LearnShifting

I did what most folks did, downloaded ibooks 2.0 and read about the new features... I was going to paste the link but I am sure Apple won't mind if I promote iBooks 2.0 by copying in their promotional text. It is a free download for your i-everything from the app store.

Introducing iBooks 2 — now with iBooks textbooks.

• Experience gorgeous Multi-Touch textbooks designed for iPad
• iBooks textbooks are filled with interactive features, diagrams, photos, and videos
• Tap to dive into images with interactive captions, rotate 3D objects, swipe through image galleries, watch videos in full screen, and more
• Use a finger as a highlighter when swiping over text in a textbook
• Take advantage of Study Cards to help you memorize important highlights, notes, and glossary terms
• Tap glossary terms to see definitions of key topics and concepts without leaving the page

The iBookstore offers textbooks on Algebra, Biology, Chemistry, Geometry, and Physics from McGraw-Hill and Pearson.
These textbooks are currently available to customers in the United States. Textbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are coming soon.

iBooks textbooks are created with iBooks Author — now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.

Along with iBooks 2.0 comes a new and free authoring tool called ibooks Author, which only works on a mac and the books you create only play on an iPad... so there is an immediate dilemma for a school jurisdiction with only 3% of our computer fleet consisting of iPads.

[More]

This entry was posted on February 1, 2012 at 10:37 AM and has received 45 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Windows has a calculator built into it and has had one since Windows first arrived on a PC. If you have been using your smartphone to calculate numbers for the last year or two, you may have missed the fact that the humble calculator which also has a scientific calculator to satisfy those folks miss their HP Calculators of old... Ho Hum everyone says... I knew that.

But did you know that the humble calculator can now calculate differences in dates, convert area, volumes, angles and many other units.

And wait, there is more! It provides four handy little worksheets to calculate a mortgage, car lease and fuel economy in either miles or kilometres per gallon or litre.

Not bad for a humble calculator. Open calculator and click on View in the menu bar to access these goodies.

This entry was posted on January 20, 2012 at 9:22 AM and has received 78 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I have been attending the RunRev online game academy which is designed to teach you how to build a game, in this case  a side scrolling game where you avoid enemies and try to collect bonuses.

[More]

This entry was posted on January 18, 2012 at 5:08 AM and has received 106 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I am not yet an android operating system user but just like the influx of iDevices into our education network - iPad, iPhone, iPod - we have encountered a little glitch with Android devices. Version 3.1 is required to join using our proxy configuration. A lot of devices at the time of writing this are running 3.01 which does not support proxy settings. I had a quick look on forums and there appear to be some folks having problems AFTER they upgrade to 3.1 from 3.01 so I am not sure yet whether the "fix" exposes more problems.

So please inform yourself before performing any upgrade... :-)

If there are any Android users out there on our education network (you will know who you are) please let me know via comment or email if you have enjoyed success or otherwise in connecting your device to our wireless network.

This entry was posted on January 6, 2012 at 11:19 AM and has received 91 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Someone sends you a file with a video embedded in it... Hoe do you get it out? Solution is easy. Change the file extension from .pptx to .zip and extract the video from the media folder within the resultant zipped archive.

Longer Microsoft step by step technote here

This entry was posted on January 4, 2012 at 3:15 PM and has received 79 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Happy New Year to all readers. As you know, New Year brings more than hangovers… it brings resolutions. My resolution is to run an informal learning event on how to build an application for an iPad, an iPhone or an Android device. For those Windows and Linux folk out there, you can use the same language for all platforms.

The language is called Livecode and it is from a company called RunRev.

[More]

This entry was posted on January 4, 2012 at 9:34 AM and has received 94 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have just returned from holidays and luckily my camera was not stolen, but if it was, I would have checked out http://www.stolencamerafinder.com which allows you to enter the serial number of the camera (so go and write it down right now) and the website will trawl the web looking for photographs that have the same information (exif data) stored within them.

There is a great article in the Age Newspaper about the website and success stories.

[More]

This entry was posted on December 29, 2011 at 2:01 PM and has received 100 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 Our Human Resource team and Information Services team developed an online orientation package which was nominated for a category in this year's Chief Ministers awards. We didn't win, but we were a finalist which means we came second or third as they don't distinguish between the two. Maybe the saying that nobody remembers who came second could be rolled out, but personally it was wonderful that the program was nominated and then made into the final three.

[More]

This entry was posted on November 22, 2011 at 6:40 AM and has received 158 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I am cross-posting this from my aviation blog because there are some photos of places on the outskits of Darwin that folks may wish to use in the classroom... For instance did you know that Z force was based on Catalina Island? Do you know that they breed giant clams on Channel Island?

http://www.xsymetrix.com.au/tefc/index.cfm/2011/11/16/The-new-detention-centre-from-700ft

This entry was posted on November 16, 2011 at 9:04 AM and has received 151 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I use a blog tool created by Ray Camden. I love it and use an online editor to create my blog posts. One small annoyance is that I have to upload graphics into my blog and then point to them from the article so that it appears embedded... like this picture of a storm taken from my office window.

It would be better if I, and other folks building school websites using SharePoint 2010 could use Microsoft Word 2010 to creating an article, copying and pasting pictures into the word document as they saw fit and then with a button click or two have the whole article, complete with pictures transported up to the website with the layout they had created in the word document.

[More]

This entry was posted on November 16, 2011 at 6:27 AM and has received 175 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.