LearnShifting

 A friend contacted me the other day about a strange SharePoint problem. She had created two document libraries which she wanted to display on the front page of her school website.

The situation was quite strange and it was a real credit that this person who had only recently started working with SahrePoint 2010 had done all the right things and gone through good testing and fault finding.

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This entry was posted on April 2, 2012 at 7:29 AM and has received 112 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I have had two schools contact me wanting to add submenu links under the default top left menu item that appears on our sharepoint sites. You can't add sub menu items to this menu item by default... but we can hide it and create duplicate menu heading under which we can add submenu items.

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This entry was posted on March 26, 2012 at 8:24 PM and has received 798 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 We have been enjoying considerable success establishing SharePoint 2010 as the school website building tool of choice for a number of reasons explained in a previous posting here.

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This entry was posted on March 26, 2012 at 6:25 AM and has received 126 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 Last week I attended a course creator and administration course for Moodle 2.2, the latest release to be deployed within the Department of Education here in the Northern Territory.

I won't try to repeat the three days of excellent training provideded by Julian of Pukunui but I will note the things that resonated with me as a person who manages the backend of our moodle system.

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This entry was posted on March 19, 2012 at 5:07 AM and has received 235 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 I have written about cameras before and all have their place. The iPod nano 5th generation is a great small camera that captures in 640 * 480 format. The flipcam is okay but I never really got into it (plus Cisco stopped making them). Then I fell in love with the kodak playsport which is probably my most often used camera as it is used to film everyone from our Chief Executive to a basketball match. These cameras are waterproff to 3 metres and although not indestructable are ideal for students to use in the production of their videos. Kodak has recently filed for chapter 11 so I don't know how long that camera will be made. Anyone see a pattern here?

Now I have a new love and although in some cases not as easy to use for interview or documentary situations (I still prefer the kodak) it absolutely shines in others. The camera I am talking about is the gopro hero2d... It is the one on the far right.

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This entry was posted on March 16, 2012 at 6:39 AM and has received 117 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I am not a 3D modelling person but I appreciate it greatly.

Creating scenes for your up and coming educational role playing game or as a character leading your corporate orientation is available through these powerful tools.

Even using them to illustrate your talking book that you plan to build in PowerPoint or on the iPad would be able to use scenes you create from these packages.

Before we go on, these are free for non commercial use just so folks don't think they can use this to illustrate a paid app they sell in an online store. 

That out of the way...

Bryce allows you create 3D scenery andDAS Studio allows you to create 3D humans, aliens, monsters and anything you desire. There is a link between the two that allows you to place your created characters onto a 3D world you have created.

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This entry was posted on February 12, 2012 at 12:02 PM and has received 198 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

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 199 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 163 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.

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 224 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.