Back in June I road in the Great Ohio Bike Adventure (GOBA). It consists of a series of 45-6o mile bike rides over the course of a week. During our numerous downtimes, I was having a discussion with my uncle about robots and automated drivers. As we were talking, there was a point I wanted to make but I couldn’t… Read more →
Group chats made easier with IRC
It’s funny the cycles that tech goes through. When the Internet was in its infancy, everything was as open as it could be. The protocols were all based on open standards, and your machine could talk to any other machine. Then came the online services of the 80s. Compuserv, AOL, Delphi, Prodigy. Each service trying to keep you in their… Read more →
How to record touches and gestures for iOS screencasts
Tonight I was playing around with Assistive Touch on my iPhone. In the Accessibility Settings, Assistive Touch places a “button” on the screen. This button gives the user access to certain capabilities, such as the ability to push a virtual home button. Playing around tonight I went into the Favorites area. This lets you record a gesture, with which you… Read more →
Suspend Chrome tabs with The Great Suspender
The newer versions of Firefox has a great feature where upon startup, web pages in tabs aren’t activated until they are clicked on. It’s really nice when you’re restarting the browser with several tabs open. Unfortunately, Google Chrome doesn’t offer this feature. As I was searching for something like this for Google Chrome, I came across The Great Suspender. This… Read more →
Solve BYOD consistency issues with VirtualBox
In my district we are currently planning our 1 to 1 program. We settled on 11.6″ laptops running Ubuntu as the device. The problem that has arisen is how to we ensure consistency with students who wish to bring their own laptop. If they were Chromebooks, the BYOD students could just run Chrome. But with the flexibility of Ubuntu comes… Read more →
Take control of your notifications
Interruptions are deadly. Well, maybe that’s a little bit of exaggeration. But even three second interruptions can cause problems. I’ve decided to take back the notifications on my phone. First stop was the phone ringer. Apple doesn’t have a silent ringtone on the iPhone, so I had to search. In my searching I came across the article iPhone tip: Use… Read more →
Don’t interrupt me
Research shows that meetings and interruptions have a negative effect on our well being that may “…contribute to burnout, anxiety, depression and other negative emotions“. Combine meetings with interruptions from students, parents, other teachers, and principals, and you have a recipe for grouchy teachers! A person takes 8-10 minutes to get back into a creative state following one interruption. Here… Read more →
Pythonista, programming on your iPhone and iPad
Let me show you something that will make you feel young as when the world was new. — Dr. Carol Marcus I feel like a teenager again while playing around with Pythonista (Universal, $6.99), an app for iOS allows you to program in python directly on the device. It reminds me a lot about when I was learning to program… Read more →
Drafts for iPhone and iPad is the app you never knew you needed
On its surface, Drafts appears to be yet another note taking app for iOS. Once you dig into it, you begin to realize the power that it yields. After your start it (which is relatively quick even on my aging iPhone 4) you are greeted with a new note or your previous note. Once you’ve finished typing your note is… Read more →
“Well, better get unconventional.” — Dr. Ballard
“Well, better get unconventional.” — Dr. Ballard Read more →