through the VGA connector, which is a major disappointment.  However, where Apple dropped the ball, other developers are picking up the pieces.   If you do a search in iTunes for “VGA” you’ll find a decent number of them.  In particular, my favorite two so far are Expedition and GoodReader, both of which I wrote about previously.  Kathy Schrock has created a Google Doc where people can see other apps she has found that work with the VGA connector, and contribute to it if you see that something is missing.

If you actually have to host a session on the iPad itself, you’ll probably want to project more than the VGA connector will allow you to.  If that’s the case, you have two options: 1) Jailbreak it or 2) Get a document camera.  I’m going to cover jailbreaking in an upcoming post, so we’ll come back to that.  As for a document camera, I picked up the Point 2 View based on the recommendation of several sites including handheld guru Tony Vincent.  So far, it seems to do a pretty decent job.  While it supports high resolution, I’ve had problems getting it to output consistently on anything higher than 640×480.  I’m not sure if that’s the fault of the camera or my computer though.  That said, it’s really intended to be used to take still photos of objects, but does a very nice job with the iPad.  It comes with a clip as well as a weighted stand and can bend into a variety of positions.  You can lock the focus on the iPad itself, so when your hand gets in the way it won’t try to refocus in on it.  It’s really small and perfect to travel with.  And of course, it works with both Mac and PC.  Price isn’t bad at all either, setting you back just $70.  There’s no light or fancy features, but it picks the screen up pretty darn well without it.  While I haven’t had it long, so far it has met my expectations.  Just be careful about that resolution.  Set it too high and it will freeze up.  And since it is just a document camera,  you can always use it for other classroom purposes as well!  Oh, by the way… it says that it’s sold out on their website, but it’s still shipping through Amazon.

Misc.

Didn’t know what to categorize this, so it gets it’s own category.  Since I got the iPad, I thought it would be great for hand written note taking.  However, I just haven’t been such a fan of writing with my finger.  Just didn’t feel right.  I figured I’ll pick up a stylus somewhere and make use of that.  Trouble is, due to the nature of the iPad screen you can’t just use a regular stylus.  You need one that is conductive, that mimics the human finger in some way that I don’t understand.  Pogo sells one for $15 that will work for all iDevices including the iPad.  I stopped by a video game store and found one for about half that price.  And it does work… but poorly.  The trouble is, it needs to be semi-spongy like the human finger.  It’s also rubbery.  So when you try to write with it, you have to drag it along and there’s a ton of resistance.  The only thing I can compare it to is like trying to write in wet sand.  You can do it, it just isn’t pleasant.  If you’re just tapping through the menus and such, the stylus works great.  Perfect for people that have muscle control issues and would prefer to grip something than use their finger.  But for writing or drawing?  I’d pass on it.

Wrapping up

So that’s it so far!  I haven’t tried out the Camera kit yet so I can’t vouch for that.  If you’ve used that, or have your own thoughts on iPad accessories, share them below.  What case are you using on your iPad and how you liking it?

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One of the first things I thought to use my iPad for was presenting and live demos.  After all, it’s such a sleek, elegant device, why on Earth would I want to lug my laptop around at all?  So I started researching ways to present from it.

First choice seemed to be obvious:  Use Keynote. There are a few problems though.  I’m not going to get into it, as it has been well documented in other places, but suffice to say there were enough issues that I decided it wasn’t the right solution to me.  Amongst other things, I didn’t want to have to convert 5 years worth of presentations over.

So I looked into ways to do Powerpoint directly from the iPad.  There’s been several articles on this as well, and so far I haven’t been thrilled with any of them.  Converting them all to images seemed a hassle, and wouldn’t support any of the ‘mouse click’ animations I use when navigating through slides (having things appear and disappear within a single slide with each mouse click, most often to highlight things).  Converting the presentation to video wasn’t even an option as my timing varies greatly based on the audience.  Most of the PPT viewers I tried only did an adequate job of displaying them. Often there were formatting errors, and none of them would support animations or videos.

Which leads me to the method that finally worked well enough that I decided to give it a whirl…  in front of a live audience… in an overflowing room…  full of administrators and tech coordinators… at ISTE.

Here were my requirements:  I needed a way to…

1) Display my Powerpoint accurately, with breaks for each of the animations I’d included.

2) Display videos quickly and easily.

3) Create text to put on screen as needed.

4) Have the option of navigating the web in real time for live demos.

5) Because not everybody is going to Jailbreak, I wanted to be able to do it without bending any of Apple‘s rules.

And here’s how I did made it happen.

The animations piece was one of the hardest to overcome.  Every PPT converter and/or viewer butchered animations, most often just by flattening them.  A major breakthrough occurred when I discovered a little plugin called PPspliT.  Install that and it will display a two button toolbar that has saved me hours of work.  One is an actual button, the other is a modifying trigger.  The button goes through your slides, looks for animations and everytime it finds one it creates a new slide from the new state.  The trigger allows you to ONLY split slides when the animation is triggered by a mouse click.  That’s the version I used.  So I selected the trigger, clicked on the button and voila!  Every time I would click the mouse, I now had a new slide.

NOTE: Don’t bother saving this version!  There’s no need!  Just do this conversion when you want to save and load up a new version.

The next part of the process was getting the resulting file onto the iPad.  While I may have been able to keep it in PPT format, I found that a PDF worked even better.  It was more compact, loaded more cleanly and always looked EXACTLY the way it did on my PC.  So I saved the file as a PDF.  On the PC, I used a a free PDF converter called PrimoPDF.  Like many others, it just sets up a virtual printer.  You click print, select PrimoPDF and it saves your document as a PDF file.  Really easy to do.

Now I have the PDF of my presentation with all animations broken out, ready to be transferred.  I could use iTunes and load it up into iBooks or something similar, but iBooks won’t project via the VGA connector.  The best app I could find for loading and projecting PDF’s was GoodReader.  I’m still stunned that this fantastic app is so cheap.  I could transfer my PDF via WiFi, via Google Docs, via Drop Box, via iDisk… or just use their helper app you can do a drag and drop via USB.  Incredibly fast.

While I’m talking about GoodReader, I also wanted a way to show movies.  Well it just so happens that GoodReader will handle .mov, .m4v and .mp4 videos as well!  I save most of my videos as .m4v anyway, so that wasn’t a problem.  But if I didn’t, I could easily use Zamzar,  Quicktime Pro or Format Factory to handle that part.  Using that same USB helper, I dragged over two videos that I wanted to share.

Now I have my PDF and videos in GoodReader.  Plug in my VGA connector, load up the PDF and I’m good to go!  Then all of a sudden I realized that I had forgotten to list the URL where people could get my resources.  Thankfully, GoodReader allows you to create AND project text files on the fly.  Just created a new file, bumped up the font and threw it up on screen.  Two clicks and I’m back into my presentation and ready to go.

It loads quick, it changes pages quick, and you even have two choices for how to do so.  You can swipe from slide to slide much like you would images in the photo album, or just tap the screen to do a direct switch to the next page/slide.  That’s the method that works best when you’re building a few bullets on a single slide.  Looks just like it would clicking through PPT.  Plus, you can pinch in and zoom on anything in there that you like.  Perfect for calling out a small URL.

When it came time to show videos, I just hit ‘back’ and loading up the video within GoodReader.  There’s a moment when nothing is projecting, but other than that there’s no problem.  Works great, loads instantly.  And when you go back to your presentation, you’ll be right back on the page you left from!

The only thing I couldn’t do within GoodReader was surf the web live.  For that, I had to use a different app called Expedition.  It was 4.99 when I bought it, but only .99 as of right now.  It’s basically Safari, but VGA out capable and has a built in ‘laser pointer’ to call things out on the screen.  Simple and works great.  I bounced back and forth between that and GoodReader a few times.

That’s about it!  GoodReader was my home base, with Expedition serving as a supporting cast member.  PPspliT allowed me to get my PPT’s into a format that was PDF compliant with minimal effort and then GoodReader took care of the rest.  All in all, it sounds complicated, but in actual practice it’s really simple at this point.  I have all my videos saved within GoodReader, and whenever I’m going to present, I just have to save and transfer a new copy of the PDF over.  Someday I hope to do all my PPT editing and creating on the iPad, but that day just isn’t there yet.

Before wrapping this up, I should add one more note.  There’s one other way to do presentations on the iPad that completely saved my hide a few weeks ago.  I was presenting in an auditorium, up on the stage.  Unfortunately, the projector and accompanying VGA cable was all the way in the back of the room.  They wanted me to load up powerpoint and then just use a clicker to navigate through it.  I wanted to do a live demonstration of a Discovery Education site.  So what did I do?  I plugged my computer into the projector, put my iPad on the podium… and used LogMeIn Ignition to remotely control my entire laptop.  It worked FLAWLESSLY.  Unlike ‘mouse’ applications, LogMeIn displays everything that’s happening on your monitor on the iPad screen.  You move the mouse around and navigate just like you would on the computer.  It’s one of the greatest apps I’ve ever used, and while it is expensive (30 dollars), I believe it to be worth every penny.  Yes, there are free ways to do similar things.  However, none of them are nearly as smooth, reliable, or simple to set up.  I have it set up so I can remotely control my work PC, my work Mac, or my home desktop at any time via my iPad.  It’s been a lifesaver many times over, and was a great way to do a live demonstration in this rather unusual setup.  Certainly got me out of a sticky situation and the audience had no idea that they were an audience of guinea pigs.  So while I wouldn’t say it’s the best setup for presentations in general, it is a great option to have available if needed.  Oh, and it’s also a great way to be able to use all the programs that haven’t been created for the iPad yet!

That’s it!  I hope this has been helpful to you.  And if you have any experiences of your own presenting with the iPad, please share a comment below!  It’s a new frontier and I know we’re all still working the kinks out of it.

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It’s been several months since I first geeked out and was the third person in line at the Apple Store the day the iPad was released.  Yes, I have embraced my inner (and outer) Nerd-dom.  At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it.  It didn’t take me long to change my mind on that.  Then I wasn’t sure if I could recommend it to others.  Once again, it quickly became something I could endorse wholeheartedly.  But the big question still remains, what is its place in education?  Is it the next big killer device?  Another in a long string of fads?  The perfect 1:1 device or a waste of budget?

I often include in my presentations John Candy’s line from Canadian Bacon, “There’s a time to think and a time to act.  And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.”  That certainly seems to encapsulate many institutions attitude when moving to iPad adoption.  In the few months since it has been released, there’s been just a FEW schools who are willing to commit to taking the plunge.

• Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania was one of the first to fire up the bandwagon, committing to giving each of it’s 2100 full time students an iPad.
• George Fox University in Oregon announced that it would give its students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad.
• Monte Vista Christian School already gave 60 of its AP students iPads with eBooks preloaded on to it.
• Gibbon Fairfax Winthrop High School was the first high school to provide an iPad to each of their 320 students.
• Northwest Kansas Technical College is going to provide an iPad to every student that registers for the Fall 2010 term and use it take advantage of the content they’re already publishing via iTunes U.
• The University of Maryland is providing iPads to 75 incoming Honors students this fall, continuing a program that has provided iPhones/iTouches to 280 incoming freshman over the past two years.
• Sacramento Country Day School in California is giving iPads to every sixth grader at no extra cost to their parents.
• Oklahoma State University will be piloting an iPad initiative with 125 students in five different courses during the fall term.

And that’s just within the first few months, the early adopters, the trailblazers.  The big question is… are they moving in the right direction or making a colossal mistake?

Based on my experiences so far, I’d say they’re making a good choice…  but might be doing it prematurely.  As a hardware platform, I can honestly say that the iPad is the greatest device I have ever used.  The battery life alone is a major reason for saying this.  I took my iPad on a nine hour flight and used it nearly the entire time.  Real world usage, not a battery test.  I watched a few movies, played some games, did some reading and typed out a few things.  After nine hours of usage, my battery still had 51% remaining.  That’s stunning.  Unbelievable.  Amazing.  And undeniably useful in an educational setting.

Anybody that has been through a laptop initiative knows that battery life can be the kryptonite of the program.  The idea of Anytime Anywhere is wonderful, but in reality once the computers have been used a few months it becomes more like LimitedTime, AnywhereThere’sAPowerStrip.  The very thought of being able to have students go the entire day without charging is crazy.  Just think about it.  They arrive to school with their iPads.  Use them in every class the entire day.  And then take them home to charge them.  No carts, no power strips spread out throughout the classroom, and it’s small enough that they can just slide them in their desks when they aren’t being used.

It sounds simple, but it’s one of those basic needs that can derail a program.  Beyond that, because the OS is so simplified, there’s no 10 minute waiting period while students power up and log in.  There’s no time to kill while students load up programs.  Because it’s so easy to jump on and off of it, it doesn’t need to be relegated to a specific time during the class.  It can easily slip in and out of a lesson without dominating it.  Plus, while keyboards are certainly handy, there’s no need for peripherals.  Onscreen keyboard, no mouse, built in microphone, absent power cable…  It’s just the student and device.  Simplicity is a very good thing.

Now that speaks to the hardware, the platform itself.  Then there’s the software.  And that’s where the “not yet” part comes in.  There’s A LOT to be excited about.  Video editing, drawing programs, music applications for real time performance and recording.  There’s office applications (both iWork and Microsoft compatible) as well as more than ample photo editing applications.  There’s e-readers, simulations, virtual frog dissections and interactive periodic tables.  There’s math applications galore, from flashcards to practice problems to interactive games.  You can view satellite images via Google Earth, or download maps going back to the Crusades.  There’s a ton of great stuff out there.  But the reality is, we’re just barely scratching the surface and the really good stuff is yet to come.

People forget, when the iPhone was released in the summer of 2007, there was no App Store, only web based apps.  It wasn’t until a full year later that people could download actual Apps onto their iPhones.  Developers had a full 4 months to create Apps for the iPhone before the App store was released, and during that time they were able to test their wares on the iPhone itself.  They knew the product, they could try it out, see what worked, what didn’t and explore the best ways to leverage the platform.

The iPad was a completely different situation.  Developers were forced to run the software on simulations leading up to the release of the iPad.  They couldn’t hold it, they didn’t know what capabilities it really had, or what the user experience would FEEL like along the way.  Consequently, nearly every launch app was really more of a beta release in some respects.  Now that we’re a few months into the iPad era, we’re just starting to see Apps being released that leverage the full potential of the iPad and the big players are finally identifying where they’re going to be making their pushes.

The point being, as good as the software is on the iPad right now, by the end of the year I have no doubt that the Apps will be reinventing the way we think of computing experiences.  The best is yet to come.

So with that in mind, would I recommend a 1:1 iPad initiative for schools right now?    Sure, so long as you have modest expectations.  Right now, there WILL be things that will frustrate you or that you are unable to do.  And if you need something that will be 100% effective on the first day of school, this is not the device for you.  If you’re looking long term and have the luxury of letting the App world catch up, a mid-year initiative would likely be the best time to launch.  Or if you can really think long term, I might consider waiting one more year for all those little details to be resolved by developers.

Regardless, I can say with complete confidence that the iPad is going to change the way we think of computing in schools.  As Chris Lehman often stresses, technology should be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary and invisible.  I think the iPad affords us the best opportunity of making idea a reality.

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This was a busy ISTE to say the least! While normally I make a point to hit at least a few sessions, this year it was all work. 3 presentations, 1 workshop, combined with booth time and a Wilkes grad course wrapping up made for a crazy hectic week. The one thing I refused to sacrifice though was face time with my network. It was an absolute pleasure seeing so many of you. Even 30 seconds face to face makes all those 140 character communications so much richer. As always, I wish I could have spent more time in the Blogger’s Cafe hanging out, but such is life. On the whole, it was a fantastic conference, and major Kudos to ISTE for organizing yet another incredibly well run event. Unlike many tech-conferences, bandwidth was never even a topic of conversation. The wireless was stellar, and the wired connections for presenters was the fastest I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t have been happier as an attendee and as a presenter.

Overall, the sessions went incredibly well. The big surprise to me was that the Policies presentation packed the room. Typically it’s a small, dedicated, hardcore group of people attending that one. This year, it filled the room up. Does this mean that we’re finally starting to turn the corner when it comes to making our policies fit the practice we know in our hearts is right? I’m starting to get cautiously optimistic!

For some reason, I seem to have Presenter Upload Deficiency Syndrome. Even when I have everything done in time, I always seem to screw up URL’s, preventing people from getting to my resources quickly. So here’s the links to the sessions I did at ISTE. Hope they help in a small part. I believe the Perpetual Learning Machine and Extreme Makeover presentations were recorded too. If I find them, I’ll link them up later.

Enjoy!

The Perpetual Learning Machine - ISTE/TIE Leadership Bootcamp
Policies Safety and Social Networking
Extreme Makeover – Education Edition (Note, this is a simplistic ‘deck’. Mostly live demo’s done during presentation)

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Saw this while hunting for a post on Darren Kuropatwa’s blog. You can see the complete article here, but I think the ‘ticker’ speaks for itself. And really drives home the need to teach information literacy. The amount of content being created and consumed on a daily basis is pretty unreal.

Don’t forget to click on the tabs, so you can see the stats they have available for Mobile and Games as well.

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I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of geotagging photos, but frustrated by some of the issues around the practice. Unless you use a smartphone as a camera, or have something like an EyeFi, it’s a chore to tag photos in this way, and a chore that not many take the time to do it seems. Those folks that have it automated thanks to tools like I just mentioned often fall prey to the opposite problem… overtagging. If you tag a picture of that spot on your jeans, is it really smart to add a geotag for it, forever locking it in to that location geographically within sites like Flickr? There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to find pictures for a location, let’s say Egypt, and having to wade through dozens of pictures of somebody’s toothbrush.

That being said, Geotagging isn’t going away, it’s only becoming more prominent. Need proof? Take a look at what Erik Fischer has manged to do. By using a few scripts, he took the millions of geotagged photos within Flickr and used the metadata to map out 50 major cities.

* Motion recorded by geotagging photographers.
* Taking all timestamps and location stamps at face value.
* Black is walking (less than 7mph)
* Red is bicycling or equivalent speed (less than 19mph)
* Blue is motor vehicles on normal roads (less than 43mph)
* Green is freeways or rapid transit.

Fascinating. Not only that so many photos are being geotagged, but that we are even able to track them based on the speed the person was moving when the photo was taken! Pretty impressive. Oh, and by the way, Chicago rates #11 on the list.

Quick informal survey: Do you geotag your photos? And if so, do you keep the setting on for ALL your photos? Or are you selective about which you tag?

Disclaimer: I’m participating in a local Chicago contest to raise awareness of first amendment issues. I’ve included the #1amend hashtag and URL to the original article in the title, so they will be included when people retweet this blog entry. Per the terms of the contest, the two people who get the most retweets using that hashtag will win a 16GB WiFi iPad. Since I already have an iPad, if I win the contest I pledge to give it away to an educator who reads this blog (details TBD). So if you enjoyed this article, help me out by clicking the Tweet button at the top!

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While doing some brainstorming today, I decided to do a search for articles about digital textbooks. One of the results was an article from David Warlick. In it, he mentioned how excited he was that his son had the choice of “bringing home a traditional, 400 page, five-pound, paperbound book, and a one-half ounce optical CD-ROM.” Of course, reality came crashing down when he realized the CD was little more than over-glorified PDFs.

He goes on to describe several characteristics he expects to see from digital texts. Some interesting ideas, it’s worth reading.

But what troubles me is that the article was written almost exactly 6 years ago. And in that time, there has been almost zero progress towards this end in most schools.

Depressing to say the least. That’s not to say there hasn’t been any progress at all. At Discovery, we have a Science service that has been approved for use as a textbook and is purchasable with textbook funds in the state of Oregon. Without a doubt, I think it’s on the right track. It has all the text one might want, but also videos, interactives, simulations, multimedia, bookmarking, read alouds, and assessment built into it. One could never accuse it of being an over-glorified pDF.

What’s concerning to me is how slow this adoption process is. While we’re working on getting it approved in several other states right now, for the most part a school can’t adopt a digital text even if they wanted to.

Think about that. It’s the year 2010 and most schools still can’t spend their textbook dollars on a digital solution. 21st Century skills? Meet 20th Century curriculum.

So what’s a teacher to do in this situation? The only thing they can… Pray they have an incredibly enlightened administration or fly under the radar. I think that’s what upsets me most. I see teachers that are doing incredibly innovative things to provide their students the best education possible, and more often than not they feel they have to hide their actions from the administration. In order to do what they feel is best for students and learning, they have to become fugitives within their own buildings.

In the end, for anybody who is patiently waiting for the digital revolution to come to them…. well don’t hold your breath. Unless you just happen to live in Oregon… or can convince your school/district to change the rules. Otherwise, if you want to do right for your students, you better be prepared to start a revolution of your own. Nobody else is going to do it for you.

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