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Rabu, 31 Juli 2013
Day 11 – The Enigma that is the Surface RT

Day 11 – The Enigma that is the Surface RT

Surface RT for Teachers –
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

The Surface RT is an enigma. I can understand those that review the Surface RT not instantly understanding this device. Most reviewers are on a deadline and usually offer the cursory specifications and offer a couple of “needs improvement” comments to justify their critique after a couple of hours of use.

What is particularly confusing about the Surface RT is that it has a dual personality of the modern Windows 8 apps along with the traditional Desktop. Once you come to grips with this reality (it is really not that hard of a concept to grasp) you see the benefits of mixing the old with the new. But, the Surface RT adds another “exception” in that the RT is based on the ARM processor that is not compatible with x86 applications. To further complicate matters Microsoft has ported their best selling x86 application, Office 2013, to the ARM processor so it CAN run on the Surface RT. Got it? For the average user that is a lot to sort out.

The Surface RT has taken a beating in the press lately and many have dismissed this device completely. This really is a shame as my brief amount of time with this tablet has completely altered my original mindset since I began this blog series.

Day 2 was really rough for me with all of the updates that needed to be installed but since that time I have only had a couple of updates to deal with and both were painless. After Day 2 my expectations were pretty low, but since that time the RT has redeemed itself for the most part and I have only depleted the battery once over the past 11 days.

Since I started doing these 30 Days with…. blog series I have come to the conclusion that many of these superficial product reviews in the press are not that helpful, especially for teachers in a classroom setting.  They all start to look alike and offer little in the way of practical hands-on advice. For the Surface RT this recently has become one giant echo chamber of doom and gloom in the press room, but what if they are wrong?

This is why I am blogging my experiences here in a real-life and practical manner for teachers and students to see an educators perspective. There are definitely bright spots in the Surface RT story that need to be told. One of the bright spots is Office 2013.
 


The dual personality of the Surface RT is a good thing overall. Having the ability to run the “Big Four” Office 2013 applications gives a teacher or student access to professional level tools at an incredible price point (currently the Surface RT is discounted to $199 education price, $289 with type cover, and that includes Office 2013).

The big four applications in Office 2013 are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. This covers most of the tasks we ask teachers and students to do daily in the classroom. The Surface RT has an excellent browser that supports pinch and zoom and the Desktop has access to the File Explorer to manage all your files. Add in the ability to save documents to SkyDrive for anywhere access and you have a very compelling device for educators at a very affordable price.

I will be going into a little more depth in upcoming posts about the Office 2013 suite of applications but having them available on the ARM-based Surface RT is a nice luxury to have out of the box.


Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 
Selasa, 30 Juli 2013
Day 10 – Bing Apps Keep You Up-To-Date

Day 10 – Bing Apps Keep You Up-To-Date

Surface RT for Teachers –
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Today I want to mention a set of apps I regularly use that come preloaded on the Surface RT that I call my Bing Apps. Since this is a Microsoft tablet it is not too surprising that the default search engine is Bing and not Google, although you can still use Google.

If you have not used Bing in a while I think you will be surprised by how graphically pleasing the Bing search page has become. Every day the Bing search engine features a colorful photo from somewhere on Planet Earth. Below is an example from a couple of days ago.

This is a different than the minimalist approach that Google takes with the Google doodle on a stark white background. Some people still “Google it” but if you are using a Windows 8 tablet like the Surface RT you might want to “Bing it”, just go to http://bing.com to see the latest picture of the day.

 Bing Apps

There is much more to the Bing family than the Bing search engine on the Surface RT. The other Bing apps I regularly use are the News app, Sports app, Weather app, Finance app, and Travel app. I have arranged them on my Start Screen with the category name Bing Apps to keep them organized and easy to access.

You can easily rearrange the Live Tiles on the Start Screen and I always place my Desktop Live Tile in the lower left-side of the Start Screen on all my Windows 8 devices so it is easy to get to. I group my other Live Tiles by categories that make sense to me. For example, I have a group called Office 2013 that keeps my Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps together.

I think of these Bing apps as my own personal newspaper. You can add feeds to some of the apps and customize the sources that pull in information of interest to you. I do this mostly with the News app where I can add my own Technology Section from the sources I choose. In a way, this is kind of like the now defunct Google Reader.


Another benefit of the Bing apps is that some of the apps offer notifications. I sometimes get a notification popup when breaking news hits. The biggest thing to get accustomed to with these apps is that you scroll to the right to access more information. We have become so accustomed to scrolling up and down that it takes a bit of time to get used to scrolling horizontally. This actually works quite well, especially on a touchscreen like the Surface RT.

Another benefit of using the Bing apps together is that you can take advantage of “snap view” where you can park one app on one side of the screen and have another app open at the same time in the main window. Below is an example where I have the Finance app open and snapped to the right-side of the screen and in the main portion of the screen I have the Sports app open.

So, I can be reading the latest sports news in the main window and at the same time have all the market stats updated in real-time in snap view, pretty cool!

You could also have your email snapped to one side of the screen while you are doing something else with the main screen.
Multitasking at its best.


Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 
Senin, 29 Juli 2013
Day 9 – The Mighty USB Port on the Surface RT

Day 9 – The Mighty USB Port on the Surface RT


Surface RT for Teachers –
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

In yesterday’s blog post you caught a glimpse of one of the best features the Surface RT offers, the mighty USB port. The Surface RT comes with a built-in USB 2.0 port located on the right-hand side of the tablet when held in the landscape position. This is a full-sized port so no extra adapters are needed, a nice bonus. Below is a picture of an inexpensive USB to SD Card reader that I often use to copy pictures from my point and shoot camera, very handy.


By the way, I use the Surface RT in the landscape position 99% of the time and I lock it into this position so the screen does not auto-rotate. This allows me to use my thumbs to swipe in from the right-side to access the Charms bar in Windows 8 very easily. It is so easy in fact that I rarely use the physical Windows button on the tablet itself. It is faster to swipe in from the right-hand side of the tablet with my thumb and select the Windows Flag icon from the Charms bar to go to the Start Screen.

Have I mentioned the Surface RT can multitask?

I often use my left thumb to swipe in from the left when I have multiple apps open. By swiping in my left thumb, over and over again, I can very quickly cycle through all my open apps. This is kind of like using Alt-Tab on the keyboard but it is much faster.

Meanwhile back to the USB port, I was not sure how much I would use the USB port on the RT because it has the ARM processor that is not compatible with x86 programs. I have been pleasantly surprised by how many devices the Arm-based Surface RT can access out of the box.

Yesterday, I plugged in my Canon S100 camera into the USB port and the RT recognized it immediately and I was able to go to the Desktop File Manager and access my files directly from the Camera. Below is a picture of the camera connected to the USB port on the Surface RT.


I also have a USB to SD card reader that allows me to read SD cards from cameras directly into the Surface RT, here is another view with it plugged in to the RT.


I can also use the Arc Mouse wireless transceiver to connect the Arc Mouse wirelessly to the Surface RT. This is very nice when using Microsoft Word when you need a bit more fine motor control.


Or, if you think the Surface RT keyboard is too small, or if you do not like an onscreen keyboard, just plug-in a full sized USB Keyboard to the USB port and use it.

If you find the wired keyboard a little too limiting then you can plug-in a wireless keyboard like the Logitech K400 and use it to walk around the room while you have the Surface RT plugged into a projector or HDTV via the RTs micro-HDMI port!

 

How’s that for versatility?

Of course, USB drives are meant for saving and storing files. I often copy very large MP4 files that I create on another machine to a USB thumb drive for sharing on other computers. The good news is that I can plug in the USB thumb drive and watch a MP4 video files directly off the thumb drive on the Surface RT. No need to upload and then download the content to SkyDrive, DropBox, Box, or some other cloud service.

Watching videos off of the USB drive is also much, much faster and keeps A LOT of unnecessary traffic off of the network. You also do not need to worry about the video stuttering as it “buffers” over a slow and congested network connection.

You might not think that this is a big deal but think about how much traffic is created by having students watch flipped learning videos. If you assign videos for homework some students will not have access to broadband Internet at home, but a simple inexpensive USB drive can contain Gigabytes of learning material.

It is also very common for our college students to have a data plan that is capped at 5GB per month so watching videos over a capped data plan can get very expensive quickly if a student goes over their data plan cap. In reality 5GB is not very much video content at all.

So, something as simple as a USB port can dramatically impact the way you use a device in the classroom and at home.


Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom
http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 
Minggu, 28 Juli 2013
Day 8 – Camera Options on the Surface RT

Day 8 – Camera Options on the Surface RT

Surface RT for Teachers –
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

The past couple of days I have mentioned two image/photo editing apps, Fotor and Skitch Touch that are two great apps for teachers using the Surface RT. Teachers make a lot of visual content for their lessons and having options is always a good thing when it comes to creating content.

I mentioned that the Surface RT comes with two cameras, a back facing camera for taking pictures and videos, and a front facing camera that I use mainly for Skype. Another great feature of the Surface RT is its built-in kickstand that has just the right angle for making Skype calls. 
Both cameras in the RT are 720p Lifecams and therefore are a little lower resolution than the 1080p cameras now on the market. Both of these cameras take an acceptable level of quality for classroom use but they are not high-resolution cameras by todays standards.

Many reviews will stop there and just give you the specifications but I know from experience that there is a big difference between writing about something and actually going out and using the product in the field. I think this may be one reason the tech press has dismissed the Surface RT, they have not used it for any length of time.

Continuing my experiment from yesterday I setup a scenario where a Biology Teacher went on a field trip and took along the Surface RT to document the trip with some pictures. Today, I did the same and took a little field trip of my own out into the woods with the Surface RT. Below is a screenshot of a flower I took with the RT.
 


In addition, I brought along my Canon S100 point and shoot camera that has a zoom lens and better optics. Below is a picture of the same flower with a tighter shot.

Can you tell the difference between the two? Besides the different framing can you tell that the resolution is much higher in the bottom picture? Select each picture and do a pinch and zoom. You will find there are more pixels in the bottom picture and therefore it is a little sharper, especially when you zoom in.

Here is another example, the picture below is at the edge of my cornfield and was taken using the back camera of the Surface RT.

 
Here is a similar shot taken with the Canon S100.


So, I have proven that a dedicated point and shoot camera that costs approximately $350 is better than the Surface RT camera that currently has an education price of $199. Not too surprising, but there is another trick that the RT has up its sleeve. I can easily take the pictures off of the Canon S100 and copy to the Pictures folder on the RT.

I used a microUSB cable and plugged one end into the Surface RT and the other end into the Canon S100, turned on the camera, went to the Desktop File Manager. The RT automatically recognized the camera and I was able to navigate to the SD card and copy files off the camera to the RT, easy peasy.

Once the pictures are on the Surface RT I can use Fotor and/or Skitch Touch to edit the photos to my hearts content. I could also have just as easily popped out the SD card on the S100 camera and put it in a SD card to USB adapter and copied the files directly off the SD card using the Surface RTs USB port. A very, very, handy feature to have on a tablet to share content from one source to another.

Below is a photo I took today using the S100 and copied to the RT. I used the Fotor app to add a couple of different effects just to show more two more examples of what the Surface RT can do.


 

 
Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 
 
Sabtu, 27 Juli 2013
Day 7 – Using Skitch Touch on the Surface RT

Day 7 – Using Skitch Touch on the Surface RT

Surface RT for Teachers –
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Continuing my journey of exploring apps to be used in the classroom with the Surface RT I have discovered Skitch Touch for annotating images, screenshots, and photos.

Skitch Touch is a very simple program but for teachers it serves the key purpose of drawing the attention of the student to an area on the screen. It is very easy to use and only took 30 seconds to download and install from the Windows Store. It is produced by Evernote and once the install is complete you get a small ad that says “Skitch is better with Evernote”  Evernote is a very popular online note-taking program.

I have used Evernote in the past but I have become a 100% convert to OneNote since I began using Windows 8 tablets. A big reason for my conversion is the excellent digital Pen I use every day with the Surface Pro. Using OneNote also allows the elimination of yet another userid and password to keep track of, Evernote requires a separate account sign-in.

Since OneNote uses my Microsoft Account on the Surface RT I already have access to all my OneNote notebooks. Because my notebooks are associated with my Microsoft Account all of my notebooks that are saved to SkyDrive are available to me on the Surface RT. That means that no matter what device I use I have access to all my SkyDrive files if I use the same MS account. This is a big plus for the Surface RT as my companion device. I will have much more to say about OneNote in a future post.

Back to Skitch Touch, you can annotate photos that you take with the camera on the Surface RT. Or, you can open any image for editing, like a map or screenshot that you have stored in your Pictures folder.  Since the RT has file management built-in you can navigate the file structure on the RT to get to the images of your choice and edit with Skitch Touch.

Since the Surface RT also has a camera you can take a picture and then immediately annotate it with Skitch Touch. Imagine you are a Biology Teacher on a field trip and you take several pictures with the Surface RT. When you get back to the classroom you can open Skitch Touch, access your camera roll, and immediately begin drawing arrows to features you want students to know about. You can very easily add text and pointer arrows to get your lesson across. Below is an example of a Catalpa Tree with seed pods annotated with Skitch Touch.

 
The above example was taken with the Surface RT camera and annotated with Skitch Touch, very easy to do. The Surface RT camera in my experience is certainly not the best camera I have ever used coming in at 2.0 megapixels, but it is fine for many everyday classroom tasks. If you find the Surface RT camera a bit lacking you can always use a separate high-quality digital camera and import the photos into the Surface RT to use with Skitch Touch.

The Surface RT comes with a USB 2.0 port!

If you have a USB to SD card adapter you can easily access your digital camera photos from the RT’s USB port. No need to upload/download them to and from Dropbox and no need to plug the Surface RT to a different computer to copy photos on and off the device.

Skitch Touch is a simple but powerful app for enhancing visual aids. It is great for adding attention getting annotations to images, screenshots, and photos. These enhanced images can then be used to make great tutorials on any subject imaginable. If you have a Surface RT give Skitch Touch a try.

Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 
Jumat, 26 Juli 2013
Day 6 - Taking a Screenshot on the Surface RT and editing Photos

Day 6 - Taking a Screenshot on the Surface RT and editing Photos

Surface RT for Teachers -
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

I stated yesterday that you learn a lot about your computing habits when you get a new device. When you need to get your work done you need access to the tools to get the job done. The first day I used the Surface RT I needed to edit a photo. Since the Surface RT does not run x86 programs I was in need of finding an app from the Windows Store to fill in the void. So today I continue my appification of the Surface RT by selecting another app to get my work done.



But first, a little more about my two app picks from yesterday, both were consumption apps, Kindle and Audible, from Amazon. I think you could make the case that the Surface RT is worth its current $349 price tag just from these two apps alone. I now literally have my entire ebook collection purchased from Amazon available to me on the Surface RT! When the Kindle was first introduced in 2007 the vision was “any book, anywhere, in less than a minute”. Today Amazon has pretty much delivered that vision. Wow, just Wow!

This is great for individuals but for schools there are challenges for ebook distribution to students with many unanswered questions. How do schools buy ebooks, distribute them, who owns them, can they be re-used year to year, will the ebooks work on a variety of devices, can you add annotations in the margins, etc… This is another reminder that we really need to do our homework if we intend to replace textbooks with ebooks. It is doable but there are many logistical questions that need to be answered before rolling out a massive 1:1 program.

For an educator, having access to such an ebook delivery service is truly amazing. I have not had the Surface RT for even a week but I see much potential. I have experienced a negative update experience and am now aware of this weakness, but so far it is certainly not a deal breaker for me.

My overall positive experience to date makes me wonder about some of the pejorative comments from others that have said no one would want a Surface RT even if given away like at #iste13. Have we become so spoiled and branded by the consumption engineers (marketing) that we cannot see the potential of the Surface RT? The RT is far from perfect, but in the hands of a teacher I see so much potential.

I think some of my optimism for the Surface RT stems from my experience with computers in general over the past two plus decades. We really have come a long way and each generation gets better.


Today’s App Pick

Now back to my app pick for today. When I began this blog series one of the first things I needed to do was take a screenshot of the Surface RT and paste it into this blog. How do you do that on the RT?

Taking a Screenshot on the Surface RT

To take a screenshot on the Surface RT all you need to do is press the Windows button and the Volume Down rocker at the same time. When you press the Windows button you will feel a slight vibration letting you know you pressed it. When both the Windows button and Volume Down rocker are pressed at the same time you will see the screen dim and your screenshot will be saved to your Pictures folder in a subfolder called Screenshots. The default file type is in the PNG format.

To get to the Pictures\Screenshots folder go to the Surface RT Desktop and click on the folder icon located on the left-side of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, this is the File Explorer (just like Windows 7).

Fotor – Photo Editing App for the Surface RT

Of course one of the first things I wanted to do with my screenshots was to edit them for this blog. I downloaded the free Fotor app from the Windows Store and in less than two minutes was editing my first screenshot picture on the Surface RT
 


Fotor is very easy to use and is touch-friendly. You can Crop images, add Text, and apply a wide range of special effects to images and photos. If you so choose you can make some “Instagram-like” images very quickly by clicking on the filters. There are also adjustable slides to move back and forth to vary the effects.

There is also a secondary feature of Fotor that is very nice and allows you to make your own photo collages very easily. You can select multiple photographs and you have a variety of collage templates. Once finished arranging your photos in the collage the way you like you can Save it to a JPG file.

Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom
http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 
 
Kamis, 25 Juli 2013
Day 5 – The Appification of the Surface RT Begins

Day 5 – The Appification of the Surface RT Begins


Surface RT for Teachers -
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Today I begin to explore some of the apps available on the Surface RT. If you follow the marketing hype surrounded around tablets you have probably heard that the phrase “there is an app for that”.

One of the big surprises I found when I reviewed the Surface Pro was how few apps I used. This was in large part due to the Surface Pro being a x86 compatible PC and therefore I had familiar applications to choose from. Over the years I have a staple of about a dozen applications I regularly use. These select programs have been able to do everything I need to produce teaching and learning content.

With the Surface RT (the little brother to the Surface Pro) I do not have the option to run x86 programs. The Surface RT runs on the ARM architecture and is incompatible with other x86 programs. I already find this limiting as I do not have the safety blanket of x86 applications available to me. I will be finding out over the coming days if I can find acceptable substitutes to some of the applications I regularly use on a PC.

I am not sure that the appification of education is a good thing because many apps are very focused on a single purpose and many seem watered-down. This can be a good thing if you regularly do that one specific thing with the app, but much of what we do in education is inter-related. I worry that breaking things down into small apps of single purpose that we might lose the big picture.

The other disadvantage of apps is that they are constantly in need of updating. Installing an app for this and for that can quickly lead to a proliferation of apps. If you are managing apps on a large number of devices the management issues can quickly become burdensome.

I am learning a lot about my workflow since I purchased the Surface RT. Starting out with a fresh system is a great opportunity to find the apps I really need. I am starting with a clean “slate” (pardon the pun) and I can quickly find the limitations of a new blank system.

The first app I installed on the Surface RT was the Kindle app and I followed that up with the Audible app from Amazon. I mentioned in an earlier post that my wife reads a lot of ebooks on our Nexus 7 Android tablet. This works great for her but she also wanted to have access to her Kindle books on the Surface RT. It took about five minutes to download and install the Kindle app and then sign-in to our Amazon account. In five short minutes we went from no access to complete access to our entire ebook Kindle Library, magic!

I also installed the Audible app even though we do not have an Audible subscription. We do have a couple of Audible books in our library so I installed the Audible app so we could listen to them. I have noticed the option for many books on Amazon that if you buy the Kindle format you also get the option to buy the audio Audible version at a reduced cost.
 

We decided to use Amazon long ago because we did not want to get locked into an ecosystem like iBooks that limited device choice. You can only read the iBooks format on an iOS device. Amazon gives us the ability to read our Kindle ebooks on Android, Apple, and/or Windows devices.

Yes, it is true that Amazon uses the KF8 proprietary format but at least you can use it on the device of your choice.

So the appification of the Surface RT begins, stay tuned in the coming days as I share what other apps I discover for teaching and learning purposes.

Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, P.hD.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/

 

 
Rabu, 24 Juli 2013
Day 4 – Multiuser accounts on the Surface RT, a big deal for schools and families

Day 4 – Multiuser accounts on the Surface RT, a big deal for schools and families


Surface RT for Teachers -
Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Another feature of Windows 8 is something called multiuser accounts. Having the capability to logon as a different user on the Surface RT is something that is missing on other tablets. Multiuser accounts come in very handy in a school environment and also for the family.

Technology budgets are not unlimited

Gadget makers are in the business of selling as many devices as possible to as many people as possible. That is their business model. So if you are a gadget maker it stands to reason that you would encourage schools to adopt 1:1 programs so that each student has their own individual device. This is great for the gadget makers but sometimes having a device for each student is beyond the fiscal means of many school systems and families.

One device for each member of the family can be a budget buster. One alternative is to have one device setup with different user accounts, thus the name multiuser accounts. This is what I have done with the Surface RT. I have an account and my wife has an account and we share the device, essentially cutting the cost of our gadget budget in half.

One device now serves two different people. I can have my Start Screen setup the way I want and she can customize her Start Screen to her preferences. Sure, it is sometimes inconvenient to share a device but saving $500 is enough of a reason for many to share. Sharing is caring.

Imagine if you are a family with 3 or 4 school aged children, is spending $500 for each child to have their own tablet reasonable? That would be $2000 spent on gadgets that will need to be replaced every three years. Some schools are even starting 1:1 programs at the Kindergarten level.  Given a turnover rate of a new device every three years for four school aged children would require four different sets of devices at a total costs of $8000 by the time all four children graduate from high school. For the average family this is difficult to do financially and does not even account for the costs of apps, ebooks, music, movies, and other online subscriptions/purchases. The costs add up in a hurry.

Online Stores

Speaking of costs adding up, these devices now come with something called “stores”. Apple has the App Store, Google has the Play Store, and Microsoft has the Windows Store. Stores exist to sell you things. I have not heard many educators address this issue but having online stores on devices in classrooms and at home with targeted advertising, branding, and marketing to children is a topic of concern.

Many tablets are now given to children either as a learning tool or more often an entertainment device. Some stores make it very difficult to setup an online account without giving up credit card information. Once a credit card number is associated with an online store account the credit card holder is responsible for payment, be careful.

This new model of online store purchase and delivery is very challenging in a school environment and also for many businesses. Making an online purchase is now just a simple click or touch away. Managing hundreds or thousands of devices in this new environment is challenging and I know many schools and businesses are struggling with the implementing and managing large numbers of devices and trying to figure out how to deal with online stores.

Many children have no concept of money and when it comes to playing games on a tablet there are now new ways for stores to make money called “in-app” purchases. There have recently been a couple of cases in the news where a parent is shocked to find a $6000 credit card bill because their child bought items from the Apple app store from a free app that included in-app purchases. Here are a couple of recent examples:

Apple refunds dad $6,000 iPad bill racked up by 8-year-old
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57594710-71/apple-refunds-dad-$6000-ipad-bill-racked-up-by-8-year-old/

In-app purchasing and $3,000 iTunes bill stun mom
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2013/07/22/nl-in-app-purchases-warning-723.html


Both examples above are from Apple but this can just as easily happen on the Google and Microsoft Stores. There are ways to manage an account to help prevent this but having a separate account not associated with a credit card is another way to protect yourself from unauthorized purchases from a child using a tablet.


Screencasting and the Flipped Classroom

For teachers there is another HUGE benefit when it comes to multiuser accounts on the Surface. Windows 8 Live Tiles on the Start Screen are wonderful in keeping you informed with notifications of the latest happenings. But, if you are using a tablet in the classroom to project up on the big screen you probably do not want all of your email and other notifications broadcasted for the entire class to see.

The same is true with screencasting. With the popularity of the flipped classroom model of instruction you do not want your personal information captured when you record a screencast that will be posted to YouTube for the world to see. With the Surface Pro and Surface RT the simple solution is to make a separate account that you can keep pristine for screen recording and/or projection purposes.

I have used this multiuser trick often to keep a nice and neat Desktop and Start Screen, everyone thinks I am so organized, you should see my other account ;)
Now my screencasting secret is out.


Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, P.hD.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/
no image

How to Update the SharePoint 2013 Term Store by Importing it from an Excel 2013 Spreadsheet

Changing your Region Settings

The first thing you need to do is make sure your region setting are formatted correctly. This is because the file format used by the SharePoint Term Store is a csv. This converts table using the “List separator” in your PC’s region settings. If you don’t set these first you have difficulty opening and converting the spreadsheet to and from a csv file format.

The csv extension literally stands for Comma Separated Values.

Change the “List separator” from a semi-colon to a comma

  1. Open “Control Panel”
  2. Click “Region” or “Region and Language”, depending on your Windows operation system
  3. Click “Additional settings…”
    photo Region1.jpg
  4. Change:
    a. Decimal symbol                .               (full stop)
    b. List separator                     ,               (comma)
    photo Region2.jpg
    Both need to change. It seems to conflict if you just change the “List separator” and not both. If they are both comma’s, the csv conversion returns semi-colon’s.
  5. Click “OK”
  6. Click “OK”

Import the csv sample template from SharePoint 2013 Term Store

  1. Open SharePoint 2013
  2. Click the cog (Site Actions), top right corner
  3. Select “Site Settings”
  4. Click “Term store management”, under “Site Administration”
  5. Select the Managed Metadata Service application, on the left tree view
    photo TermStore3.jpg
  6. Click “View a sample import file”, on the right (properties pane)
    photo TermStore2.jpg
  7. Click “Save”

Working on the Terms

  1. Open this file (ImportTermSet.csv) with Excel 2013.
    If all the region setting are correct, it will open correctly, in the correctly formatted columns.
    photo TermStore4.jpg
To see the raw csv, you can open it in Notepad.
For more on the Managed metadata input file format, here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424396.aspx

When creating your Managed Metadata terms store it is always better to plan what you are going to do and what they are going to be used for. TechNet has some nice articles on this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee530389(v=office.15).aspx

Compare Excel spreadsheet with Term Store

What will the spreadsheet going to look like in the Term Store?

photo TermStore5.jpg

photo TermStore8.jpg


Save to csv

If you have competed creating the terms in Excel and have the spreadsheet in xlsx format and you want to re-save it to into csv format.
  1. Open Excel 2013
  2. Click "File" tab, on the Ribbon
  3. Select "Save As", on the left
  4. Click "Browse"
  5. Select the file type: CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)
    photo TermStore9.jpg
  6. Give the file a relative name
    e.g. ImportTermSetNew

Import csv to SharePoint 2013 Term Store

Remember permission. The authentication account which you use to access the Term Store Management Tool, must be listed as a "Term Store Administrator", or you will not be able to accomplish this task.
  1. Open SharePoint 2013
  2. Click the cog (Site Actions), top right corner
  3. Select “Site Settings”
  4. Click “Term store management”, under “Site Administration”
  5. Select the Managed Metadata Service application, on the left tree view
  6. On the left, in the tree view, select the “Term Group” you would like to upload to.
  7. Select “Import Term”
    e.g.: Test Term Group
    photo TermStore6.jpg
  8. Click “Browse”
  9. Choose the relevant csv file
    e.g.: ImportTermSetNew.csv
  10. Click “OK”
    photo TermStore7.jpg
Selasa, 23 Juli 2013
Day 3 – The Dual Personality of Windows 8 on the Surface RT

Day 3 – The Dual Personality of Windows 8 on the Surface RT

Surface RT for Teachers - Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Windows 8 is a transitional operating system that hangs on to some of the old ways of doing things, like the Desktop, and at the same time innovates with the new touch-friendly and colorful Live Tiles on the Start Screen.

Another innovation of the Surface RT is that cloud computing services like SkyDrive are seamlessly integrated into the OS when you use your Microsoft Account. Think of SkyDrive as a hard drive in the cloud, you automatically get 7GB of free storage space when you sign-up for a Microsoft Account. Of course, you can buy more storage space if needed.

If you are using a Microsoft Account be sure to follow your organizations policies about using external accounts. I also recommend that you keep a separate Microsoft Account for school use to separate your personal information from schoolwork.

Before I go any further in exploring the thousands of apps available for teaching and learning on the Surface RT I would like to take a moment to share my understanding of the new Windows 8 operating system and address some of the criticisms I have heard from others.

First, Windows 8 is a new and innovative operating system. By definition that means that there will be new things to learn.

This dualism of mixing the old with the new creates a “dual-personality” that some say is “jarring” as you switch between the Desktop and the Start Screen.

I have never considered the switching between the Desktop and the Start Screen as jarring and I think this dualism is actually a positive. It preserves a form of backward compatibility to the old way of doing things like having familiar applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote available from the Desktop on the Surface RT.

The same jarring argument can be made of the iPad as you switch between any app and the Home screen. Switching from an app to the grid of icons on the iPad’s Home screen is just as jarring but I hear few complain about it.

Desktop – File Explorer and Snipping Tool

On the Surface RT there are two other very big positives of the Desktop besides the MS Office programs.

First is the File Explorer, being able to find and organize your files via the File Explorer is a must for busy teachers. If you use Windows you will see the familiar Documents, Pictures, Music, and Video folders.

Second is the Snipping Tool. If you do not know about the Snipping Tool you need to learn how to use it. I use it so much that I Pin it to the Taskbar of the Desktop on the Surface RT, it is a must-know tool for teachers. The Snipping Tool allows you to copy freeform or rectangular areas of the screen to take a screen grab of just area of the screen you want. This is great for making tutorials.


Where is the Start Button?

The other common complaint you hear about Windows 8 is that there is NO Start button! Much ink has been spilled by reviewers and many have been very vocal about the missing Start button in Windows 8. This of course can easily be worked around.

If you have a tablet like the Surface RT you can press the Windows Flag on the tablet itself to take you to the Start Screen no matter what app you are in. Press it again and it takes you back to the last thing you were working on. The Windows Flag button on Win 8 tablets is similar to pressing the Home button on the iPad. When you press the Windows Flag you also get haptic feedback (vibration) letting you know you pressed it. If you have the keyboard attached you can also press the Windows Key.

Microsoft is Listening - 8.1

If you are one that considers the removal of the Start button as a deal killer and/or think the switch between the Desktop and the Start Screen is too jarring I have good news. Windows 8.1 is currently in beta testing and I have a testing this new version. In Windows 8.1 the Start button is back!!! And, Microsoft is changing the way the switch between the Desktop and Start Screen work. In Windows 8.1 you can use the same theme of wallpaper on the Desktop and the Start Screen making the switch between the two visually smoother (less jarring).

I am testing Windows 8.1 on a couple of systems and at some point I will probably upgrade my Surface RT to the 8.1 beta version. But, for now, I want to stay on Version 8.0 so I experience the Surface RT the same way teachers that received one at #iste13

Until next time…

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, P.hD.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/
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