Two new apps for the Kindle Fire

A few weeks ago I published a blog entry entitled "20 Essential Apps for Educators" that listed what I felt were the top 20 apps for educational use. Today I'd like to add two more apps that I've found in the last few weeks.

New App #1: Go Launcher Ex

One of my biggest complaints about the Kindle Fire when I first got it was the homescreen. I felt like the turnstile that was used to scroll through previously viewed items took up WAY more space than it needed. And I missed the ability to have Android "widgets" placed on my home screen.

But with the Go Launcher Ex program a Kindle Fire user can setup his or her user interface more like an Android tablet or cell phone. Like most cell phones, there are five possible screens to scroll through, with the middle screen being the "Home" screen.

Using Go Launcher Ex, here's what my home screen now looks like:

Notice how I have widgets for my Touchdown program that display on the screen both my unopened emails (in the example above I didn't have any) and my upcoming appointments. I also have my most often used apps on the screen, and I'm better able to organize my other apps (placing utility programs on one page and games on the next.

I will say this, though: I miss the old home screen. For as much as I had complained about it before to other people, I guess I'd gotten used to it. It was unique. Now I feel like I'm just holding an oversized smart phone in my hand.

The old home screen isn't gone, though. It's called "Kindle Launcher" and is in with the other apps (and I placed it as the bottom left most icon on my home screen, sort of like the Windows "Start" button). If I go into the application settings and go to Go Launcher Ex and clear the default settings, the situation will reverse, and the Kindle Launcher will once again become the homescreen and Go Launcher EX will be just another app in the list of apps.

I'm going to leave the Kindle the way it is for now, though, and I'll decide after a few weeks of use which I like better.

You can download the Go Launcher EX program by clicking this link.

New App#2: Prezi Player for the Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire is an Android device, and Prezi's don't work on Android devices. Except that one guy has found a workaround. It's a bit clunky and involves the installation of actually TWO different programs, but it doesn't require rooting the Kindle Fire. I'll be honest, though: it's a little trickier than anything I've recommended before, including sideloading apps. Directions can be found on this page.

Netbooks added to Tablet Decision Maker

The Mobile Device Decision Maker, which I wrote about in a previous blog post, has been updated now to include netbooks. The new spreadsheet can be found at the link above.

Originally I didn't include netbooks because--in my mind--netbooks aren't really a separate category. They're just a low end laptop. However, after consideration, I decided that a) in many people's minds, they ARE a separate category, b) there is a noticeable difference in ability between netbooks and the kind of laptop that I was scoring in the "laptop" category, and c) the spreadsheet WAS distinguishing between high end and low end Android devices, so it was only fair that I also distinguish between these upper end laptops and a netbook.

In addition to adding netbooks, I also added a 41st descriptor to the spreadsheet: "Boot Up / Wake Up Time." I added that as a result of considering the question of "Exactly what is it about netbooks that makes them less desirable than--say--an iPad?". One answer is the overall processing time of the netbooks is slower (a web page that a powerful desktop might pull up in a second and an iPad in a second and a half might take a netbook 8 or 10 seconds to open), but another problem with netbooks is the overall time it takes to boot them or wake them up. They're definitely not "instant on."

In any event, as I said when I first created this spreadsheet, I'm just one guy, so if you feel my scoring of the netbook--or any other device, for that matter--isn't quite right, let me know and together you and I can figure out what it ought to be.

Should We Teach Digital Citizenship?

Last week I had a conversation with a colleague of mine about the teaching of digital citizenship in school. This person asked me if I thought we NEEDED to teach digital citizenship and whether or not it was right for the state or federal government to FORCE local school districts to teach it.

I don't want to address the second issue at all (This blog isn't about politics and I don't want it to be), but as to the first question, whether or not we NEED to be teaching digital citizenship, the answer is absolutely!

And if you want proof that it's needed, I submit to you the following photograph, which I took while standing in line at a Subway sandwich shop:

We live in a world where people have to be TOLD to turn their cell phones off while placing an order! So yes, apparently we need to teach students the right way to act in the 21st century.

So that Subway Restaurants, Incorporated doesn't have to!

P.S. There's something ironic, though, to the fact that--while the Subway worker was standing behind the counter waiting for me to tell him what kind of cheese I wanted on my 6 inch Sub--I held up my hand and said, "Hang on! Let me get a picture of this!" and then proceeded to get out my phone and use it while placing my order so that I could write this blog post about how people had to be told not to use their phones while placing their orders.

Stranger at the Door

Every now and then something happens at work that knocks my pride down a notch or two...

Yesterday I was bringing a CPU over to my system administrator's office. It's at Lloyd High School, in an old part of the building that USED to be the principal's office. It's right beside what USED to be the front doors of the building, but now are just doors that nobody uses anymore because they're hidden by the new cafeteria . But I parked beside the cafeteria and walked over to the windows of my system admin's office, figuring that he'd let me in the building.

The only problem was that he wasn't in his office. So I walked over to the old entrance doors. I don't have a key to the doors, and as I said, this is an OLD entrance, old enough that it doesn't have an electronic key card reader on the locks. But I peered into what USED to be the main lobby of the building (and which is now an art exhibit hall) and saw, in the doorway of the gymnasium across the lobby/exhibit hall, six students. I motioned for one of the students to come and let me in. They didn't budge. I watched as they pointed at me for a few moments and talked among themselves. Once they finished their conversation they all turned towards me and started shaking their heads and pointing towards the CURRENT front entrance of the school.

I started to get angry. Didn't these kids know who I was? But I couldn't really get angry because the answer was obvious: No, they DIDN'T know who I was. And actually, they were doing the exact right thing. They shouldn't let a stranger into the building.

I got on my cell phone to call my system administrator to see if he was SOMEWHERE in the building and could let me in. While I was on the phone, a Lloyd teacher--I'll call her Emily--came walking by and the girls stopped her and pointed at me and talked to her. I hung up my cell phone, figuring she was going to let me in. After talking to the girls for a moment, she walked over to the door and shouted (I heard it through the double glass as barely above a whisper), "This isn't the main entrance anymore! You'll have to drive around to the front of the building and they'll let you in there!"

I looked at her with a smile on my face, thinking she was kidding. I pointed at the door handle. She frowned. "Sir, you're going to have to go to the front entrance! You can't come in here!"

"Emily!" I shouted back. "It's me! Bryan!"

"I'm sorry, sir," she said with a scowl. "You need to go around to the front of the building, or I'm going to alert the administrators!"

No smile cracked through her demeanor. She really didn't know me. I waved her off. "I'll walk around!" And I did. And as I did so a single thought occurred to me:

I need to get out in the buildings more often...

The Proper Use of a Prezi Presentation

The first time I ever saw a Prezi presentation, I immediately saw the potential for the site. With its swooping movement and its ability to drill down further and further into the details of something, I saw that Prezi was perfect when you had connecting ideas that didn't fit on a PowerPoint presentation. It was just right for showing off complex relationships, especially when there were varying levels of detail.

Unfortunately, I've rarely seen that kind of Prezi. What I mostly see are presentations that could just as easily have been a PowerPoint but that were placed into a Prezi so that people in the audience could be ooh'ed and awed by the dizzying movement. And I guess it must have worked to that effect, because the site has caught on and now it seems like everyone is using the site, whether it makes any sense or not, and whether the ideas in the presentation are connected in a visual way or not.

And as a result, I'm about as frustrated by a Prezi presentation as I am by a boring PowerPoint presentation.

Over the weekend though, I stumbled upon the website below, which shows EXACTLY the kind of information for which the Prezi tool works best. It's absolutely worth your time to check it out, especially if you're a science teacher.

Before I post the link, though, a disclaimer--the site isn't constructed solely using Prezi. It does look like it's a Prezi that's been modified by people with a working knowledge of Flash, but it's not something that a typical user could create on his/her own. It's not THAT much more advanced, though, and--as I said--at least it demonstrates the kind of subject that really works with a Prezi.

Visit the site.

My Least Favorite Day

It's that time of year again! One of my least favorite days of the year.

Let me back up and explain...

More than a year ago, our local cable system made the switch from an analog/digital broadcast format to an all digital broadcast format. Once that switch was made, any TV without a digital tuner (i.e. any TV more than 3 or 4 years old) could no longer display the digital only signals getting pumped through the cable. In my school district, virtually every TV is more than four years old. As such, on that day a year and a half ago, ALL of those TV's went dark.

The cable company, though, is required by law to provide cable TV for free to classrooms, so they sent to every school an analog to digital converter, one for each TV in the building. Sounds like a great solution, right? Except for one thing: These digital tuners require a much stronger signal than do the tuners built into the analog TV's. And the cable signals in our buildings are infamously weak. In the new wing of the high school, each classroom cable is split by a signal amplifier, which attaches to the electrical power of the building and increases the gain of the signal, but in all of the rest of the high school and in all of the rest of the buildings, the cables are split with 22 cent coaxial splitters, and they're usually split time after time after time, making for a VERY weak signal.

If an analog TV has a weak signal, it will still display the picture. It will be snowy, sure, but it will still display the signal. With a digital tuner, though, a weak signal isn't shown AT ALL. And that's what happened in the majority of our classrooms throughout the district. Sure, we could have purchased signal amplifiers for each building at the cost of thousands upon thousands of dollars, but when I went to the building administrators with this possibility, they immediately nixed the issue.

"Who cares?" one of them said in our monthly administrators' meeting. "No one watches cable TV in class, anyway. Everything's United Streaming" [an educational streaming service that the state of Kentucky provides to every Kentucky public school] "or YouTube or something like that." The other administrators all agreed that this wasn't an issue worth worrying about. Some even said they were glad that the cable was gone from the classroom because now they didn't have to worry about walking in on teacher's in their classrooms on their planning periods who were watching soap operas. So everything was rosy.

Until.

Until the first day of the men's NCAA basketball tournament. On that day, the same principal who had said to me that no one watches cable TV anyway called me and said, "Bryan, can you do whatever your magic is so that we can watch basketball over here?" I had to inform him that--despite his apparent misconception that I was a supernatural creature--I did not, in fact, have any magic that could make a weak digital cable signal work on an analog TV. He was actually pretty angry with me. "You KNEW this was going to be a problem, didn't you?" he shouted. "Well, then, will you unblock the CBS website so that we can watch the games over the Internet?" (For the record, I don't have the CBS website blocked, just the part of the site that streams the video.)

"I can't do that," I said. "It would be a violation of our district AUP for staff or students to watch it. Besides, we don't have the available bandwidth to support bunches of people watching online video all at once."

"So what are my options?" he said in an irritated voice.

I wanted to tell him, Maybe you could forget about the games and actually do your job. But hey! The University of Kentucky was playing, and I've learned from a lifetime of living in the Bluegrass that you don't mess with a Wildcat fan. "You could purchase an over the air digital to analog converter at Wal-Mart and a cheap rabbit ears antennae, and you could hook them directly to a TV. It'll cost about $60."

"How much?"

"About $60," I said. "Six months ago you could have gotten a coupon from the federal government and gotten the converter for free, but that program's over now."

"No way I'm paying $60!" he said. "Forget it!" And he hung up.

I felt bad for the guy, but can I tell you a secret: I'm GLAD that the games can't be shown in the classrooms. It eliminates the temptation. When I was a teacher at the high school, I resented the other teachers in the building who played the games. Students would come trouncing into my afternoon classes and say, "Hey, Mr. Sweasy! Can we watch the games?"

"Nope," I told them. "We're here to learn English, not to watch basketball."

"But Mr. _______________ let us watch it last period!" someone would shout, and then I'd get a laundry list of other teachers who were letting their students watch. I would inevitably give in and hold the game like a carrot above their heads.

"Let's get _______________ done first," I'd say, "and then we'll turn the game on and watch it for five minutes--FIVE MINUTES--before coming back together and doing ______________. Once we finish that, we'll watch again for five minutes. Is that okay?" They would always say that no, that wasn't okay, that we should watch the game for the whole period, but when I told them that it was a take it or leave it proposition, they always took it.

So I'm actually glad to remove that whole argument on behalf of the teachers.

But still, this is the one or two days out of the year when everyone realizes that their cable TV doesn't work anymore.

KySTE Conference 2012--My Final Take

The last two posts I've made have focused on what I "got" out of the 2012 KySTE Conference. Since the final day of the conference included only three sesssion time slots, and I actively partipated in two of them, I "got" a little less out of the final day than I (hopefully) "gave." So instead of focusing on that, I'd like to focus this final post on the conference as a whole...

I thought the third KySTE Spring conference was fantastic! The board did a tremendous job of organizing and pulling off a very professional conference. And I don't just say that because I'm on the board! Actually, as Past President of the organization, I probably had the smallest role of all of the current board members. President Jeff Jones and Executive Director Gary Grant did most of the heavy lifting, and they did so successfully.

After the conference, after all of the attendees had headed for home (or for local pubs to watch the UK basketball game), after all of the donated computers had been packed away and sent back to their respective homes, after we'd cleared out of the registration area so that the United League of Pentecostal Women could come in and start registering people for THEIR conference (I'm not lying here--they had taken over half of the registration area in the East Galt House while we frantically worked to get our stuff out of the other half of the area, and believe me, I'm not getting a bunch of Pentecostals all worked up!), and while vendors disassembled their "intelligent" classrooms and the convention staff from George Fern started tearing down the vendor hall, those KySTE board members who hadn't made an early exit for home gathered in the Magnolia Cafe for a debriefing and (more importantly) late lunch.

While we ate, we discussed what went well, but--as always seems to be the case--spent most of our time focused on the problems that needed to be fixed. The Members Only reception at the Hard Rock Cafe Thursday night was one issue that needed to be resolved. We turned away about 50 people who didn't preorder tickets, but we ended up with about 100 no shows, meaning that we could have allowed all 50 of those people in. How to fix that for next year was a topic of discussion. Another topic: the raffle during the vendor grand opening. A number of the people who put their names in the raffle drawing either weren't there or had left before the drawing or couldn't hear their names being called over the loudspeakers. We talked about that and decided that we may have to come up with something similar to what we did this year at the closing--that is, have people turn a ticket in when they ARRIVE at the vendor grand opening so that at least we know they were there at some point. Another issue--the lack of effectiveness of our ETAN booth. If you don't know what an ETAN booth is, well, then that says about all there is to say about how effective it was this year. I'm sure that'll be addressed for next year as well.

But as we sat there listing ideas, I said to the table, "If our biggest problems are that we turned people away from an after hours event, and we couldn't give prizes away at a vendor hall opening, then I think we're doing pretty good." And I really believe that. This was only the third KySTE Conference to occur in the spring at the Galt House (Prior to that, the KySTE Conference was a summer affair held--usually--in the home district of the KySTE Vice-president), and each year we've had the conference at the Galt House, the problem list at the end of the day debriefing has gotten smaller and smaller. And more importantly, the importance of the problems have gotten smaller and smaller as well.

At the end of the first conference, the number one problem was the difficutly getting on the Galt House Internet. Whether attendees attached via the wired network or tried the nightmare that at the time was the Galt House wireless network, they usually found that--connect or not--there was no bandwidth available. That's because the Galt House had a whopping 10 MB of bandwidth at the time for EVERY guest, both those in their rooms and those in the meeting room spaces. So even if you COULD get on the network, the bandwidth was maxed out. Another problem at the time was the KySTE dinner, a catered meal at the Galt House attended by almost all attendees on the second night of the conference. The problems were that a) the dinner was VERY expensive for KySTE and b) NOT the right place to have an awards ceremony (No matter how polite people are, if you put them at a circular table with food they're going to talk to one another). A third big complaint was with the organization of the conference, which had been ported to the spring from our annual summer conference. At the time all three days of the conference were open session days (like Thursday and Friday were this year), and there was a complaint from some administrators that it was too hard to have teachers out of the district for three straight days when school was in session. Finally, several attendees complained that there was no continental breakfast for attendees--not even a cup of coffee! While none of these meant that the conference was a dud (It was actually a roaring success!), they were SERIOUS issues that needed to be addressed.

And they WERE addressed for the 2011 KySTE Conference. First, working with Insight and the Galt House, KySTE increased the available bandwidth during the conference from 10 MB to 100 MB. This fixed the network problems for session presenters, who could plug into the network with an Ethernet cable and get out to the Internet just fine. What it DIDN'T do, though, was fix the slow, 802.11b wireless network of the Galt House, so regular attendees without 3G cards had no hopes of getting any Internet access. Second, the dinner was scrapped and the awards ceremony moved to the closing session, where people would be sitting in straight lines and paying attention a little better. This created a new problem, though, which was that the closing ceremony became TOO long. A second problem was created when some of the money previously spent on the dinner was moved to providing hot food for attendees at a lunchtime vendor opening. KySTE wasn't prepared for how hungry people were going to be, and ended up spending more than twice as much as planned on the food for the vendor opening, and STILL people were dissatisfied with how much food there was. On the positive side, though, some of the money saved from the dinner was able to fund a continental breakfast on both the second and third day of the conference. Finally, a third major change LAST year was the reorganization of the conference schedule so that the first day was for non-teachers only (administrators, CIO/DTCs, TRT's, and technicians). Teachers only attended the last two days of the conference.

To address the new issues from last year, KySTE successfully put pressure on the Galt House to upgrade their wireless network, which they literally did days before the conference last week. The wireless wasn't perfect, but when is it ever? Personally, I was on it throughout the conference on my Kindle Fire, two different laptops, and my cell phone, and I rarely got kicked off. Also, the second keynote address was removed from the closing session of the conference, and the closing session itself was scheduled to occur earlier in the day so as to avoid Louisville afternoon traffic. In addition, the vendor grand opening was moved to the after dinner hours, which removed the need to have hot appetizers. Instead, 1,500 pieces of cheesecake were made available as dessert for attendees. And in lieu of a dinner, a Members Only reception was held at the Hard Rock Cafe, with the issues that we described above.

But as I said, the "large" issue at the conference has gotten smaller and smaller each year. We went from "You Guys have GOT to do something about the Internet access" after the first conference to "You guys have GOT to do something about the wireless access" after the second conference to "I didn't know I needed a ticket to get into the Members Only reception." That's quite an improvement each year, especially from last year to this year.

So I guess what I'm saying is, good job, Jeff and Gary. You've outdone yourselves.

I have three months left on the KySTE board, and though I know there'll be a couple more monthly con calls and a retreat in May when a bunch of important decisions will be made, for the most part, my work with the organization is done for now. And that's always bittersweet. But after the fantastic conference that I saw put on this year, I know that the organization is in good hands.

And I look forward to next year, when I get to attend the conference as a regular KySTE member, enjoying the fruits of labor of this new KySTE board.

KySTE Conference, Day Two--Renewed Urgency

Yesterday I posted about day one of the conference, summing up what I felt the overarching theme of the first day was. Today I want to post about what I've gotten out of the second day of the conference, and I have no such grand plans to try to do any summarizing.
The reason: I didn't get to nearly as many sessions today. I spent a great deal of time today behind the counter at the ISTE "bookstore" in the 2nd floor lobby of the Galt House. And in all of that time, most of what I learned can be broken down into three basic ideas: 1) If you put yourself in the middle of a lobby at a conference and sit behind a table and look official, lots of people will come up to you and ask you questions. Mostly about the locations of specific meeting rooms. 2) KySTE needs a point of service solution so that we can accept credit cards more easily. 3) The next year that I volunteer to work the KySTE Conference (and that won't be next year--I fully intend to take a year completely away from KySTE and get recharged before coming back for probably one more run through before retirement) I'm going to ask to do something other than the bookstore, because that's not my thing.

But I'm not here to talk about the bookstore. I want to talk, actually turn around in my own head for my own benefit, what I DID get out of the conference today. I attended two sessions, one on the uses of Microsoft OneNote, and another by KySTE 2012 Keynote speaker Scott McLeod about being an effective technology leader. From the OneNote session, I debated with the speaker about which is the better choice for Kentucky schools--OneNote or Evernote. We didn't really decide. On one hand, most teachers already have OneNote installed on their computers and don't even know it, and many student computers have it as well (In my district, virtually ALL PC's in the district have it installed). This would make a district wide implementation fairly easy to achieve. On the other hand, Evernote is free (OneNote is a pricey purchase, especially for the home) and it syncs across all devices more seamlessly than OneNote does. It's something I'll have to decide about, and to be honest, I've got time because I'm not planning to push this out to everyone in my district unless a need arises.

That's about all I got out of that session.

The other session, though, that was a different story. Dr. McLeod presented a number of interesting ideas for 10 ways to improve your technology leadership. He made a number of statements that I found really intriguing. So many, in fact, that I sometimes found myself hearing a great, thought provoking idea and thinking, "I need to write that down," and before I could he or his colleague said something ELSE intriguing and I started thinking about that and soon lost all memory of what it was he had said before (In fact, at one point I seriously considered raising my hand and asking him if he could repeat word for word everything he'd said over the last six minutes so that I could remember what that one really inspiring phrase was, but he seemed on a roll and I decided to let it go). But one thing stood out for me.

I don't remember exactly what the wording was, but as Dr. McLeod was talking about PD he said--simply as an aside--that we gave PD to teachers in the same way that we tried to teach students, with the one size fits all philosophy. And that really got me thinking. In my school district we have the same standard, four professional development days that everyone else in the state has, but we also have our students attend school longer than 6 hours a day in order to get the required 1,062 hours of instruction in 170 days rather than 175, and we use those additional five days also for professional development. That's nine full days of professional development, 54 hours. And what do we do with it? In all schools in the district, for the most part, you'll walk into the school building on PD days and the teachers are sitting in the library, all getting the same information drilled into them, as if every teacher in that building all had exactly the same professional need at exactly the same moment.

It's ludicrous.

And more than ludicrous, it's hypocritical. Because we tell our teachers all the time that they should be differentiating instruction, but here before those teachers' eyes are their leaders and they aren't differentiating ANYTHING.

I swear I was listening to the second half of Dr. McLeod's presentation. At least with half of my brain. But the other half of my brain was on a mission: This has to change, that half of my brain was saying to me. It doesn't matter how, but I have to go back to my district and somehow convince the other school and district administrators that this has to stop. We have to find a way to not only meet the students where they are with their learning (practically a mantra in my district), but to also meet the teachers where THEY are. And that means acknowledging first and foremost that they're not all in the same place.

Larger conferences like this KySTE conference are a great model for one kind of way that we can do that. The first time that I ever went to this conference, back when I was a teacher instead of a CIO and it was called the Kentucky Teaching and Learning Conference, I was blown away by the fact that there were so many possible sessions that I could go to, and that I had all of the freedom to go to the things that interested me and that I NEEDED. This was the kind of professional development I wanted and needed. I came back to my district thinking, THIS is what we need to be doing for PD in the district, and a couple of years later, when I was CIO, I convinced the district leadership to give it a try. The Erlanger-Elsmere Teaching and Learning Conference is what I called it (Okay, so maybe coming up with titles for stuff isn't my specialty--look at the title of this blog, for Pete's sake!), and we had the thing for three out of four years. You can see a website for the last version of it by clicking this link. Of all of the PD's we've ever had in the district, it was BY FAR the most enthusiastically received. As in 94% of all of the staff members ranked it as either very beneficial for their job or somewhat beneficial to their job. And 97% of the staff members in that final year wanted to see the EETLC continue from year to year.

So what happened? Senate Bill 1 / Unbridled Learning happened. Building principals pushed back against the conference--they said they couldn't "waste" an entire PD day letting teachers do whatever they wanted when there was all this work that had to be done for Unbridled Learning and the Common Core Standards and End of Course Assessment and everything else that occurred. So now teachers are sitting in the library learning about CIITS and common assessments and curriculum alignment. Because it's important that all of this stuff gets covered.

And I'm not knocking the principals. All of this stuff really is important.

But darn it, this has to change. It has to. We're never going to get effective PD assuming these teachers all need all of this. And I'm not sure what to do (though I have a few ideas I'm going to bat around with the central office administrators next week), but I have to do something.

Wow, having written all of this, I have to say, maybe I got more out of today than I thought I did. Maybe I got a renewed sense of urgency.

That's not a bad takeaway...

KySTE Conference, Day One--Pandora's Box

Today was the first day of the annual Kentucky Society for Technology in Education Conference, which is held every March in Louisville. The conference proper starts tomorrow, but today there were multiple pre-session meetings for district administrators, technology teachers, CIOs, and technicians. Unlike last year, when as KySTE President I was in charge of the conference and pretty much spent the entire three days standing behind the registration desk dealing with issues, this year I've actually gotten to go to about half of the first day's sessions. And here's what I got out of them:

People are nervous.

Specifically, people are worried about the influx of personal devices and 1:1 initiatives and what kinds of devices to purchase and how do we protect the network from all of these devices and who's gonna fix 'em when they break and how can we teach when 30 kids have a total of 11 different devices in the classroom and how are we ensuring that kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing on these devices instead of chatting with friends on Facebook and what if they look at porn and do we charge a technology fee and how does equity of access fit into this puzzle and what about the teachers who haven't figured out how to incorporate a regular old desktop computer into the classroom much less a tablet or an iPhone and lots of other stuff.

And all of those concerns point to one fact. All of us in the field of ed tech understand that the education technology landscape is changing. Rapidly. And portable computing devices are driving this change. With the price of the iPad 2 dropping in the next few days to just $399, and with high quality 7 inch Android tablets like the Kindle Fire selling for just $200, and with Android cell phones selling in the corner supermarket for less than $100, we're approaching a point in the VERY near future--much nearer than I think most people in education realize--when every child will be carrying around SOME kind of portable computing device.

I've seen both this change and these concerns coming for a while.

About six months ago my school district upgraded our core router, and when we did so we changed the way the router was setup so that devices that couldn't attach to our domain and connect to our proxy server could still get on the Internet. "Transparent proxy" is what it's called, and I described it for months to the administrators in my district as "The Panera Bread Experience." I told them, "IF we institute this transparent proxy" [and we wouldn't have done so without their knowledge and permission] "users will be able to attach to our network and get on the Internet from our network with the same ease that they can do so at Panera Bread." I have no idea why I chose Panera Bread over any other business that provides free wi-fi, but that's not the point. The point was what I said next. "Once that happens, everything changes in the district. Any guest, parent, student, teacher...anybody...can attach to our network and surf the web. It will make access to the web easier. But it's also going to bring problems." Despite my warnings, though, the administrators were all in favor of instituting this change. That Panera Bread Experience was too tempting to resist.

On the first district administrators meeting that we had following the change, I told them that we were up and running, and that true to my word, it was now as easy to get on the Internet in my school district as it was at Panera Bread (to my relief. I wasn't really sure if it would be exactly as easy, and it turns out that yep; it was exactly as easy). And I told them, "I am VERY, VERY excited about what this can mean for instruction and for learning in this district. But I've been saying this and I'll continue to say it--everything changes now."

One of the administrators who'd been listening to me for three months and being silent finally asked, "What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of the myth of Pandora and the box?" He nodded. "It's like that." He looked at me uncomprehendingly. "Do you remember the scene in GHOSTBUSTERS when the mean, bearded guy from the EPA made them turn off the power to the grid and all of the ghosts came out and that weird, 80's music started playing and the one ghost got sucked up into the tailpipe of the taxi and ended up in the driver's seat? That's exactly what's going to happen!"

That, of course, told him no more than the story of Pandora did, so I kind of started over. I decided to forgo the analogies and just give it to him straight. "Once you open up your network like that, you give up a lot of control. Yesterday we knew about every device on our network, what the computer name was, who was logged onto it, what it was doing. If the user logged on was a student who didn't have a signed AUP, they didn't get Internet access. Now ANYONE can sign on with their iPad from their house, and we have no idea if that person is a teacher or a guest of the district or a student who has lost his Internet privileges."

"But that doesn't matter," that principal said. "Most kids don't have an Internet capable device with them at school."

"They don't because yesterday they couldn't get on the network. Today they can. We're not announcing that, but how long do you think it will take before students figure this out on their own? And once they do, they'll start bringing their devices in. And even if students DON'T have a device today, they will soon. With the prices of devices falling all of the time, it's inevitable that every student will have a device."

And it is. Consider this: The original Kindle device was introduced in November of 2007. At the time it cost $400. Today the current Kindle closest in specs to that original device sells for $79. That's an 80% price drop in 4 years. Now think about the Kindle Fire. It currently sells for $200. If the Kindle Fire follows that same pattern, that means that in 2016 a device like the Kindle Fire will be on sale for $40. And when that happens, that device will no longer be behind glass in the electronics section of the store. It's going to be hanging from a J-hook at the checkout line. And once that happens, EVERY student is going to own one. My children's school supply lists include a TI-80 calculator. They are twice as expensive as that 2016 Kindle Fire is going to be. If in 2012 we can place a calculator on a school supply list, in 2016 we'll be placing a personal computing device--one that can take the place of that calculator and take the place of a textbook and take the place of an Internet research computer and a host of other devices--on that list.

This is the day we've been dreaming of, folks. The day when every child has access to a powerful personal computing device. The day when students and teachers can pull these devices out and use them in their classrooms as an integral part of having class. The day when the phrase "digital learning" disappears because it's become so embedded in instruction that it's just "learning." This is the day that we've been pining for and wishing for and imagining for years now. It's just beyond the horizon now, just a few years away. It's coming faster than we ever imagined it would.

And we're scared to death of it...

Over the next two days of the KySTE Conference there are going to be plenty of sessions, and many of them are going to be about this coming day in one way or the other. I hope they help prepare us for the coming tsunami. Because, to paraphrase what we said when we were kids playing hide and seek in the backyard, Ready or not, here it comes...



I can't see the video.

Windows 8: (Very) First Impressions

Last week Microsoft released a consumer Windows 8 preview. I downloaded it and installed it on one of the laptops here in my office.
Good news: Installation was very easy. Go here-- http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso --and download the ISO image and then burn to a DVD (You’ll need to select the option in your CD burning software to “Burn an image to a disc” or something like that). Then install. I set the thing to run overnight and came back in the morning and it was done. There are a couple of prompts at the beginning, but once the installation actually starts that aren’t any more.

 Bad News (or maybe not—maybe just “News”): Uh, it’s WAY different from Windows 7. I haven’t seen a change this big to Windows since the move from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. It makes the change from Office 2003 to Office 2007 (the Ribbon) look like NOTHING! Frankly, I was lost at first. I am finding my way around it a little bit, but my first impulse is that I hate it.

 I know Microsoft is trying to create an operating system that not only runs on your desktop computer but can also run on a cell phone or tablet as well—one operating system for all devices. But frankly, I don’t want a cell phone operating system on my desktop computer—the icons are too big and even the graphics are weird—everyone else is going for flashy, 3-d graphics, and this looks amazingly flat.

I seem to be at odds with the rest of the computer world, though. Over the weekend I read story after story after story about how favorably everyone was regarding Windows 8. I feel like quite the outsider. Maybe the issue is that I think most people are viewing Windows 8 as Microsoft's first serious foray into the tablet world, and they're looking at the operating system as a tablet OS or a cell phone OS. And looked at that way, the OS is fine. But as I said above, I have it installed on a laptop computer, and I'm looking at it as a PC operating system. And viewed in that way, I think it has the potential to be a terrible failure.

Maybe my opinion will change. I've spent less than an hour hands on with the operating system. Maybe time will cause me to fall in love with it. But for now my feeling, I guess, is that it isn't always best to try to be all things for all people.

Kindle Fire: 20 Essential Apps for Educators

There are a lot of people out there who have--for reasons I haven't been able to determine--real disdain for the Kindle Fire. My honest guess is that these people are Apple-lovers who are upset that the Kindle Fire isn't an iPad. Me? I love my Kindle Fire. It's my personally owned device, but I use it for both personal use and for work. And today I'd like to share with you my favorite apps for both personal use and in an educational settings.

In regards to the educational setting, I want to break the apps into three distinct categories: 1) Apps for Instructional Use, 2) Apps for Administrators, and 3) Apps for IT Technicians. Add in the personal apps that I think ANYONE could use, and there are a total of four categories I would place these apps in. Here they are, in order from most favorite to least favorite (I started to do the list in descending order as I thought it would build suspense, but I quickly realized that there were some lower rated apps that were extensions of more favorite apps, and it made more sense to go in this direction).

By the way, some of the apps below require "sideloading." That is, you won't find them in the Amazon App store, and you'll have to search through the web and find the installer files (with the extension .apk) before you'll be able to use them.

1. Exchange by Touchdown
USERS: Administrators and Technicians
PRICE: $19.95
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/NitroDesk-Inc-Exchange-By-TouchDown/dp/B004SKASNW/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330376514&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Exchange by Touchdown is the only app in the Amazon App store I could find that has full support for a Microsoft Exchange environment. If you want to keep tabs on your Exchange email, including Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, and Notes, this piece of software is essential. In fact, if you're looking to purchase a Kindle Fire for work-related purposes as a public school teacher in the state of Kentucky, then factor the $19.95 for this product into the purchase price...because you're going to want it.

2. Evernote
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Evernote-Corp/dp/B004LOMB2Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330614417&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Evernote is a note taking application. It's not unique--there are lots of other note taking apps in the Amazon app store. What makes Evernote stand out, though, is 1) its feature set AND 2) it's omnipresence. First, it's feature set: Evernote "notes" include typed text, of course, but the Kindle Fire app includes some really advanced formatting features, too, such as the ability to bullet and number text, and boldface, italicize, and underline text. In fact, if you're too cheap to purchase on office suite app (See #6 below), you can user Evernote as a basic word processor.

But that's not all Evernote can do. In addition to typing information into an Evernote app, you can also add attachments to the note, including sound files and pictures (Alas, since the Kindle Fire doesn't have a camera nor a microphone, so you can't record audio or take pictures on the fly, though the app allows for that if Amazon ever includes that in Kindle Fire 2.0).

And then, as I mentioned, there's the omnipresence of Evernote. Every major platform (Windows, Apple OS, Android, iOS) has an Evernote application or software install. There's even an online version of Evernote if you sit down at a computer or tablet that doesn't have Evernote installed. And every note you take--whether online or on your Kindle Fire or on your computer--is saved in the cloud and synced onto every one of your Evernote installs. So you can write a note in a meeting on your Kindle Fire and it will be waiting for you on your desktop Evernote software when you get back to your office.

This app made number 2 on my list because--outside of Touchdown--it is the app I most often use for work.

3. Mobicip (beta)*
USERS: Instructional Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://content.mobicip.com/category/tags/android


(NOTE: See important update by CLICKING HERE!) 


WHAT IT IS: Mobicip is a web filtering and app blocking software for Android devices. It's the first product on this list that has to be "sideloaded." That is, you won't find it in the Amazon App store and you'll have to find the .APK file yourself to install it. But don't worry--the link above includes a link to the APK file.

I've already written an entire blog post about Mobicip, so rather than repeat that here, I'll just say that if you're planning to hand a Kindle Fire to a student then you'll need this app, and I'll send you to my prior post for more information.

4. Wif-Fi Analyzer
USERS: Technicians
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/farproc-Wi-Fi-Analyzer/dp/B004EBZX6W
WHAT IT IS: Wi-Fi Analyzer is a FANTASTIC tool for analyzing a school's Wi-Fi network. Not only can a user walk around the school and see the strengths of the various SSID's in the building, the user can also see the actual access points operating on that SSID (in my high school I can often see 8 or more access points at one time operating on the same SSID) and what channel they're operating on. It's an easy way to get lots of information about your wireless network.

5. Calorie Counter by myfitnesspal
USERS: Personal Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Calorie-Counter-Diet-Tracker-MyFitnessPal/dp/B004H6WTJI
WHAT IT IS: I've kept a food journal on and off for most of my adult life (mostly because of genetically high cholesterol), and I've never found an easier way to do it than with this app. Users can search for specific brand name foods (Oreos or Quaker Instant Oats) or specific foods from restaurants (McDonald's French fries or the Bourbon Salmon from Friday's), and I've yet to find a food or a meal from a nationwide company that wasn't in the database. And if it isn't, you can create your own foods as well. There's also an option for adding exercise so you can track that as well, and like the Evernote application above, everything is saved in the cloud and available on other Calorie Counter apps or at the myfitnesspal.com website.

6. Documents to Go (or some other Office suite)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: $14.99
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Documents-Go-Full-Version-Key/dp/B004SDSSFY
WHAT IT IS: Documents to Go is a Microsoft-Office compatible suite with a Word-like word processor, an Excel-like spreadsheet application, and a PowerPoint-like presentation application. There is a free version available in the App store, but it's view only.

Honestly, the Documents to Go app isn't necessarily any better than the other paid Office suites that are available in the Amazon App store. They're all about the same, with the the ability to create very basic files that can be modified on a computer later. I chose Documents to Go over an upgrade to QuickOffice, the app that comes pre-installed on the Kindle Fire, only because Documents to Go was one of the Amazon Free Apps of the Day.

7. Gemini App (or some other application management app)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/SEASMIND-Gemini-App-Manager/dp/B004UT6RE0
WHAT IT IS: Gemini is an application management program that allows a user to 1) see what apps are currently running on the Kindle Fire, 2) see the amount of memory that those apps are using, and 4) kill any running apps that aren't desired. There are other apps like it in the Amazon App store (Advanced Task Killer being the other one that I'm most familiar with). Any will serve the purpose, but you're going to want to have at least one for those times when your battery seems to be draining for no reason and/or your Fire seems to be dragging for no reason.

8. Google Docs*
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.docs&hl=en
WHAT IT IS: For those people too cheap to fork out fifteen bucks for #6 above, they can download the Google Docs Android app and do at least some basic office-suite work using the Google Docs app. It's not nearly as feature-rich as the web version of Google Docs, but in a pinch it'll get the job done.

There's a huge catch here, though. Amazon intentionally left all Google applications out of the Amazon app store, and though users can browse the Android market on their Kindle Fire, they can't actually install apps to their Kindle from the Android store. In order to install Google Docs, you'll need to search the Internet for the Google Docs .apk file (which I've already done for you: Download it here--once the page loads, just scroll down and click the link underneath the barcode).

9. Gmail*
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.gm&hl=en
WHAT IT IS: The Android app for Gmail. It's preinstalled on most Android devices, but the Kindle Fire removes it. Yes, you can setup a Gmail account in the mail app included on the Fire, but I like the original Android app better. It looks more like the familiar web version of Gmail, and it pulls emails in more quickly than the Fire's built in mail app.

Like Google Docs above, you have to "sideload" it, but I've done the footwork and you can just visit this page from your Kindle Fire and download the file here.

10. Pandora
USERS: Personal Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Pandora-Media/dp/B005V1N71W
WHAT IT IS: Does anybody really need me to describe this app? Pandora is the most popular Internet radio site in the world. It works great on the Kindle Fire. You'll want to have headphones or external speakers to connect your Fire to, though, because the speakers on the Fire are infamously weak.

11. USA Today
USERS: Personal Use, Instructional Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/USA-Today-24-Free-App/dp/B006PJ3UKC
WHAT IT IS: I am not a fan of the print edition of USA Today. It's always struck me as being written at about a third grade level, appropriate for fans of the Weekly Reader magazine. And with plenty of other free news apps in the Amazon market, you may wonder why, then, that I selected this one. The answer: because it's awesome. The number one thing that makes it awesome is that--unlike most apps--which are really just links to mobile versions of websites, this is an actual app. Yes, you have to be connected to the Internet to get the latest content, but once you've synced the latest content, whatever "section" of the paper you're in (Top Stories, Entertainment, Sports, etc.) will continue to be available once you go offline. That's right--if you're somewhere where there's no Wi-Fi signal, you can continue to read the section you were on the last time you WERE on the Internet.

12. Alarm Clock Extreme Free (or some other alarm app)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dmobile-apps&field-keywords=alarm+clock+extreme+free
WHAT IT IS: Like numbers 6 and 7 above, this is really more of a You-Need-this-KIND-of-App more than it is You-Need-this-PARTICULAR-App. There are plenty of alarm clock apps for free in the Amazon app store. I settled on this one because (and this may sound stupid but it really does matter to me) the icon of the app actually looks like a clock so that I don't have to try to remember what it is that this app does, and because this app allows you to save multiple alarms and wake up to specific music on your Kindle Fire. But really, one alarm clock program is pretty much the same as all of the others.

13. ES File Explorer (or some other file explorer app)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/EStrongs-Inc-ES-File-Explorer/dp/B004HN2FY0/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330704951&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Ditto #12. ES File Explorer is an app that allows you to browse the folder contents of your Kindle Fire. You don't necessarily need THIS file explorer app--so long as you have SOME file explorer app. You'll need them for those occasions when you download a file to your Fire but can't find it, or when you need to delete some files quickly. This particular one works for me. Choose it or choose your own, but make sure you have one.

14. Wi-Fi File Explorer
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free (or 99 cents for paid version)
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Dooblou-WiFi-File-Explorer/dp/B004KA1YE2/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330705238&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: The Kindle Fire comes out of the box with a built in USB port for charging and for connecting to a computer so that you can transfer files. However, the Fire doesn't come with a standard USB cable, so if you DO want to transfer files from a computer to the Fire you need to go out and purchase one.

Unless you have this app...

Connect to Wi-Fi, open Wi-Fi File Explorer, and you're presented with a web address. Type that address into your computer's web browser and a web page will open up that lists all of the files on your Kindle Fire. You can browse, upload, and download files.

Some advanced features (such as bulk uploading and downloading) require the paid version, but if you need it, it's only 99 cents. Good luck finding a USB cable for that price.

15. Fing
USERS: Technicians
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Overlook-Fing-Network-Tools/dp/B005VT42BS/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330706310&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Fing is a network information tool. Ever wonder how many different devices are on your network? What their MAC addresses and IP addresses are? What operating system they're running? This app quickly scans your entire network and presents you with this information. And it learns as you use it, maintaining a database of devices on the network as time goes on, so that not only can you see who's ON your network, but who USED TO be on your network but no longer is.

16. Kenton County Library/Overdrive Media Console
USERS: Personal Use, Instructional Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Boopsie-Inc-Kenton-County-Library/dp/B006RA152Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330706407&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Okay, so maybe this app is only useful if you live in Kenton County, Kentucky. But wherever you live, it would be a good idea to search the Amazon app store to see if there is a library app for your local library. With the Kenton County Library app I can not only browse my local library catalog, see if I have any books due or fines to pay, but I can also--using an app called the Overdrive Media Console (instructions for downloading and installing this app are in the Kenton County Library app)--check out ebooks and audio books on my Kindle Fire and read them using the Overdrive Media reader. That's right--I can install and utilize a competitor to the built in Kindle reader, and get books and audio for free! It's an inferior reader compared to the Kindle Fire (though I do like that--in addition to tracking where I am in the book--the Overdrive reader also tracks where I am in the specific chapter I'm reading!), but it does work on the Fire.  Speaking of which...

17. Nook for Android*
USERS: Personal Use, Instructional Use
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: https://market.android.com/details?id=bn.ereader&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImJuLmVyZWFkZXIiXQ..
WHAT IT IS: ...I can also download the Barnes and Noble Nook reader and use it on the Kindle Fire. So if an ebook is cheaper on the Barnes and Noble device than it is on the Kindle device (99% of the time the prices are the same, and that 1% of the time when they're not it always seems to me that Amazon's prices are cheaper. But still...), you can purchase the book on your Kindle and read it in the Nook Color program.

As you might expect, the Nook Color app isn't available in the Amazon App store, so you'll have to sideload it, but again I've done the work for you. Just click this link.

18. PG Calculator Free (or some other calculator)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Piotr-Gridniew-PG-Calculator-Free/dp/B0052N5GLI
WHAT IT IS: Another app where you want to have one of these types of apps but don't have to necessarily choose this one. I like this one because, more than any other calculator app I tried (and I tried about 7 of them), this one looks like a real calculator. Plus, and again I know this silly but don't really care, the icon of the app is a calculator as well!

19. Skitch
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/Evernote-Corp-Skitch/dp/B005TBWN0K/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330707637&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: Skitch is a whiteboard drawing app. Yes, there are a number of those on the Amazon app store, but I like Skitch because it is designed by Evernote (See #2 above), and it integrates perfectly with it.

20. Stopwatch (or some other timing app)
USERS: Everybody!
PRICE: Free
MORE INFORMATION: http://www.amazon.com/coolcode-org-StopWatch/dp/B004X85GMC/ref=sr_1_1?s=mobile-apps&ie=UTF8&qid=1330707855&sr=1-1
WHAT IT IS: A free stopwatch program. It's about the same as any other stopwatch program, no better, no worse. Again, it's the icon that drew me to this one (and the positive reviews).

BONUS APPS

Okay, I couldn't narrow it down to just 20 apps. here are two more that at least deserve honorable mention.

21. Web Snapshots: Have a web page you want to either preserve or share? Open your browser to the web page and then open Web Snapshots. You can use the program to save whatever page you're on as a PDF file or export to Evernote or your email system or several other programs on your Kindle Fire.

22. Blogger*: I use Blogger quite a bit (THIS blog is a Blogger blog), and this app would rate higher if you could use it to edit any blog entry ever made in a Blogger blog. Alas, you can create new blog entries in the Blogger app, but you can only edit entries that you originally began with the app. Started a blog entry on the web? Sorry. You're out of luck. Otherwise, I'd be using this app all of the time. It's still a nice tool to have, though, if I need to make a blog entry and there's no computer around.