Tech Tutor Mark

I've been wanting to write this for quite a while, and I think now is the perfect time.  Despite the fact that I make my living off of "technology," I am becoming more and more depressed by a mindset that looks down on anything remotely considered "old technology," advocating that it should be thrown out and replaced with new and more updated technology.  In other words, just because something is old, technology advocates (which will remain nameless) are continually deeming it worthless or complete junk.  This frustrates me.  There is still a place for equipment considered "old technology" because the new stuff simply doesn't always accomplish what the older stuff did.  My picture above speaks volumes: New Coke vs. Classic Coke.  What was the result?  Classic Coke just worked.  New isn't always better.  Older technology isn't promoted because it makes very little "new money" for the manufacturers.  Of course I will offer plenty...

From OSXDaily comes this concise collection of must-know iPad tips .  These are some of my favorites, too.  Also, scroll down to the comments section for a few additional tips. 

O ur school district just purchased 625 iPads with Title 1 grant money for some of our elementary schools. In one week, I have registered and synced the first 120 of those iPads using multiple Bretford PowerSync Carts for iPad .  So far, the process has taken just over eight hours, with many more hours of setup ahead.  While I was away at a tech conference, Apple released a new application for Mac OS X Lion which could vastly simplify the whole process for us.  Here is a video by Randy Saeks from the TechRecess blog which does a great job of introducing Apple Configurator, which sounds like it may be exactly what people in my position have been looking for...and at least for us, it came just in time.   First look at Apple Configurator from Randy Saeks on Vimeo .

I have been a collector of Web Tools & Web Resources for quite a while now, and have been meaning to create my own list of favorites. This is one of the tools that keeps coming back and teachers recommend it repeatedly to each other.  While I'm at it, I'd also like to give a mention to one of my favorite online tech resources.  For those unfamiliar, Wordle is a tool that can serve the following functions in a classroom:  Brainstorming Tool  Improve Classroom Participation in Students  Turn Words into Graphic Communication  Get Kids Thinking about Words  Increase and Improve Vocabulary Skills. The list could go on, but that's a start. I belong to the Teacher Learning Community , or SimpleK12 .  Last year I won a vacation in Big Sky, Montana as a result of entering one of their online contests.  SimpleK12 is one of the best collections of EdTech resources you will find on the Web. Their continual webinars are second to none,...

PCMag writer Jill Duffy wrote this helpful tutorial on how to clean up iTunes.  It took two parts to cover the majority of steps you need to whip your iTunes Library into shape, but it should help a lot of iTunes users.  Here is part 2 .  This article is quite thorough and I found it very useful.

I created this video tutorial after making the teacher evaluation template for our school district. The steps included the following:  1) I received the teacher evaluation from a principal, who created it in Microsoft Word based on input from colleagues.   2) I converted the Word document to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Professional X.   3) I created the drop-downs for each option and the text-box fields. Drop-downs worked better because they allow you to change your answer. Radio buttons didn't work as well on the iPad because they didn't allow principals to change their choices.   4) I distributed this template to all of our principals, who now have iPads.   5) We found that PDF Expert was the best app to complete the evaluations. PDF Expert is a wonderful $9.99 app for the iPad. The best iOS PDF app on the market, or at least the best I've seen so far. Please watch this video to see how it all fits together. 6. The video was created using a do...

MOODLE is a tremendous resource for teachers who want to manage their course online, or to blend online content with a classroom environment.  Blended courses seem to be the way to go right now, and for those of you who have tried Basic MOODLE and want to go to the next level, here is a great video tutorial on how to create an online quiz .  MOODLE is quite complex to learn, so the best way to tackle it is in pieces.  I found the Quiz module to be quite tricky for new users because there are really three parts to it. This video breaks down each of the three parts very clearly in MOODLE 1.9 .  Ravi Makhija created the video and posted it to his blog . Click on the full-screen button in the bottom right corner to view it in the way it was intended: nice and large.  Moodle users: this is how to create a Moodle quiz.  Nice and concise and simplified.  Thanks to Ravi for making it easy for everyone to understand. 

Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers fame offers up seven great ways to quckly and easily share files.  I recently did a post on WeTransfer which has a 2 GB file size limit.  Now we have seven more .  Byrne, who is the foremost authority in "Web Tools," is a tremendous source of educational online resources, and these simple file sharing services raise the bar.  I'd never heard of any of them, so definitely check them out!

Being the huge movie snob/geek/collector/buff/follower/connoisseur that I am, I actually took the time to search out the best social network where people like myself might like to hang out.  Of course there are the message boards at IMDB , but I wanted to find a community that offered such things as chat, message boards, the ability to upload photos, share videos, and that also had news articles about the movie industry, lots of humor and gave you the ability to say and post just about anything you wanted to.  I found all of this at Jo Blo's MovieFanCentral and since joining back in November of 2011, I have become quite addicted to the site.  For those who don't know, the JoBlo site started back in 1998, and today the JoBlo Movie Network has thousands of loyal and avid followers.  MovieFanCentral is just a piece of the pie which includes Digital Dorm, Arrow in the Head, Movie Hotties, JoBlo Videos, and Pimpin' Poster Palace.  MovieFanCentral is merely the ga...

Geek.com did a nice comparison piece on the three big Smartphone OSs.  Here is a link to the article, where they compare iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.  It really does put things into perspective.  My Sprint contract runs out on March 1st, so I found this article helpful as I try to figure out which phone to go with at that time.  By the way, I've never owned an Android or iPhone before.  I'm admitting to being one of the Windows Phone users who signed a 2-year contract with an HTC TouchPro2.  Trying something new will be interesting to say the least.