I had the good fortune to migrate to an iPhone 4S today. It went so smoothly that I want to share what I did.
First, a bit of background information. My iPhone 3GS was already running the most current version of iOS (5.0.1). That phone was already using iCloud to sync mail, contacts, calendars, bookmarks and notes. I am using a Mac running Lion (10.7.2) for syncing.
- Read this short article designed to help people who are traveling and rent an iPhone.
- Run software update to ensure you have the most current version of iTunes.
- Prepare to Back Up Contacts, Mail Accounts, Calendars, Bookmarks and Notes
Check that you have your important data set to backup. With the iPhone plugged in and iTunes open, click on the iPhone in the left navigation bar. Then click on the Info tab. That is where you tell the iTunes which data to backup. If you are not using iCloud, make certain you have the right boxes ticked to back up that data from the phone to the computer. I am using iCloud so I did not tick any of the boxes and I had the message below.
- Sync your old iPhone.
- Transfer Purchases and Back Up
It was probably redundant, but I also right-clicked on the iPhone in iTunes and transferred purchases from iPhone to computer. Then I right-clicked again and made the iPhone back up.
- Back Up Databases
I created a folder on my desktop. Then I backed up the following data sets on my computer into it so I could more easily recover if something went wrong.- Contacts: Open Address Book > File > Export >Address book archive
- iCal: Open iCal > File > Export > iCal archive
- I should have backed up 1Password, my third-party password program. Fortunately, that data seems just fine.
- Backup Third-Party Apps Data
Next, from within iTunes I scrolled to the bottom of the apps tab to the filesharing section. This is where you can backup app data from certain third-party apps. For the apps that actually had data which I wanted to keep, I clicked on the app, clicked on the data, and then clicked the Save To.. button to save it to that backup folder I created on my desktop. I did this for Good Reader, Gym Buddy and HandDBase. Many of my apps, such as 2Do and Evernote sync to a location on the web, so I did not back them up here.
- Sync New iPhone
When I plugged in the new phone I was asked if this was a new phone or if I wanted to restore. I chose the latter and selected to restore from my old iPhone. Everything I did up until now took around 15 minutes. This step took another 15 minutes while all my data was transferred to my new phone. To my delight, everything seems to have transferred correctly. My apps seems to be there, in the same locations and folders. My important information is there such as contacts and calendars. Even my third party apps have their data and my Gmail app already knew my credentials and logged in. - Rename Your New Phone
Since you did a restore, your new phone now has your old phone’s name. Double-click on the name of your old device in the left navigation bar. Give it a new name and press return.
- Connect to WIFI
In settings, connect to your wifi network.
- Connect to iCloud
In settings, click on iCloud and login. Select which data sets you want to backup to iCloud. Make certain Find My iPhone is turned on. I sync everything except Photostream, Documents & Data. That is a personal preference. You may want to sync those as well. See short directions with photos here. - Check that Find My iPhone is Working
On your computer, open Safari. Navigate to www.icloud.com. Login. Click on the cloud. Click on Find My iPhone. Let it find your new phone. - Charge Phone and Wait for Network Services to Kick In
Since I am switching to a new phone but keeping the same phone number, it will take a few days for network services to transfer from my old phone to my new one.
That’s it. The entire process took no more than 45 minutes. I hope your migration goes as smoothly. If you are lucky enough to give it a try, let me know how it goes.
(This was actually an attempt at using the WordPress ipad app to post to a personally hosted blog. Looks like it worked! Our attempt to upload mp3 also worked but AAC was not so good.)
When I moved to Singapore, I spent lots of evenings and weekends at work. Even if I hauled my laptop home, it seems I always left some key document at work, or needed something that could only be accessed at work.
Jump ahead five years and now most of my files are online and platform-independent. I’ve shifted from One Note to Evernote. I’m using Dropbox instead of My Site in Sharepoint to store files. Both of those play well with my Windows 7 tablet at work, my Mac at home, my iphone and my ipad. As a result, I can do more of my work from the comfort of my home or on the road.
Increased use of Google Docs further facilitated this change. It allowed me to work on docs, spreadsheets and presentations from home and work. However, finding an app that accessed those well on my iphone and ipad has been less fun. When I started looking, I discovered that many apps allow you to view your docs. Unfortunately, few let you edit them well. Google’s own app sent you to Safari to do any work.
Eventually I found iGoogDocs and access improved. It is not flashy, but it is quick and reliable. With few taps I was into my docs. One further click and I was editing them. I used it with both Docs and Sheets and while I wouldn’t want to do major revision work on either on a phone, the quick bits I needed to revise on the fly worked well.
With Safari for reading my mail, and iGoogDocs for viewing work docs, all was well until I switched from Outlook to Gmail at work. I was part of the pilot group charged with figuring out and resolving the glitches of moving off the Exchange server. This made mail a bit trickier on the iPhone. I was already using Safari to read my personal Gmail. It wasn’t very feature-rich, but my personal mail didn’t require much. However, my work mail needed a more powerful interface to improve my workflow.
I found a really nice phone app called iMailG. I was quickly hooked on it due to all its handy features and visual appeal. I could now star messages. I could quickly jump to the top and bottom of message. I was amazed at how much better my experience was using that rather than the iPhone’s Mail app or Safari. (Since that time Google has vastly improved it’s mobile version so most features are available via Safari if you don’t want a stand alone app.
Since these two apps served me well on the iPhone, I eagerly put them on my iPad when I finally purchased one. iGoogDocs worked, but only at the size of an iPhone screen. After trying a few iPad apps, I decided to use IGoogDocs anyways because it was more stable and quicker.
I also installed iMailG only to find it was not compatible. The developers were working on an iPad version but it wasn’t available yet. I briefly used a nice app designed to play well with multiple Gmail accounts. It worked well until it was updated. I contacted the developer and he made a fix but it didn’t stick. I was back to looking for an app for my work Gmail.
Fortunately I found Google Apps Browser by G-Whizz! As with iMailG on the phone, this app added value to my experience. It has a well-designed interface that lets me work more efficiently. It has many nifty features and it is stable. It works well for mail, docs, spreadsheets and calendar. The other apps probably work well but I don’t use them at work. I am so pleased that I think I will purchase the iPhone version. That way my work mail can be on that and my personal account can be on iMailG.
The story could end there, but it doesn’t. iMailG is now available for the iPad. It is a delight to use. It is tied in my affections with Google Apps Browser for mail and doc access. Since I don’t have an app on either device that handles multiple accounts, this is the best solution– and it is a good one.
How are you accessing your Google accounts on your i-devices?
Clarence Fisher recently wrote a post regarding digital reading. At the end of the post he states,
My reading habits are changing and some of it is due to the devices I have been using. The popularity of these devices is unquestionable, but they have the long history of paper to compete against. They are interesting, useful and easy to use. But can they change what and how we read? Do they make being literate different?
Recently this same topic has been on my mind. I received a Kindle at Christmas time. I enjoyed using it for many reasons.
- I appreciated the almost instant access to books that would be expensive to ship to Singapore or require a trip downtown.
- I liked the integrated reading light in the overpriced cover.
- The built-in dictionary was helpful.
- When travelling I found it useful to carry many books in such a small package.
- My tired night eyes appreciated that I could change the font size.
Then I read a professional book on it. I could mark up the text, take notes and then sync those with my online account. Voilá! No more flipping through the book to find my highlights and notes. Instantly my notes became much more useful, much more powerful. In addition to my own highlights, I can optionally view what other readers have highlighted. This has further enhanced my reading experience. Now when a professional book isn’t available on Kindle, I grouse and am less likely to read it. All in all, the Kindle did add value to the reading experience and I was glad to own it.
Then I discovered that I could manually (or automatically for a fee) upload my Instapaper articles to the Kindle. I know from past experience that I am unlikely to spend time on my computer reading the articles I have saved to Instapaper. When I discovered that I could upload the files to the Kindle I read far faster and with more enjoyment.
However, all was not perfect. Adding notes was a tedious process. The reading light sometimes bothered my spouse. The Instapaper articles were “dead;” I couldn’t share them or save them on the Kindle. Most bothersome was needing to buy the reading material. I am a big fan of libraries and wanted to read library books on my Kindle. I know that feature is coming out later this year. I hope it isn’t a Windows-only thing as so many DRM things are.
This summer I purchased an iPad 2. I knew it was supposed to be a nice platform for reading, but I was more interested in it as a laptop replacement for use when traveling, teaching and in meetings. Therefore I was surprised to find how much it impacted my reading.
The first impact came from using Flipboard. I was able to enter my blogroll, Facebook and Twitter RSS feeds into the app. It’s newspaper-like layout made it a pleasure to read those feeds and easy to skim to find the posts I really wanted to read. The app’s sharing features made it easy for me to share links on Twitter, Google Reader or via email. I could retweet and reply to what I was reading. I could send articles to Instapaper. I even worked out a fairly painless procedure for getting links into Diigo. (I dearly wish there was direct integration with Diigo. That would save me even more time.) In short order, I went from 1000+ unread posts to being caught up each week.
Next I tried the Kindle app. Now reading professional books was even better because it was easier to add notes. I am more likely to have my ipad with me than my Kindle, so books are more often at hand.
Then I tried Zite. It is a news reader that allows you to pick areas of interest. Then, within those areas, you can give individual articles a thumbs up or down to train the app to better meet your interests. The layout and features are similar to Flipboard so reading is a pleasure. Not since I had a paper subscription to the International Herald Tribune have I read so much news and enjoyed it so much. Today I noticed that the app has added the feed from the Popular Science magazine website. An hour later I was still grinning as I read articles back through last December, everything from the theory of cancer as a parasite, not merely a cell mutation, to a photo from the International Space Station of the last space shuttle’s glowing vapor trail on its final descent.
Then I discovered that the Ramsey County Library in my hometown in Minnesota has many books available for reading on your computer or your mobile device using Overdrive software from Adobe. More than 15,000 libraries world wide use that system. I needed to create a free Adobe account from the Adobe website. I also needed to download the Overdrive app and enter my Adobe ID into it. Then I used my library account which I already used to reserve and renew print books, to login. In a matter of minutes I had a book downloaded to my iPad.
Patrons are allowed to have up to two ebooks checked out at a time. The lending time varies by book but most seem to be 2 week loans. Unlike most Kindle books, the layout was the same as the print book. Picture books are in full color. The first chapter book I read included page embellishments. I wish the Overdrive app had a built-in dictionary, but other than that, it has all the features I need. Their ebook collection is tiny compared to their print collection. Despite that, I have a long wishlist of books I plan to download and read.
Back to Clarence’s original questions. I haven’t exactly addressed them, but I can unequivocally say that for me, digital reading devices have me reading more, reading more broadly, sharing more of what I read, and making better use of my notes.
My own questions include the following:
- Will mobile reading devices have a similar impact on our students? I know for my elementary students that is unlikely since most of the apps mentioned above cannot be used by them since they are under 13.
- For older students, how can we leverage the power of these devices?
- I have been an avid reader since I was a child so my taking to these devices is no surprise. Will the diversity of materials readily available make reading more appealing to reluctant readers?
- Will they appeal to some reluctant readers because they are tech?
- Do we need to teach them different literacy skills to make the most of these devices?
Are you using ebooks or mobile devices with your students? Has it impacted their reading? Please share your experiences with me.
- Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading Her Kindle, After Mary Cassatt by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com used with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
- Readingby Courosa used with permission under Creative Commons license
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
One of my quests this year was to develop an online showcase for student projects. Five years ago, most digital student projects were word processed documents that could be printed out, or Powerpoint presentations that could be presented or printed.
Now in addition to those formats, we have podcasts, videos, Bitstrips, Voicethreads, Glogs, and other formats. We are also starting to see more open-ended projects where teachers let students chose how to share their learning.
About a third of our teachers and specialists have their own blogs or wikis. Two of our classes are using student blogs as digital portfolios. A number of others are using Powerpoint as a digital portfolio platform and embedding or linking to their projects. Some digital projects can be saved as .wmv or .jpg or .mpe and dropped in our online photo galleries. The rest have been more problematic to share. For the rest of the classes we need a digital showcase.
In addition to showcasing student learning, I saw other uses for this showcase…
- Share examples of projects with teachers during planning meetings
- Share exemplars with students at the start of a project
- Share exemplars with WASC accreditation teams
We clearly had a need, but we weren’t sure which format to choose. Our school has a Wikispaces account and an Edublogs campus account. We could make a case for either platform. In the end we decided on Edublogs. At this time, the blog templates were better looking, and the platform was easier to work with. You can view it here.
The Gecko Hub
Our original theme was much better looking but the font size was too small and we weren’t ready to start modifying the CSS template. We switched to our current theme which is not nearly as attractive but the black background makes the student work pop visually. It met our needs in terms of allowing the needed search widgets.
We set up a number of categories to allow us to search effectively. We have categories for grade level, subject and tool type. Now I am realizing we should add the ISTE categories as well. Since it is the computer teacher and myself adding projects, that should be manageable.
The search field should allow visitors to search by teacher’s name, making it easier for families to use.
We are just starting to add student work to the blog. I am liking that the newest projects appear at the top of the main page, that we don’t need to create the navigation links, and that each post really has its own “page” so teachers can add the link to their newsletters.
I am not loving the unfinished look of this theme, but I’ll leave it for now.
I am learning how to modify embed codes to make for a more attractive post. For example, embedding a full-sized glog doesn’t work very well. The right side of the glog gets cut off. Fortunately, I can modify the embed code, making the glog appear at less than full -size. Now I need to find that magic combination of easy to read but still fits in the blog.
Creating the posts is time-consuming. I am hoping my assistant will be able to help. Another problem may be storage. At the end of the year we tend to clear out most student projects from our subscription services. We need a way to mark the exemplars so they don’t become dead links on the blog.
I suspect at the end of each year we need to go in an modify the posts, removing the link to each child’s project and leaving only the exemplars.
While we’ve clearly only made baby steps, it is a start. I am confident we will continue to refine it into a powerful tool. I’d love to hear how you are showcasing student work online.
Whether you are planning your next lesson or working on your own new year’s resolutions, take a minute to flip through these ten mistakes people make when trying to change behavior. There is a wealth of information in this brief slideshow.
We had the great good fortune to have Alan November at our school for two days. One thing he said we should implement right away was an archive of student work to help teachers see what can be done.
I have been planning on setting something like that up since school started. I wanted it for the following purposes.
- A place to share student work with families, other classes and each other.
- A place for students to receive feedback from an outside audience.
- An archive to help students see what has been done in the past — they usually rise above the bar set by previous classes.
- A repository of examples so that as teachers plan the year with us, we can “show” them what other classes have done.
- A record of our tech integration growth. It won’t capture all our growth. Rather, it is one of many tools used for that purpose.
My first questions is format. We have Wikispaces.net, Edublogs, Blogger and Google Sites as school supported options so my first decision is blog or wiki? I am least interested in Blogger and Google Sites due to the space limitations on our school Google Apps accounts. I don’t think students will usually be the ones adding projects to the site since neither platform allows multiple people to work on the same page at the same time. Can you do that with Google Sites as you can with Google Apps? If so, that could be very useful. In any case, I am leaning towards Edublogs because it has so many attractive themes. Our Wikispaces.net account has a very vanilla theme. It goes well with our corporate website, but it isn’t a look that I think will appeal to children.
Whichever I choose, I am uncertain how to organize it. Based on my list of goals above, would you organize it purely chronologically? By grade level? By type of project? By subject area? Having so many goals make it challenging to choose. As I look back over those goals, I think they are already listed in orders of importance.
If I use a blog, then the most current projects would be what you saw as you visited the site which is handy for parents and students. This would also create an automatic chronological archive in the sidebar, making it good to show our school’s growth over time. That is good. Will that still work if I have multiple pages? For example, I could have different pages for different types of media. However, when I’ve seen teachers add pages to their site, those pages are like a single entry blog post. If they want to add to it, it is all still the same post. That is less desirable. I would like each new project added to be posts. That would more elegantly allow for comments on each group of projects. Anyone know how to make Edublogs do this?
Maybe, I only have one page but use categories. I can have categories by year, grade level, subject, and type of project. With those categories listed in the sidebar, it would be easy to click on the grade 3 category and view work that way, click on math and see tech integration in math, or click on Bitstrips and view all the ways we used Bitstrips across the curriculum.
There are of course, student privacy concerns. However we take those into account when we create any project that may appear online.
As you can tell, these are preliminary thoughts. Does your school have anything like this? What platform do you use? Any words of advice as I embark on this project? I’d appreciate hearing them.
Photo Credit: Oh the Irony by JP-Flanigan used with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 GenericBack when I was a classroom teacher, I rearranged the furniture in my classroom regularly, looking for that perfect arrangement. Now that I teach in a computer lab with desktop computers, moving the furniture is out of the question. Maybe that is why I keep changing lesson plan books.
Other than sub plans, I haven’t kept a paper plan book in longer than I can remember. Maybe never since student teaching. For major planning I use an Understanding by Design inspired Word document. However, for weekly plans for each of my 15 classes, I keep shifting what I use.
First I used Word. Tried Exel, then went back to Word. Then One Note became available and I loved using that. Moving between classes was so smooth. The first year I used it I made a tab for 2008-09 and made each teacher a page within that tab.
I was excited the next year when during my team planning with the classroom teachers, I found I had to reorganize the notebook. For 2009-2010 each teacher had their own tab and the plans and other supporting documents such as rubrics, worksheets, etc., were separate pages within that tab.
I loved how that worked, except I could only check it on a Windows computer. That meant I kept lugging my work laptop home each night so I could work on my lesson plans.
At some point during last year our school acquired its own Google Apps. In the interest of learning its quirks and strengths, I switched my plans from One Note to Google Docs. The advantages were I could work on my plans on any computer with internet access. I could even check them on my iphone. I was surprised at how often I did look them up on my phone.
However, I didn’t love this format. Having been copied over from One Note there must have been stray bits of code that I could never find but they made some of the tables behave poorly. Now I know I should have exported each from One Note to Word, then uploaded them to into Google Docs.
I also had significant lag and denial of access problems. This was good in that I raised a ticket on it with our IT Help and one of the engineers fixed it by changing some network settings. I was glad to have that problem identified and fixed before large numbers of our users began using the platform. Even with these problems fixed, I still didn’t love this option. It felt clunky despite its advantages.
This fall, I decided to return to One Note. I now had a little Lenovo S10-3 netbook running Window 7. It had One Note on it which was going to make my life much easier. I have everything set up with my lesson plans stored in a One Note notebook in Sharepoint so I could access them at work or at home.
Unfortunately, it isn’t playing well with the netbook. Sections keep getting corrupted. They work fine on any computer at work, but on the netbook they quit syncing. Of course, it happens the most to the sections I use the most. Not handy.
Today as I stared in dismay as my lesson plan notebook began corrupting on the netbook, I felt like I was back at square one, needing to lug my work laptop home when my lovely Mac was already there. Then lateral thinking kicked in an I thought of another idea. Why not use Evernote?
In case you haven’t heard of it, Evernote is a collection of software and services that allows users to collect, sort, tag and annotate notes and other miscellaneous information. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote
Evernote comes in many versions. You can have a free account or one with an annual fee with more features and more storage. You can use it on the web by logging into their site. You can also download their free desktop app which can work offline but syncs with the web one when it can get online. There are also mobile versions.
All of these versions sync. This means I can access my Evernote notebooks at work on any computer there either through the web or by downloading the desktop app. Then, when at home I can access it on my Mac. I also have the free iphone app and it has worked well on there.
I have had an Evernote account for a few years. Like One Note, I have a number of separate notebooks within it. This summer, as part of an AppSumo deal, I was able to purchase a one year subscription to the pro version of Evernote and a number of other online apps for the same price as the Evernote subscription usually costs so I jumped in.
One of the premium features in Evernote is the ability to have your notes on your phone. With the free account, you must be connected to the internet to access your notes. Now I have all my notes on my phone all the time.
Another feature is the ability to import Office files. Since I already had lessons started in One Note, I used One Note’s Send to Microsoft Word feature. After I had done this with the plans for each class, I emailed them to myself so I could work on my Mac instead of the netbook with its smaller screen. If I already had Evernote on my netbook, I could have eliminated the email step.
I just made all of these changes today so I can’t tell you if this is THE solution. I am already finding things to like about it. One nice feature in Evernote is tags. In addition to tagging each page with lessons2010, I also tagged them with their grade level + 2010. For example, 3rd2010. Now I can quickly find just my third grade classes and copy information between them when they happen to be doing something similar.
I also accessed them on my iPhone. Because the lesson plans have tables, they are stored as rich text and cannot be edited on the iphone. However, I am able to view them just fine. I was in a similar position when the plans were in Google Docs.
I think I will miss having a tab for each teacher. I haven’t yet figured out how I will keep rubrics and other items with the lesson plans. I can think of a number of options. I did have to put numbers in front of the teacher names (e.g. 01., 02., 03.) to force the plans to be arranged in the order of my classes rather than alphabetically by teacher name.
I will update you later on how this works out. In the mean time, if you have a digital lesson plan book, please tell me what you are using and how well you like it. I need to get back to those lesson plans I was working on two hours ago.
I don’t want this to become a blog of other people’s videos, but this one is too good to not share. I haven’t read any of Daniel Pink’s books, but I have had the good fortune to listen to him give a lecture on his book, A Whole New Mind which is an inspiration for any teacher.
Now he’s posted on YouTube this amazing animation of his new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Its concepts run contrary to standard concepts of both economics and motivation. However, they are not new. A decade ago Alfie Kohn was making some of these points in his book Punished by Rewards.
As compelling as the message was the media in this video. It feed into my recent fascination with the power of infographics. This animation is part video, part mind-map. As the video finished my first thoughts were…
- I want the camera to zoom all the way out like a Prezi so I can see the big picture.
- I have a much better understanding from this than I would have received from a Powerpoint with the same information.
In regards to that second thought, I want to know WHY it was more effective. Part of it was literally seeing the lines drawn between connecting ideas. Part of it was the iconic nature of the drawings, and the combination of text, graphics and narration. Is that all? I’m not certain.
Do you find this type of presentation more effective that a good Powerpoint or Keynote? Why? Please leave a comment to let me know your ideas.
(Thank you to Kim Cofino for this find as well. See why I have such love for my PLN?)Wow! This video is well-made and documents one school’s journey from traditional portfolios to digital ones. Thanks you for another tweet by Kim Cofino via Chad Bates for steering me towards it.
Short Portfolio Project Movie – narrated from Lawson Journalism on Vimeo.
