I’d like to thank Stewart for another blog recommendation as well as a few app recommendations.
The blog (now added to the blog roll) is www.musicianswithapps.com.
The apps recommended by Stewart were:
from Foriero:
(The author of www.musicianswithapps.com also strongly recommends My Note Games)
Crack!
Tonight the inevitable occurred. An iPod Touch in our house hit the cement in our garage, and the screen is operable, but you can feel the broken glass.
For those of you that follow this blog, you will know that we have two iPod Touches in the family–one for our three year old, and one for our twelve year old. You might be surprised to find out that our twelve year old’s iPod Touch is the one that is now broken. He was using the device in our SUV, went to get out of the car when we got home, and it hit the concrete.
His initial reaction, after a full-out anger tantrum, was to ask if we could go to the Apple Store where they would replace it for free. I had the privilege of telling him that Apple wouldn’t cover an iPod Touch out of warranty for free, and that the repair would be $199 (I looked it up to verify the cost). So what do you do? Buy a new one? A new iPod Touch (32GB) is $299.
The end result is that you find an iPod repair service. You can search the web for people near you, or you can even check Craigslist for people that offer the service.
Several years ago, I had read about Blake Paulson, a college graduate in Alexandria, Minnesota, who started a company called ifixipodsfast.com. Blake put several “how to” repair videos on YouTube, and the Star Tribune (one of the newspapers in the Twin Cities) ran an article about him in 2007. ifixipodsfast.com is no longer a valid web address, as Blake fixes more than iPods. His website is now www.fastfixology.com.
Last December, my brother-in-law had an older iPod Touch that stopped working due to a failed battery (long out of warranty), so he bought a replacement battery off eBay and we attempted to replace it (mainly, I tried to replace it). In the process, I didn’t install the battery correctly, and I broke the digitizer (in the earlier iPod Touch models, the glass and digitizer were separate items). I remembered having read about Blake’s website, and found it on the web. After an exchange of e-mails, I ordered replacement parts and service, sent the iPod to him, and he was able to quickly and cost-effectively replace the bad battery AND repair the damage I caused.
So when I need a repair on an iPod Touch or iPhone, the first place I look is fastfixology. I know there are other services, but three things are true:
I don’t know if this has been discussed (if so, I’ve missed it), but SchoolTube is now iPad friendly. SchoolTube is a YouTube-like service meant to provide a place for educational and education-created videos. Until recently, iPads were unable to open any of the Flash-based videos, meaning that SchoolTube must have adapted their service to HTML5 standards. You still can’t upload an iPad-created video to SchoolTube from iMovie, but at least you can watch those videos now.
A brief history: this summer I managed to buy two HP TouchPad tablets for $99 during the “fire sale.” I’ve since installed a second OS (thanks for CyanogenMod) of Android 2.3 on these devices, making them non-Android Android tablets. The addition of Android (even though it is version 2.3, which is still being shipped on many other devices) allows for the installation of many more apps (from Google or Kindle), making the device much more practical. For example, it can be used for Netflix, whereas with the stock TouchPad OS, WebOS, no Netflix app is available. The developers of CyanogenMod have recently released a few early alpha versions of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but some features still aren’t working (i.e. You can’t use Netflix yet), so I’m waiting before upgrading.
There are two differences between a TouchPad tablet and a typical Android tablet. First, nearly all Android tablets are 16:10 widescreen devices, whereas the TouchPad shares the same dimensions as an iPad (4:3). Second, the TouchPad lacks the external hardware buttons that are present on older Android Devices, and replaces them with software buttons (which, I believe, is how Android 4.0 will work with all devices).
My thought of the day: Android devices (in all forms) aren’t ideal for children. My three year old has been using our iPhones, iPads, and his iPod Touch since he was one. Of course, as het gets older, his level of interaction increases. But there were many apps, such as Bumblebee Touchbook, that he has been using for years. Actually, as I write this post on my MacBook, he is using my iPad and drawing (on Noteshelf), and playing a number of games. At the moment, he’s interacting with Miss Spider’s Bedtime Story. If he wasn’t using my iPad, I’d be writing this blog post on it instead of my MacBook.
From time to time, we use the HP TouchPads as a Netflix player to alleviate the demand on the TV (the twelve year old typically wants to watch “Good Luck, Charlie,” and the three year old wants to watch “Curious George.” I’ll also bring the TouchPad to the bathroom at bath time, and let a show play (TouchPad on the counter) in the background as the three year old splashes away. And from time to time, my three year old tries to interact with games on the TouchPad. This is ALWAYS a disaster. If my three year old is playing a game on the TouchPad, it isn’t long until he’s pressed some button he shouldn’t have, is in another menu, or he’s accidentally left the game altogether. You could argue that this is a TouchPad related issue, and that if the TouchPad were an actual Android tablet, there wouldn’t be (at least until version 4.0) software buttons, only hardware buttons. My response: do you think any rational three year old (or forty year old) isn’t going to be pressing hardware buttons (intentionally or unintentionally)?
This experience with Android helps me to realize that the iPad…at this point…is still the far better system for schools. Technologists may prefer tinkering with the Android, but let me say with some certainty that the majority of educators are NOT technologists, and when they are teaching, they want to simply be able to teach. They want technology to become transparent in the classroom, not the focus of the classroom. Technology becomes the focus of a classroom in two ways: either there is a visit from a person whose school does not have technology, and the “wow” factor makes the technology the most noticeable factor in the room; or the technology does not work and thus becomes the area of focus. Educational technology has to be extremely user-friendly for the student and the teacher. Don’t assume that because students are raised in a digital world that they have any clue of how to actually use that technology.
Our iOS devices have proved to be kid-friendly. This is why products like the BubCap have been produced. Has my three year old accidentally exited a program? Yes. Are some apps poorly designed, allowing non-readers to find themselves in menus from which they have escaped? Yes. But the difference is that kids figure out what that single home button does pretty quickly (yet another reason why all the rumors of the home button going away are laughable), and many developers (particularly for kid apps) are very aware of making kid-friendly apps that even help the non-readers. Android is still a mess of buttons (physical or not) where the “owner flexibility” of the device is a hinderance for children.
Perhaps Android “isn’t for kids.” But isn’t the education market a huge potential for growth (Or is Google pushing the ChromeBook for that market?)?
I hope it is only a temporary issue, but this evening I was trying to locate the PDF Band Music Library (www.pdfbandmusic.org), and it is not loading.
Does anyone know what happened to the site? Did it close because of a lack of funding? Is this related to some of the recent actions that shut down “sharing” sites?
Did a publisher find a work under copyright and request the whole site to be shut down like IMSLP?
Or did the site just change hosts and is in that period where it won’t appear until all the net servers are updated?
If you know can you please send me an e-mail?
UPDATE:
I just received an e-mail (Thanks, Rich!) that mentioned that the site was hacked and that they are working on getting the site back up as soon as possible.
This happens to be one of those rare situations where searching Google (i.e. beyond a single search) didn’t turn up any information on why the website was down. Even a Twitter search for “PDF Band Music Library” (and some derivatives) resulted in finding my own post!
I’ll try to remember to update this post when the PDF Band Music Library website is back up again.
