Chanatown

I've made it a goal to get more involved with lesson development using SMART Notebook with ETHS teachers that have the interactive whiteboards in their classroom. Several faculty members have taken me up on my offer to help plan, design, and implement Notebook lessons for their curriculum, and I'll be sharing our products here, though you can find all of the links with descriptions on  my website  or on  SMART Exchange . In Similar Polygons , we wanted to reinforce ratios and setting up proportions from word problems. I used the drag/drop capability to encourage students to see where the numbers were coming from when creating a proportion. We then used some of the measuring tools to discuss what makes two figures similar. Finally, we used drag/drop to label geometric figures and coupled with setting up proportions in traditional problems. For the lesson on Substitution , we had students drag values into variables, thus putting a hands-on approach to substitution. W...

Article first published as The Best Free iPad Apps of 2011 on Blogcritics. With hundreds of thousands of apps available for Apple's iPad, there are sure to be plenty of quality ones to be had for free. Nevertheless, despite Apple's closed market and quality control, bad apps are commonplace and especially so among those that are free. Below, I present a list of some quality free apps. Those new to the iPad are encouraged to take a look at last year's lists as well ( Best Free Apps of 2010  and Best Paid Apps of 2010 ), and if you have a few bucks leftover or an iTunes gift card from the holiday season, be sure to pick up something from the Best Paid Apps of 2011 as well .

Another week in December, another lucky winner.  This time, with only a few entries to choose from, Janet S. was the lucky one to pick up the iMainGo X speaker system. Congratulations! Your prize gets shipped this week. Thanks to the generosity of a few sponsors, we've got two giveaways this week - a free iPhone customizable case ( reviewed recently here ) and  a 90-day full license for xtranormal's education edition ( also reviewed here ). These giveaways are both New and don't require any shipping, so you'll get them as soon as you win.  Enter away, and as always, act fast - this giveaway will close in a week, and we'll unveil the final giveaway of 2011. Hit the jump for the raffle.  Good luck!

Congrats to our week one December raffle winner, Azslyn C, who picked up a portable speaker system from Portable Sound Laboratories. Week two brings the deluxe version of the iMainGo - the "X" version, also reviewed recently on this site. All giveaways are in Like New condition, opened just for review purposes and will be shipped to you for free!  Enter away, but act fast - this giveaway will close in a week, and we'll unveil yet another cool prize. Hit the jump for the raffle.  Good luck!

Congrats to our November raffle winners, Katrina J, Ashley R, and Clayton B, who each picked up an uber cool iPad case. With close to 30 entries last month, the competition increased, but so did the number of prizes. This month, we're going with quantity and quality, with a new giveaway each week! Just in time for the holidays. The first prize is going to be an iMainGo 2 Portable Speaker system. I reviewed this item recently, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the booming sound from this tiny little accessory. All giveaways are in Like New condition, opened just for review purposes and will be shipped to you for free!  Enter away, but act fast - this giveaway will close in a week, and we'll unveil cool prize #2. Hit the jump for the raffle.  Good luck!

Congrats again to our first ever raffle winner, Clayton B. who picked up October's prize of a VStream PC to HDTV device. With under 20 entries last month, the odds were definitely in the reader's favor. This month, we're pawning off not one, not two, but three iPad cases.  They are as follows: 1) The NavJack iPad Executive Planner (White) - this one's a beautiful portfolio style case for the original iPad, reviewed on this blog earlier this year . 2) The SofShell for iPad 2 (non-Smart Cover) - Just reviewed this month , this sticky skin will keep your iPad from slipping off tables, chairs, and your Porsche. 3) Aluminum Keyboard Case for iPad 2 - this one generated some buzz when it came out , and I purchased one with my own hard earned money. Unfortunately, I didn't care for it, mostly because it didn't stay snapped shut in case mode. Still, the keyboard works well and overall, I appreciated the design. All three products are in Like New condition, all ...

Article first published as Rafflecopter - Organizing Your Giveaways, Promoting Your Brand on Blogcritics. I like free stuff as much as the next person, though nowadays, I find even more pleasure giving away items to friends, family, and now to you, my loyal (or first time) readers. However, the process of collecting entries, selecting a winner, and distributing the prizes can be enough of a logistical headache that it takes all of the fun out of the joy of giving. Well, enter Rafflecopter , an amazingly simple and intuitive website application designed to give you all the tools you need to drum up some interest in your brand and make it easy to give away stuff to the masses. I got a chance to play around with the invite-only website, and I am also excited to announce my first official giveaway. Make sure you reach the end, but first, a look at the application.

Recently, I had a request to convert a PDF into an editable document, and although we have access to Adobe Acrobat Professional, that would have meant assigning a ticket and waiting for an install on the user's machine. Instead, I remembered and then recommended that the teacher try the "Convert PDF to Google Doc feature." Before completing selling it to other teachers with similar requests, I gave it a quick test run with the following results.

Everyone loves free apps, especially when they normally cost a few bucks. Well, coinciding with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference, McGraw-Hill is giving away all of its Everyday Math apps for free.  This will only be valid through the end of the conference, April 16, so stock up now as the apps are normally priced at $1.99.   Available apps include: · Addition Top-It ™ - Subtraction Top-It ™ - Beat the Computer ™ - Name that Number ™ - Equivalent Fractions ™ - Tric-Trac ™ - Monster Squeeze ™ - Baseball Multiplication 1–6™ Facts - Divisibility Dash ™  The apps are available for iPhone and iPad and can be viewed on this website as well as through the iTunes Apps Store. For more thoughts on Teaching and Learning Technology,  please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or through email .

Recently, I received an email alerting me to a new offering from the folks in Redmond, Washington. With a title like Microsoft Mathematics 4.0, I was immediately attracted to what was potentially in store.  A well written paragraph offering "a large collection of tools, tutorials, and instructions designed to help you tackle math and science problems quickly and easily" hooked me in further, though Microsoft had me at the price of "free." Let's take a look to exactly what one gets with Math 4.0.

Article first published as Best New and Notable iPad Apps for January 2011 on Blogcritics. 2010 introduced the iPad into our lives, and early adopters were treated to a ton of great free and paid apps. Coming off the heels of my Top 10 lists of 2010 , here is the beginning of a monthly feature designed to keep you up to date with all that is new and improved in the App Store.

In education, the word "free" is music to a teacher's ears. The same applies for this Technology Integration Specialist, and one who was bummed to discover that Xtranormal is now operating on a paid premium business model . As another option for an Asian Studies project, a teacher offered Animoto and this service remains free to educators and students. Which tool will benefit more from the Xtranormal shift to paid only?

Article first published as Best Free Apple iPad Apps of 2010 on Blogcritics. It's that time of year - Top 10 Lists galore. So, I will play along and offer a few reflections on the year that was 2010 with a list related to the top gadget of the year, the iPad. The device itself debuted to great success, but as with all hardware and software relationships, you can't have one without the other. Thus, here are ten apps that I've used extensively throughout the year, with the best part of all being that they are free.

Before I had my newborn, I would often take the train and bus into work, and I would use my Droid X smartphone to surf the web. Despite a speedy 3G connection, I appreciated websites that had a mobile version so I could get right to the content and bypass any irrelevant sidebars, videos, or other navigational tools. I felt the same should be true for this very site, so I began investigating options for mobilizing Chanatown. Just when I thought I had a winner, guess who stepped in with the easiest and best solution of them all? Find out after the jump.

Although I'm out of the chemistry lab, I'm still involved with teaching the subject through private tutoring and online through Northwestern's online learning program. As students and teachers become increasingly attached to their computers both in and out of the classroom, they often have the need to use a periodic table online. Here are a few of the best versions that go above and beyond the traditional paper copy. They are all quick to load, stable, and would surely make Mendeleev proud.

With a newborn just hitting the two week old mark and Thanksgiving break at the house, I've had some time to tool around with the look and feel of Chanatown. Just the other day, I discovered some advanced settings in the Template Designer under the Design tab of the Blogger Dashboard. Here are some of the changes I made during the hour of spent (not wasted) time.

If you are a frequent reader of Chanatown ( subscribe now if you are not), chances are you're a fan of cool tech toys. And I'd be willing to be you've experienced a Black Friday or two once in your lifetime. Here's a great SNL short that effectively sums up what many may have gone through early this morning. Hope your BF is going a bit more smoothly than the one depicted below.

We are closing in on published post #200 here at Chanatown (stay tuned for the black tie gala), and I am proud of most of the content that I've managed to contribute to the Interwebs over the course of a year. Some of my more prominent articles are gaining a fair amount of recognition on Google search, but others remain buried in the archives. With the hopes of bringing some of the still relevant and noteworthy pieces back to the forefront, I chose to implement the widget LinkWithin to show related posts with thumbnails after each article.

Article first published as iPad OS 4.2.1 Update Finally Arrives, But Was It Worth the Wait? on Blogcritics. It is hard to believe that it's been over seven months since we first heard that the iOS4 update would eventually make its way to the Apple iPad . Users have been patiently waiting on Apple's promise that multitasking, AirPlay, and over 100 new features would be coming to iPad "later this fall." Well, while old man winter is rapidly approaching, Apple did manage to deliver on its promise in time to finish raking those leaves. As fast (or slow) as you can download, install, and update your iPad, here are some initial thoughts and observations on the shiny new update.

BackOff for Mac and PC This is going to be a quick post more out of frustration rather than necessity. I woke up at 5am this morning for many reasons: 1) our cats needed access to their litter box which I remembered was accidentally closed last night, 2) our newborn baby needed a diaper changed, and 3) the iPad iOS 4 update had finally arrived! Already bummed that I missed the release yesterday (this is what happens when you get a baby, I suppose), I wanted to get a jump start on the day by beginning what I presumed would be a long and drawn out update process. Little did I know that I would be sitting here 7 hours later staring at the same silly progress bar, measuring the millimeters of movement hour by hour. There had to be another way...