Thursday, January 29, 2015

How to Invigorate a Sluggish iPad

Ever find that your iPad (or iPhone) is running a bit slow? If your device runs a bit sluggish, there are a few possible solutions:

1) Quit Apps - Some apps that are still open may be running (e.g. music app) and using some of the processing speed. It is good practice to quit apps every so often as this will also prevent apps form conflicting with each other. To quit an app, double click the home button and the apps that are still open will appear. Swipe up the screen to quit the app. Here's a challenge: see if you can swipe up 3 apps at a time - it take a bit of dexterity but it is possible.

2) Increase your Storage Space - if a lot of videos are taken and stored in the iPad camera roll, these sometimes take up quite a bit of the storage memory. To remove photos or videos, go to the Photos app and tap on Select in the top right corner. Then tap on the photos and videos you want to delete (or tap on the select button on the right to select everything from that day). After selecting your photos and videos, tap on the trash can in the top left.

You can also increase storage space by deleting some apps (e.g. Toontastic is 708 MB in size); if you have larger apps that you no longer need (or, like me, downloaded and never used in the first place), delete them. The easiest way to delete your larger apps is to go to Settings>>General>>Usage>>Manage Storage. From here, you will see a list of apps in order of size. Tap on an app and you can then delete it. I usually like to have at least 1 GB of storage memory available so it allows me to take a longish video should the circumstance ever present itself.

3) Reboot the iPad - as mentioned in this blog post, turning off the iPad once in a while will improve its performance. This will prevent any corrupted memory from interfering with the performance of your iPad.

I only wish these solutions were available when I felt a bit sluggish. Have a great day!!


Sunday, January 25, 2015

Screen Shot on a MacBook

Taking a screen shot is one of the most common actions I do with my computer. It allows me to make an image out of anything that appears on my screen, whether it is some text, an image, part of my desktop, or a video that has been paused. To take a screen shot on your macbook computer, press command+shift+4 on your keyboard and cross hairs will replace the cursor arrow. Click and drag a rectangle around what you want to take a screen shot of and then release - an image (png format) will appear on your desktop. 

Other options for taking screen shots are: 

a) press the 'contol' button while dragging to take the screen shot and the image will be pasted on your clipboard; or press command+shift+4+control to take your screen shot.

b) after pressing command+shift+4, tap the space bar. A camera icon will appear (instead of crosshairs) that will allow you to capture an entire application window. Move the camera over any application window and it will automatically highlight - then press the trackpad and a screenshot of that window will be taken.


c) command+shift+3 will instantly take a screen shot of your entire desktop; as well, command+shift+3+control will paste your entire desktop image onto the clipboard.

I find that my desktop gets quite cluttered with images so I am getting into the habit of using the control button to put the screen shots on my clipboard and therefore control the number of files on my desktop.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Getting Content Off the iPad

One of the most common questions I am asked by teachers is 'How do I get the student work off the iPad?' While there are a number of solutions to this, there is not an easy one that works for all situations. Below are some solutions to this question, and hopefully one of them will address your situation.

1) Image Capture - this application is on all apple computers. Open the application and then plug the iPad into the computer (via the USB port). After the iPad's name appears in the Image Capture window, click on it and all photos and videos will appear. Select the photo (or select multiple photos by holding down the shift button while clicking) and drag them to the desktop. The 'Import To' drop down menu is also useful for putting photos in certain places on your computer. This is useful when you have time for each student to connect to your laptop or when students need to transfer work from the iPad to the lab computers.

2) Email - many of the district iPads are configured with a FirstClass (aka Richnet) email address that allows users to email work from within the app they are using. Be sure the students correctly type in the teacher's email addess the first time they do this as the iPad will store this address in its memory and will become an autofill option. The email option is useful when the whole class is wanting to hand in the work they completed on an iPad app.

3) FirstClass/Richnet - all of our district iPads will have the FirstClass app installed and this can be used to email content as well, especially videos or photos that are on the camera roll. After logging into Richnet, tap on the pencil icon at the bottom left of the iPad screen and you will be asked to create a new message/document or upload a photo. Tap on 'Upload Photo' and a new window opens that shows your iPad's photo library. Select the photo or video and it will automatically upload it as a message. This is useful for getting one or two large videos off the iPad, or if students in your class have Richnet accounts.

4) Fresh Grade - Fresh Grade is an assessment tool that allows teachers and students to quickly and easily load digital files onto a student's digital portfolio. For work that is completed on an iPad, the students can save the work on the iPad photo library and then upload it to their digital portfolio using the Fresh Grade Student app. Both videos and photos can be loaded, plus the student can write a comment that attaches to that piece of work. This option is useful for those using Fresh Grade in their classroom (obviously) and when all of your students are wanting to hand in the work they created.

5) File Manager - this free app will be found on all iPads in the district mobile iPad carts and on many school owned iPads. This page on my website shows how to use File Manager. File Manager is very useful for transferring epub files (made with the app Book Creator) or larger videos.

6) Mobile Devices - If you have your own mobile device, take a photo or video of the work on the iPad. Not the best solution but it does get the content from student to teacher.

7) iExplorer - this is a program you load on a computer. The demo version is free and can be downloaded here. I run it off my desktop as the applications folder on my HD is locked down. You can also drop the application into your home folder Go menu>>Home>>Applications. After loading it onto your computer, open iExplorer and plug the device in to your computer. The content on the iPad will appear in folders (e.g. apps, photos, books) and all you have to do is open up the folder and drag the specific photo or file to your computer's desktop. Voila!

8) Air Drop - Apple devices that we use in Richmond are capable of utilizing the Air Drop feature. It works best with computers that have OS10.10 and newer iOS devices (not iPad 2's). Your blue tooth and and wifi need to be up and running to have your devices recognize each other. Air drop allows the transfer of movies, photos, epub files, and any other type of file that can be exported.

Hopefully one of these options will work for you and allow students to share / hand in the work they complete on the iPad.

You will notice that Dropbox, Google Drive or icloud is not an option I've suggested. This is because using these services will contravene the FOIPPA law we have in BC.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Reader View in Safari

Most websites have a lot of advertising along the left, right and top margins of the page and even embedded into the middle of the text you are trying to read. This can be distracting even for the most focussed adult reader; imagine how distracting it can be for your students? With Safari, you can eliminate all distractions by going into Reader View. In Safari 7, the 'Reader' button is the blue button to the right of the website address. In Safari 8, the 'Reader' button is to the left of the website address (the stack of three and a half lines). When you are on a website, click on these icons to activate Reader view - you will see the difference. To exit the 'Reader' view, tap on the 'Reader' button again, tap outside the 'Reader' view window, or hit the esc button. Below are two screen shots of the CNET page that explains "How to use Safari's new 'Reader'", with the screenshot on the right using the 'Reader' function. Note that there will be some webpages that prevent the 'Reader' view from being activated.
Regular view for a website
Reader view for the same website





Thursday, January 15, 2015

Keep Calm and Turn the Power Off

Sometimes, your iPad or computer simply won't work properly no matter what you do. Whether the screen freezes, the gestures won't work, or an app doesn't work properly, there is one solution that works 99% of the time – power off your device. To power off your iPad, press the power button down for a few seconds and then at the top of the screen you will be prompted to 'slide to power off'. After this, the iPad will likely take a few seconds to completely power down, at which time you can turn it back on by again pressing the power button. For your laptop, go to the menu and select 'Shut Down...'.

Powering off your iPad or laptop should be done at least once per week. This will prevent the applications from leaving behind any corrupted memory and will restore any settings etc…. to their known state.. This also holds true for your iPhone.

So the lesson here is to power off your devices once per week in an effort to minimize potential problems with your tech.


Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Keyboard Characters

Keyboard Viewer on the computer's desktop
Many of you know that pressing the option / shift / buttons on the keyboard will generate different characters (e.g. shift + option + k will type the apple ''). Ever want to see all of these special characters? Go to system preferences >> keyboard >> check off 'Show Keyboard + Character viewers in the menu bar' and a special icon similar to this will appear in the menu bar (top right portion of the screen). Tap on this icon in the menu bar, select 'Show Keyboard Viewer' and a keyboard window will appear on your screen. This keyboard will show the currently active keys. Press on the shift button and the keys change to capitals, and if you press the option button, different characters appear. Now try the opion + shift button and even more symbols/characters appear. Also in the Keyboard + Character dropdown menu is the 'Show Character Viewer' command, which displays a variety of unicode characters that you can use. When you find a special character / symbol you want to use, double click it or drag - drop it into a document.


Monday, January 12, 2015

Book Creator Export as Movie

Book Creator options for exporting your book. 
While at the Apple Education Learning Institute in Regina, I went to a presentation by primary teacher Kathy Cassidy and learned that Book Creator Books can be exported as a movie, as well as an ePub file and pdf files. The exported movies show each page in the book and automatically play the audio and video clips on each page, and turn the pages automatically. This is perhaps a more versatile way to post book creator books on a website or blog. Posting the book as a video also makes it possible for students to add this to a digital portfolio (e.g. Fresh Grade) as many of these services do not have an option for posting .epub files. 



Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Instead of going up to the drop down menus at the top of the screen to close windows, copy text, or quit applications, I always use the keyboard to perform these and other functions on my computer. Although it takes a bit of time to get used to doing this, this is a tip that will save a person time in the long run. The most commonly used key is the Command key, with the Option, Control and Shift key also being used (see symbols in chart to the right). Here is a link with many more keyboard shortcuts, and here is a one pager with commonly used shortcuts.


Check out the below keyboard shortcuts that I commonly use:

Quit - ⌘Q
Close - ⌘W
New - ⌘N
Print - ⌘P
Open - ⌘O
Save - ⌘S
Save As - ⌘ ⇧ ⌥ S


Undo - ⌘Z
Redo - ⌘Y
Copy - ⌘C
Cut - ⌘X
Paste - ⌘V
Select All - ⌘A

Screenshot to desktop - ⌘⇧3
Screenshot (customize size) to desktop - ⌘⇧4
Open Spotlight - ⌘Spacebar
Find - ⌘F
New Folder - ⌘⇧N
Mission Control - ⌃ + arrow up
Exit Mission Control - ⌃ + arrow down


Editing Text in MS Word (and some other applications)
Bold - ⌘B
Underline - ⌘U
Italicize - ⌘I
Enlarge Font Size - ⌘⇧.  (command + shift + period)
Reduce Font Size - ⌘⇧, (command + shift + comma)


Hey power users - want to create your own keyboard shortcut? Go to System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Shortcuts >> App Shortcuts >> + , then type the exact word of the command that is in the dropdown menu of the application. I use text boxes a fair bit so made a shortcut of  ⌃ ⌥ T and typed in Text Box in the space provided. Before using the newly created shortcut , you have to quit the application and restart it. Have fun with them.