May 19, 2011

On Thursday, May 19, 2011, I met with the Director and Asst Director regarding the future of TIE (Technology Infused Education).  It looks like the program will continue one way or another, which is great news for teachers in Arkansas.

I had my area tech meeting starting at 10am, so before that, I installed Impero Client on a couple workstations in the lab for a demo.  Once the meeting started, I discussed the Arkansas Digital Sandbox, ArkansasIDEAS, and Arkansas iTunesU.  We had a demo from Xirrus Wireless (more a presentation, really).  We discussed summer workshops, summer tech workshops specifically.  We also went over the changes to the tech plan inventory requirements along with AUP templates/guides provided by the state education department.

After the meeting, I worked with Blevins on their transition to Google Apps for quite some time.

Near the end of the day, I went to the Asst Director's house to work on a data transfer issue between the iPad app called "AudioNote" and the computer.  Turned out to be a much easier process than I was trying to make it. Basically, AudioNote will let you copy the recorded files through iTunes' file-sharing feature.  This serves to back up the data so one can free up the space on the iPad.  The audio files play in Quicktime, and rumor has it they can also be converted using Audacity.  If that's true, I never hit the right combo of import settings to get the audio to play in Audacity.  The format, according to Quicktime, is IMA-4, 16 kHz, Mono.  Audacity has only one IMA setting and it would not let me pull the file in.  I tried a variety of other options and still the file came in as a screechy mess.  To me, it sounded like the scene in 'Strange Brew" where Bob and Doug play a floppy disk on their record player.  In any case, we found a workable solution.