Author Archives: AlanP

Engaging students online: Going beyond BB Collaborate and Zoom

Posted on April 24, 2020 by AlanP

BlackBoard Collaborate and Zoom are both excellent as web conferencing tools to link teachers and students, but educators need to expand their repertoire to include tools outside the web conferencing software to get engagement once the initial novelty wears off. … Continue reading →

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Demise of Windows 7 and the digital divide at schools

Posted on February 5, 2020 by AlanP

As school begins for a new year in Australia, parents are doing their best to provide their children with as modern a computer as they can afford. Many will still have Win 7 as their operating system (as many tertiary … Continue reading →

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Think again before buying a Windows 32 GB laptop

Posted on February 7, 2019 by AlanP

With the power of hardware these days, it is tempting to just buy a cheap lightweight laptop. After all, you can cruise the internet, check your email, and watch videos on them. Windows 10 is a great operating system for … Continue reading →

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New quizmaker software: Swency

Posted on January 1, 2019 by AlanP

If you find Kahoot too much hype and over competitive, with too many options that you never use, then there is a start up that has produced a simple down to earth quiz maker. It is web-based, called Swency (https://swency.net). … Continue reading →

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Macbook abandoned by Apple, embraced by Linux

Posted on December 10, 2018 by AlanP

Installing Ubuntu on a mid-2007 Macbook For the last couple of weeks I have been fighting a losing battle trying to get Linux to work on an Macbook. I was happy enough to use the Macbook with the original software … Continue reading →

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Two more online clipboards worth knowing about

Posted on September 27, 2018 by AlanP

Since I move around a lot of different campuses and venues, I talk to a lot of groups that I want to give links to so they can see online resources I have created or want to share with them.  … Continue reading →

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How to transfer Minecraft worlds between iPads

Posted on July 29, 2018 by AlanP

Transferring anything between iPads is traditionally a difficult task. I have used FileHub to in the past to transfer documents, photos and music. Google Drive and other cloud storage providers can do a similar job. However, transferring Minecraft worlds has … Continue reading →

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iPad fun with math calculations

Posted on February 23, 2018 by AlanP

Getting students to do enough practice at maths for it to sink in and be retained is quite a challenge. QuickMaths is an iPad app that has been around for a long time but is still worth a shout out. … Continue reading →

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Youtube keeps offensive Youtuber, kicks out proven inoffensive creators.

Posted on January 20, 2018 by AlanP

New YouTube Partner Program (YPP) rules announced on 16 January 2018 will penalize the smaller and new video creators (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72857?hl=en). These new rules state that a Youtube channel needs to have 4000 hours of viewing time and 1000 subscribers to … Continue reading →

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Social Bookmarking With Diigo – never lose a web link again.

Posted on January 9, 2018 by AlanP

Never lose a web link again! You can soon fill up the bookmarking links on your browser – Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Then what do you do? My solution to this problem is to use Diigo. It is a social … Continue reading →

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