Take Out from the Opinion Drive-thru

Microsoft Takes Aim At Apple With Business-Friendly 'Surface' Tablet

Microsoft is doing its best to make Windows 8 as attractive as possible, especially to business users, in an attempt to carve out a space in an Apple-dominated tablet market with its Surface tablet.

http://onforb.es/NgFa9I

Apple’s Retina-Equipped MacBook Pro Is a Sight to Behold

With its newest MacBook Pro, Apple has drafted another set of design standards and build philosophies for PC makers to follow, this time for high-performance machines. The next wave of portable computers will become even slimmer. They will lose their optical drives. Their serviceability will be limited. And the screens will get better — much better.

http://bit.ly/NO8CFk

50 Must Have iOS Apps for iPhone and iPad Users

iPhone is a great phone. Hardware and software aside, what makes the phone great is the app ecosystem. There are lot of apps available in Apple App Store and you will surely find lot of apps that you’ll like. In this post, I have listed 50 apps that I have found after lot of searching and trying.

http://bit.ly/NO66ik

QR Codes: Poetry & Speech Units

While QR codes could be used to direct students to any type of podcast, they are incredibly helpful for teaching poetry and short speeches. In such a context, students have the ability to choose their own “text” and listen, review, take notes, even evaluate.

http://bit.ly/NO6ygE

14 Ways to Use Garageband in the Classroom

Garageband is a great app that I think any student or teacher using an iPad should consider buying. It is a multi-track audio editing app that is as robust as you will ever need (unless of course you teach audio production). Later this week I will be posting a new page full of Garageband resources for teachers, students and learning. For now, you can get your brain juices flowing by reading the list below, watching the embeded ‘how to’ videos, and then go start playing with Garageband yourself!

http://bit.ly/MuvnYX

Obama directive means federal agencies have to go mobile — can newsrooms keep up?

Major federal agencies are getting 12 months to implement new mobile strategies, the White House announced on Wednesday. President Barack Obama says each major agency has to pick two “key government services” to make available on mobile phones. Obama said in a statement that “Americans deserve a government that works for them anytime, anywhere, and on any device.”

http://bit.ly/KjndTs

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"Take Out" with generous permission of americanvirus

CBL Research Tool

Since the ADE 2010 Summer Institute in July, my Challenge Based Learning team hascontinued to work on our projects-- building resources for educators who wish to earn more about or try CBL.

I decided to draw on my experiences with CBL last year to create a few short video modules on research and media management. My first endeavor was created using past blog & presentation material, Flickr Creative Commons photos, Voila, GarageBand, and Photo to Movie.

Dragon Dictation & Movie Making

I had the unusual experience recently of using my iPhone to help make a movie. No, I didn't use its movie camera. Instead I used the dictation app, called Dragon Dictation. I dictated my script over the phone and emailed myself the text. Now, granted, I might do something like this just for the geeky heck of it. But in this case it was pretty helpful. I was scripting a narration to accompany some movie screen captures , and I needed a rough idea of the timing, since the audio would have to be synched with the video (I used the iPhone as a stopwatch for this).

Below is the result. In addition to Dragon Dictation, I used GarageBand, iPhoto, Keynote, Voila, and iMovie. I worked much harder on this than my last module, but you'll see that I was not up to smoothing out all the rough patches.

Flickr Creative Commons Rocks!

This summer I put considerable effort and energy into creating some tools for teachers interested in trying Challenge Based Learning. For example, I created one called "CBL Media Management Do's". Recently, I completed a companion piece about the "don'ts" of media management. But there is a different twist,. On the first one I primarily used screen shots for my demonstration. But for this one, I relied heavily on Flickr Creative Commons photos. Though these pictures were not taken with CBL in mind, I still think that they help illustrate the points I tried to make in the narrative. Do you agree?


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The movie was created with GarageBand, Yahoo Advanced Image Search, Photo to Movie, Voila, Keynote, and Preview

Giving the Supreme Court Some Face Time

From time to time I link some of my little instructional movies to this blog. I've edited several this summer, but all of them have been for my film class or Challenge Based Learning. This is ironic because American Government classes comprise nearly all of my teaching assignment this coming school year.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, plenty of media is already available for current events and political issues. And secondly, a video presentation would not enhance many of my subjects what a podcast or slide show can do. The videos demand more time and attention, so the pay off is simply not worthwhile.

But recently, I was updated some podcasts on the court system, and I decided that a piece on the current Supreme Court would benefit from visuals. While facial identification of Supreme Court members is not exactly a major goal of the curriculum, I decided that a montage of photos would help make my points about Court demographics. Let's see if you agree:



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This movie was made using the following tools: GarageBand, Voila, Dropbox, and Photo to Movie

Quick and Easy Podcasts (at MAPSA)

I'm at Cobo Center, November 2, hosting an Apple Computer Breakout Session for the annual conference of Michigan Association of Public Schools Academies (MAPSA). Here's the description of today's breakout:

Quick and Easy Podcasts

In this session, join Apple Distinguished Educator Larry Baker to see how easy it is to create and edit podcasts using GarageBand. He will also take a look at how iWeb allows even a novice to stylishly share audio and video with others. As time permits, the group can sample interesting podcasts and learn that with a couple of mouse clicks one can subscribe to them for free at the iTunes store.

This is a labor of love. After all, it was podcasting that accelerated my exploration of educational technology. Now it is a fundamental part of all my courses. I will begin by showing how I began using them on Moodle and how I now use require student podcasts in all of my courses. I will then give a GarageBand demo. I hope there is time left over to take a stroll across the virtual campus of ITunes U. If not, they can come back, on November 3, when browse the Apps Store and the Apple Learning Exchange as well.

Click for Slides on Quick and Easy Podcasts

Apps & Sites Worth Revisiting

I would like to revisit some web sites and applications that I now lean on even more heavily than when I first recommended them:

Magnatune In Transcending Words (and copyright!) I recommended Magnatune as a source of Creative Commons music-- pieces by professional musicians that you are free to use so long as you give attribution. Each day I get a "Free Song of the Day"in my inbox. These have added up to a wonderful collection of music from which to draw for my projects. I now go to this playlist regularly for my movies and slide shows. A majority of freebies are classical and ambient, but I have found some wonderful electronic and blues music too. Excellent stuff.

Garageband I only use one little piece of GarageBand-- its podcasting feature-- but I have lbecome so hooked that I will enthusiastically present a break out session on this feature at MAPSA. It is so elegant, yet so simple. Now I can mix and edit my own mp3 productions with ease. Adding a Logitech USB Desktop Microphone, has even further upgraded my podcasts.

PhototoMovie These days, I often I produce an GarageBand narraton and then drop it right into PhototoMovie. This is the best $50 I spent these summer. Another simple application (Do you see a pattern, here?), PhototoMovie allows the user to add jpegs to narration or music and quickly piece together a movie that can be shared on YouTube. I have now produced several, like the Werner Herzog Filmography (play a few seconds of it in order to listen for the Magnatunes theme music by Lawrence Cresswell).

iTunesU Go to the iTunes store and visit iTunesU with its plethora of free video and audio podcasts from Duke, Stanford, Yale, NY Public Library, Library of Congress, New York Metropolitan Museum, Holocaust Museum etc. Using PhototoMusic I produced this little iTunes Preview to insert into a Keynote presentation I will make in October to Mame36.

Twitter "Enough already about Twitter," you may say. After all, I sang its praises in Why Twitter? But I use it more heavily than FaceBook or any other social media. Since the summer institute, many fellow ADEs have joined. Furthermore, some of the savvier sports journalists in town have jumped in as well. I find myself checking for filtered tweets half a dozen times a day. An addiction? No way. The majority of my professional, sports and political reading now comes from blogs that are linked by Twitter or my Google Reader.

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"Summer Revisited for Hope" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Madmoiselle Lavender

Death by PowerPoint and Resurrection by Keynote

I began a presentation last January by declaring that I didn't text or use PowerPoint. The idea was to put people at ease-- They were not about to be overwhelmed by a geeky, loves-all-things-techno obsessive.

Between you and me, I don't have anything against text messages. Neither my job nor lifestyle call for me to use mobile devices much. PowerPoint is another matter. It would be logical to use it in my job, but I've seen so many dreadful presentations that I haven't seen merit in learning how to do it. My greatest pet peeve is the presenter who reads his slides to us. And often the slides are terrifically uninteresting-- too many bullet points, etc. The fellow in the photo below pretty much personifies all that I loathe about slide shows.

BUT, I have had an epiphany. I am working through the Atomic Learning tutorials on iWork '09 with the idea of getting certified by Apple. Learning how to use their presentation software-- Keynote -- has brought unexpected pleasures. While slides serve as the spine for the presentations, the animation options and media integration allow for incredibly dynamic options. Recently, I completed a project that completely delighted me. I have been working on a Keynote presentation about my digital anthology for MAME 36.

I decided that I wanted to create a dynamic overview of the anthology, so I laid down a simple soundtrack with GarageBand and synchronized a set of slides with it. Here comes the cool part-- I exported the slide show as QuickTime movie. Check it out:

The Digital Anthology

So what to do with the movie? It has been embedded as a slide in the over all presentation. I suppose that I may still bore my audience to death, but it won't be because I chosen to use my slide show as a teleprompter.

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"GiardinaKARLSRUHE - Death by Powerpoint" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by alice_c

My New Recipe for Making Slideshow Movies

I found a sweet recipe for whipping up delectable slide show movies for my Film and American Government courses. This is simple and quick. Recently, I cooked up an American Political Party treat for the coming school year. Here's the recipe I used:

1) I recorded an mp3 with GarageBand. (Sometimes I just edit a "leftover") .

2) I searched for jpegs free of copyright restrictions. Some came via Advanced Image Search of Yahoo! in order to dig for Creative Commons photos. But the Library of Congress was a virtual treasure trove. The key to my search in their digital collection was to add the phrase no known restrictions on publication to any search. After a few hours, I had over a hundred public domain photos for my movie.

3) I created my title pages and other text files with Pages. It has wonderful templates for adding "spice" to my presentation, and it is easy to export the finished product as a jpeg.

4) I mixed my concoction together in PhototoMovie (recently praised in Summer Play with jpegs ). The mixing of mp3 and jpegs was simple: I simply dragged them into this easy-to-use application. The title pages and a few other slides were given specific placement, but for this movie I was not particularly concerned about matching the photos with the narration, so I set the presentation "Fit Photos to Title".

5) I exported this mix as a QuickTime movie.

6) I uploaded it to YouTube.

Viola! Sample my recipe and let me know what you think:

American Political Parties

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"Ingredients" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Frenkieb

Over the Top (The Tech Campaign Continues)

Part 3 of 3 - "Year in Review from the Trenches"

In Part 2, I had a chance to moan about "shell shock." But of course, I am not simply going to stay huddled on the ground holding my helmet. Here's my "battle plan" going forward.

* Focus on building my networks beyond my own building and aggressively seek a role as a Web 2.0 curriculum presenter and consultant. (Received confirmation of an October Mame 36 presentation two days ago. Woo-hoo!).

* Focus on media rich skills. I can make basic podcasts and videos, but I want to develop better technical skills with GarageBand and iMovie. The first weeks of summer "vacation" I am really immerse myself in this wonderful stuff.

* Ask fellow Web Warrior, Rick Strobl, to be my Sherpa as I venture as I get into the rarefied air of web media.

*While I dig into media applications, I will cut down my summer blogging to twice a week. But when I blog, I will naval-gaze less and try to engage my audience more. At the same time, I will more consciously "journal" in bursts through Twitter, giving my "followers" more content.

* I will be sampling academic lectures from iTunes U, to see how I can use the material in my courses. I have already begun editing two of these for the AP Digital Anthology.

* When I come beck to my internet classroom projects in the Fall I will focus on streamlined methods of evaluation.

* I will launch the Blog Squad at school in the Fall but will confine my efforts to a pilot approach.

* I am determined to keep pushing into social bookmarking. Sooner or later I will find another Diigo lover with mutual reading interests.

*I will love the heck out of the ADE Institute in July.

The Drive-thru will begin a Tuesday, Friday schedule next week.

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Photo: British soldiers "go over the top" at the Battle of the Somme

Ten by Ten Top Techs

As the end of the school year approaches I've been tempted to make lists of this or that, so why not go all out and make a 10 x 10 list?

My Ten Best Blogs this Semester:

Wrap that Red Herring in Paper

At Long Last...ebook Joy!

A Vast Tinker Toy Playland

Hyperlink Heaven

Techno Topsy-Turvy

Sage Schuste Seduced by Cyberspace?

Tooting Your Horn

To Leap Forward or Hunker Down?

The Digital Natives Aren't that Restless

Teaching Literature Unbound

10 Lessons I've Learned at Age 55

Tweetdeck Top Ten: @bridgers, @cultofmac, @englishcomp, @jackiegerstein, @markwagner, @Milw_Mac_Guy, @ScottElias, @mcleoud, @potsie, @TweetingTigers

10 Necessities of Education Reform by Judy Willis

The 10 Commandments of Power Point. How can people possibly think that reading PowerPoint slides to an audience is an effective way to communicate? This post by David Pierce is a must read for those who use (abuse?) PowerPoint or teach it to others.

My 10 RSS Feeds Knowing that I would just get depressed if I loaded more and more feeds into my Google Reader, I always limit myself to ten. Click here for my current feeds.

My 10 Largest Delicious Tag Bundles: finish, blog, tenthings, google, dadcalx, AP, mhs, 13, technology

10 Reasons to Tweet: The nine I wrote about in Why Twitter? plus this obvious one that I forgot: # 10 Twitter is perfectly suited for mobile communications.

10 Sites I Check Daily

10 apps or sites that I've enjoyed learning to use this year: GarageBand, iMovie, QuickTime Pro, Google Docs, Audacity, WikiSpaces, Google Sites, Twitter, Presentation.

10 Compelling Reasons to Teach with Technology

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"The 'Ten Truck' FDNY' Flickr Creative Commons Photo by stevejonesphoto

Transcending Words (and copyright!)

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 3 of 4

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language. - Herbie Hancock

I'm sure our great art teacher, Susan, wonders how she got dragged into this blog. But if she had not asked a question about copyright and music she would not have launched my adventure into the realm of Creative Commons music. This has been one of those fun Web 2.0 experiences where I learned to use cool tools while searching for content (see Geometrically Progressing. . . .).

Well, I basically ducked Susan's question which concerned student use of "all rights reserved" copyright music. By staying within the Creative Commons we all are quite welcome to take, use, mix, mash music files; usually with the mere stipulation that we credit the artist. Over the past few weeks I have acquired a collection of interesting CC music. This is very easy to do with iTunes. On the info tab of a music file, I always enter "Creative Commons" as my Grouping. This way with a couple of clicks, I can create a "Smart Playlist, locating the style that I might want to legally use for a project.

Presently, I am adding to my music library through Magnatune. This site presents music by commercial artists. For example, I recently downloaded a piece by Barry Phillips, whose cello music appears in Ken Burns projects. This piece is called, Polska fran Glava, and one can easily imagine how a student might use it for a slide show or movie. Magnatune customizes licenses for commercial use, but maintains a generous policy towards downloading music for non-commercial and student use. I subscribe to a daily download that's emailed each day. If I like it, I add it to my library. These tracks end with a narrative clip describing the piece, but this is easy to clip with Audacity or GarageBand. Magnatune is search-friendly and provides detailed information about the artists.

PodsafeAudio has music by independent musicians which is royalty free. I found a nice guitar piece by Lawrence Creswell that I have used as a thematic intro for some of my podcasts. Called Water Bug Dance, it has an NPR kind of sound. I found it more difficult to search for and find quality music on this site, but it's all free and copyright safe.

If students are looking for copyright-free sound effects, Free-Loops.com is a fun site. Again, all of the sound loops are licensed under Creative Commons. After downloading the WAV files, they can be dragged into Audacity or GarageBand and then added to a student's creations. Here's an example called, Chime Clock Sound. There is a terrific selection of loops for a person seeking to create his or her own music mix. While I am more than satisfied by the huge set that comes with GarageBand, I still like poking around Free-Loops. I strung together recurrent loops of Red Bass and started dancing around the kitchen until my wife made me stop.

If you or your students are into sampling, remixing and mash-ups, ccMixter "is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want." Sample packs and a capellas are available for free download and the quality is consistently good. Podcasters and movie makers can browse among some interesting remixes. I suggest starting with with Editors' Picks, where I found, Short Fuses Burn Long Bridges, by William Berry, who creates a very original sound. Many of the selections take a capella vocals and surround them with trance or club music.

I'm looking forward to dabbling with this stuff and sharing my new interest with some of my students. Unlike me, they might actually be able to come up with something artistic!

On Friday, Part 4 of this series-- Building Virtual Audiences for Students
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"Narumi [HPP] by me" Flickr photo with kind permission of p o m

Groovin' with My Favorite iTunes Artist-- ME!

Several weeks ago, Andy Mann briefed students, teachers, and parents at our school on social media issues . After meeting with faculty, he and I had some time to talk Web 2.0 shop. He showed me a number of interesting web sites and I shared what I had been doing with Moodle. The subject of audio files came up, and he casually mentioned how great it was to podcast using GarageBand.

For the past two years I have really enjoyed using podcasts in my classes and extra-curriculars. But for each of these activities I have been reliant on creating mp3s by telephone. Recollecting what Andy had mentioned, I decided to embark on a new podcast project using GarageBand. What a blast!

My Lit into Film students recently submitted detailed notes on two films for the purpose of comparing and contrasting them in a later paper. Rather than jot my feedback in red pen, I decided to try podcasting and then emailing my audio reactions to the students. Click to listen to one of these podcasts. If you have iTunes the mp4 will go right into your library. I only mention this because as I noticed as I was creating my twenty-five podcasts that I was loading my iTunes with .... me!

Podcasting and emailing took some time at first, but I thoroughly enjoyed the change of pace and the opportunity to really explain my reactions rather than scrawling cryptic written phrases. Besides, after I got the hang of it, I could make and send a detailed mp4 in ten minutes. The students appreciated receiving much more feedback than they would have gotten, conventionally. And as a bonus I was introduced to GarageBand, which has been ignored on my personal computers for three years. No longer!

Two last comments: 1) Podcasting was particularly suited as an evaluative tool for this assignment because general remarks were appropriate. 2) I am going to introduce Audacity to my government classes soon, so that they can have an experience similar to mine for our coming project. I'll post on that experience in a month or so.

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jpgs: "Doofus at Leisure" taken by Chris Baker & GarageBand '09 screen capture.