Learning in the Lou

 I love some soft background noise to help me focus. Did you know there was a setting on the iPad that will play a few simple background sounds? Open the Settings app. Click Control Center on the far left. Click Hearing . On your home screen, swipe from the upper right corner towards the lower left. The trick is to start swiping when your finger is off the screen and then drag it across the screen. Click the ear. Choose your sound!

The Files app has so much to offer. Sometimes I get annoyed I need to switch apps to find things in places like Google Drive. Did you know you can see all your files in Drive in the Files app? Open the Files app. Click the ice cream cone in the upper left. Choose Edit Sidebar. Toggle on Google Drive. It should be set to green. Now you will see all your Drive folders! Access it by clicking on Google Drive on the left under Locations. A super useful tip, find a folder you use a lot in your Drive. Long press the folder. I usually choose Favorite, you can find it about halfway down the list. Now you can find your most-used folders under the Favorites section.

  Scan a piece of paper using the Files app. When you open what you scanned, there is a small pencil tip icon in the upper right. Click that. This will open the mark up tools. Mark up the doc and click done in the upper left. Send that to whoever needs it. This is one of the best features on the whole iPad. I have used it for about a million marked up images. Related Post: Files App

Do you remember webpages in the era of geocities and myspace? All those flashing things and fake bugs running across the screen? While those where annoying, I feel they were slightly better than what we deal with today. I do love Chrome but some of the features of Safari on the iPad are rad. This feature might help you and some of your kids read more efficiently. Start by opening a webpage in Safari. Something that is of interest, like self repairing your phone. My daughter broke the Kindle when she was in 2nd grade and we used the iFixit site to repair it. I did make her pay for the parts and do all the work. This site is super empowering. Use Safari, not Chrome. Safari. Click the Aa in the address bar. Click Show Reader. The article kinda jumps off the page and all the distractors just disappear. It makes reading webpages a dream!

 Please follow these steps when submitting work to Canvas from your iPad. 1. Open the assignment and click the big green Submit Assignment button at the bottom. 2. Click File Upload . 1. Click Camera to take a picture(s) of the work you want to turn in. 2. Click Library to access things like screenshots or pictures you have already taken. Camera - take the picture as you normally would. Camera 1. Click Camera again if you have more than one picture to submit. 2. Click Submit when you are ready to turn in the one, or many, pictures. Library If you need to upload images from Photos, click Library. Then select the first image. 1. Click Library if you want to add an additional image. 2. Click Submit when you have your image(s) ready to turn in.

There is an app on all the iPads that is often overlooked. In this post we will show you just two things. How to find your Google Drive in the Files app. Using the Files app to scan documents. Google Drive and Files App Look for the file folder icon. Click the ice cream cone, the three dots. Then Edit Sidebar. Toggle on Drive and then click Done. While you have the Drive app on your iPad already, this is another way to quickly move docs around. Scanning with Files App I love Post-It notes. Some are just little reminders and to-dos. Other notes are ideas. Some of the ideas are for this week and some are for far into the future. Some of the papers that are around me should be kept forever and my filing system is chaos at best. We all use our device camera to capture papers. What frustrates me is all the space around the document, it seems inefficient. If you use Files it will cut out all the extra bits on the sides and leaves you with just the paper. To start scanning, open Files and cli...

  Doritos is adding five less chips per bag due to inflation. Same price just a few ounces lighter. I started to wonder a few things. How much does one chip weigh? How much does five chips weigh? Do the different flavors have different weights? How much lighter is one bag with five less chips? How much lighter is one box? How much lighter is a pallet of Doritos? I see this as an authentic math problem that could be solved in many different ways. My final wondering are...  How much gas does the trucking company save due to the reduced weight? Does producing five less chips improve the health of someone who eats a lot of chips? Does the factory producing the chips use less resources? What are the other ripples that five less chips cause/solve today and tomorrow? (This is an awesome wonder wall question.) What sparks me about this is it makes the math we learn come alive and we need multiple people and ideas to solve it. What are the answers to these without Googling?