Traveling in Style with the Waterfield Field Muzetto

For sometime now I've been looking for a lightweight but stylish bag to carry my Surface 3 and iPad Air when I'm traveling. When I came across the Waterfield Field Muzetto bag I had to take a look at it and see how it could meet my needs. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the Waterfield bag company they're located in San Francisco and all their bags are made here in United States. Before I ordered my bag I went to the Waterfield website, took a look at their products and found the website easy to navigate and filled with some great looking products. When I finally ordered the Field Muzetto bag the process was easy and

Waterfield Field Muzetto

streamlined. The Waterfield  company gives you that special attention and within seconds of ordering the bag I received several emails updating me on the status of the bag. Because each of these bags is handmade I was given a date as to when it would be completed and shipped out. Even though I ordered the bag around the holiday season the bag was delivered prior to the holidays which was really fantastic!

Un-boxing the Waterfield Field Muzetto bag one can get a sense of the high quality craftsmanship that goes into everyone of their bags. The bag is extremely lightweight and made of a beautiful light brown waxed cotton canvas with is accentuated with a chocolate brown leather panel in the front of the bag. The light brown cotton canvas has a distressed look which really adds to the beauty of this bag. Once you pick up the bag you realize how lightweight it is, which is great since I intended to use it to carry a Surface 3 and iPad Air. There are two main compartments in the bag with the divider between the two that is padded. The inside cloth is a beautifully textured zig-zag rust colored material that gives the bag a really nice look when it's opened.The inside compartment is padded with a nice brown felt material. Using the bag I can fit my Surface 3 as well as my iPad Air into each of the compartments, very comfortably. In the second compartment there is a zipper that allows me to securely store some pens and a notebook which comes in really handy and is ideal for storing cables and a power supply. The Field Muzetto bag comes with a full-size adjustable strap with a padded sleeve that is ideal for carrying the bag comfortably across your body. There is an outside pocket that can come in handy for storing your phone, notebooks, or magazines or other incidentals. I am extremely happy with my purchase and the high quality of craftsmanship that went into the Waterfield Field Muzetto bag. If you are looking for a high quality and light weight bag to hold you tablets - I would highly recommend the bag. And by the way the company is great to deal with - a real plus!

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Review of Dell Chromebook 13-Sleek & Smooth

As more schools jump on the Chromebook wagon it is is exciting to see companies like Dell step up to the plate and deliver high quality devices for schools. For many of us who have been using Chromebooks for some time now- I always found the first generation devices

were rather under-powered and lagged in performance. But this is changing rapidly with new Chromebooks that are sporting Intel processors. With Dell's release of the Dell Chromebook 13 the tides are changing and now educators and students can have access to devices that house much faster silicone. The Dell Chromebook that was provided for me for this review, the Dell Chromebook 13 sported an Intel i3 processor with 4 GB or RAM and 16 GB Solid State Drive with a 13.3 inch FHD Display and is priced at $529 on the Dell website. The Dell Chromebook 13 is made of carbon fiber finish with magnesium alloy that is easy to grip and gives the computer good protection from dings and bangs.  The Dell Chromebook 13 comes standard with 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, HDMI 1.4, MicroSD slot Noble lock slot and a Stereo headphone and microphone combo jack and weighs in at 3.2 pounds. The keys are Chiclet style with back lighting and feel really good when typing. Most users will find the precision Touchpad with built-in glass integrated button extremely easy to use and will not find a need to carry a mouse. The Dell Chromebook 13 supports Bluetooth 4.0 LE, making easy to connect your computer to external devices that support the latest Bluetooth standard for Low Energy. Pairing one of my Logitech Bluetooth mice took just seconds and was very easy to accomplish. The Dell Chromebook 13 comes with Dell's 720p webcam which is pretty standard across most of the Chromebooks which should work well with Google Hangouts or Skype.

Using the Dell Chromebook 13 you will find that its boot time is extremely fast and in a matter of a few seconds you will be logged in and ready to go. One of the really great features of the Dell Chromebook 13 is its battery life. With a 67Whr - 6 cell battery you should easily get 10-11 hours of battery life to keep you going all day long. The LCD screen provides you with a crisp view of your text documents and HD videos look great on the screen. One of my favorite features of the Dell Chromebook 13 is having an Intel i3 processor inside. You definitely feel the difference when working on this computer and having the processing speed of this mainstream chip really makes this a pleasurable experience. Whether you are just using Google Docs or opening up an app you will find the experience to quick and very smooth. Having worked on less powerful Chromebooks,  the experience of using the Dell Chromebook 13  was very positive and a device I would highly recommend to educators to look at. If you are looking for a top of the line Chromebook, then you need to take a look at the Dell Chromebook 13, it has a lot to offer in its quality built, design and horsepower. While the Dell Chromebook 13 may come in a little more in terms of its price ($529),  if this is your go to everyday computer it is worth the extra dollars to have such a high quality computer that you can count on to give you a great user experience! For educators who may be working with students who need to use a touch enabled screen, Dell does make a make a Dell Chromebook 13 model with with a touch screen.

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Note Taking- Marrying Pen & Paper with the Cloud

One of the really important skills that students need to develop is their ability to take notes in class. While many students have access to digital devices many still rely on traditional pen and paper for note taking. While the research would support (The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking, Psychological Science,  Pam A. Mueller &  Daniel M. Oppenheimer first published on April 23, 2014) the use of pen and paper- wouldn’t it be great to be able to marry both the ink with digital technology to take advantage of the best of both worlds. In this post I'll share with you a couple of different strategies that students might find helpful to marry ink with their digital world.

One of my favorite note taking tools is Evernote which I have been using for some time now. Evernote is a great way to capture ideas, notes, images, audio and store it on the web for easy access. Not too long ago, Evernote in collaboration with Moleskine came out with journals that allow students to quickly move their handwritten notes to the cloud with full searching capabilities. The system is very easy to use and would give students the ability to continue to take notes as they always have using pen and paper. When they are done they can use Smart Stickers that come with the Evernote writing journals to quickly file their notes using the camera on any tablet or smart phone. The Smart Stickers are quite ingenious. Using the camera on a tablet or smartphone you can associate a sticker with a particular notebook. For example, if you associate the sticker that has a House icon on it with your Science notebook, then when you take a picture of that page that has the house sticker affixed, it automatically will file the note in your Science notebook. The Evernote system works great and one of the big advantages of this system is that you can easily search all your handwritten notes. Evernote will OCR all of your handwritten notes and make searching very easy.


For the students that want to add more functionality to their hand written notes they should take a look at the Livescribe smartpens. Livescribe has been developing this technology for the last seven years and allows students not only to record ink, but also the associated audio. For students that have difficulty taking notes and listening at the same time the Livescribe pen can be a great note taking strategy for them. Livescribe not too long ago came out with the Livescribe 3 pen which pairs to an iPhone or Android phone and uses the microphone and speaker on the phones for recording and playing back note-using Low-Energy Bluetooth to save their work. All of the students notes automatically get sent to the Livescribe + app on the student's device which can then be shared with Onenote or Evernote. This combination of services gives students access to their Livescribe notes in the cloud for easy access. Using the Livescribe 3 pen makes it easy to take notes and gives students that extra safety net-in that their notes also now can include audio. 

Students will find both solutions easy to implement and depending on their learning profile will find value in each of the approaches. That being said, both solutions allow student to marry ink and paper with the digital world making their notes searchable and accessible which after all is the whole idea.

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Speech Recognition - Coming of Age!

Ever since I've been involved in the field of assistive technology there's always been the hope that speech recognition could assist students with the writing process. While speech recognition has been effective for some of the students we work with, it hasn't always worked out for the majority of the students that we work with. In the last six months there's been some new developments that make speech recognition a reality for many students. For many of us that are using smart phones we find ourselves using speech recognition more and more on daily basis for text messaging and for writing emails. Now students can take advantage of speech recognition on mobile devices such as iPhone's, iPad, Android phones, Windows tablets as well with as within Google Docs. With the advent of machine learning the speech recognition engines keep getting better and better and do not require initial training. This has made it a very easy entry for students to trial speech recognition. Prior to this time, students would have to spend a considerable amount of time training and creating a profile. With the advent of mobile devices this is a thing of the past. Over the last six months I've been using a number of different speech workflows that I wanted to share with you.

Google recently added Voice Typing to Google Docs which really has taken speech recognition to the next level. By simply plugging in a microphone to a desktop computer students can start to use speech recognition immediately. I have found that the speech recognition that's built into Google Docs to be very accurate and allows students to quickly get their ideas down. Voice Typing opens up all kinds of opportunities for students to quickly get their ideas down on the page. With the advent of this API other companies have been using and integrating the Voice Typing into their apps. You will now find Voice Typing integrated into Co:Writer Universal, WordQ, as well as Read and Write for Google Chrome. Having Voice Yyping integrated into these applications give students a new way to get their ideas down on the page. It's really exciting to work with students and watch them as the words fly onto the computer screen. 

With the advent of so many stews students using iPads and the new system IOS 9, SIRI has become a better contender in the area of speech recognition. Anytime student see the microphone at the bottom of the keyboard they can click and speak and the text gets immediately transcribed. Although it's not perfect it certainly is a very fast way to input text on the iPhone or  iPad. SIRI is wonderful in that it works throughout the operating system giving students access to it from wherever application they are using. I am working with many students that are currently using SIRI instead of writing which has worked out really well.

Another interesting application that I came across is called myEcho and it's an app that you can install on your iPhone and takes advantage of the SIRI technology. This workflow is great if a student has an iPhone and is working on the Windows platform. The student can first purchase myEcho aoo for IOS for a $1.99 and then install the companion app on their Windows desktop, laptop or tablet. Once the iPhone and the computer had been

paired up, the students simply brings up the myEcho app- clicks on the microphone and begins to dictate. When when you click on the done button the text automatically gets sent to whatever application is open. This would allow a student to use speech recognition using their iPhone as the input mechanism and would allow them to type text directly into an application like Microsoft Word or any application that can accept text. Just like SIRI there is about a 15 second limit but you can continue to add text to your document by clicking on the microphone button. This application is not limited to one computer which would enable a student to  have the myEcho companion installed on his many computers as they have access to. This is a great solution for students that have an iPhone but are still using a Windows computer at school or at home for productivity

This past week Nuance the developers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking released a new app for Android and IOS called Dragon Anywhere. Dragon Anywhere is a mobile solution with hands-free use while doing speech recognition. Dragon Anywhere allows the student to dictate for as long as they need without having to tap on the microphone button on the keyboard. Dragon Anywhere allows the students to use voice commands to select text, export text and to move the cursor around the document totally hands-free. This power it has been unprecedented until the release of Dragon Anywhere. Once the student has done the dictation it's easy to export the text via email it or even place it in Drop Box.The one downside to Dragon Anywhere is that there is a monthly subscription fee of $15 to use the app. It really would be great if  Nuance had an educational pricing schedule for students to that schools could begin to pay for this service.

Certainly you can see a lot has changed over the last couple of years with regards to speech recognition- making it a much more viable alternative for students that have difficulty in the area of written language. With a little practice these tools can become an invaluable part of their assistive technology toolkit.

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IPEVO Ziggi-HD Plus- 8.0 Megapixel Document Camera Really Shines!

I have been using IPEVO products since they became commercially available and have always been amazed by the quality and the price. Sometimes I wonder how they do it. When I demonstrate the IPEVO document cameras to my students they always comment just how great the images look and when I mention the price, they are astounded! With this as a backdrop, I was happy to receive the Ziggi-HD Plus to review

which recently became available. The Ziggi-HD Plus is a 8.0 Megapixel camera and an up to 12x continuous digital zoom that is powered via the USB cable. The  Ziggi-HD Plus is the same dimensions as their previous model but when you use it with the updated IPEVO Presenter software the image quality of the Ziggi-HD Plus is spectacular. Ziggi-HD Plus's 8.0 Megapixel camera delivers a resolution up to 3264 x 2448 pixels when used with Mac or PC.

In my testing the image quality is fantastic even under low light conditions. Teachers will really enjoy the faster refresh rate on the Ziggi-HD Plus which is ideal when you are moving objects or writing under the lens. Under all conditions the Ziggi-HD Plus was much faster at focusing objects under the lens and was very responsive. When looking at the image it is hard to believe that a $99 document camera can produce such a high quality image. The Ziggi-HD Plus includes a built-in microphone that when paired with the Presenter software allows you to use it for creating videos or for video conferencing. The Ziggi-HD Plus is ideal for creating videos (MP4 format) for the Flipped Classroom. Ziggi-HD Plus and IPEVO Presenter are now compatible with Chromebooks and the Google Chrome browser (PC and Mac) through the Chrome IPEVO Presenter app. To round out the experience you may want to consider

purchasing the following accessories: Carrying Case, Height Extension Stand, Scan Kit and the Magnifying Lens. In any case if you considering a purchase of a document camera for your classroom you have to check out the Ziggi-HD Plus - it is great value for the price! Bring your classroom lessons to life with the Ziggi-HD Plus!

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Tegware Bagel 360-Some Great Gifts for the Holidays

What can be better than marrying to of my favorite gadgets the iPhone 6 and the Boogie Board? If you haven't guessed, it is the Tegware Bagel 6 for the iPhone 6 & 6S. How many times are you on the phone and need to jot something down and you can't find a piece of paper or a pen? I'm sure if you are like me you find yourself in the situation quite often. If that is the case ( no pun intended :-) ) then you should take a look at the Tegware Bagel 6 for the iPhone 6.  The Tegware Bagel 6 case marries a very handy case for your iPhone 6 alongside a Boogie Board with a stylus. Now you can pull out the stylus or just use your finger to jot down that name, phone number or a reminder and when you are done you can click on the button to quickly erase the contents. No need to worry about the battery life of the Boogie Board it has been rated for over 50,000 erasures! The Tegware Bagel 6 has been designed with all the right cutouts so that you can access the camera on the iPhone 6 easily. The Tegware Bagel 6 case has been designed to securely let you store a credit card, which is great for those of you who are on the go. The natural writing experience on the Boogie Board is exceptional and if you need to permanently capture what you wrote simply pop out you iPhone and take a picture of the Boogie Board contents. The Boogie Board is detachable which makes it easy to carry in your pocket for

those times when you just want the freedom to write. For those of you who are looking for a different design style that includes the Boogie Board, take a look at the Tegware Bagel 360 a flip phone case design. The Tegware 360 covers and protects your iPhone 6 and lets you quickly flip over the screen to display a Boogie Board, to jot down your ideas. The Tegware 360 includes a stylus and quick way to pop off the Boogie Board for writing down ideas. Tegware cases add innovation to the case, that is just not found anywhere else. Now is a good time to get these as gifts for family and friends who enjoy using their iPhone 6! For more information head on over to Tegware.

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Extra Power for the Holidays with Jackery Batteries

Jackery Air 6

With the holiday season upon us there is good chance that you will be spending more time out of your home or office and be on your phone more, as you make plans to meet up with friends and family. It is during these times that you begin to realize just how long your battery will take you before your phone shuts off. As great as your smart phone is and all of the apps are, they are of no use if your phone totally discharges. It is times like these that you had wished you were carrying an external battery. When I know that I am going to be out all day and on the go with my iPhone 6, I always carry an external battery. I would like to thank Jackery with providing me with these batteries to review for this blog post. I have used many external batteries over the years and when I came across the Jackery Air 6 for the iPhone I had to take it for a spin. The Jackery Air 6 is beautifully crafted 3000mAh battery with an orange fluorescent aluminum casing that is thin and stylish, weighing in at 3.36 ounces. I found that the Jackery Air 6 charged quickly and gave me the ability to fully recharge my iPhone 6 to a full charge. There is a micro USB port for charging the battery and and full USB port for the Lightning cable to your iPhone. The Jackery Air 6 has a 3 color (Red, Green, & Blue) LED indicator that lets you quickly check on the battery level and comes with a mini lightning cable as well as a USB to mini USB cable for charging the battery. The Jackery Air 6 outputs 5V/1A and is ideal for charging your iPhone 6 or 6S. For those of you on the road and always want to ensure

 
that you have a lightning cable with you check out the Kero Lightning Nomad Cable that fits on your key ring. One of the issues I have had with external batteries is that they tend to weigh too much and are rather bulky but the Jackery Air 6 dispels this, and easily fits in your pocket- at times you don't even realize you are carrying it! This makes for an excellent practical and stylish gift for the holidays.  

For the times you will be on the road with more then one device you may want to consider the Jackery Giant +. The Jackery Giant + is a 12,000mAh battery with a flashlight

Jackery Giant +

which is ideal if you need to charge two devices at the same time. The Jackery Giant + supports 5V/1A and 5V/2.1A which is ideal for charging more demanding devices. While the 5V/1A port is great for charging my iPhone 6 the 5V/2.1A port is ideal for charging my Surface 3 which is rated for the 5V/ 2.1A output. The Jackery Giant + is a much bigger battery and weighs in at 10.4 ounces and is one I would most likely throw into my backpack when I am on the road with my Surface 3 or iPad Air.

Jackery Bar

If you are looking for a lighter weight battery that can support 5V/2.1A you should take a look at the Jackery Bar which weighs in 5.5 ounces. The Jackery Bar has a simple 3 bar LED light to instantly let you know just how charged the battery is and includes a flashlight which could come in really handy when the power goes out. The Jackery Bar is a 6000mAh battery which is ideal for charging your iPhone 6 but could easily fully charge your iPad up when it is 50% discharged. Having the convenience of the Jackery Bar being able to meet multiple needs is ideal and one that gives you the flexibility to use it with smart phones or or more demanding tablets. 



You will find the Jackery batteries are well designed and will give you the confidence that your iPhone and tablets will keep on ticking as you move through the holiday season. As you can see there are lots of options whether you are using an iPhone or carrying with you an iPad, Surface 3 or tablet. For more information about the Jackery batteries click here.

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