Great feature: Saving your Google Mail and documents from Google Drive

Good news!

It is now possible to save (a copy of) all your Chadwick Mail and Google drive data.

This is great, especially if you are leaving, and just want to keep a copy of all things. After downloading,

you will need to upload the data into a mail application on a laptop, and then you have the local

standard options (search, delete etc.). It can - if you choose - maintain your folder/label structure as well.

As you can see from the screenshot, you can download many other things as well.

Here are the steps involved:

Download a copy of your Gmail data (Mail, Drive data and even more):

Go to your Google account settings, 

find and select Data Tools and continue to select the data you wish to save-keep. 

Mail will be saved in the Mbox format, meaning you could open it easily with Apple Mail (on your laptop) or Outlook (for Windows).

Here is a link with more specific info

Google Drive Data question:

What is the difference with copying the files from Google drive 

(when you sync your drive data from the cloud to your laptop, see screenshot below)?

The data download as described above, will give you readable documents on most platforms.

Meaning, Google Docs will be converted to docs you can read in MS Word, Pages or OpenOffice.

When you would copy the data from your synced Google drive, you maintain the Google document formats

(and that then again means, you can easily upload them again, into another account)

Bottom-line: An excellent new feature that Google offers here, and it might be a time saver for you.

 

Easy blogging for kids with Easy Blogger Junior

❝ Easy Blogging for kids ❞ to Edublogs

Just discovered this - pretty amazing - App (for iPhone, or better iPad) that will make blogging for your young students very easy.

Instead of you doing the work, it's time to hand it over to the students themselves! 

From PreK to  . . . they will master this one with little to no extra help.

The App supports a shared iPad environment, an outstanding feature.

It was developed by 3 fathers/educators, and they have given it a lot of thought. 

The best is to watch the short video that explains all features, you can find it at their homepage:

http://www.theeasyappcompany.com/app/easy-blog-jr/

It will allow your students to pick their name from a gallery, and then they will be guided in simple steps towards creating a blog post.

The App supports pictures, movies and text.

Ready to go for it?

Here is the iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easy-blog-jr/id716354615?mt=8

Publish EduBlog posts to your blog directly from your personal email account - possible now!

 ❝ Post by Mail ❞ to Edublogs

One of those outstanding features of Posterous was the fact that you could blog via E-Mail.

Wordpress has those possibilities, but Edublogs (we use the Campus setup) was lacking this possibility so far.

It took a (long) while, but now you can post to Edublogs by sending an E-mail as well.

It requires the JetPack plugin activated.

After activation, you must connect (with any valid account) to Wordpress.com.

Then you can configure the settings. Posts will be formatted, and can contain image(s).

Read more about the mail settings and the plugin here: http://jetpack.me/support/post-by-email/

 

There are more options (other than Post by Mail) as you can see below. Connect to Facebook, 

post directly to Twitter etc. Good stuff out there!

You might want to share this good news with your teachers (and students)!

Here is a quick tip: have a QR-code on your desk, that will send a mail to your Edu-Blogs mail account!

Fix a slow Mac computer - best approach

Help: My Mac is getting slower, has delays, and has often a spinning beach-ball!

Ok, it's time for safe boot and a repair permissions act!

Why/what is that: Safe Boot?
It is a useful tool for isolating problems & conflicts by putting OS X's startup volume in Safe mode. It will run your Mac with a minimum of extensions loaded, it performs basic checks and - best of all - it allows you to run Disk Utility in the most efficient way.

Why should I Repair Permissions?
File and folder permissions are crucial to your computer system. Well, one of the (few!) flaws of Unix-based systems is the fact that installing of software can mess-up those permissions, and that will result in your computer getting slower and slower. 

This is the reason, why people sometime suggest to perform a 'complete new fresh install' of your whole Mac. This would bring all permissions back to default, and all will be fast again. Now, that would be a lot of work too! Well, Disk utility in Safe Mode will do a whole lot of special repairs, in a lot less time - and it's of sure the BEST thing you should try (before doing a complete new installation . . .)!

It wil fix things a lot, and you might experience a new fast Mac afterwards! And just so you know: running Disk Utility in Safe mode is more effective than running it just from your Mac in normal operation. 

Ok, here are the steps:
1. For Safe Boot: restart your computer while holding the Shift key

2. Do not let go of the Shift key until your screen says Safe Boot

3. Once you see the screen with the words Safe Boot let go of the Shift key. Now login (as usual)

4. Open Disk Utility located in the Utility folder of your Applications folder

5. Select the main hard drive and have First Aid  selected in the Disk Utility window

6. Select Repair Disk Permissions (do not select 'verify')

7. When Disk Utility is ready, you will see  "Permissions repair complete". It might take a long while!

After this, you should restart your computer! And, hopefully, things will be better, as repairing the Disk Permissions in Safe Boot will take care of many problems.

Of course, check how full your harddisk is! Keep a minimum of 20% free (no kidding!). Your OS needs that space for swapping files and caches around. Also, use 'Activity Monitor' (in Utilities) to monitor what is going on under the hood. Keep an eye on the CPU loads and discover Memory eaters.

Last tip: having more than 10 Tabs open in (any) browser, will cost a lot of memory being used. The - fabulous - extension 'OneTab' can help you there, just download and use, you will not regret. Browser's little helper on the way! http://www.one-tab.com

Running Windows Explorer on your Mac

We all had that problem: a travel booking system, or a CD with medical images or . . . requires Windows and Internet Explorer.

You have several options on a Mac: installing Bootcamp with a paid version of Windows, or using virtualisation software such as VMware.

All do-able, but at a cost, and perhaps not so convenient for the very occasional need. 

Well, there is a - free - option as well, and it uses a little trick. You will work with a 30-day 'trial' version of Windows, and after that period is over, you basically reset the trial back to a new start, and then you can go again . . .

http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/04/internet-explorer-for-mac-ie7-ie8-ie-9-free/

Shows how to do all of this. Don't worry, it's pretty easy, and don't let the Terminal commands scare you off.

It takes a bit, but it will work fine. Virtualbox is free software (from the big Oracle), and although it's not a speed monster,

Windows XP with Explorer 7 (or 9) will work just fine. 

The steps are:

1. download and install Virtualbox

2. download and install Windows via a terminal command

3. hah, there is no 3. Just be patient and then: Done! Just start it all up now, and go ahead!



       Screenshot: The Terminal Window - downloading (and automatic) installation of Windows

        Screenshot: Starting Windows after installation of Virtualbox

Update: I just experienced some issues when installing the Windows XP with the terminal command on my Macbook with Maverick 10.9.1 (fresh installed, but that's another topic . . )

A bit of Googling revealed that Microsoft does offer "trial" versions of their OS to be used with virtualisation software. Here is the link: http://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

Grab the version of Windows that you prefer, download the compressed files (multiple parts) and then go from there. Windows 8 will run pretty slow, XP will be speedy, keep that in mind. Well, I am doing a download from this link right now :-)

Great free Visual Art iBook resource

Need some ideas how to use iPads in the Art class room?

Come and grab an excellent, 41 pages free iBook at

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/ipad-art/id706608032?mt=11

written by Cathy Hunt, an ADE (Apple Distinguished Educator)

(she is on the web at: http://www.ipadartroom.com )

Highly recommend!

"Hour of code" invitation to faculty

Dear Faculty,

as promised, here is some more info:

The hour of code =  an international campaign, aiming to have students of all ages introduced to (at least for a bit!)

the ideas and principles of writing computer code. The event is supported by a great website, full of resources:

http://csedweek.org/resource_kit  The aim is to reach 10.000.000 students!

And, it will be easy on your part: 

• The Self-guided lessons require little or no involvement from the teacher

• Requires no previous experience on behalf of the student or the teacher

• Can be completed in one hour or less.

               

Coding is not a geek thing anymore (well, sort of), nowadays there are many graphical tools available, that deal

more with the logical steps involved, as compared to typing lines of code in a sequence.

Scratch (invented by MIT) is such an example. 

How can you get involved?

Pick an hour next week, dedicate a class and do it altogether!

Step-1:

Introduce the campaign by showing - takes a few minutes - a few videos as to why programming is important

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYZF6oIZtfc  Bill Gates and others (2 minutes only)

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDAP1OQ9Zw  a 6 year old explains how he got to develop Apps (4 minutes)

Maybe show the info graphic -> on page http://code.org/stats  of the campaign website. Has some great facts,

showing that we/schools are not catering for those jobs.

Step-2:

Pick the right level coding exercise from the options available at 

       http://code.org/learn

You might wanna try some of the options yourself, decide and then get going!

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Ok, If you miss the time to try them out, then find here are a few hand-picked suggestions:

Lower level:

http://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/  Many options to tackle small programming tasks. 

Middle level:

http://code.org/api/hour/begin/scratch This is very nice: the exercises are based on Scratch, a wonderful free

programming language by MIT. All graphical, and guarantees a lot of fun.

Higher level:

If most of your students have an Android phone, you could try the MIT app AppInventor. With this, one can develop an Android 

App (not IOS Apple) in no time. Will be an eyeopener for many!

http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/hour-of-code.html

On an iPad:

The free App "Light-bot-hour of Code" is downloaded on all of the MS/US iPads. It features an hour of coding basics, slick!

You can book the iPads with Marcel (as stock lasts!) 

http://light-bot.com/hoc.html  you actually can also do this on-line (Flash based) with a Mac

We hope you will give it a go, sometime next week. 

If not, all the resources are still around, and you are not bound to this week.

"Yes, I will move ahead". 1 step at a time"