Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • 21st Century Learning – Return of the Jedi #oetc11

    The slides are available on Google Docs, and I’ve started to put my
    links under http://www.delicious.com/mr.rcollins/partvi.

    Have you succumbed to the dark side? Do you use technology for good or
    evil?

  • Interview with Kent State journalism students at #oetc11

    I was interviewed by Amanda Murrow at the Ohio eTech Technology
    Conference:

    Star Wars for Teaching from David Smeltzer on Vimeo.

  • My presentations for the eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference 2011 #oetc11

    I’ll be presenting twice at the conference this year. On Monday, I’ll be
    presenting “21st Century Schools: Part VI, Return of the Jedi” from 3:45
    – 4:30 pm in Room: D230 – 232. This session will be on motivating
    students and teachers, while trying not to stray to the “dark side” of
    technology. The twitter hastag will be #rcpartvi.

    My second presentation is Tuesday, “An iPad, Kindle, and iPod Touch
    walked into a classroom…” at 3:45 – 4:30 pm in room: C213 – 215. This
    session will explore the Kindle, the iPad, and the iPod and how they can
    be used in the classroom. Alternative technologies will also be
    presented and discussed. The Twitter hashtag will be #rcmobile.

    For both presentations I’ll be using Google Docs, and will update this
    site with urls to the presentations. I’m going to try to use the “View
    together” feature, where participants can follow along and actually
    converse if they have Google accounts. For audio, I’ve set up a
    Shoutcast server and I’ll be attempting to broadcast the audio live
    while presenting. I don’t know how well it’s going to work, but it
    should be fun!

    Update: The “21st Century Schools: Part VI, Return of the Jedi”
    presentation is online at http://eduk8.me/nrMMMm. I’ve started to
    collect the links for the presentation at
    http://www.delicious.com/mr.rcollins/partvi

  • Distraction free writing with JDarkroom

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    While there are several full screen text editing apps, I’ve settled on
    JDarkroom. Written in Java, JDarkroom is a distraction free text
    editor, taking over your entire screen so you can concentrate on writing
    and not worry about new email or tweets. It is patterned after Darkroom
    for Windows     and Writeroom for Mac.

    I was using Evernote for writing, but it doesn’t have a full screen
    mode. To emulate the ability to sync my notes written in JDarkroom with
    my other devices I use Dropbox (Affiliate code in link,
    dropbox.com is the website without the affiliate code). Now I just
    save my notes into my Dropbox, and Dropbox takes care of syncing them
    across my devices. The Dropbox app for Android allows me to edit text
    files directly in the application, and there are several apps for iOS
    devices that will let you do the same. For mark up in text files I use
    John Gruber’s Markdown. It’s a very readable way to encode
    formatting in a text file. There are several libraries that let you then
    convert it to html or back to markdown. I installed the WMD plug in for
    Wordpress     which allows me to write in Markdown (or just copy and
    paste from one of my files.

    Yes, it’s a little convoluted, and as soon as Evernote as a full screen
    editor option I’ll probably switch back to it, it does work for me. 🙂

    []: https://ryancollins.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sc_1.png

  • Checking out Android

    As I prepare for my eTech 2011 presentation, An iPad, Kindle, and iPod
    Touch walked into a classroom…    , I decided that it would be
    beneficial to plan on questions about Android, Android Tablets, and how
    they may work in schools. The Consumer Electronics Show was held this
    past week, and during it a bevy of manufacturers announced tablets, with
    almost all of them running Android.

    Android is an open source operating system created at Google based on
    Linux. Google allows distributes this OS free of charge to be used by
    manufacturers and cellular providers on mobile devices. It competes
    against other mobile operating systems such as Apple’s iOS (used on the
    iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch), Microsoft Windows Phone 7, RIM Blackberry
    OS, and HP’s WebOS.

    I purchased a Motorola Droid off of eBay and received it this past week.
    I’ve been playing around with it for the last couple of days, so this
    isn’t so much as a review as it is my first impressions.

    (more…)

  • FIrst impressions of the MacBook Air 11″

    Since Steve Jobs blessed my MacBook Air and I received it two day early,
    I’ve had almost a week to investigate the 11″ MacBook Air. I opted to
    max it out, so it has 4GB of RAM, 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) and the
    1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. The educational price was \$1,329, which
    was almost more than I was willing to spend, but so far, it’s been worth
    it. The MBA is replacing an original 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook,
    which had been upgraded to 2GB of RAM and a 7,200 RPM 200GB hard drive.
    Before I ordered the MBA I did some quick calculations, and CPU wise,
    the MBA should be as fast as my old MacBook (the Intel Core 2 Duo is
    10-15% faster than the Intel Core Duo, and the MBA has a front bus of
    800MHz compared to my MacBook’s 667MHz). Adding more memory and the
    faster drive, it is faster than the MacBook that replaced it. (more…)

  • My Apple Event predictions

    Tomorrow Apple is holding an event to announce new products for the Mac.
    What will be announced is anyone’s guess, but here’s what my intuition
    is telling me:

    1. A new MacBook Air is pretty much a given. The rumors are pretty
      strong that there will be an 11.6″ and 13.3″ Macbook Air, and that
      they’ll be more affordable than the current Air. I’m hoping there is
      an 11.6″ because I’m ready to upgrade my original MacBook! 
    2. New MacBook Pros. This is something I haven’t read anywhere, but I’m
      pretty sure it’s going to happen. Why? I ordered two for the school
       district on October 8th with a shipping time of 3-5 days. A week
      later I received a notification that they would ship between Oct.
      21-26. Notice the first day is the day after the Apple Event. And
      now today I received notification that they will not ship until Dec.

      1. Apple must have something planned for the MacBook Pros, and
        originally thought they would be able to ship them on the 21st, but
        something happened and they’re planning on shipping them 6 weeks
        later.
    3. OS X 10.7
    4. iLife ’11
    5. Mac App Store – Apple added the ability to sign applications in OS X
      10.5 Leopard, and with the success of the iOS App Store will create
      an App store for the Mac. Unfortunately it will still go through
      iTunes, because for some reason everything has to go through iTunes
      with Apple.

    Anything I missed that you want to see Apple unveil?

  • Goodreader app now supports annotating PDFs

    The latest update to the best \$.99 I’ve ever spent on an all for my
    iPad just made the application even better. Goodreader now allows you to
    mark up PDFs, adding notes, highlighting text, or drawing. It can save
    the markup in the same file or make a copy for you, preserving the
    original.

    If you have \$1 and an iPad, this app is well worth it.

  • Bought my 6 year old daughter an iPhone

    My daughter is an avid reader and writer, so as she is preparing to go
    into 1st grade, I wanted to give her an outlet to publish online. What I
    did was set up a Tumblr blog for her at gracyl.ryancollins.org. I
    chose Tumblr because it allows her to easily post through email, so she
    can post through her computer, my cellphone or her mom’s cellphone.

    In the process of setting her up, I decided I wanted a more portable way
    for her to write posts. I thought about giving her my 1G iPod Touch, but
    went on eBay to look at the iPhone 3G (I wonder how you are supposed to
    use the plural of iPhone 3G?). They seem to be selling for right around
    \$150, so I bid on a couple and finally won one at \$138. I’m not
    planning on activating cell service on it and will use it just like an
    iPod Touch    . The advantage of the iPhone 3G of the iPod Touch is the
    inclusion of the camera and GPS (I’m not certain the GPS works without
    cell service, I guess I’ll find out).

    With the Tumblr app installed, she will be able to post to her blog
    anywhere she has wifi access. I’m excited to see how well it works, and
    if she’ll stay away from Tap Fish long enough to find out what else the
    iPhone can do!

  • Flowchart: Should you buy an iPad?

    I worked up a little flowchart in Pages on my iPad to help you make your
    decision on whether you should buy one. This post and the graphic were
    totally created on my iPad.

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