TECH, 5/13/15

I love making PowerPoint presentations. I was a stickler for them in high school and college and each one had to be perfect. So naturally, I chose to do Keynote. I was unfamiliar with the software despite having owned an iPad for a while because my go to was using PowerPoint. I was impressed with the simplicity and ease of use, but then again, it is an Apple program so it is to be expected. Some similarities I noticed where it offered templates right from the start, including different styles of slides depending on the type of presentation you wanted to do. The formatting of the slides and the process of editing the slides is also very similar to PowerPoint. After having used PowerPoint, I found the program easy to use and navigate. There are a lot of options for transitions and builds, which surprised me. A real difference is the toolbar at the top. Where as PowerPoint's toolbar can be overwhelming with all the pages and options, this simply has 6 icons and 3 words. It's much less intimidating to a first time user or a novice to Apple software.

Using Keynote on an iPad, while somewhat simple to do, can be a bit frustrating at times. It is way easier to use a mouse to create a presentation. On the iPad, I often suffer from "fat finger" syndrome and end up clicking things that I don't mean to and I can't figure out how to get out of what I just did. It would also be more difficult if you typed in notes on your presentation because you would have to go back and forth between notes and presentation. This is a great app though, and i look forward to using it, maybe not on the iPad, in the future.

Box.net is also a great site to store files on the cloud. I had never heard of the site, but I downloaded it and played around with it and it is a neat program. I feel that it shares a lot of similarities with Google Drive but it's a good way to save and access files on the cloud without having o log onto Google.

I had also never heard of Rover, but upon further research, I found that it is a browser for K-12 students and provides links to educational sites, such as PBS Kids and the NASA Kids' Club. It is also formatted similar to Safari, so that will be familiar to some. One flaw that I found off the bat is that it blocks Wikipedia, which I do not agree with in an educational setting. I fully support blocking a lot of sites in schools, but access to an online encyclopedia is not one of them. Also, it blocks YouTube. It's given that most things on YouTube may not be best for education, but it also has a lot of neat educational videos on there too. I also don't agree with that.

I like Safari. It's a great alternative to Internet Explorer. While I lean more towards Chrome as my main browser, Safari is a close 2nd. I think it has the potential to be used effectively in a classroom setting, provided that the proper blocking software is installed on it.

iThoughts is a really neat program. Again, i had never heard of it so, I had to investigate and play around with it. It takes making web diagrams to a whole new level. And again, as with all Apple products, it's so simple to use. The click-and-drag feature really simplifies so much because it eliminates typing and copy & pasting images. The webbing features, zooming in and out with ease, and connecting different parts of the diagram make this a valuable teaching tool. As a history teacher, I can use this to show the flow of events in a cause/effect format or I could use this is a lesson about a specific person, place, or event. I definitely plan on using this in the future, even if I have to pay the $10 or so to download it myself.