Backup your Gmail with this tool.

You may never need this tool, but it's great to know that there is a tool like this. This tool allows you to backup your Gmail or even transfer your Gmail from one account to another. http://goo.gl/qcecx  This could come in handy if you ever want to backup your email from the cloud, or simply transfer to another account.

The most overlooked feature of the new Google Chromebooks.

I have used both the CR48 beta and now the Samsung Chromebook Models and there are a lot of things to love about the new Google ChromebooIks.  Battery life, quick boot up, low maintenance, light weight, and more... But the best feature and use may be easily over looked.  This is the perfect laptop for an older parent, tech-challenged person, or simply anyone who seems to break computers.  There are no programs that can be installed to break the system.  There are no settings to change. There is no need for anti-virus or anti-malware software to load.  This thing just runs, and runs for a long time between electrical fill ups.  This is the perfect notebook to give someone and not expect them to be asking you to reformat it six months later.  And as the saying might go.... price of a Chomebook - $430.  Not having to fix it later - PRICELESS.

Some nice desktop sharing tools.

I just ran across this tool, and it's great for sharing your desktop to a bunch of people at once... and the good news is that they do not have to install anything!  All they do is go to a web site to see your desktop.   With Join.me  you download a single program, run the program and then give your colleagues the URL you’re given. When they follow it, they see your desktop. Live. It’s as simple as that. Awesome for doing a webinar type presentation.


If you are doing a one-on-one computer support session, I still recommend Team Viewer. http://www.teamviewer.com But this program requires more installs and downloads and is designed for only peer to peer connections, unlike the Join.me product which is more for the one to many presentations. 

Update- Turn your Nook eReader into an awesome Android tablet.

This is an update from my blog column in March 2011: http://noelnerskine.blogspot.com/2011/03/make-your-own-android-tabletfor-less.html
That was great, but it turned out to be a little slow,  this build is awesome and easy to do by using Nook Cyanogen.  Follow the steps on this website to have a speedy Android tablet running from a simple micros SD card on a Nook: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1000957
If you do not want your android tablet, you just pop out the micros SD card and boot to the Nook eReader!

Great tool for finding out what is taking up your hard drive space!

Often, old video projects, class slide shows, memory book projects, etc... are hanging out in folders on your computer or network drive and you forgot they were still there.  Sometimes it is really tough to figure out what is taking up your file storage space and where those old files are hanging out.

Fear no more Kimosabe.  (For those of you to old to remember the friend of the masked man.... I am envious, because you probably still have a full set of hair too. )

The Windirstat program (http://windirstat.info/) (Windows only tool.) is a great tool for finding those files.  It is a free program, that is easy to run. It is a small utility that is easy to install and can even be dragged to a pen drive or a network drive and ran from there as well!

Just yesterday, we found one folder in a teachers network drive that they no longer needed from 2003.  This folder was taking up 250 meg of network space.

Give it a try, and start deleting!

A way to eliminate textbook costs?

Can we get rid of textbooks and their associated costs in education? I know, this topic may open a can of worms for many in education, and especially for the text book and publishing companies!  As school districts adopt more 1-to-1 initiatives or BYOD (Bring your own device) initiatives, schools will need to provide more electronic resources for those devices.


Until the publishers and text-book companies come up with a reasonable price, as well as finding the best format and delivery mechanism .... we must look at developing our own materials.  


Here are just a couple resources to start with: 


The Khan Academy is a non-profit that is working on providing open-source distance learning curriculum. This institute provides user-paced lessons via hosted videos providing a free resource for students and teachers as well as supplemental exercises for the ck12.org flexbooks (mentioned below).


Currently high school level math and science digital textbooks are available through the CK12 non-profit organization and I envision that the more topics will be added over time. The interactive student and teacher edition FlexBooks content is vetted, reviewed, core standards-based and also customizable. These books can be customized (Flexed) to meet your needs.  Check out their site for more information: http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/

With these two resources alone, you would have a great start to customizing your math and science curriculum and optomizing it for the digital devices that are coming our way in education.

Google is giving away the Kitchen Sink - Will we use it?

After seeing the Scripting capabilities of Google Apps, I was sold a year ago not only on Google Apps but what could be done with the scripting capabilities.  There are many things Google is giving us in education, but this may be the kitchen sink.

Back in my March blog I mentioned the self grading quizzes that you can do using a script called Flubaroo.  While attending the NETA 2011 conference a couple weeks ago, I attended a session that was put on by an administrator in a school here in Nebraska that highlighted several ways he used Google Forms and the power of scripts for many day-to-day activities including quick walk through evaluations. Many of his forms can be found here. 

While many of Google's tools are very easy to use, that is not necessarily the case concerning writing scripts. Thank goodness for individuals who create scripts like Flubaroo and are willing to share them for others to freely use.  There are many scripts out there that are free to use and add a lot of functionality to many Google apps.  I encourage you to look at those scripts and utilize them to accomplish many tasks that you did not realize were able to be completed using many of the Google Apps.

For those of you that have some coding experience or are willing to learn.... listen up "Grasshopper", this is where you can make the Google Apps do about anything you or your district wants it to do.  Will school districts be able to find qualified individuals who have some scripting capabilities to use the sink that Google is giving away?  I hope so, but in the mean time... I am hoping to learn a little bit about this scripting myself to be able to at least modify some great scripts that other good coders are willing to give away.

Happy scripting!