So here is a movie on how I found and added a recipe to OneNote while I was watching a show.
Blog
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One Note – Recipes
I like to cook and I like to use One Note to keep track of recipes – why? Because then I have the recipes on my phone when I am shopping. I’m a very spur of the moment kind of person and if a key ingredient for a recipe is on sale, I’ll decide to make that. So here’s a typical recipe I have saved:
Note that there I even make a shopping list. Which I make manually after pasting the recipe. The beauty of this, is that I can use SnagIt to get the recipes off the screen and paste the into OneNote. OneNote has some of the same tools.
The best part, is once the recipe is synced, it’s available on my phone.
If you don’t cook, there may be other information you run across frequently that you would like on your phone AND your other mobile devices.
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Getting Organized
The last few days, I’ve spent getting organized, and getting things together I have put off forever.
Some of it has been prompted by the move from SkyDrive to OneDrive. I have a Windows Phone, several Windows 8 computers and love the fact that I can get to everything in the cloud quickly and easily. So I’ve been moving things around and getting things to where I can actually get to them.
I’ve also had an app forever, that I didn’t completely understand, but am getting it now. Tasks by Telerik. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work right, and keeps generating new tasks. I’m going to complain and then stop using it. Tasks by Appamundi seems to work much better, just wish it had a Windows 8 version for the desktops
I’ve also been cleaning up my Office365 account and my Hotmail account so that everything is available from the phone. It feels nice to be organized.
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Apparently that foreign language substitution passed
There are days I wonder why I got into education.
I got an email that said that the proposal to allow students to take Computer Science instead of a foreign language passed. <sigh>
In my opinion and I said it before – it’s wrong and against any ethics I can think of. I’ve asked two people who supported and they said: it will attract students who don’t want to take a foreign language. Frankly I’m a proponent for foreign language education but high school is too late. Of course, high school level courses aren’t taught for people who want to be fluent, they are taught so people can read literature in the original language.
Never a bad thing.
Attracting students who don’t want to take a foreign language – not a good thing.
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Computer Science a Foreign Language? NOT!
Several states are looking at proposals that allow Computer Science to be substituted for a foreign language.
I’ve looked at this from several points of view.
First, as a curriculum designer, and I have looked at both the Language TEKS and the Computer Science TEKS and I see that the share very few objectives.
Second, as a former foreign language student and as a computer scientist. I took 4 years of Latin in high school, my choice. I thought it would be cool to be able to read some of my favorite literature in their original language. It was. I also majored in computer science. Learning 4 years of Latin did not help my ability to write software. While it makes it easier for me to spell, and I understand the rules of language better.
I have challenged advocates of this proposal and they support it to increase the enrollment in their classes, as students don’t want to take a foreign language. Personally I find this offensive that anyone would want to take away from someone else’s program to promote theirs.
I don’t expect that most students take a language in order to read a book in its original language, but most students don’t take 4 years of a language, they only take one.
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Gamefly Rocks
And if you click here , I get a free month.
I teach XBox programming but don't do a lot of gaming myself. When I first got my XBox, I bought some games I didn't like but I couldn't return them. I could resell them at a loss. That really bummed me.
So I found Gamefly. It's great, because you can rent games, try them, and even buy them, often at a reduced cost. My students were meh, about it, but I think it's because of the credit card policy and most don't have access to them.
What I really like about Gamefly is that I can put my membership on hold if I don't have time to game and come back to later, like in the summer, when I do.
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Accessing Data Remotely
One of my biggest problems is getting to my cloud data. I want to access it from my classroom, while I am at teacher conventions, and even just out and about and at the gym. I don’t want drag my entire music collection around – my husband and I have been buying music for decades and we have all our music on a hard drive. A big hard drive. I don’t even want to carry one of those around.
I also want to get to my photos, my lesson plans and anything else I might want when I’m away from house, again, without dealing with a hard drive or flash drive.
So far, the best solution has been the Western Digital My Cloud. I mentioned the other day when I was talking about backup solutions, but the Western Digital My Cloud has apps for Windows Phone, Apple and Android (including Amazon Fire), that just work.
I have the three terabyte, there are 2 and 4 TB models available.
Super easy to set up. Super easy to use. Customer Support via email is a bit slow, I asked a question on a Saturday and heard from them on Tuesday but I was able to solve the problem without their help.
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Reduced my ATT phone bill
They finally made the Media share plans available to their old customers, saw I to the Twitter and jumped on it. I have two devices now, a phone and a hot spot and was wasting data. I also don’t like not having unlimited talk.
I have yet to use all minutes but still.
I am at 6 gig data, unlimited talk and text and still get my 15% discount so I think I am saving about $20 a month.
Unfortunately not an affiliate. But have been a loyal customer for 3 decades.
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Backup Solutions
I’m always telling my students that they should backup anything they want to keep and that goes for the rest of us. I always keep things in at least three places – the original computer, the cloud, and a server at the house. Over the years I’ve had several
My favorite, which I am in morning for to this day was a HP Device that ran Windows Home Server. That thing was the easiest to use. I could just stick a thumb drive in a computer, come back to it 4 hours later and it was back to whatever state I wanted it in.
But all hardware has a limited life. I still have it, but have removed the working drives, and it sits gathering dust.
My next favorite devices are also old, but still working, a Buffalo Terabyte NAS and an Iomega NAS.
The Buffalo NAS had really good customer service and good software.
Iomega was bought out by Lenovo. I haven’t dealt with customer service since they were bought out, but I do have one of the new devices:
It was easy to install and very easy to use. Since the district is very firewalled, I haven’t used any of the cloud features.
I also have a Netgear Stora, that’s quite old. I haven’t been happy with the support or reliability of Netgear devices.
The latest device I really like is the Western Digital My Cloud. Customer support is really slow at answering email, but so far, other than an issue with initially loading firm ware, it just works.
I have the 2TB, comes in a 3 and 4 version:
What I really like about this device, is that all my tablets, my Windows Phone and my IPod working with it, both at home and when I’m out and about. I keep trying to find a way to keep my extra books available to me when I’m on the road and this is it.
Very easy to use. I’m also willing to help set it up.
The most important thing about any backup solution, is that you use it. Make sure you set up a way to run your backups.
One of the things I like about Windows 8, is that you can automatically set up things so they are saved while you are on the go using Skydrive. However, I still back up my Skydrive! Especially photos. That’s what I mean about having everything in three places.
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Project Based Learning on TV
Nicole Curtis – Rehab Addict — January 16
PERFECT PBL!
She presented a problem, told them there was no right or wrong answer and left them to think — Urban Garden.
On the job site, she appointed a kid that had been working on the project for a while as foreman. She stopped and showed them certain tasks — how to plan mum for example — and then let go.
Here's the win-win on this — cheap labor, kids are out getting Vitamin D –AND the kids in the neighborhood have sweat invested in the garden — are they going to tear it up? Are they going to stand by and let other people tear it up?
No way, no how. If you are interested in PBL, look up the episode, it just moments, but it's exciting.