I’m in Croatia working with Teachers and students from all over Europe.

 One of the apps I’ve been keen to push out is the Awesome Bossjock. This is fast becoming one of my fave apps. Ta to @joedale for the tip when we met at the Apple Teacher Institute in Malvern in the Easter hols!

I’m using The Figure app to make the music idents and then syncing a set of special sound effects via iTunes to the class iPads. It’s one of those apps that just nails it.

I will do a more detailed demo and explanation in my next post that aims to:  Rip the lid off iPad Audio in the classroom, no hyperbolic shameful, self-promotion there then ;-)

Hope you like this demo and the little story that goes with it.

Live from Croatia, keepin’ it real (in cheesy DJ voice)!

I will be writing more in the next few days about Audio in the classroom, how to manage Garageband Audio projects with Apps like Figure and BossJock and the super publishing space Soundcloud.

Here are some examples….

Switch Ken Burns Off in iMovie on the iPad

turn off ken burns from Digital Roadtrip on Vimeo.

There are some critical debates here in the North of England like which side of the Pennines you come from and which one is the best.

Likewise, on the iPad,  ”to have or not have the Ken Burns effect” on every still image in iMovie!

So i’m tackling them both here…Here’s how the Ken Burns effect is switched off.

Combining eBooks using Book Creator and Edcanvas

You can now share and combine ebooks created in Book Creator on the iPad. You’ll need dropbox to share the books. I’m also using Edcanvas here to distribute.

Edcanvas is useful if you want to add additional resources and instructions, and especially good if you don’t want students anywhere near the dropbox.

Although files are shared from Dropbox, Edcanvas links directly to dropbox without any hassle or visibility to the students.

Why bother?

  • You might want to amalgamate a class set of books into one. 
  • You might want paired or group collaborative projects where books are combined

Note - copying the Url from the “share” window is hit and mostly miss. You can email the link to yourself or copy the link to the canvas from the browser - thanks to @edcanvas for advice on this!

Having totally nailed ;-) handing in any iPad generated work to a teacher’s laptop in class, using the simple Printopia/Finger print software, I need  a new challenge.  The wow factor of the above for iPad based teachers is unsurpassed! Eg. 30 students handing in work by printing as PDF automatically into a folder on my desktop. Any way…New challenge… The next hurdle for me has been large file management eg. audio and video files without resorting to large up/downloads across the internet. Whilst being a big fan of a class set of web 2.0 channels eg. EDMODO,  Vimeo Edcanvas Soundcloud  and cloud storage tools Sometimes I just want to share something from a large 500 GB drive or hand in a large project without uploading and killing the school Internet bandwidth. The meDrive from Kanex promises to do this. I’ve ordered one and I’m excitedly tracking the US delivery. I’m really excited about this as it fills a gap currently filled by clunky web solutions and complex middleware tools to support web dav. Webdav on a mac mini has never been truly reliable for me. This really could change things, with USB pen and large storage drives easily being shared across the iPad learning spaces. It can be easily managed by the teacher not the tech team. This has always been my modus-operandi. Large files? So I still want iMac hubs doing green screen and creating more complex digital content but I want to be able to share these outcomes within school, without the publishing pain. So as soon as it arrives I’ll share the classroom experience!
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Having totally nailed ;-) handing in any iPad generated work to a teacher’s laptop in class, using the simple Printopia/Finger print software, I need  a new challenge. 

The wow factor of the above for iPad based teachers is unsurpassed! Eg. 30 students handing in work by printing as PDF automatically into a folder on my desktop.

Any way…New challenge…

The next hurdle for me has been large file management eg. audio and video files without resorting to large up/downloads across the internet. Whilst being a big fan of a class set of web 2.0 channels eg.

  • EDMODO, 
  • Vimeo
  • Edcanvas
  • Soundcloud 
  • and cloud storage tools

Sometimes I just want to share something from a large 500 GB drive or hand in a large project without uploading and killing the school Internet bandwidth.

The meDrive from Kanex promises to do this. I’ve ordered one and I’m excitedly tracking the US delivery. I’m really excited about this as it fills a gap currently filled by clunky web solutions and complex middleware tools to support web dav. Webdav on a mac mini has never been truly reliable for me. This really could change things, with USB pen and large storage drives easily being shared across the iPad learning spaces. It can be easily managed by the teacher not the tech team. This has always been my modus-operandi. Large files? So I still want iMac hubs doing green screen and creating more complex digital content but I want to be able to share these outcomes within school, without the publishing pain. So as soon as it arrives I’ll share the classroom experience!

Pupils print PDFs to the teacher’s computer for assessment.

With the Printopia app installed on the teacher’s computer (not the iPad!), student projects can be sent as PDFs directly to the teacher’s computer. The only proviso being that the teacher’s computer is on the same network as the student devices.

Road Testing an iPad in the Classroom this Summer?

Good Buddy and kinda ICT Rock star Mr Tim Rylands asked me to make a quick list of apps for a school test driving an iPad - here’s 10 (actually I squeezed a couple of extra cheeky ones in) from over 500,000+ on da apps store man.

Ok… So you have borrowed a couple of iPads to test drive at your school.  Where do you start?

This list straddles (ouch!) both Primary and secondary schools. 

1. To explore the touch screen iPad experience Puppet Pals Directors Pass (£1.99) is a great way to start. Pupils can appear as cut outs in the animations and backgrounds /settings could taken from drawings, paintings and even “Street view” from the Maps app.

2. For some interactive problem solving Scribblenauts Remix (69p) is a fun place to start. I have to think quite hard about this!



3. Paper (basic version free) - an ironic name but a beautiful Zen-like experience. A uncluttered toolset for mark-making with digital pen, paintbrush and pencil. It looks just like  real pencil marks. We bought the full version within minutes.

4. Explore some Amazing Physics ( Potential Energy/Kinetic Energy and Speed/Acceleration by creating your own roller coaster ride with Cstr Physics (69p)

5. Create a Film trailer about a favorite subject or even life in your school using iMovie (2.99) For a real world example working with Polish and Romanian students in Turkey last week check this out….

6. Phoster (£1.49) - This app is great for creating Posters that combine images and text. We have used it for creating poster for eSafety and funky eBook covers. Whenever you need a text/Image message this app gets the job done very quickly.

7. Create you own eBook and share it. For Primary schools we tend to go for Book Creator for iPad  (£2.99)and for more complex projects that include video we reach for Creative Book Builder (£2.49)everytime. For the official CBB video tutorial (made on an iPad by Digital Roadtrip) check this out…

Creative Book Builder for CBB from digital roadtrip on Vimeo.

8. Create the most unique presentations (with automatically drawn animations) using Video Scribe (£2.49)

9. For Musicians Garageband complete with smart instruments has to be the once stop shop for tomorrows music makes and producers. The video below shows how you can even jam and record all the parts to one iPad.

If you want to get clever you can copy and paste audio from other music apps into Garageband our current faves are DM1 and iKaossilator. GB is also very good for recording all speaking and listening activities, creating podcasts and radio progs etc.

10. Share some content from the teachers computer to the iPads using the amazing free Groupzap.com collaboration tool. Drag and drop any content into the Groupzap board and invite the iPad via email and you are good to go!

After all this excitement you can add a few well meaning gestures…

The Scrunch - 4 fingers and thumb to close the existing app and arrive by magic at the home screen.

4 Fingers up - to reveal recently used apps (useful when copying and pasting between apps)

4 Fingers across enables you to move from one app to the next adjacent open app.

Finally 1 finger wait for it….to put the iPad to sleep whilst your dreams fizz and pop with ideas for your next creative iPad experience.

This app could be really useful for collaborative homework. Sketchshare although it requires Game Centre (which will invariably be blocked in school) it won’t be blocked at home. So collaborative projects, that need to be developed live “on the fly” via annotations/drawings and images can be created. The fact that audio is also live means that real speaking a listening across the 4 iPads supports the process.

The saving of transparent PNG versions of the files will also be cool for other apps like Keynote and Pages!

I can’t wait to use this app in and out of school!

Photoshop Touch for the iPad

When the iPad was born, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that Photoshop on an iPad might be interesting, but now I’m not so sure.

 

I use a whole range of instant gratification apps almost like a tool kit to process an image. These apps include - Snapseed, Phoster, Type drawing, Background Eraser, Tiltshift, Percolater, Pixlromatic amongst others. Maybe I’m sub-consciously rebuilding Photoshop from a bunch of disparate apps? If I keep adding to the tools, the sum total cost could be close to Photoshop Elements @£60 ish! Great for iTunes revenue, but not great for my bank balance.


 So let’s download the beast… 

At £6 it’s not cheap or really expensive (depending on what it offers). It is light in Mbs weighing in at 50Mb - I’d say good job Adobe! on the small footprint. 


You can directly import images from the “Local Photos” option. This is what iPad users would call the Camera Roll. Of course it ran first on Android so the terms of reference mean I don’t feel so at home.

There’s also access to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, the built in camera, Google and your Facebook account. Interestingly, one image I immediately wanted was in my iCloud stream and that wasn’t obviously accessible neither is Dropbox.

On the upside, the Google import is direct from Google images with a search option as opposed to linking with your Google account. It does offer a search by colour! and also by usage rights which is great again for educators. 

With my “Apple head” on I thought “forget the handy tutorial”, I can figure this out!  Guess what? I could load an image, I could add layers and text but I couldn’t intuitively really manipulate anything with ease.

Back to the in built tutorial and hey there’s a whole series of 13 activities. These are very well put together offering a whole range of image editing options. I’ve opted for the clean up background tutorial. Wow! It’s simple and easy to follow with the on screen prompts. I’m not a big lover of a manual with apps. For me things have to be obvious, but I am making an exception here as these tasks are not simple gratification taps, like many iPad Photo apps.

There is some skill involved in this. Skill and the iPad don’t have to mutually exclusive!


Not sure why we need bikini clad babes - but Adobe obviously think it’s a great idea.

More critically for iPad creatives, it does save Transparent PNGs. These will look gorgeous in Keynote, Pages, Explain Everything and Avid Studio as an “overlay” - oops Avid Studio is kind of quirky/cool on the iPad, but that’s another story!

PT does also offer an interesting ”Enable Presentation Mode” in the preferences that creates a red visual laser pointer - this again is great for “Sage on Stage” sessions. My fellow ADE’s are gonna love that “bad boy feature”.

So first impressions were not great, but then RTFM and it all made sense. It was a bit of a snub to Apple by releasing the Photoshop Touch app on Android before iOS. I’d love to know the download stats for the two platforms.  I bet after 1 day IOS is already higher than Android.

As regards workflow it seems iPad bound. In that there is no import and export of .PSD files. Is that an issue? - I’m not sure that it is for most people that are also happy to work within the limits of 1600x1600 pixels!

Overall I think this is a great app for longer and more meaningful digital imaging learning journeys or should that be digital roadtrips? ;-)  It feels very android in terms of interface and a little clunky but it does for and it has got a reasonable set of tools.

I am liking it. It could be improved. I’m thinking secondary/high schools and planning. The 1600x1600 limitation means that some outcomes won’t look good on that new LED you’ve just purchased for the school foyer.