The Ninja preordered his iPad 3G 32 GB iPad and has spent a little over a month with it. The Tech Ninja certifies the iPad as way cool! No longer does the Ninja reach for the laptop to look at the Interwebs, it is the iPad that gets to have all the fun. The iPad has changed the Ninja’s workflow and in a positive way.

That’s all fine and good, but what about educational uses> Could the iPad replace, say laptops in the educational setting? The Ninja’s answer: That depends.

There are all kinds of things that the iPad does well in the educational realm. Research, note taking, and the large amount of educational apps that helps with multiplication fact memorization to learning the ABCs, to learning Arabic, but it seems to the Ninja that the iPad was really created for content consumption and it isn’t as equipped with the tools needed for what the Ninja likes to do with his students: content creation.

Yes, you can purchase Pages and Keynote to assist you in creating some content but hat about video and audio creation? (The Ninja assumes that the recently announced iMovie for iPhone will have an iPad counterpart, but that isn’t right now.) There are a few apps that might help but right now they are few and far between. Websites that can be used for content creation typically use large amounts of Flash and Java programs, neither of which the iPad can use. So for the Ninja and his classroom, the iPad would not be worth the investment for the third graders that he teaches.

However, the Ninja can see the iPad being an awesome tool for older students, perhaps high school and college aged students.

The iPad can also be a very useful tool for teachers as well. This week, the Ninja attended and presented at the Missouri Positive Behavior Support Summer Institute. The iPad was a perfect replacement for that heavy MacBook Pro that the Ninja typically totes around at conferences. Coupled with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, the iPad is a great note taking device during conferences. As an added bonus the Ninja was able to use Keynote for the iPad for his presentation. The Ninja was careful to modify his original Keynote file so that it would play nicely with Keynote for iPad. Here are some tips for doing just that. My presentation had at least five videos inside of it that all worked flawlessly, well with the exception that the Ninja didn’t turn off the Standby feature on his iPad. On two occasions the iPad went into Standby mode. Thankfully it was no issue to Unlock and play from the point I left off. Since this was the first time, the Ninja did have the MacBook Pro handy just in case something exploded. The Ninja has become convinced that the iPad is the perfect companion for conference going and presenting.

The thing that really makes the iPhone or iPad are the Apps. Here are a few that the Ninja has invested in. (Clicking the App icon will try to open iTunes and take you to that App’s iTunes page. Prices are accurate as of 06/12/10.)

	Pages by Apple, $9.99	Pages is a word processor for iPad. It isn’t exactly like it’s desktop counter part but does well opening Pages and Word files as long as you keep it’s limitations in mind.
	Keynote by Apple, $9.99	This is the App, that I used to present with. It isn’t as full featured as the desktop version of Keynote and it is important to be aware of those issues. A little tip from the Ninja, if you create a Keynote file and you want to use it on the iPad, create a duplicate file and append “-ipad” to the end of the name so that original is untouched by any of the changes that Keynote for iPad makes. The Ninja is hoping that Apple is working hard to make the iPad version more compatible with the desktop product.
	iBooks by Apple, Free	iBook is the free book reader that the iPad will prompt you to download when you start it up. It is pretty nice. Before getting the iPad, the Ninja thought that he would continue reading on the Kindle because of its paper like surface and not read on the iPad because the back lighting would be a strain on the eyes. That has not been the case and the Ninja has found reading on the iPad very comfortable. Apple has announced that the next version of iBooks will also be a PDF reader as well. Very cool. Apple gives you a copy of Winnie the Pooh.
	Documents to Go Premium by Data Viz, $14.99	Documents to Go has been around since the Palm days. Docs to Go does the same thing that it did back then, it allows you to create, edit, and view Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. It also connects directly with several of the online storage sites like Dropbox so you can access files from many different places. You actually edit PowerPoints in Outline mode, so if you are easily distracted, editing in Outline mode might be a plus for you. There is a standard version that cost $9.99 that does not have the nice online storage integration and you can not create new documents, just view them.
	Kindle by Amazon, Free	The Kindle app allows you to read your Amazon purchased Kindle books on your iPad. It will keep your bookmarks and place synchronized across all your Kindle apps and your kindle itself. Very good reading experience with the Kindle App as well. Sadly there is no fancy store to buy books you have to shop on the Amazon website.
	Dragon Dictation by Nuance, Free	Dragon Dictation will listen to you speak and then type what you said out. Then you can copy and paste the text any where. Tired of the virtual keyboard? Try Dragon Dictation. The Voice recognition is pretty good. The Ninja uses Dragon to make quick Facebook or Twitter updates quite frequently.
	Instapaper Pro by Marco Arment, $4.99	Find a long article on line that you want to read, just not that very second. Send the article to Instapaper. Instapaper will save the article for reading offline and it will format it so that it is easy to read on an iPhone or iPad. Free iPhone version can be found here.
	Dropbox by Dropbox, Free	Some time ago, the Ninja signed up for the free online storage service called Dropbox. He was tired of losing his USB Keys with important information on it. Then when the iPad came out he realized how handy Dropbox can be. In order to get a Pages document into Pages for iPad you have to go through iTunes and then sync and… well it is a mess, very un-Apple like and one of my biggest complaints about the iPad itself. Then I discovered that I can drop docs I want on my iPad into my Dropbox folder, that will by synced up to the cloud. Then I open Dropbox on my iPad find the doc and choose Open in Pages or Open in Docs to Go or whatever program I want that will open the doc. Much smoother than the Apple solution.
	MobileRSS HD by NibiruTech LTD., $4.99	Mobile RSS works with Google Reader to keep The Ninja up-to-date on all the blog articles that he wants to read. MobileRSS will allow you to star, share and comment on items just like the Google Reader website. It will also cache images for you. It also makes sharing things on Facebook and Twitter easy.
	Simplenote by Codality, Free	This is what the Ninja takes note on. It is quick and dirty text editor with nothing fancy. It does, however, have the ability to upload your notes to the cloud and keep your devices in sync or you can access your notes anywhere you have an internet connection.
	TweetDeck for iPad by TweetDeck, Free	The twitter client that the Ninja use on the iPad.
	USA Today for iPad by USA Today, Free	The USA Today newspaper electronic format.
	Weather HD by vimov, LLC, $0.99	This app shows what the weather is with very cool videos. This is a very pretty app, otherwise, pretty useless.
	WordPress by Automattic, Free	WordPress allows you to post to your WordPress blog. It also allows you to moderate your comments and edit pages.

These are not all the Apps the Ninja has on his iPad. No games.

So what are your thoughts on the iPad and if you have one, what Apps do you love?

The linked file is a PDF and will require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

>> Download Now! << (649 KB)

So for mail merge we will be using two programs: Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. We have three major steps to accomplish:

1. Create data spreadsheet
2. Create document to merge into
3. Merge, save, or print.

We will start by starting up Excel.

Create Data Spreadsheet

Excel is a spreadsheet program that can perform all kinds of ninja magic on numbers and other data. A spreadsheet consists of rectangles called cells. Like other coordinate grids, each cell has a name that comes from the letter of the column and the number of the row. The highlighted cell below then would be named B2.

Basically we are going to use the spreadsheet as a data table and we will use row one for our headers. Double click cell A1 and type Fname.  Then you can either press the TAB key or double click on cell B1 and type Lname. These headers can be anything you want. Address, City, State, Zip, Parents are some common headers that the Ninja uses quite frequently. A reminder, pressing TAB will take you to the next cell in the row, ENTER or RETURN will take you to the next cell in the column. If you hold down SHIFT with either TAB or ENTER it will take you to the previous cell rather than the next. As you type your text may leave the cell you are typing in. Don’t worry, it will do that.

Once you have the headers in, it is time to fill in the data for your students under the header. Each student gets one row. I have an example below of what your data might look like when you are finished.

You will notice that some of the text is cut off when it runs into another cell. That is fine, your text is still there. The Tech Ninja normally has separate columns for City, State, and Zip but combined them for space. As needs arise, you can always go back and add more rows if you get a new student or new columns to track additional data. The ninja usually makes a spreadsheet with names and addresses before the start of school each year and then just add as I go on through the year.

Now save your spreadsheet. Remember where you saved it!

Create Document to Merge Into

Now we head over to Word.

Type up your document as you normally, however where there is data that will come from your spread sheet, just leave a space there.  See the sample below.

Once you have finished writing the document, it is time to start the mail merge process.

Click the Mailings tab and then from the Start Mail Merge drop down, choose “Letters”

Next from the Select Recipients, choose “Use Existing List.” An Open Data Source window will open. Browse to where you saved your spreadsheet file and click open.

A Select Table window will open. Select Sheet1$. Make sure that First row of data contains column headers is checked and then click OK.

Now to double check you will get the names you want, let’s click Edit Recipient List.

Now you should see the data that was in your spreadsheet. If you want to exclude a student from the mail merge you can remove the check from in front of their name. You might want to scroll down through the list to make sure there are no blank rows that have checks in front of them. Once you are satisfied with the list you can click OK.

Now we need to tell Word where want our data to appear in the final letter or document. To do that, place your cursor where you would like the first bit of data to appear. In the example below, I have place the cursor right after “To the parents of:” (1). Click the Write & Insert Field (2). Click the lower part of the Insert Merge Field (3) and then choose Fname (4).

«Fname» will appear where your cursor was. Continue to add fields to your document. You can change the formatting of the fields by applying underline, bold, italics, font, font size, etc. to the fields. You can also copy, paste and move the fields around your document. In the completed example below I have made the grades bold and two font sizes larger. Note: the complete field is the text between the double greater and lesser than signs. If you alter those signs or text in between them, the field will not merge properly.

Next, we need to preview the document to make sure that everything will merge correctly. Click the preview Results drop-down button and select Preview Results. You can use previous and next record buttons to see other data sets.

If you are happy with the result, we can go on to the final step.

Merge, Save, and Print

Now click Finish & Merge. Here we have three options:

1. If you edit individual documents Word will create a new document with each record on a different page. You can edit each individual letter, save the document and then print.

2. You can print the documents. When you merge to printer, a window will come up asking which records you would like to print. If you want all of the records printed, simply click OK and print away.

3. If you included e-mail addresses in your original spreadsheet you could also e-mail this document to parents by selecting Send E-Mail Messages. Word will ask you which column in your spreadsheet has the e-mail address and it will ask if you want to send the e-mail message as HTML so the document will appear in the e-mail message formatted as you have done in Word, Plain Text so the document will appear in the e-mail message but it will not be formatted, or to send the document as an attachment. Each recipient will get only the record that is associated with the e-mail address in the spreadsheet. Cool.

Now that you have created a data source, you can always go back and add info and use it for other mail merge documents, decreasing the amount of time that you are working on personalized letters and documents.

If you are using an older version of Word and Excel, the process is pretty similar however in Word you need to go to Tools and then Mail Merge for a mail merge wizard that will walk you through the steps for merging. One thing to remember, when you choosing your data source in older versions of Word, it doesn’t automatically look for spreadsheets so you will need to change the File Type to either All Files or Excel Spreadsheet.

Happy merging!

There are several video tutorials on how to create these forms. Here is one on how to create a quiz.

A video tutorial that I like even better is this one that even teaches you how to set-up your spreadsheet to grade quizzes for you.

Happy quizzing.

First open your PowerPoint file and go to File and then choose Print. In the drop down menu tha allows you to choose which printer you want to use, select Smart Print Capture. Choose your other options for example do you want a note taking page with three slides or each page to have one slide. Once your options are correct, click print and the slides will appear in either a new Notebook file if you didn’t have a Notebook file open or in the Notebook file that is already open.

This solution, however makes each PowerPoint slide into an image. If you had any interactive elements, animations or transitions in your PowerPoint file, they are now gone. Many teachers have created review games with numerous links so this solution will not work. Typically these teachers have neither the time or the desire to recreate the file in Notebook even if it is a much more interactive program.

This issue had me stumped until I came across a free program for Windows called iSpring Converter. This little program will take files created in PowerPoint and convert them into a Flash file while preserving sounds, animations, transitions, and hyperlinks. The main idea behind the app is that it is an easy way to display PowerPoint files in a website but since Notebook easily handles Flash files it is a handy and fast way to put PowerPoint files into Notebook. As a bonus, iSpring Converter compresses the PowerPoint files as it converts making the resulting Flash file smaller in size than the actual PowerPoint file. Since each PowerPoint exists on one Notebook page, you can even have more than one PowerPoint file in one Notebook file.

The steps are pretty easy. When you install iSpring Converter it will place several new buttons in PowerPoint. (2007 version seen below, 2003 versions and below will have similar buttons.)

Open the PowerPoint file that you want to convert. Press the Publish button (as seen above) in the iSpring toolbar. Name your new Flash file and choose where you would like to save the file. Then publish your PowerPoint file.

After iSpring has converted your file, open Smart Notebook. Go to the Insert menu and chose Flash File… Navigate to the .swf file that you created and insert. Once in Notebook you can easily resize it to fill the whole Notebook page. There is also a button that allows you to go to full screen mode.

iSpring also offers iSpring Presenter as a paid product that allows a user to have more control over the Flash files that you can create as well as allowing you to create quizzes.

If you have a question that you would like to ask the edTech Ninja, leave it in the comments or e-mail the edTech Ninja:

The Ninja has collected these links from one of his favorite blogs  Teachers Love Smartboards. Jim has a wonderful collection of resources and ideasfor the SmartBoard using Ninja. Check him out!

The Notebook file covers:

• When elections are held
• Jobs of the President
• Requirement to be President
• The two major political parties
• Primaries and Caucuses
• Nominees for 2008
• Vice Presidents
• Campaigns
• Voting Day
• The Electoral College
• Mock Elections
• Election Online Resources

The hyper-cool interactive electoral college map on page 15 was created by the awesome ninjas over at TeqSmart. They have more from where that came from. They have Notebook files and gallery elements available for free and for pay over on their website: http://www.teqsmart.org. The Tech Ninja highly recommends them. Click here to check them out.

Technical Information: This file was created in Smart Notebook 10 SP 1. Notebook versions older than 9.5 may not be able to
open this file correctly. To prevent download issues, I have zip compressed the file. To view the file on Windows, right
click on the compressed file and choose "Extract All..." Double click the resulting file to view.

>>Download now<< 16.25 MB

When you open up NSE it starts on a very different screen than you plain jane Notebook installation. The first stop is the new “My Home” page. Here, Smart gives several templates that allow students to have their own schedule as well as areas to customize with their own pictures.

Across the top of the My home area, there is a new tab bar with three tabs. The first takes you to the “My Home” area, a tab labeled “My Binder” (more on that later) and then a tab with the day’s date called “My Notes”. Any new notebook files opened will create another tab with the name of the file on it. If you hover over a tab, a small x will appear that you can click to close the file similar to most tabbed web browsers.

Down the right (as in the picture above) or left side of the screen depending on the preferences is the normal toolbar tabs with the addition of one new tab at the bottom for Quick Links indicated by a picture of a pencil and ruler. The other tabs, page sorter, gallery, attachments, and property tabs are unchanged from Notebook 10 (though they are a wider width than in Notebook 10 Service Pack 1). The new Quick Links tab provides handy links to recent files that have been opened and links to files that are due in the coming week. Included in the Beta version are some links for some surveys about the new program that I imagine will not be in the regular release.

During the installation process, the user is asked to choose a location on the computer to put the My Binder save date. Here, students can create and import Notebook files. After they add files, students can edit the properties of the document to add due dates, subject and keywords. Students and browse these files under the My Binder tab. The ninja wonders if a teacher could set up and binder save location on a network to multiple installations of NSE in a lab setting. Would that then allow a teacher to drop a notebook file into that save location on the network and it be available to all the student computers.

A new button is also included in the default toolbar.

This new button give you a link to tutor.com which is a pay-for-use website that allows students to fine tutoring help on homework via the internet. This button can easily be removed.

So what are your thoughts on Notebook SE? How can it be used in a class settings? Share your ideas in the comments.

Smart has just released a new piece of software. The Ninja is installing it now. The new software is called SMART Notebook Student Edition (SE). The program is only in BETA right now which means if you don’t feel comfortable playing around with what could be flakey software, you shouldn’t install it. BETA is a version before it is officially released. Just a warning.

The student edition appears to be just the same as Notebook but it does add a few features. I will leave those for a larger post.  Coming soon.