Setting up Groupwise on your iPad

Go to your Settings
Go to Mail, Contacts, calendars
Choose add an account
Select Exchange/Microsoft Exchange
In the appropriate boxes, enter your Groupwise email address, username, and password
For the server address, enter mobilesync.sayreschool.org
Leave domain empty
Enter your username as your first initial last name
If available, or if prompted, select to use SSL
For the rest of the settings, the default should be used
You should only select to have the mail and calendar items synced.  Don't choose contacts, as this will attempt to sync the whole Groupwise address book

Tech - Teach- Learn

For those of you looking for some Professional Development opportunities this summer, here is one in Louisville.  A two day opportunity for educators to learn to be more effective with technology and Google Apps for Education in the K-12 classroom. **Please note the online registration system requires a fee for event organizers to track daily attendance. THERE IS NO FEE FOR THIS CONFERENCE.** Lunch is also provided for you at no charge.

Technology for Teaching & Learning Conference

August 5 & 6, 2013
8:00 am - 4:00 pm

Make Your Blog into a Book with Blog Booker

BlogBooker is a wonderful resource that was recommended to me the other day.  For those of you who are looking to make your own digital textbooks this might be a really viable option.  BlogBooker is a site that produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog's entries and comments.  Book Blogger is compatible with Blogger, WordPress and Live Journal Blogs.  I was able to make a PDF out of my blog with a table of contents, footnotes and some images.  I think this is an fantastic tool for creating digital textbooks especially if you are already using blogs in the classroom.

Using Google Translate

A student came to see me today needing to translate an Arabic webpage.  Even though Google Chrome has the capability of translating sites I had to use Google translate to get this site in English.  The usual way to translate sites using Chrome is as follows:

Enable the translation bar

1. Click the Chrome menu on the browser toolbar.
2. Select Settings.
3. Click Show advanced settings.
4. In the "Languages" section, use the "Offer to translate pages that aren't in a language I read" checkbox to adjust this feature.

Even though  my checkbox was checked it still was unable to translate the site so I had to copy the URL into http://translate.google.com/.  

The above mentioned method is not browser specific. 

How to Save Keynote Files to Google Drive on your iPad

For those of you using Keynote, Pages or iPad apps and want to open the documents in word through your Google Drive, here are simple steps to follow:

Go to Pages and type up a new document

When you are done hit the wrench in the upper right hand corner and a drop down menu will show

Choose share and print

Choose open in another app

Choose Word

Choose open in Google Drive

Choose upload when prompted

10 Great TED Talks for Teachers

Here is a list of 10 Great TED talks for teachers compiled by the site, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, many of them are worth watching but I found Eli's talk to be particularly illuminating. Eli's discussion of filter bubbles may make you interested in choosing a different search engine, a private one, such as Go Duck Go, which I mentioned in previous newsletters.  Eli's point is that algorithms are customizing your searches to the extent that we are no longer getting objective search results.  If we are using a different computer for the same search and I am a Democratic and you are a Republican a search through Google may gather different hits.  Google may assume my party affiliation, from prior searches, and may in fact not bring up any conservative perspectives assuming I am not interested in hearing a conservative perspective. 


Alternative search engines

https://startpage.com/

https://duckduckgo.com/

Google Drive File Attachments

Every now and then a student comes to me needing to send a large email file and Groupwise won't accommodate the file size.  One way to send the file is through your Gmail account.  Google Drive now allows for files as large as 10GB, that is huge!  Simply click on the Google drive icon and insert  the file.

Google Drive Research Tool

 Teaching students research skills is paramount these days as there is so much information they are gathering from the internet and it all needs to be cited eventually in the proper format.  I got a good tip today from Aaron Maurer's site about how Google drive can help facilitate researching and citing. 

1.    Go to your Google Drive page
2.     Choose “Create” and then select “Document”
3.     Start by writing your information
4.     When you get to a word  in question, highlight the word and go to the menu bar
5.     Click on “Tools” and then find “Research"

Google searches the word and pulls up relevant searches, from there you can preview, insert link, or site cite.  You can also choose between  the citation format:  Chicago, MLA, APA