IT Ideas

Just upgraded one of our terminal servers to 2012 R2. This brings a number of benefits which include: The return of the start button! Go straight to desktop (this option can be set in the local group policy editor). Better rdp performance. Couple of things to be aware of - You need to remove the taskbar pin for powershell and admin tools. These can be found in C:\programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu\ - remove anything you don't want users to play with. I copied these and popped them in another folder on the C drive so I can still access them. You need to make a mandatory profile to do what I've done here - plenty of guides on YouTube! Brief video demo:

You can use the Autocrat script alongside a Google Form and a certificate template to create a system where a teach simply fills in a Google Form and a certificate is the n generated. This might go to the admin team for printing, get emailed home or to the student or all of these. You would embedded to form somewhere that the teachers can easily find - and all they have to do is fill it in to award a certificate. The form will keep a record of all rewards for you. To set this up take about 20 mins for a subject. Most of this time is in the design of your certificate and what you want to give awards for. This is a brief walk through from beginning to end of setup.

Google Presentations just got a bit better today. You can now edit the master slides - so add formatting, images, logos etc that appear on all the pages in the same place for example. Couple of screen shots below - find it in 'View' 'Master Slide'. Full widescreen support also comes with this release.

Couple of people asked me about recording audio on Chromebooks - for things like students pod-casts. So I looked up a few ways of doing it. The closest to the experience of an application like Audacity on a PC I could find was an online app called TwistedWave . As normal - just sign into the app with your Google Account. Works well as far as I can see and exports straight to your Google Drive. Demo of it in action done via a Hangout on Air on my Chromebook:

I use photos and videos quite a bit in Google+ now, especially as you can instant upload from your phone. Its useful when you do a video of a presentation of take a photo of a piece of work and you want to show it to the rest of the class for them to feedback on it. So I did a bit of a video to show you the basics - probably better guides out there - but at least these are real examples.

I've been using Lucidcharts for quite a while now for organisational diagrams, mind-mapping and the link. Today sees the launch of Lucidpress which gives you full blown desktop publishing with Google Drive integration and sharing. Sign up with your Google Account at  https://www.lucidpress.com/users/register You can also link to your drive by going to your Google Drive and 'Connecting More Apps' Screenshot: