Technology in the Classroom

Episode 192 – AI curriculum

October 25, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Tony and Patrick are back once again for another great show! Check out the talking points below and you can subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting app (we are on almost all podcast directories).

Apple event takeaway
1. MacBook Pro starting at $2000
Bitpaper.io – https://bitpaper.io/
1. Better than a lot of .io sites
2. Good for math homework
3. Touchscreen
4. Review on Wednesday
Student printing at Tony’s school
1. Unsustainable “print party”
Tony has been drinking AndyGator – https://abita.com/brews/andygator#
AI in the curriculum
1. https://www.ibm.com/watson
2. Reading recommendations
  1. Daemon by Daniel Suarez – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon
Dell – some interesting things for parents if you know the right person
1. Online store for your organization

Download the episode here

WordPress + Anchor.fm = It’s a little broken

October 22, 2021October 27, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

When I heard about this in March of 2021 I thought that this was too good to be true? How could this partnership last? here is are two services that want you to consumer content on their websites/apps. How are they willing to split their revenue? Well it looks like it’s starting to fall apart a little bit.

What should happen?

Well here is how this was working. You would write your post on WordPress.com and then publish it. You had to publish it for Anchor.fm to see it, so once it was published you would log into your Anchor account and click on Episodes at the top.

If there were new episodes to be converted they would show up in the list.

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Google Forms + Form ranger = Event Signup – Part 2

October 20, 2021October 27, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Part 1 was a quick rundown of how we successfully utilized Google Forms to allow parents to sign up for our After School Activities (ASA’s). I didn’t dive into the nitty-gritty when it came to the details about how we utilized the Form Ranger Add-On with Google Forms to make it all work. I made a quickish (it’s about 7 minutes long – I’m out of practice) video to show it, but some people like to see the steps broken down, so keep on reading if that’s you.

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Episode 191 – Un-Boxing Day

October 18, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Tony and Patrick are back and having more fun than ever. As always, you can find our podcast on your favorite podcasting app or on Podomatic. Check out the talking points below and if you have any humorous clips you want on the show – reach out to us in the comments!

Tony and Patrick catch up
New sounds for top of the- show
Google Forms + Form Ranger detailed post
Apple’s new event
1. What would you like to see?
Is Tony done with Chromebooks?
$33.99 – Really?
Video editing
STEM/Maker
Windows 10 – Could be the best option but it is still the most annoying operating system on the market
Dystopian School Follow Up- We will only use Linux, but you can choose your flavor

Download the episode HERE

Google Forms + Form Ranger = Event Signup

October 13, 2021October 18, 2021 Patrick Cauley1 Comment

Google Forms is pretty great. It’s easy to use, it presents the results in easy to digest graphs and it stores all the raw data in a spreadsheet so you can then organize and display however you want. Despite all this is does fall short in a number of areas. One of those is for event registration.

Our situation

What we are doing at my school is offering After School Activities (ASAs). These are not free and there are limited spots to each activity. In the past we used online form services such as Wufoo or Cognito Forms as we can add those limitations, but then outputing the data didn’t always look great and you are also paying for a service.

As for parents paying, that is handled by our business office individually with each family, so our form does not need to collect and process payment and we can always shut down a Google Form whenever we need to, but the form must be able to limit how many people can be signed up for a particular activity.

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iPad Mini, Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3 and Surface Studio Laptop – Are they good buys?

October 6, 2021October 18, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

Recently Apple and Microsoft held events and unveiled some new products. Looking through my educator glasses I thought I’d write about them and try to evaluate if they are good for schools. When I say that, I mean, are they good to buy a whole bunch and give them to teachers, staff and/or students. So let’s dive in.

iPad Mini

No. There you go. The iPad Mini looks great. It probably has good battery life, the screen looks bright and the build quality is solid. In the past the iPad Mini was the “cheap” iPad, so schools bought them and teachers/students liked them. The landscape has now changed. Now schools can buy an iPad Mini for $449 (education discount) but the “cheap” iPad is $309 (education discount).

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Episode 189 – Hercules Headmaster

October 4, 2021October 4, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

*Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons*

WE ARE BACK! Tony and I are going to try and podcast every week folks. That’s right, every – single – week of this year. Will we do it? Not sure but we are going to try. We are also going to try and switch up the podcast a little. Instead of just talking ed tech we may do some series or something. I don’t know, but I do know that this episode was a lot of fun. Check out the talking points below and be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app.

What have we been up to since our last episode (March 2021)
Streaming live events – Patrick’s new setup
Dystopian School (A better way to run a school)
1. Definition – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia
2. Trend of making a mound into a mountain
3. Kevin Sorbo as Hercules as the head of school – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules:_The_Legendary_Journeys

Listen to it here

Download it here!

Milanote – A review

September 20, 2021October 18, 2021 Patrick CauleyLeave a comment

In 2020 I wrote a review about LucidSpark and then made a quick tutorial video. If you’re not too familiar with it and want a quick summary of what LucidSpark does, it is a collaborative tool where people can share and organize their ideas on a near limitless canvas. It is simple and easy to use and I like it.

Then I saw this comment on the video.

Well, I have no loyalty to one product over another and so I thought I would check out Milanote and write a quick review.

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Chromebook – Sign into two accounts at the same time

September 13, 2021September 20, 2021 Patrick Cauley1 Comment

I was working on a review when this came across my desk. Here is the short story. A teacher noticed that a student had another person’s email open while on their Chromebook. At first, the thinking was that they had signed into that Chromebook as that person (which is not a great idea). Upon further investigation, it turns out that the student in question was properly signed into their own Chromebook but somehow was able to open up someone else’s Gmail next to their own.

Before I go and detail how this happened, this is simply wrong. I cannot think of having a student log into another student’s email account as a good thing. Whether they’re friends and share passwords (another bad idea) or not that should be squashed.

I am going to detail how this works and what you or your Google Admin needs to do to fix it.

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