I am at band camp this week at Hocking College in Nelsonville, OH. In the past, I would be carrying around a notebook with all of the music we have written, a drill chart book, a tuner and a metronome. What am I toting around this year? An iPad. One device, not three. No 9 volt and AA batteries to buy and carry around.

At first, I was skeptical. Could the iPad make it through an entire day. Would it overheat in the direct sunlight? Would it be more difficult to use? Could it replace the paper charts we have been using for years? The answers are YES, NO, NO, YES!

I noticed JD (band director for Berne Union) had his iPad out on the field on Sunday night. He said he was going to try using it and see if would replace using 2 books (drill charts and music). It worked well for him on Sunday night, so I had him send me the files he was using and decided I would give it a try on today. Listed below are the apps we are using and how we are using the iPad to clean drill and music.

First of all, we setup Dropbox accounts. We installed the clients on our computers and placed the files in our Dropbox folders. Then, we installed GoodReader ($0.99 in the App store) and entered our Dropbox credentials. We grabbed the files we needed from Dropbox and placed them in GoodReader. When we needed to access the marching drill, we opened up the appropriate file. For those of you who have never seen marching band drill, here is a picture.

GoodReader allows you to zoom in and zoom out using your fingers. This was handy when you are trying to figure out exactly where to place the students on the field. Also, you can add bookmarks in the pdf files. We combined the drill charts of the 4 songs into one file. We created bookmarks for each song. So, if we want to work on the second song, we hit the bookmark for that song and go.

The same applies for the music. There is one file with bookmarks. You can use the bookmarks or tap the right side of the screen to go forward one page or tap the left side of the screen for the previous page. Below is an example of the music we are using.

Another application that we are using is Subdivide Metronome ($4.99 in the App Store). It is a metronome application for the iPad to provide the tempo of the music for the band. If you have ever used a Dr. Beat, it is very similar. It can subdivide the beat and play different pitches for the different beats and meters. If you want to determine the tempo the band is playing, you can tap on an area of the screen and it will show you the current tempo that you tap. It is very accurate. It has replaced my metronome that I paid over $100 for many moons ago.

The final app I would like to mention is eTuner for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad ($1.99 in the App Store). It is a very simple tuner that shows you the pitch being played and whether the note is sharp, flat or right on the money.

Time will tell if the iPad will make it through the entire marching band season. My first impression is that it is a very valuable tool on the field. I was not concerned with the battery life. I knew that it could last about 10 hours. My concern was with the iPad overheating. I have experienced the overheating issue while driving. I listen to podcasts during my 30 minute commute to and from work. I had the moonroof open, so the sun was beating down on the iPad. After 10 minutes of exposure to direct sunlight, the iPad shutoff and displayed the message that it had experienced an overheating event. I did not experience this on the field. When I was not using it, I closed the case and kept it out of direct sunlight by shielding it with my body or moving it around. Battery life was at 70% after a 3 hour rehearsal with constant use.

My only concerns are what to do when it rains or damage to the iPad from being dropped due to being a klutz or having a guard member knock it out of my hand with a flag! If it is raining, I will stick it in my bag and use the paper charts. I have been very careful with the iPad on the field and I try to avoid the guard! Another concern I have is with the accuracy of the tuner. I plan on using the iPad and my $200 tuner at our first contest, the Lancaster Invitational in Lancaster, OH. If everything shakes out, the iPad could replace $300 worth of electronics for $8 dollars!

Last Saturday (June 19, 2010), I attended PodCamp WordCamp Columbus 2010 in Mendenhall Labs on The Ohio State University Main Campus. While combining both WordCamp and PodCamp sounds like a good idea, it was tough deciding which sessions to attend. I arrived fairly early, so I planned my day by choosing the sessions that looked interesting and stuck to my schedule.

My day began with my commute from Lancaster to Columbus. I decided to leave the laptop at home and see if I could get through the day with an iPad. After all, I am teaching 2 classes on the iPad this week. I left the house at 7:30am and fired up the iPad to play podcasts on the way up to Columbus. It took about 45 minutes due to road construction detours. When I arrived, I signed in, made a name badge and received a guess wireless access code. Before the opening session started, I checked email, read RSS feeds and browsed the apps store (I am 4 rows up on the left in the gray shirt).

I used the iPad constantly, using Osfoora HD for Twitter updates and to look up information in Safari. I used the hashtag #pwcbus in all of my tweets. Instead of taking notes, I have an archive of not only my tweets, but everyone who used the #pwcbus hashtag. I used Blast Follow to add everyone who was using the hashtag. I did find some spammers on the list, but they were easy to find and delete.

Thank you to Skyline Chili for the wonderful lunch! I ate outside with some people I have been following on Twitter, such as @JimBrochowski, @NetterB and @CherylHarrison. When I finished lunch, I took a walk to the music buildings, where I spent a lot of time as a student (1986-1990). I visited the percussion studio and remembered to bring my key to the practice rooms with me. Unfortunately, the locks have been changed.

The afternoon sessions started at 1:30 and the iPad was used non-stop until 5:15pm. When the closing session ended, I headed to the parking garage and hooked up the iPad to listen to more podcasts on the way back to Lancaster. I ran some errands on the way back and stopped for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. While I was in the restaurant, I read an eBook (Reach by Jeff Utecht). When I finished dinner, I got back in the car, put on more podcasts and headed home. I arrived home around 7:30pm. When I pulled in the garage, I received a notice from the iPad that only 20% of he battery remained. I started the day on a full charge and used the iPad constantly for nearly 11 hours.

There were a lof of people that had laptops and netbooks. Some people ran into the room to find a power outlet to plugin. It was so nice to be free from wires and my lap didn’t get hot from a laptop. I didn’t carry a backpack either. I had a small bag with the iPad, some business cards, earbuds, notepad and pens. I never used the notepad or pens.

I want to thank everyone responsible for organizing PodCamp WordCamp Columbus. Thank you @AngeloMandato, @Rockson, @Wyliemac and @Blantonious. If I missed anyone, I apologize! I am glad they mentioned for everyone to “checkin” on Foursquare. Over 50 people checked in, so we received the “Swarm” badge.

A special thanks to the sponsors. Thank you to The Ohio State University Center For The Study And Teaching Of Writing, Blip.tv, Blubrry.com, Spaceblue, Circle of Seven Productions and Wiley Publishing. And of course, thank you to Skyline Chili for the wonderful lunch!

First of all, shame on me for not posting to this blog for 3 months!

This is the time of the year when the teachers are looking forward to the end of the school year. Testing has been completed. End of the year projects are in full swing. Planning for the 2010-2011 is beginning to take shape. And yet, this is a very uncertain time.

Last year was an uncertain time as well. Ohio did not have a balanced budget and we did not know the school funding formula until very late. I was told to plan on having the same level of funding or less and to plan accordingly. Because I didn’t want any surprises, I didn’t purchase anything until I had a budget in writing. I believe I began making purchases in October.

The Logan Elm Local School District had two levy renewals on the ballot on May 4th. Both issues failed. The board of education will have a lot of work to do in order to get the issues passed before January 1, 2011. If the issues do not pass, we will lose 2.7 million in funding. We faced a similar situation in 2005 when thirty-six positions were cut. I lost my full-time tech, a position that was not restored after the income tax was passed in April of 2005. On May 4th, we were told in a meeting to plan for the same level of funding or less for the 2010-2011 school year. If the levies failed, massive cuts would be made for the 2011-2012 school year. Will there be cuts for the 2010-2011 school year? Right now, we do not know. The board of education will be meeting on May 19th to work on a plan and budgets.

There was an article on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch today concerning the Ohio Budget for 2012-2013. In July 2009, the Budget Planning and Management Commission was created to get a head start on the 2012-2013. The current two-year budget, ending June 30, 2011, is balanced with nearly $8 billion in one-time state and federal money. How many meetings has the commission had so far, you ask? A dozen? Six? Three? One? How about ZERO! Yes…that’s right. Our lawmakers are hard at work. It’s only been ten months. Give them another month to figure out when they can have a meeting. I wonder how much that meeting will cost. I don’t see them using Elluminate, GoToMeeting, Skype or DimDim.

So, where are we headed? Will the Logan Elm School District exist after 2013? Will we have county school districts? Eighty-eight school districts instead of 612? Where will we be with technology? Will we have computers? Laptops? Netbooks? iPads? Gtabs? Will we have technology in schools or will teachers be forced to go back to slate and chalk due to lack of funding?

Wow…what a difference a year makes! eTech Ohio is to be commended for the changes they made to the 2010 eTech Ohio Technology Conference. I will admit I was very critical of eTech Ohio after the 2009 conference. In my blog post on February 8, 2009, I said I was going to take a year off from going to the conference. I didn’t take a year off, but I only went one day this year. Now, I wish I had registered for the entire conference.

In last year’s blog post, I detailed the reasons I was not going to attend. I mentioned that I wanted to see my colleagues and friends. I did see some of them, so I was thankful I decided to go one day. Last year, I wanted to get my hands on netbooks. This year, I took my Acer Aspire 10″ netbook, iPod Touch and Blackberry Storm (first gen..insert joke here). My Blackberry was useless in many of the session rooms. eTech listened to the feedback and provided wifi throughout the entire conference hall. The wifi network was rock solid and very strong. I witnessed attendees taking notes, backchanneling on Twitter and other sites and viewing the presentations and websites from the presenters. I really enjoyed following the conference hashtag (#oetc10) and I am not following some more users on Twitter. I tweeted that eTech should put the Twitter feed on the wall by the information booth. I received a tweet that it was up. Even though I could not see it, I read tweets from users mentioning the Twitter feed. Next year, I am looking forward to presenters using Twitter in their presentations and providing a backchannel. Ryan Collins mentioned that he would like to see hashtags for every presentation in the conference planner. That would be sweet!

Now that eTech is providing wifi, I am hoping that presenters will live-stream their presentations. That way, if you are in a presentation and are not engaged, you can leave the session, go out in the hall and find another session to watch on your laptop. This would be helpful for those that have physical handicaps in accessing the second floor of the session rooms. I have never thought about how difficult it would be for someone in a wheelchair to get around the conference hall with 6700+ people. Live-streaming would definitely provide more opportunities, especially if a popular presenter is booked into a small room. Rather than sit on the floor or stand in the back, you could go out in the hall or sit at tables in the back of the vendor hall and watch the live-stream.

I guess I shouldn’t be upset that some of the major vendors were not at the conference. I have to realize that there are many conferences for them to attend and it can be very costly for them to have a presence at every conference. When I make purchasing decisions, I do keep in mind the vendors that I spoke with at the conference. I said last year that I would not buy directly from Dell. I have kept that promise. All of the computers we have purchased this school year have been from Partstock or CDWG. I must say that there is one piece of technology that caught my eye in the vendor area. Epson has an LCD projector that has a very short throw (2 feet) and it is interactive, eliminating the need for an interactive whiteboard. All you need is a regular whiteboard or a white surface. The projector is the BrightLink 450Wi.

If anyone from eTech Ohio is reading this, I am eating my words right now. I may have been a little harsh last year, but I really enjoyed the one day I attended this year. I wish I could have attended all three days. Based on everything I saw this year, I will definitely be back for all three days for the 2011 eTech Ohio Technology Conference. I am assuming the hashtag will be #oetc11, if Twitter is still around in 2011. I am excited about attending next year’s conference and this year’s conference is still going on! Today, I followed the #oetc10 hashtag and I felt like I was at the conference. I am looking forward to doing the same tomorrow!

I created a Protopage a couple years ago. I used it as my start page or home page. I had lots of links and had some RSS feeds and a weather feed. I have been very happy with it, until Protopage began placing ads on the site. I don’t mind the ads. I know they have to “pay the bills”. However, I cannot have “racy” ads on my page.

Since we are rolling out Google Apps for Education, I decided to create a Google Sites page. It did not take very long to put the page together. Right now, I just have links. Google has “gadgets” that can be added to the site. I will do that soon. For now, my Google Sites page meets my needs and I like the fact that I am using something that we have adopted.

Click here to visit my Google Site.

Have you noticed that you can’t download a piece of software lately without being hassled to download other software? For example, when you download Adobe Reader from the Adobe website, there is a checkmark next to Install McAfee Security Scan. If you leave this box checked, McAfee Security Scan will be downloaded along with Reader and installed on your computer. Most users do not uncheck the box.

Another example is when you upgrade Java, there is a checkmark in a box to install Yahoo Toolbar. Again, most users do not uncheck the box and they end up with a dozen toolbars installed in their browsers. I saw a browser that had so many toolbars installed, you had to scroll down to see the top of the webpage on a 15″ monitor!

Software makers know that most users will click yes or Ok, so they know the software will get installed on a lot of computers. Since they make money from these types of installations, I don’t see the practice ending anytime soon. However, I do not like this and would like for software makers to cease this practice.

On March 1, I wrote a blog post on Spiceworks. We had just started using it, so it was a little early to give usage information. We had a few helpdesk tickets that were entered through the Active Directory integration or via email. My tech and myself were entering tickets and we were encouraging our teachers and staff members to enter tickets directly instead of filling out paper forms, coming out to our office or stopping us in the halls.

At the beginning of the school year, I sent out an email detailing how to send an email to the helpdesk. At the time, my tech and I had about 20 tickets that we had entered. We were hooking up computers in classrooms and found computers that were not working and other issues. I was amazed by the response from our teachers. I started getting emails on my phone from the helpdesk. Spiceworks had processed the requests and entered them in the helpdesk. After the dust settled, we had over 40 tickets in the helpdesk. Last week, we closed 30 tickets. This may not seem like a lot, however, there are a few factors involved. First of all, some of the tickets contained multiple computers. For instance, one ticket had 6 computers that needed serviced. Some tickets take longer than others. There are some tickets that take a few minutes and some that take a few hours or quite possibly, a few days. Also, my technician only works 22 hours per week. On top of working on helpdesk tickets, we had to issue laptops, attend meetings, enter users in Active Directory and create user profiles on the servers.

I am very pleased with everyone utilizing the helpdesk. It is a very easy process to initiate a request and it keeps us organized by having everything in one place. We don’t have paper requests, post-it notes and voicemails to deal with. Everything is in one place and we try to close out the requests as quick as possible. We hate seeing a lot of requests in the helpdesk. We would like to have zero requests. Right now, there are 49. We will work hard to get them closed and I wish we could get them closed quicker than we can. I wish I had larger staff to close the requests quicker. However, I was taught to be grateful for what you have. I am grateful, given the current economic climate, to have a part-time technician. Also, I am grateful that we will be hiring building technology coordinators soon. They will help us by having a contact in the building that can help us out by resetting switches, servers and other tasks.

I attended Podcamp Ohio 2 on Saturday, June 20, 2009 on The Ohio State University Main Campus. It was a great day to learn and there were 184 attendees. I took notes using Evernote in the sessions I attended and will post them at the bottom of this blog post. If you are not using Evernote, you should!

I met some wonderful people at Podcamp Ohio 2. Thank you to The Ohio State University for providing guest wireless internet access. I had a blast taking notes and tweeting some highlights of the sessions I attended. I tried to keep up with everyone at the unconference by following the hashtag #pco09 on Twitter.

Thank you to Qdoba for providing the fantastic lunch! It really hit the spot after attending the morning sessions. I love the tortilla chips! I will have to find the nearest Qdoba location so I can enjoy it again! Also, thank you to Avitae for providing your delicious caffeinated water! Thank you for providing a wonderful product with no preservatives or additives!

Thanks to @AngeloMandato, @DoctorAnonymous, @MerryCricket and all of the volunteers and workers for putting on Podcamp Ohio 2. I really enjoyed all of the sessions and I soaked in a lot of information. Thank you to all of my new followers and I am following 20 more people as a result of attending Podcamp Ohio 2.

Podcamp Ohio 2 would not have been possible without the sponsors. Thank you to The Ohio State University Center For The Study And Teaching Of Writing, Blubrry.com, Doctor Anonymous Podcast, Circle Of Seven Productions Book Trailers and Marketing, AssistCoach.com, blip.tv, TechSmith, SpaceBlue and Avitae.

Notes from the sessions I attended taken in Evernote:

On April 5th, 2007, I started this blog to provide information on technology for students, teachers, parents and anyone who wanted to read this blog. Though the focus has not changed, the frequency of posts has changed. There are many reasons why I have not been posting regularly, but the number one reason is Twitter. I have been more active on Twitter over the past year, with the majority of my tweets beginning in December 2008. The popularity of Twitter has skyrocketed and my Twitterverse has expanded. A lot of my friends and colleagues are on Twitter, which has expanded my personal learning network.

A lot has changed in the past year. One major change is having a new boss who is very supportive of technology. It is very refreshing to have someone who understands and uses technology daily. She expects everyone to read their email daily and all memos and information that used to be sent out via interoffice memo is now sent via email. This expectation has lowered costs and has increased efficiency. Another major change is I have a part-time college student providing technology support 22 hours per week. He is a hard worker and has lots of ideas. Support tickets are now manageable, which has given us time to provide new services and streamline our operations. Since January, we have installed a new helpdesk solution (Spiceworks), installed a new imaging solution (FOG) and we are in the process of rolling out a new antivirus solution. We have installed 110 computers and LCD monitors as well.

What changes are coming down the road? We have a lot of ideas and priorities we would like to accomplish. Our servers are getting long in the tooth and need to be replaced. We would like to replace more computers. We would like to get more technology in the classrooms. We would like to provide training for the teachers. All of this will take time. However, by streamlining the support ticket process, we have more time to devote to new projects. At this point, we are taking inventory of what we have and what we will need to acquire.

I am very excited about the future of technology at Logan Elm. Even though the economy may be down, things are looking up. We are in the process of creating a plan for new facilities. This has been a time-consuming process, but we are getting a lot accomplished. Next week, we will have community meetings where we will get a lot of input which will help the committee form master plans. From a technology standpoint, I can’t wait to get new buildings. I drive by our neighboring schools that have new buildings and wonder why their students are any better than the students of Logan Elm. The fact is, they are not. They just have new buildings. Logan Elm students deserve better facilities. We believe now is the time and we believe they will get new buildings soon!