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.

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This entry was posted on February 1, 2012 at 10:37 AM and has received 197 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.

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This entry was posted on January 18, 2012 at 5:08 AM and has received 182 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.

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This entry was posted on January 4, 2012 at 9:34 AM and has received 176 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.

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This entry was posted on December 29, 2011 at 2:01 PM and has received 178 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Today is the day we celebrate World Teachers Day.

It wasn't until I started working in education and my own child attended school did I realise the importance of schools in community. Police stations deal with many events in community that are not joyous or filled with learning (although I am sure some hard lessons are learnt by folks in that environment). Hospitals and clinics treat the sick and injured, saving and giving life but even there people are exposed to a mix of pain and suffering. An exception is greeting your newborn child or seeing someone cured.

In school there are challenges to  be sure, but we are teaching, nurturing, guiding and trying to prepare children to be the best that they can be with a value set that makes them a citizen of the planet. So today we celebrate those people who do that job of helping mum and dad guide their child along a path of learning and maybe more importantly understanding the learning.

Today is also Bill Gate's birthday, a person who like Steve Jobs has had a profound affect on the residents of this planet.

Today also marks the day that I have been using computers for longer than I have not used a computer.

Today I also have a birthday and turning 50 is always a time for a little reflection.

Last night I compiled my first iPad application and transferred it from the Mac to the iPad. It is a shocker of an app, it doesn't really do much and half the buttons didn't work, however I don't mind because at 49 and 364 days of age, I was able to do it by myself.

So thanks to a combination of Mr Gates and Mr Jobs - my 25 year involvement with computers at a professional level is something to celebrate because like the very children we are trying to inspire, mentor and teach it is self satisfying to feel that at 50 I still have the urge to bash away at something new until I know how to do it and be excited by it.

Today is also Hari Sumpah Pemuda or national youth oath day in Indonesia and it is also Bandanna Day where you can purchase a bandanna to help  youth cancer patients.

So I apologise for a self indulgent post, but hopefully the message of life long learning comes through loud and clear.... on this rather special day for me and a few others.

Now to get those two pesky buttons working!

This entry was posted on October 28, 2011 at 5:15 PM and has received 172 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Alison introduced me to a $4.50 iPad app yesterday called Creative Book Builder which allows you to create eBooks/iBooks on your iPad. I have focused in the past on solutions that start on the Windows platform because our standard operating environment is Windows and our teachers and corporate staff have Dell laptops issued to them.

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This entry was posted on October 5, 2011 at 7:07 AM and has received 755 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have purchased Dragon naturally speaking in the past and spent time training the software to recognise my voice which it did a reasonable job of. When I first purchased the product it cost quite a few hundred dollars, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw it for free on the Apple app store. It is called Dragon Dictate and a company called Nuance owns it.

Naturally I downloaded it and tried it out. It did a wonderful job and if you inject words like "full stop" "new paragraph" it will carry out those formatting commands for you.

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This entry was posted on September 15, 2011 at 6:34 AM and has received 408 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Chomp. Chomp. CHOMP. Our first mobile app has officially launched, and it's already taking a bite out of iPad screens across the country. Introducing... ScreenChomp! This free screen recording app is just the canvas you need to jot your ideas down and share them – with the world, or just a friend or two.   Helpful to anyone, but developed with teachers and students in mind, ScreenChomp records your touchscreen interactions and audio so you can... Send helpful tutoring videos home with students Allow kids to create videos that help their classmates Explain complexities from afar Record your most recent brilliant idea Share doodles with friends and family A whiteboard with many colored markers, a wide-open Canvas, and easy sharing through ScreenChomp.com or Facebook make it as easy as Record. Sketch. Share!   Learn More »

This entry was posted on August 24, 2011 at 11:32 AM and has received 255 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have been on this quest to offer a solution to teachers that would enable them to create a talking book. I had a few criteria though.

• You had to be able to use free tools to do it.
• It couldn’t be something that teachers thought was too difficult and not worth the effort
• It had to play on the iPad
• It had to play on other devices as well, including Windows
• As the book was read, words would highlight. (Don’t get too excited by this – it is not there yet, but more on that later)
• I also wanted teachers to be able to share the books with students and other teachers who had iPads without going through iTunes

I need to tell you that this has been a long time coming and I feel that out of our teaching community, about 90% would be able to create an eBook without audio after about ten minutes guidance (ie reading this blog entry) and of that group, half would be willing to have a go at adding audio and video to their book.

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This entry was posted on August 21, 2011 at 5:26 PM and has received 612 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Another great tip from Sally, a passionate teacher. The Northern Territory Library server has provided an online tutoring system for free for students. It is available 3 - 8 pm, Monday to Friday and you can go there online by visiting https://connect.yourtutor.com.au/default.aspx?GUID=ac00ff9c-bd60-46e3-9458-bb3969c73abe. There is a short explanatory video which will explain the service available at http://yourtutor.com.au/walkthrough/library/yourtutor.htm. Even though in the video it suggests that you need to enter your library card number, I didn't have to when I tried it yesterday.

So how good is that? You pick the subject, year level and your student, son or daughter gets a second way of explaining things which might resonate a little more with the child or even the novelty of having a teacher online might push them further.

This made me think of using our own extensive video conferencing solutions to deliver a breakfast session once a week using Adobe Connect or OCS. I would pick one of the 23 items I want to teach my son and present a 15 minute starter presentation and take any questions for the next 15 minutes. The time I am proposing is 6:30am to 7:00 for those wanting to view from home (you'll need ADSL 2 and live close enough to school not to miss the first bell), or 7:15 -7:45am. This would be once a week on the least maddest day of the week. Let me know if you think this is worthwhile and the topics are the ones I posted in this previous post

This entry was posted on April 13, 2011 at 5:54 AM and has received 501 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.