Best iOS 11 Feature for Educators

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Josh

The iPad/iPhone screen capture feature is one of my favorites. Its easy to take take a screen shot on the iPhone or iPad by pressing the home and power buttons at the same time. (Screen capture on the iPhoneX is a little different – On the iphoneX you press Volume Up button and Power button together at the same time to screen capture.)

What the new iOS 11 screen capture lets you do:

Now with iOS11 you can actually do something more than just save the screen capture to your photos. You can:

Draw on the captured image: You can use different types of markers and different colors to draw. You can even use shapes, text or add a custom signature. Just start drawing on the screen image. To add a signature touch the + sign at the bottom right.
Crop the image: This allows you to cut off parts of the screen you don’t want. I sometimes do this before I txt a screen capture so it doesn’t take up as much memory. To crop the image just drag any of the blue frame corners to the size you want.
You can also magnifying a section of screen capture.

Send captured image to other apps: You can send the screen capture or edited screen capture to other apps or other people via txt or email. When you are ready just tap on the up arrow in a box at the bottom left.

Screen capture is not the only place you can use the new iOS 11 markup tools. You can also do the same mark ups on pdf files in iBooks. Just click on the picture that looks like a pencil at the top of the screen.

What are your favorite uses of the screen capture tool?

How to create great video memories on the iPhone and iPad

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Josh

While I’d like to think someday I’ll be a great videographer that probably won’t happen anytime soon. Thankfully the memories section in the iOS photos app has you covered. Apart from a few quirks, the memories app will help you quickly put together your favorite memories into a nice video. You can quickly create awesome movies to preserve your memories using just the iOS photos app. Here is a quick guide on using the photos app to make a video memory.

How to get to the memories app

Open the photos app
At the bottom select the second icon labeled memories
There will be several memory videos already created.

How to customize

You have to play the memory video first before you can customize or edit the Memories movie. If the video looks exactly like you want and the music is to your liking, then you can go on to the steps below to preserve this Memories video. Otherwise you can edit the the video by selecting the “Edit” link in the upper right hand corner.

(in iOS 10 it will be a small icon with lines on the bottom right) .The easiest edits are to change the Mood of the music and change the length of the video as shown above. You can set the movie length to short, medium, or long. You can also change the music to dreamy, sentimental, gentle, chill, happy, uplifting, epic, club, or extreme. The photos Memories app will automatically update the movie with your new choice.

Choose more pictures or videos

The app does a pretty good job choosing pictures, but what happens if you have a picture in your Memory video that you don’t want? You can choose not to include some of the pictures or videos in the memories video. You can also add more pictures and videos to your Memories movie.

Select the Photos & Videos to edit what pictures are used in the Memories video. You can scroll along the bottom to see all the pictures included in your Memories video. Tap on the picture or video you want to edit. You can change the length of the video clip or you can remove the picture or video by putting it in the trash. (It does not delete the picture on your iPhone or iPad)

You can also add more pictures by pressing the + sign at the bottom left.

Edit title and song choice

Now that you have the pictures you want you can edit the title and song. You can either choose from Apples song Soundtracks or music you have saved from iTunes on your iPhone or iPad.

How to save and export video memories

Since the Memories movies are always changing you need to preserve your favorite memories so they won’t get changed or removed. To preserve the memory movie scroll to the bottom of all the pictures and then select “Add to Memories”.

Having finalized the memories video I highly recommend you export and save your video. Ideally you would think the logical export option would be iMovie but alas I was dearly disappointed. You can indeed export to iMovie but there is little you can do since the whole memory is exported as a video. To save your Memories movie file press the box with the up arrow at the bottom of the screen where you edit the Memories movie.

You now have several options on how you want to export your Memories video.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht207023

P.S. Memory movies only work on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV. You won’t see Memory movies on your Mac (for now).

Smartphone spelling list

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Josh

If you have a smartphone then you probably carry it with you most if the time. Here is a tip for homeschool spelling word lists. I use my iphone to keep a spelling list for each of my kids. Any time my daughter asks how to spell a word, I pull out my iPhone and add the word to the list. This also helps me ensure I am spelling the word right. Below is a picture of the list for my son.

If there is a word my children spell wrong when they write, I also add it to their list. I can add words from the list to thier spelling words for the week.
Hope this helps. If you have anything that helps I would love to here from you.

Lego mindstorm EV3 for Android and iOS

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Josh

Lego is finally coming out with a tablet and Smartphone compatible Lego Mindstorm set. The Lego Mindstorm EV3 was announced at the 2013 CES show.

It is not quite clear how the new EV3 Mindstorm will work with Tablets and Smartphones but a new processor is the key. According to Lego:

“the EV3 Intelligent Brick now un‐tethers robots from the computer by providing users expanded on‐brick programming and tighter integration with smart devices.”

The new Intelligent Brick uses an ARM processor and Linux OS base that allows on board programming. My guess is that apps can be created to interact and program the smart brick. Right now it appears that the only app that Lego will release will be a remote.
The new EV3 intelligent brick does allows connection via bluetooth and wifi. This should make things easier.

Unfortunately the new Mindstorm set will not be available until the summer of 2013. The Lego education website lists the availability as the fall of 2013. The education set also appears to be $10 cheaper at $340 but it does not include software. Hopefully software will come with the non educational set and hopefully in the future you will not need a PC.
What do you think? Will you wait until the fall to pick up the new Lego Mindstorm set?

Homeschool Tablet

Using the iPad and tablets for homeschooling.

Category Archives: iPhone