iHomeEducator®, Inc. Blog

iLive Problem with Videos

2012-01-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

All,

Just wanted to let all our users know that there are some issues with the videos hanging the app on an iPhone or iPod Touch. It seems to work fine on the iPad. We are in the process of fixing this. It had to do with iOS 5 and also the new way Youtube embeds videos using iframe. These changes complicated the debugging process but now we should have a fix.

It will just take us a little time to get through all the iLive apps and check each video to clean up this problem.

Thanks for your patience.
Andy

Troubleshooting and Support: Multitasking

2011-12-31T09:28:00.000-08:00

Apple has a great support page for users that have problems with their apps. Symptoms are crashing, black/white screens, etc... Sometimes apps will run into memory limits on the devices if other apps are still occupying resources.

Apple Support Links:

iOS: Understanding multitasking

iOS: Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store

Users are welcome to report problems directly to us at support@ihomeeducator.com

via iTunes:

How to report an issue with Your iTunes Store purchase

iPlanShopping Tutorial

2011-12-28T20:45:00.000-08:00

iPlanLessons Tutorial 2

2011-12-27T17:17:00.001-08:00

iPlanLessons Tutorial 1

2011-12-20T12:10:00.001-08:00

iPlanShopping 1.1 - Usability Improvements

2011-12-10T21:27:00.001-08:00

OK - so you have a great idea for a gift... open iPlanShopping... Add an idea.

"I need to buy Aunty Una a pair of gardening gloves for her birthday from Costco by July 1st, 2012."

For this example:

Idea: Gardening Gloves
Category: Birthday
Retailer: Costco
Receiver: Aunty Una

Add a new Idea - then scroll down and tap on Categories: "Birthday" - wait - this is a new category and in version 1.0 you would need to jump out and create the category. Now you can create the category and add it immediately. Select the category "Birthday" that you've just created and return to the main "Gardening gloves" form to create and/or select the Retailer and Receiver. All three entities of "Birthday", "Costco", and "Aunty Una" can be added via the new Idea: "Gardening Gloves".

No more jumping out of the "Idea" form and creating the Category, Retailer, and Receiver first... this should make it easier.

Also the new Category, Retailer, and Receiver are automatically available under the tabs. You can then open a filtered view of the shopping ideas by any custom Category, Retailer, and Receiver.

Note: In the example screenshot: "Hot wheels" to be bought for Christmas at Costco for Adam by Friday November 25th at a budget of $20 and Actual Cost $22. Note that the "$" is not required and only number. This way all calculations can be applied to any currency (i.e.: EU, AUD, etc...)

All the other features for version 1.1 remain including budgeting by line item and by report.

Andy

iPlanLessons 1.7 Update: Copy, Category, and Journal Report

2011-12-08T13:43:00.001-08:00

All,

We have been receiving a lot of emails and consolidating the Product Enhancement Requests.

Key enhancements have been added into 1.7 as a free update to all users of iPlanLessons.

Copy:

by Day - lessons are copied forward by day (skipping weekends)
by Week - lessons are copied forward every 7 days

The way this works is with the # button, purple week button, and blue day button. The user taps the # button to specify the number of new copies. You can reset it to the minimum default of "1" with the reset button.

Example:

Start with a lesson on Monday
Tap the number button to increment it to "4"
Tap the blue day button - The number will reset automatically to "1"
Exit the Day Lesson view.
Tap the refresh button under the Calendar - you will see 4 new lesson copies on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each will have a sequential number of 2, 3, 4, and 5 to show they are copies of the Monday lesson.

The same works for the "purple week button":

Example:

Start with a lesson on any day such as Tuesday.
Tap the number button to increment it to "8"
Tap the purple week button - The number will reset automatically to "1"
Exit the Day Lesson view
Tap the refresh button under the Calendar - you will see 8 new lesson copies on every Tuesday for 8 weeks into the future numbered 2 to 9.

Caution: This is different from the "Repeat Event" configuration within iCal. When tapping the iCal button on a lesson you are actually defining an event within iCal and we only store the date in iPlanLessons for the current lesson. The repeat and alarm definitions are specifically only stored in iCal and not iPlanLessons.

Subject Category:

What is a "Subject Category"? This is a customizable "subject" breakdown. This could be for example:

"Algebra" under the primary subject of "Math"
"Piano" under the primary subject of "Elective"
"Bible Study" under the primary subject of "Elective"

Category has been added into the main lesson form under Primary Subject.

Category is modifiable from the lesson form without exiting to the Tabs.

Category can be accessed from the Tabs as well and filtered lesson views can be accessed for the Category.

Why did we not allow custom "Primary Subjects"? Mainly because this field is being used for the Searching and Report functions. Customizing this field would cause complications. We think the Category field provides richer functionality to the app.

Journal Report:

This was a special request from Nancy Barth - thank you Nancy.

We added this 4th report type to allow access to primarily the Journals, standards, etc..

Other fixes:

Some other minor updates were made throughout the app.

Thanks for all your support and feedback.

Andy

iPlan Series Tips and Roadmap

2011-12-05T14:10:00.001-08:00

Blogging Lessons:

www.mollysassignments.blogspot.com

www.bayleesassignments.blogspot.com

Thank you Selena!

It is great to see how you have set up these blogs as daily assignments for your daughters.

iPlanShopping:

We developed this as a way to help us personally as a husband and wife dealing with our budgets and purchases. This morning my wife shared with me her shopping list and we discussed our budgeting over breakfast. It was so refreshing to have the ability to quickly see where we stood with our purchases before we enter the charges into Quicken.

We've seen iPlanShopping being gifted recently. We think gifting this to friends is a great idea and hopefully is a gift that pays back in the long run.

iPlanLessons:

Working on enhancements:

Researching Copy Lessons feature - TBD
I may add another entity called "Course" to help break down the Primary Subjects
Maybe adding additional reports

iPlan Next?

We are working on another planning app for food lovers... details to come...

Cheers,

Andy

Hello K-Mart Shoppers!

2011-12-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

Hello K-Mart Shoppers!

Christmas is here and so is iPlanShopping!

My wife said to me this afternoon, "We are shopping tomorrow for Christmas...".

We've been traveling the last couple weeks to see her parents in Seattle and prior to that we were in Florida for a business conference and mini-vacation... shopping for Christmas has been hanging over our heads as the days tick by and there are really less than 20 days because we need to ship the gifts to family on the East and West Coast!

So what did I do over Thanksgiving at the in-laws you might ask? I was programming a shopping app for her ;-) And when I installed a beta pre-release version on her iPhone 4S she started to use it to organize her shopping list. Not only that she emailed me a budgeted list so I now know what we need to buy... I was thrilled!

I found this great blog by SimpleMom from 2008 which still applies. SimpleMom writes:

However, if you’re late jumping on the “Christmas planning ahead bandwagon,” let it serve as a great fire to get you going for the next holiday season. When you save a little every month all year, the Christmas season truly becomes something worth anticipating. As Dave Ramsey says, Christmas is not an emergency – it falls on December 25 every year, so you know it’s coming.

I also like her suggestions here:

More than anything, consider curbing your gift giving. Many extended families draw names, where everyone is only responsible for giving one gift. I think that’s a fabulous idea. Many also don’t give to each other at all, or only give to the children – also a smart move. I mean really – how many random knickknacks do your parents need? Embrace simple living, and express this in your gift giving. (We’ll discuss some simple gift ideas closer to Christmas.)

Hey I like that "Simple living"! Holiday shopping however is just the season when all of this is magnified.

There are 12 months of shopping that we as parents need to get under control from basic needs, travel, household items, birthdays, anniversaries, back-to-school, and back to holidays again... so I decided to create a custom "Categories" table related to Ideas... this way you can create an idea and relate it to any category.

Similarly there are people who receive and benefit from what you buy for them... family, friends, relatives, co-workers, etc... and then there are retailers where you buy the stuff... I believe these three entities then allow us to effectively organize what we buy.

Then a budget and amount was added to the the Idea form. And also to the Reports. So you have the ability to look at line item budgeting as well as a monthly or weekly/daily budget. Then each report can be filtered by Category so you can budget within a report... an overall budget can be added to each report.

We hope you like our new iPlan app!

Andy

Note: I haven't decided on creating a blog for iPlanShopping reports... I'm not sure people want to share their shopping lists in a blog... TBD

iPlan Series Update - Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-27T09:49:00.001-08:00

We hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! We just drove over 12 hours through mountains and fog from grandma and grandpa's house. We had a great time, but it is good to be back home.

A quick update - we just submitted iPlanShopping. This app technically leverages the same user flow as iPlanLessons. However the motivation for developing this is due to this busy season as we try to juggle gifts for friends and loved ones.

Given the economy with many homes today watching their spending we felt it would be beneficial to have an app that also tracked budget and cost of each item purchased.

Personally our family uses Quicken for accounting purposes however it is nice to have something that is mobile and also looks at the planning of these purchases ahead of time. We tend to use Quicken after the fact at the end of the month when it is too late to make adjustments in spend. Quicken is great for tracking regular monthly spend like utility bills and mortgage... however not tracking impulse buys and surprises can be the real reason many of us fall behind in our home finances... iPlanLessons allows you to plan ahead by tracking, prioritizing, and categorizing these purchases for any category, retailer, and receiver.

We also hope it gives us a tool to help teach our children these valuable "Home Economic" lessons. Abby our middle school product manager has been our Q/A tester and we hope this helps her also appreciate the value in planning and budgeting.

We are also researching iCloud - this is a learning experience itself and we thank you for your patience as we investigate the proper approach to implementing iCloud for our iPlan Series of apps.

Andy

Middle Schooler Student Update!

2011-11-13T16:19:00.001-08:00

Hello Fellow Readers of my blog,

This is Abby, the Middle Schooler/ Product Manager of iHomeEducator.

I apologize for not posting anything for... lets see....a year. Anyway, just wanted to try to get back into the "swing of things".

Some of you are probably thinking, " So Abby, what are you here to talk about? Anything new??"

"No, actually, nothing new." says I.

You then are probably thinking, " So what are you posting a blog for? What's the purpose?"

"There isn't a purpose. Well...the purpose is (and I regret to say this) it's school."

Everyone knows the real action takes place in the classroom!! Every year of school gets harder and harder and HARDER!! (Everyone knows that). Sometimes in math when working with different concepts, functions, etc. I tell my mom, "It's sometimes so "easy" its hard!!". I have a feeling a lot of you feel the same way.

I hope you enjoy using our apps and I hope they help you with this problem I am living through at the moment. ;)

Abby

iPlanLessons & iCloud?

2011-10-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

We know some of you have asked us when this is going to be available. We still need to make modifications to our code and test for this feature. Now that iCloud is available for the iPhone and iPad we will make time to do this.

Meanwhile thank you for your patience.

iPlanLessons 1.6: Fixes and Enhancements

2011-10-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

1.6 - Fixes and enhancements

Fixed Done and Not Done selection - it was not working in 1.5
Added Status buttons back for the Day View - we missed these too and we're going to try them again in 1.6 but only with the Calendar Day view - I think the problem may be the number of lessons displayed.
Added the ability to add lessons from the Day View - We added the "+" add lesson button to the Calendar Day view. This way you do not have to jump between the Lesson and Calendar tab. But I was not able to preset the calendar day. It defaults to the current day and not the day you have selected.
Added Field Trip - a white color code
Added link to Common Core Standards from within the Instructions - This is an external website and internet access is required. The standards site did not work in an iPad browser but fortunately found this new site which we linked into the app. You can hold you finger down and copy excerpts to include in your lessons.
Sort Resources from within the Lesson - before the resources were not sorted alphabetically when you selected a resource for a new lesson.
Sort Classes from within the Lesson - similar to the resources above we have sorted the Classes.
Student First and Last names are shown when selecting your students that are in a class.

We will miss you Steve

2011-10-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Our thoughts and prayers are with Steve's wife and three children.
We will miss you Steve.

iHomeEducator

"Find what you love...", Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

History of the US - A Collection of links and videos

2011-10-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Our 8th grader is moving through US History and we wanted to help her take the words off the page and make it more engaging so I'm preparing this blog for her and maybe this will help you as well.

Thank you Khan Academy.

Thanks to dizzo95

iPlanLessons 1.5: Calendar Added and Stability Fixes

2011-09-13T11:13:00.001-07:00

What's New in version 1.5

Stability: We apologize for the crashing that occurred in the previous release. This had to do with renaming entity names and a combination of issues which we had to reproduce and solve.
Simplicity: The flags and status icons on each row were also causing stability issues and after discussing it with my wife we decided to remove them from the rows. We also received feedback that the icons took up too much space especially on the iPhone. The priority and status controls can be modified by tapping into the lesson and scrolling to the bottom. This also allows you to review the contents of the lesson before tapping the "Done" button.
Selecting Lessons by Calendar Date: This is the most significant enhancement in the 1.5 release. Now in addition to selecting a filtered list of lessons by "Resource" and by "Class" you can also pick a filtered list of lessons by a date from a calendar. Also once lessons are assigned to a date the box will have a "marker/dot". The markers will be highlighted with each refresh of the calendar. Note the "Save Database" function was also added to this view for convenience.

We also added color coding for the Primary Subjects of each lesson which was proposed by Sue W. below in the comments. So now you can visually differentiate Math, Science, Language Arts, History/Geography, and Electives:

iPlanLesson 1.5 will be reviewed and released by Apple in the next week as a free update. We thank you all for your patience, collaboration, and words of encouragement. We apologize again for the crashing that occurred and the frustration that many of you experienced. Thank you for helping us make this a better app.

Andy and Arlene Lee

iPlanLessons - Warning Debugging Renaming Issue Still

2011-09-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

All,

iPlanLessons - Warning we are still resolving the issue with "renaming" lessons, classes, resources, and students. It is better to delete and recreate versus rename. Also please save your database often so you don't lose data.

The issue is I'm able to reproduce the problem using a 3rd party set of software running the current version of Xcode and Lion. However our 3rd party software vendor is already on the next beta version of Xcode and does not see the problem in order to fix it. We will continue to update you on progress and sincere apologies for this esoteric problem.

We are very sorry for those that have entered in data and lost it when this crash occurs. Therefore we ask that you try to save your data whenever possible.

Also, My wife just encountered a problem that some of you may have found with changing flag priorities. Once a flag has been changed she was not able to reenter the lesson - exiting the app. A quick fix was to change the scoping by selecting "Red Flag" under the "Search" and select "All" again. This seemed to reset the list of lessons and allow her back into her lesson. She also noticed as she selected priority flags at the bottom of the list - the list was resorted. The same occurred when changing status in the filtered views. I am researching these problems.

Andy

Thank you Steve Jobs

2011-08-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

This past summer I had the great opportunity to go to the WWDC in San Francisco. Racing there on Amtrak from Sacramento and arriving at ~6AM. I still had my luggage bag and decided to go check into the hotel and return. Unfortunately that was my biggest mistake because when I returned the line of 5000 developers already wrapped around the building and I had to sit in the overflow section to watch Steve Job's Keynote on the big screen versus in person.

I still remember my first Apple II computer, floppy disk drive... the Macintosh in college... growing up with Apple literally.

From the Apple II to the iPad 2 (which I still don't have yet)...
From floppy disks to iCloud (which I can't wait to use).
Programming in Applesoft to Objective-C in Xcode
I was in 8th grade... now my oldest daughter is in 8th grade!

Thank you, Steve, for giving us all tools to learn, tools to teach, and tools that have made our lives easier. Thank you for leading a great team of engineers at Apple.

Andy

Thanks to Steve - Another blog by Seth Goldin

iPlanLessons Version 1.2.1: Renaming Entities

2011-08-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

The iPlanLessons Version 1.2.1 update has been approved.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iplanlessons/id445740545?mt=8

iPlanLessons Version 1.2.1 has a new library which we included. What is this library?

Well we work with a software library which allows us to basically create "entities"... i.e.: lessons, resources, classes, and students. This 3rd party library had a bug in it when renaming the "name" of the "entity" which had to be fixed and we recompiled our app with the new library. Basically it was running out-of-bounds in the numbering of the renamed object.

I know some of this may not make too much sense but hopefully now you can rename your lessons, resources, classes, and students without crashes from this renaming issue.

If you still experience problems:

Backup your database using the iTunes File Sharing
please make sure you've synched up the new version 1.2.1 app from iTunes to your device.
If you have any lessons that will not open you may need to delete these lessons.
If in some cases you cannot even open the "lessons" tab - you may need to delete the app and reinstall it from iTunes - try copying your iPlanLessons.sqlite database over from a backup.
If this still doesn't work, I'm sorry but you may need to reinstall the app from iTunes after removing it from your device. Please re-enter your lessons and continue to backup after large numbers of entries.

Side Note: We found in our Settings the version still says 1.0 - this was an oversight on our part and you should have version 1.2.1 if you update it from iTunes. Please ignore this mis-numbering which will be fixed in the next update.

Thank you for your patience.

Andy

iPlanLessons Tips & Tricks: Linking to Assignments

2011-08-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

First we hope everyone is getting a great start to their school year. We've finished the first week of homeschool classes and the energy level is high around our house.

iPlanLessons version 1.2.1 is in the queue for review and should be out this week. It contains the fix to "renaming" entities.

We want to thank all that have emailed us with questions and enhancement requests. The next big enhancement on our list is supporting iCloud but we will be prioritizing the other enhancement requests as well and try to do the ones that are technically possible with our current design.

I want to thank Ivonne who came to us with the following question this weekend.

Ivonne helped us test a "hidden" feature - adding a web link into your assignments...

==========================================

On Aug 20, 2011, at 9:36 AM, Ivonne wrote:

Hello,

When I paste an assignment that includes a link to a webpage, the link is
not active on my report. I also made a website as the resource for the
class, and again, no active link. If there is a way to do this, please let
me know. If not, please add this functionality to a future release.
Thanks.

God bless,
Ivonne

==========================================

On 2011-08-20 17:31:05 +0000 IHomeEducator

Hi Ivonne,

Can you try this?

Put this around the URL.

<a href="your URL">your text</a>

In the assignment.

See if it works?
The reason is the reports are in HTML...
So they will read HTML syntax.
Maybe not as convenient but it may work.

I have not tested this though.

Thank you,
Andy

Sent from my iPad

==========================================

On Aug 20, 2011, at 10:52 AM, Ivonne

It worked!

---
God bless,
Ivonne

==========================================

All - we hope this little "workaround" helps many of you. It is not the perfect solution but at least leverages the current reporting HTML features. In fact since the report is emailed as HTML, any HTML tags within the text will be interpreted as HTML tags. So be careful as this may also reformat the report itself.

Thank you all!

Andy

iPlanLessons - debugging issues - apologies

2011-08-14T13:38:00.001-07:00

All,

We've had a few emails recently where the lessons are being created and filled out. Then after saving the lessons successfully - one goes back and renames the lesson, or changes a flag, unfortunately the user then experiences a problem where they cannot re-enter the lesson. The app sends the user back to the main page or it crashes.

We're testing this on our simulator to try and reproduce it...

Resolution: The resolution to date is to delete the lesson that is having problems by:

tapping the edit button to show the "-" icons in red. Tap this "-" icon and a red "delete" appears.
or, swipe across the lesson from left to right to reveal the red "delete" button.

This will clean up the corrupted lesson but we are still looking into the problem.

Here are some promo codes for a free download of iPlanLessons - they are first-come - first serve as a thank you.

6RNX7X73EAMH

P46NMNJF4AM7

N3YK46HWNRJE

HXHJ3LYPLJ77

7LL4F4J476M4

Thank you for your support.

Andy

iPlanLessons - Planning the next step...

2011-08-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

We want to thank everyone who has purchased iPlanLessons. Thank you to those that have reached out to us with questions, praises, concerns, and enhancement requests. The school year is not far away so we wanted to give you some insight to what we are planning for the app itself.

Backup - The version 1.2 release just came out this week so we hope you have updated your app with iTunes synch. This will provide File Sharing so that your database can be saved to your laptop/desktop hard-drive.
iCloud - iCloud will enable users to share personal data across all your iOS devices. It is all very new so we are being careful about what we release when and it will require iOS 5... Apple targets iCloud this fall so we hope we can enable iCloud in our app after the Apple release.
Product Enhancement Requests - Thank you to those that have sent in your enhancement requests. I've been personally commenting on each and every email and I appreciate the collaboration. In the last two weeks we have seen almost every variation of enhancement request... from copying lessons to dynamic reports, new views to flexible subjects, grading to transcripts, import and export, bumping and collaborating for co-teachers... our plan is to consolidate the requests in a spreadsheet for us to prioritize. We will be looking at the following criteria to help us prioritize: technical feasibility, effort involved, and repeated requests. Our goal is to make sure your data is not harmed and that is our biggest concern. Thus be sure to leverage the new backup feature. Also as we receive requests we are keeping in mind what may require a database change. These database changes also increase the risk to your data because migration is involved. Please understand we may not be able to satisfy all requests.

Personal Note: As a father who developed iPlanLessons for my wife and kids it is humbling and somewhat overwhelming to see so many people around the world start to use it. Thank you for your support and patience as we continue this journey of planning lessons on the iPad.

Andy

iPlanLessons version 1.2: Database File Sharing

2011-08-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

We have added the ability to backup your iPlanLesson entries by using the iTunes File Sharing function. This new feature has been submitted in version 1.2 which is being reviewed by Apple and due for release by August 8th, 2011.

Open your iTunes application on your computer desktop/laptop:

select your device after you have plugged it in with the USB cable
Select Apps (see top selection)
See File Sharing: Scroll down to see your iPlanLessons app - select it
See your iPlanLessons.sqlite file which is the database and contains your data
Select this and save it to a backup folder - you can rename this new saved file.
Do not rename the iPlanLessons.sqllite file and do not delete it from iTunes.

Other Tips and Tricks:

Renaming: (This problem has been resolved in version 1.2.1)

Renaming lessons, classes, resources, and students can cause problems as the name is the unique identfier for the "object" in the database.
If you plan to rename items this can cause crashing problems
We recommend that you delete entries and create a new entry.

Deleting:

Deleting an entry can be done by swiping across the row from left to right - a red delete button shows up on the row.
Or tap "Edit" in the top left of the list view which shows small red circles with "-" symbols. Tap these icons and a red "delete" button shows up on the row.

Andy

iPlanLessons and iCal

2011-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

We've received some email questions regarding this capability so here is a blog that may help.

iPlanLessons will synch a specific selected lesson with iCal. You will notice when you've created a Lesson and returned to the list view, there is a calendar icon (see below the icon between the priority flags and the email icon).

Tap the icon for a specific lesson to open the Event Scheduling Form. Here is an early demo showing an iCal button which I've replaced with the red calendar icon:

Note the Calendar icon is also accessible in the filtered view of the Resources and Classes so as you view your lessons by Class you can schedule the lesson without having to go back to the Lesson tab list. I hope this is helpful.

See the red icon for iCal below in the filtered "lessons by Class" view:

See the red icon for iCal below in the filtered "lessons by Resource" view:

Note these filtered views were added upon the request of my wife and daughter to help them organize the lessons between our three children. Now they can tap on the green "lessons" button for 8th grade and manage the lessons just for that grade by status. iCal can be used to schedule lessons that are not yet done.

iCal Attributes:

Basically in our database we are storing all the the lesson information such as title, date, objective, assignment, priority, etc...

We wanted to leverage the strength of iCal for the Calendar view. After talking to experts at WWDC they recommended that we try not to reproduce the features and functions of the calendar in our app and focus on leveraging iCal. So that is what we decided to do here with iPlanLessons. Each lesson passes:

Lesson Title
Lesson Date
Lesson Attributes into the notes of the iCal Event

The remaining iCal Event attributes are scheduled through a popover form:

Time
Repeat
Alert

Limitations:

This is a one-way push of the event
If you schedule the lesson twice you will have two events in iCal.
If you change the event in iCal it does not resynch into iPlanLessons (I thought about this but the logic would be pretty complicated to synch bi-directionally).
Each lesson needs to be scheduled accordingly - we do not have a bulk push into iCal. I feel a builk mode is something which could cause performance issues. I recommend a phased approach - schedule maybe a week at a time. Plus we cannot bulk update all the event specifications automatically since certain iCal attributes are not stored within iPlanLessons (i.e.: time, repeat, and alert). iCal is an extension of iPlanLessons.

Google Calendar:

iCal will synch with Google Calendar as a standard feature of iCal
A Google account is required
Some helpful videos and blogs include:

How To Blog from "Easy Mac"

Future:

iCloud support (TBD)
iCal and iCloud synch (TBD)

If you have any questions please email us to support@ihomeeducator.com - we are always open to collaborating.

Andy

iPlanLessons 1.0.1 submitted for review

2011-07-23T00:04:00.001-07:00

Compiled for iOS 4.2 to support Verizon iPhones

Added Video Demo to the Instructions Page

Added Support Blog link to the Support page for users to check up on latest news for iPlanLessons

Changed the Student editing to only allow changes when selecting the "Edit" button. We think this may help with stability/crashing issues. We have been testing the Class and Student definitions and so far it seems pretty stable.

No database changes were made in this release so your data entries should not be affected by this update.

iPlanLessons Release 1.0 Demo and Save Database Note

2011-07-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a demo of iPlanLessons Release 1.0.
The big difference between this demo and the previous demos is that we have added filtered Lesson views. Note that now under Resource and Class you can tap the green "Lessons" button and see a filtered view of all lessons for that particular Entity.

Warning: Our daughter has been testing the app on the iPod Touch and found some crashing problems when tapping between Students and Class. Make sure you return to the Home Page and tap "Save Database" if you have entered a lot of data. This will just make sure you don't lose data if the app crashes. We're continuing to look into the problem.

"Hackathon not Hackadon!!"

2011-07-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Last week over dinner our daughter said, "Daddy, what's a Hackadon?"... Immediately I thought of a "three-horned dino" like Trixie from Toy Story 3 hunched over a laptop typing away!

"Hackathon, not Hackadon!!" was my reply... yes Daddy is getting old and I do hack a lot on the computer so maybe "Hackadon" is a good name for Daddy... the name stuck for the rest of the weekend.

iOSDevCamp 2011 Weekend in San Jose:

Special thanks to ACT who contacted us after the WWDC in San Francisco with a complementary pass to the iOSDevCamp 2011.

We loaded up sleeping bags in Sacramento and piled into the Volvo to take the three hour drive down to San Jose to crash at our relatives - thank you Ed and Katie!. A little apprehensive about my first Hackathon... not knowing what to expect. Would I be good enough? What will I do? Who will I meet?

I was trying to get wired in mentally... keep an open mind... what really can be done in one weekend?

Friday I showed up at 5pm to register and begin to network with people. Saw Sarah and Mike from ACT and thanked them for helping me enter the event. Then after the opening ceremonies began to receive various meeting requests through crowdvine. I met a couple of developers looking to prototype offline maps on mobile devices but kept my options open. Then during the ideas pitch session I heard about WhirlyGraph - "Wow a 3D globe!... this would be cool!... my kids would love this." So after the session I just happened to run into the founder of mousebird consulting, Steve Gifford and discussed the possibilities of working together. That night I only had 2 hours of sleep... my mind spinning with possibilities... The next morning we added Brian Chapados to round out the team.

Highlights:

3D rendering is so cool... back at Purdue University I remember rendering a Star Wars X-wing and always wanted to try it out on the iPad - the globe was amazing.
I was able to contribute with the WebView selection to wikipedia, and the popover tableview... we also tried a custom SplitView Controller but the multi-touch interfered with the Globe multi-touch. Also we tried Core Plot but it only worked on the simulator and did not work when synching with the iPad so we settled for the functionality which was shown. Both created unnecessary diversions but we learned a lot...
The United Nations database has an amazing set of statistics per country and the work Brian put into wrangling the data truly helped in populating the SQLite database cleanly. Then Steve hooked this into the 3D lofting above the countries. Later I found out that Brian is a PhD/Scientist and Steve is a 3D Expert from CMU.
Source Control - we used SVN and Google Code... another road block was getting it to work due to passwords. Fortunately Steve remembered that Google generates passwords for us. Overall a great learning experience for source control processes as I typically operate alone when coding.
Our Demo - we worked right down to the wire.. finished at 1:58pm Sunday and demos started at 2:00pm. Below is a highlight of our demo.

We were honored to receive the "Best International Award".

Awards:

Fast forward to 22:00 minutes as Steve accepts the award

Thanks to the the sponsors of the event. Great team members: Steve and Brian! Overall a very memorable experience! Congrats to all 78 entries - I hope everyone benefitted from the experience.

Andy
"Hackadon"

News Posting: iHomeEducator on winning iOSDevCamp Team WhirlyGraph

Team WhirlyGraph: Brian, Andy, and Steve (left to right)

Posted on Flickr by X-commerce

iPlanLessons - The journey continues... Father's Day to July 4th...

2011-07-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!

Yes iPlanLessons is coming together... It's our priority to try to get this out before the school year starts... What you will see and hear in this demo are the following:

Creating Resources
Creating Lessons
Setting status and priority with scoping
Reports (three types: by date, by week, and subject by day)

Some behind the scenes notes:

Subjects versus Resources: As my wife began to test the app and plan her first week of school for our three children she began to list several subjects but I realized she was using the subjects as resources... So I reconfigured the subjects as resources to allow freedom to list any text book, unit study, computer online material, app, or anything you may use in a lesson. Then we added a segmented pick list of "Primary" subjects.
Primary Subjects: Primary subjects are selectable. This was for ease of use. I'm hoping "Electives" will be the catch-all for any subject outside of the norm.
Subject by Day: The other challenge was creating the reports - the first 2 were completed but I struggled with the "subject by days" grid report. Then after being wired in for hours a light bulb went off at 1AM July 4th!... I received a big hug from my wife for completing this report :-)
Priority Flags - I thought it would be useful to have a priority... then my wife said, "Everything is important... so I'm not sure how to use these priorities of High, Medium, and Low?"... So I explained that there may be 100's to 1000's of lessons and each may be a higher priority at some point in time. Then we decided to modify this to be just a set of colored flags. Thus allowing you to flag them like an email message.
Status Icons - For some time we could not decide what to use for status... pending, partial, and done seemed to make sense... Then after looking at various icons I found the hour glass icons. I hope these work for all of you.
Not Done? - My wife and daughter also had questions on "not done"... and I explained that "Not Done" meant "Pending" or "Partial". I hope this quickly allows you to zero in on only lessons that are "Not Done" versus hitting Pending and Partial separately.
Reports by Class - This feature was requested by my wife as we have three kids. If in the report definition you do not select a class, the report will list lessons for all classes.

Still to be developed:

Filtering Lessons by Class when setting the status - this will be a challenge as you may have any number of classes. The folder system will need to be dynamic - still in Research and Development.
Synchronization between devices - This will require iCloud, iOS 5, and Lion - all in Beta from Apple. In R&D with future testing required.
Due date versus Duration - We are still working through whether we have the specific lesson "Due date" set or "Duration"... For example the lesson assignment is due in 1 day versus 5 days. As you shift the Lesson target start date we want to automatically shift the due date and also keep the date only on a Week Day versus Weekend... this get's tricky. Still in Design/Development.
Standards - Researching the possibility of a list of standards to be picked for a lesson - TBD...

Andy

iPlanLessons: The journey to lesson planning.... on an iPad!?!

2011-06-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

I thought it would interesting for some of our readers to look into the thought process behind our Lesson Planner app. We'll call this iPlanLessons for now. The basic features include:

Create your Subject
Create your Students
Create your Class and relate this to the Students
Then Create your Lesson and relate this to your Subject and Class...

By providing these entities to model your lessons it provides flexibility in your planner which cannot be modeled as well in a flat spreadsheet or pieces of paper in a binder. There is a level of reusability...

How do we schedule these lessons?

This is the next hurdle in our development and design. We now have to have some time parameter tied to the Lesson and where do we store this? We first decided to store this in iCal so the parameters of the Lesson are pushed into an iCal Event. This included attributes of the Lesson such as Lesson Name, Subject, Objectives, Standards, etc...

This seems logical... however...

iCal questions?

We have soon discovered various other requirements and limitations.

iCal does not show the typical Week Grid view often required by a teacher...

iCal has a Week Grid of (Time by Day versus Subject by Day)..

iCal Benefits - it's in the Cloud

I demo'd this to my 8th grade Product Manager and Chief Mom... created a Lesson, tapped on iCal and created an event... it was synched to the default Calendar and pushed into our iPad's iCal, Google Calendar, and our iPhone... all within minutes. Now it was cool... but it led to more questions...

Which is the "Database of Record"?

For example is it iCal or is it the Lesson Planning database...

If one changes the dates on the Calendar will it synch back into the planner database or should the planner be the "master controller" and iCal then takes care of the integrated calendar view.

At this point we will assume the Lesson Planner is the database of record and therefore start and end date and times will need to be modeled in our planner user interface - something we did not expect to do initially but this needs to be added.

Lesson Assignments?

We also realized we needed an "Assignment" tied to the Lessons. These assignments are also scheduled so they can show up in a Weekly Grid. The Weekly Grid is broken down by Subject (y-axis) and School Days (x-axis) with the Lesson/Assignments in the boxes of the grid...

State Requirements?

Each state is also different so we need to look at the printed requirements. We will be looking at emailing reports on lessons and Weekly Grids which can be used for record keeping.

Summary:

So as you can see the planner app is becoming a journey...

***"The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”

Don Williams, Jr. (American Novelist and Poet, b.1968)

*** “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”

Greg Anderson (American best-selling Author and founder of the American Wellness Project., b.1964)

Understanding the Foundational Building Blocks of Life!

2011-04-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Building iHomeEducator, Inc. has been an educational experience in itself. From developing our apps to finding partners. We are so excited to be working on our next wave of apps and hope to provide you more information in the next couple of weeks. These new apps will broaden your app library to include more history, more math, and more language arts.

What About Science?

As parents we never thought we could teach atoms, molecules, and DNA to our 1st grade daughter. Chemistry seemed more a Middle School if not High School subject until we discovered Gravitas Publications, Inc.

Here is a video of Dr. Rebecca Keller describing why she created Real Science 4 Kids (RS4K).

We are grateful to be working with Gravitas Publications in releasing RS4K Chemistry Pre-Level 1 which fundamentally walks children through the building blocks of life from an atom to DNA... a wonderful engaging app.

Here is a demonstration of our first joint app with Gravitas Publications:

This app is available for $9.99 on iTunes.

Meet our new partners for Geography and History

2011-04-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

This year has been a year of change for us. This business has gone from part-time to full-time, it is now incorporated, and most significantly, we are now working with partners to provide a greater range of subjects to our community.

Our first partner, Knowledge Quest, Inc., has been wonderful to work with and Terri Johnson's breadth and depth of knowledge in geography and history is obvious in our first app, Wonders of Old: Ancient Timline. I was not a good student of geography or history and teaching these subjects to my children was a challenge for me. Terri's maps and content has helped me teach as well as enrich my own knowledge of ancient world history. The app has a large overview of ancient history and there is a timeline at the top, middle, and bottom of the map. History is broken up into regions and the student can see the unfolding of history across time and place - a wonderful tool for any student. The student can navigate through history and for example, see what happened in Babylon and China in the 6th century BC.

The second app with Knowledge Quest is Map Trek: Ancient World. This app also features a timeline, but the subject matter is focused on ancient history using maps. There are ~30 maps along the timeline and the student can tap on any title to see the detailed map. Tap on the map pins and the student will read the description of the area and historical details. My seventh grader was making her own timelines for history earlier in the school year and using this app has made her life much easier! Now she can focus her attention on the significance of the historical events and analyze them from a geographical perspective.

Our second partner is Zeezok Publishing, LLC, and Kris Wilcox's book on Ancient China that has been made into an app. Our Chinese heritage influenced our decision to make this app since we want our children to know and appreciate Chinese history. I remember writing a report in sixth grade on China, but I could not tell you all of the dynasties throughout history. This app helps the student see the development of China from ancient time through present day. I am amazed at all of the accomplishments and inventions that can be traced back to the Chinese - the app is rich with details for the student to explore.

We are working with additional partners to bring other subjects for your students to learn. Thank you for your feedback and continued support!

Arlene
Chief Mom
iHomeEducator, Inc.

Wonders of Old: Ancient Timeline multi-tasking clean-up

2011-03-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your patience regarding the following issues.

We have received a couple support emails with the following symptoms:

I am running 4.2.1 on an iPad - I will touch an icon and get the pop up, but it will crash almost immediately.
FYI - background info - app has been unstable since install. First time in app the pop ups worked, next time I was able to use the pinch feature and hear the music. From that point on only the pop ups and music have worked. App install was done along with updates for other apps. It seemed to take a considerable amount of time, but there were many updates.
I can barely see the words, even placing the ipad horizontally.
It crashes instantly as soon as I touch a picture.
There is simply no response to pinch or other touch features other than crashing.

Resolution:

One scenario is the multi-tasking that occurs on the iPad.

Forgive us if you already know this but it is something I do regularly with my children and wife as they use the iPad daily. They do not clean up the apps running in multi-task mode and over time these apps cause problems.

Each time you exit an app it actually is still running in the background.

Over time you may have several apps running in the background and this can cause issues with processes and memory usage. The best way to resolve this is outlined here on Apple's support page.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4211

Please let us know if this solves your problem directly at our email at:

support@ihomeeducator.com

iLiveSpelling Mammals

2011-02-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

Our first grade daughter has been working on sight words, reading, and spelling. She also loves mammals and this inspired us to build a new cross-curricular app which addresses this need for her.

In this app we put together a new feature to allow the student to explore the world and some of its mammals. The Mammal Explore mode is appropriate for any age.

Also included in iLiveSpelling Mammals are 100 sight words from Fry's first 100 and Dolche's Primary words combined, which is suitable for K to 2nd grade.

We decided to really test her understanding of the word within a sentence and also with a photograph. She has the option to play a recording of the sentence or the word which is her mom's voice. She then types in the word and receives immediate feedback. Over 100 combinations of sentences, words, photos, and videos are included. The tests are randomly generated from the pool of over 100 possible word/sentence/photo sets. The tests are automatically graded and can be emailed or blogged for record keeping.

The VGA adapter support works with the spelling sentences and photos which can be projected to an LCD Projector in a classroom.

Also like the other iLive apps the videos can be used as an incentive and set to appear after 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20 correct answers.

We also worked on making the Simple English Wikipedia Page kid safe to prevent access to sub-pages and getting to a search field. So the initial data is visible but the links are removed. A Youtube video is included under each wiki page where available... Watch the demo below for more:

ETA late February

Cheers,
Andy

Redeeming Promotion Codes

2011-02-10T20:01:00.000-08:00

Apple provides app publishers a limited set of promotional codes for each app and each release. Each code is good for 30-days before they expire. We provide them as promotional tools for reviewers, teachers, instructional technology coaches, and parent educators.

Here are some tips on redeeming promotion codes from Crazy Mike Apps:

How do you set up your own Test Blog for Classroom Record Keeping?

2011-02-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have taken the time to find the blogging feature of iLiveMath and iLiveGrammar. So in addition to emailing the test results you can blog it to Blogger.com.

Many may just take the email and file it away but it is nice to have an indexed blog which you can come back and review. As parent educators we review these online test results and determine where our children need work... What problems do they struggle with? What grammar/spelling problems are they struggling with?

Note: Yes we are working on spelling :-).

The test blog creates a great central location for record keeping...

For example:

http://www.iLiveGrammar.blogspot.com/

http://www.iLiveMath.blogspot.com/

and soon:

http://www.iLiveSpelling.blogspot.com/

The above are blogs which we use to track the test results of our own kids and those that decide to post their test results from our user community. However you may want to create your own blog.

First Create a Blog:

Learn more: http://www.Blogger.com

Create your blog in 3 easy steps - see video below:

Then create a Mail-to-Blogger address:

You can learn more here.

The email will look like:

(blogname).(secretword)@blogger.com

Modify the settings on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch

First go to the settings icon on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

Scroll down to our app settings.

Select the iLive app

Turn the Mail2Blogger switch to "ON".

Copy your email address into the Mail2Blogger email.

There you go :-)

Your test emails should now still work and the same test is also mailed to your own Record Keeping Test blog!

Content, Design, Development, and Publishing Apps

2011-02-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

I recently found this link on Stack Overflow... the blog spans 2 years of discussions around the cost of iPhone developers based upon hourly rate, skill, etc... is this really what produces a successful app?

If you are a publisher and/or content provider and you are looking for an app developer, the real questions are more than just hourly rate and skill. If you are looking to develop an app and you are struggling to find a developer I believe that an app developer is like a marriage... it is a long-term relationship.

The Developer
What should I look for in a developer?

Team Player - Collaboration is key
Communication Skills - Can you communicate with them? language? time zone?
Efficient - Established library of apps to pull from?
Established track record - What other apps have they worked on?
Passion, Purpose, Autonomy - Do they have a Drive? (see the book)
Similar Goals - A drinking game app and math flash cards don't mix well...
Ongoing Maintenance and Support - Are they committed for the long haul when the app starts to crash or when there is a poor review to help fix and enhance the app?
Ongoing Updates and Roadmap - Can they work with you effectively to map out additional enhancements and provide a roadmap?

The Seller/Publisher

More than just the developer - what about the "Seller" and the "Store"? Maybe it will make more sense for you to find an app developer that already has an established suite of apps in the iTunes Store.

Seller with a common set of Goals - What is your mission statement? Does it align with the mission of the Developer and Seller?
From Idea to "Ready for Sale" - Established developers have streamlined the process of getting their apps through the Apple review team.
Similar Target Market and Buyers - Find a Seller who is selling to the same market you are selling into. Odds are this seller already has a buying community looking for apps from them.
Track record in What's Hot? New and Noteworthy - This is huge. This means Apple has recognized this app developer and seller out of tens of thousands of developers as one to be recognized.

The Business Model

How do we pay this developer? How do we know if this app will be successful?

1 time payment - This model is very risky for both parties. Where do you draw the line? How do you estimate the time and effort before you start a project together especially if this is the first time you have worked with each other. General cost of app development can range between $10k to $100k+... and this does not guarantee the app will sell.
Hourly Rate - This is also a very risky business model. Your developer will be looking at the the app as a set of tasks which will take a certain amount of time. Will the end result be what you want? You may be nickel and dime'd with changes over time as development is very time consuming... and this does not include maintenance, support, and updates.
Shared Revenue - 50/50 - both the app developer and the content provider takes the risk and reward... This provides the most healthy environment for collaboration to build the best app. Both parties will want to see the app succeed.

I hope this helps in providing some insight to the developer, seller, and business model of app development... for more information on what iHomeEducator offers please contact us.

Warm wishes in the Year of the Rabbit!

2011-02-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

One year ago our daughter blogged about the Year of the Tiger. By the way she is 12 and born in the Year of the Tiger. ("Time for the Year of the Tiger" blog)... we are so proud of her as she is our Product Manager and blogger and even has the heart of a poet. Many of you may have followed her last two poems which introduced iLiveGrammar Winter.

From the Blog "Who Am I?": Poem The Land of Light

Blog "Snowy App" also has a nice snowy poem.

If you haven't read them please do check them out. With the blizzard of 2011 covering more than half of North America it seems appropriate to warm yourself in front of a fire, sip a cup of hot cocoa and read some poetry.

Today we celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. So I went through our iLiveMath Animals of Asia app - question after question and bingo - the Year of the Rabbit question popped up!

Warm wishes to all in this new Year!

"Tiger Challenge" - Balancing Game vs. Educational App Time

2011-01-30T16:43:00.001-08:00

"Tiger" Mom or Dad with cub

The kids are now in full swing with their homeschool and Mom has been doing a great job with the instructional work every morning... but we still have a challenge with limiting their iPad, iPod Touch, and computer fun time in the afternoon. So we tried something new today to try to balance the educational app time against the game app time...

For our 1st grader:

"Using iLiveMath (Level 1) or iLiveGrammar (Lesson 1 nouns and verbs)... For every 10 correct answers you get 10 minutes of fun time on the electronic devices... "

For our 7th grader:

"Using iLiveMath (Level 2 or 3) or iLiveGrammar (Lessons 2 to 4)... For every 10 correct answers you get 10 minutes of fun time on the electronic devices..."

We will be using a normal kitchen timer to monitor fun time.

For accountability and audit purposes: Mom and/or Dad will review the questions and their answers which are stored in the cloud. They must be emailed and blogged for us to keep a record of their progress. We have turned on the blogging feature for all our apps (see instruction tips below).

Wow - after proposing this to our kids... they immediately began to negotiate terms!

"But only 10 minutes? What if I forget to email? What if I am just watching my sister play on the iPad? How long will this last? What about the iPod Touch? What about the laptop? But Dad, What if it's an emergency!?!"

Hmmm... Hey at least we didn't say "No computer games at all" was my thought. Unlike the recent Tiger Mom article in the WSJ we are at least allowing them to play the games only after they do some educational app work. We do find it humorous that in the "Tiger Mom" article the "Chinese" parent buys a bunch of work books to improve a child's weak areas in study - we wrote an app series to generate millions of problems instead :-)

So we will see how long this lasts in our household.

We think in the end they will become more confident with their math and grammar skills. The important thing is for them to learn and even if Level 2 and Level 3 are easy for our 7th grader, we believe it will help her build confidence and exercise those brain cell.

Note: our Pre-K 5 year old isn't reading yet so he gets to watch the videos and look at the photos.

You'll see our children's progress here:

Note to turn on the blogging feature:

Exit the app
Go into the device Settings (look for the Settings icon on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch)
Scroll to our iLive app and you will see a setting to turn blogging "on"
Note you can create your own Google blogger site and change the Mail2Blogger address stored in the settings to your own private blog.

Cheers,

"Tiger" Dad

What am I?

2011-01-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

The Land of Light

"Falling lightly and so brightly

All around, a land of light.

Even on a frightful night

It still can be a wondrous sight.

For some it means a frozen street

And others a special, special treat

And when you go in for the night

You can warm yourself by the firelight."

by Abby (7th Grade)
iHomeEducator 2011 (c)

Post your guesses on the iHomeEducator's Twitter or Facebook page. The answer is related to one of our iLiveGrammar apps.
~Abby

Promethean and SMART Board support for Ed Technology

2011-01-26T20:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Teachers, Technology Instructors, and Principals,

Do you have Promethean and/or SMART Board projectors?

We worked with a school in Maryland and Illinois to enhance our apps for classroom collaboration. Please see their testimonials and also a demo of our iPad running iLiveMath Entomology projected to a large screen TV for classroom collaboration.

We are always trying to find ways to get our students to use higher thinking skills to solve everyday problems in order to give them ownership to real life applications. We first purchased iLiveMath Ford Cars and really liked how it blends Math applications with history... We contacted iHomeEducator who worked with us to enhance their apps so that we can display the photograph and the word problems using our existing SMART board projectors. Now an entire classroom can benefit from the content and teachers are provided an answer key. My students love the iLiveMath Entomology app too. I would also like to say that iLiveMath apps provide a huge amount of content enriched vocabulary which has in turn extended a simple math lesson into several cross-curricular lessons. We have the entire iLiveMath series and look forward to more from iHomeEducator."

Richard Stevens, Principal, Kitzmiller Elementary, Kitzmiller, MD

I wanted to share iLiveMath with my students at school, but did not want to give them access to my iPad. My school has a Promethean Board so after collaborating with iHomeEducator we can now share the teaching content with all my kids using the projector! I teach several units wrapped around the theme of a continent. At this time we are studying Asia and have iLiveMath Animals of Asia as well as Entomology."

Lisa White, 2nd Grade Teacher, LaSalle II World Language Academy, Chicago, IL

Note:

We made some app logic modifications to check to see if there is an external VGA monitor plugged into the iPad. Then we load the VGA TV out with just the word problem and photo, while the answer and controls remain on the iPad. We unfortunately don't support the ability for students to interact with the app via the Promethean/SMART Board. This would require bi-directional messaging back into the iPad and I don't believe anyone has this working yet.

Also we do not mirror the iPad interface to the projected output.

The Snowy App

2011-01-16T16:14:00.000-08:00

"Falling on my tongue and nose,
As I make the snowman pose,
Stalling in the cold wet snow,
Calling to my mother, "No!"
I want to play.
I want to stay.
Even on this frightful day.
For playing in the snow is fun,
Even if there is no sun."

by Abby (7th grade)

iHomeEducator (c) 2011

Happy New Year to all!! I hope your year has started well. Our first 2011 release is iLiveGrammar Winter. It includes darling seal pups and polar bear cubs as well as intricate ice formation pics and videos. This app will help you if you are one who dreads grammar or just needs practice. :) It's a great way to strengthen your knowledge on nouns, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.

I hope this will help you in this next quarter semester.

Abby
Product Manager Tween

iLiveGrammar Winter - Video's

2011-01-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

We had no idea winter could be sooo interesting... the more we researched this app the more we learned about snowflakes, wildlife, etc... here are just a couple of the videos you will find linked as an incentive in this cross-curricular app.

BBCWorldwide Youtube Channel - special on Polar Bears

Baby Harp Seal posted on Youtube

Volume Purchase Program

2010-12-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Since September of 2010 we have been participating in the Volume Purchase Program with Apple. "The Volume Purchase Program makes it easy for educational institutions to purchase iOS apps in volume and distribute those apps to users. The Volume Purchase Program also allows app developers to offer special pricing for purchases of 20 apps or more", Apple says in its website.

The program works with vouchers that educational institutions can purchase:

Purchase Volume Vouchers: Volume Vouchers can be purchased at the Apple Store for Education in dominations of $100, $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000. These vouchers can be bought on behalf of the education institution by an Authorized Purchaser, and they may use purchase orders. The Authorized Purchaser is often a purchasing agent at the institution. Institutions should receive the Volume Vouchers in the mail within 3 to 5 business days.

Redeem Volume Vouchers: Institutions can designate one or more “Program Facilitators” to redeem Volume Vouchers and purchase apps through the App Store Volume Purchase Program. The Program Facilitators can be anyone chosen by the Authorized Purchaser — a dean, a professor, a school principal, or a teacher, for example — or the Authorized Purchaser may also fulfill this role.

IEAR's Wiki - Volume Purchase Program

Apple's Overview of the VPP

We hope you find this information useful.

iHomeEducator and iLiveMath Brochures

2010-12-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple new marketing tools which we put together for our 2010 Year in Review. It's been fun to compile images of our apps. Hope you enjoy them as well and feel free to pass them along... Tell a Teacher or Parent!

Download a brochure on iHomeEducator

Download a brochure on our iLiveMath App Series

Vote for the Best App of 2010

2010-12-13T18:12:00.001-08:00

iLiveMath and iLiveGrammar have been nominated for the 2010 Best App Award (Best Elementary Math and Language Arts Apps) - Vote for your favorite! Polls are open through December 15th

We are honored to be on this list of exceptional app publishers.

Good luck to all!!

Classical Teaching and Grammar

2010-11-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

We moved to a classical educational approach to learning this year after much consideration over the summer. We were at a crossroads with our daughter, Abby, who was starting seventh grade in the fall. We could continue the standards approach or start the classical educational approach. The CA standards curriculum no longer met my daughters needs and she was bored with the material... it was a good decision to go the classical route. Her language arts curriculum dramatically changed to focus on all disciplines: writing, spelling/vocabulary, literature, and grammar.

After three months of school, I have found Abby's writing and reading comprehension to be greatly improved. Her thoughts on paper are more descriptive, concise, and clear. Her vocabulary has increased and she is looking for the roots of words to decipher meaning. She is reading classical literature including the abridged versions of Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, and is now reading the poems of Robert Frost. I love that she is reading these classics rather than excerpts of books or short stories and that she is enjoying the literature.

Our greatest challenge has been grammar....

The standards curriculum we used had grammar integrated into the lessons and Abby's knowledge of grammar was very basic. A pretest in grammar at the beginning of the year revealed major gaps in her grammar. As we have progressed in the grammar curriculum this fall, her improved writing reflects the lessons she has learned.

Our latest grammar app was developed to help students reinforce the grammar they learn in class. Grammar is the mechanics of language and vital to all good writing. I interviewed Abby and asked her why grammar has been a challenge for her.

Chief Mom: "What subjects are you studying this year?"
Abby: "This year I am studying math, literature, writing, botany, history, and grammar."

Chief Mom: "What is your favorite subject this year? And why?"
Abby: "Literature is my favorite subject this year because I really enjoy free reading during my leisure time."

Chief Mom: "What is your least favorite subject this year? And why?"
Abby: "Grammar is my least favorite school subject. I don't really enjoy it because of all the proof reading and definition memorizing.

Chief Mom: "How does our Grammar app help students?"
Abby: "Our Grammar app can help students by enforcing parts of speech in a way that is fun and engaging."

Chief Mom: "How has studying grammar helped your writing?"
Abby: "Grammar has given me a better understanding of how to build sentences,word functions, and punctuation.

Over the last few months we've developed and launched iLiveGrammar Botany and iLiveGrammar Autumn. Abby and I contributed by actually coming up with the various combinations of sentences. We hope this new tool will aid in teaching not just grammar but also serve as a cross-curricular science tool too. Let us know if you have any additional ideas and feedback.

Sincerely,
Arlene and Abby

What's New? What's Hot? and What's Next?

2010-11-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

iLiveMath™ Botany 4.0 has been released:

Over the last year we have been photographing flowers and plants with our Nikon D5000 and the results have been stunning... which leads us to our next app.
Our 7th grader is learning about Botany this year and she LOVES it!! She gave us a 30 minute run down of angiosperms, seeds, etc during our drive to the airshow and this is only her 2nd week of school.
Promo Codes will be made available upon request to teachers, reviewers, and special promotions.

What's New in iLiveMath™ 4.0?

Chicago and Maryland schools have requested that we project our apps within the classroom. The demonstration below shows our app running on an iPad projected via an iPad VGA adapter to a large screen 62" TV. In a classroom you could be using a projector. Only the word problem and photo are projected to the screen.
Note this feature is still in review and also we are having some anomalies where if you complete a test and go back to the home page the display disappears and you will need to reconnect the adapter to the iPad as well as restart the app to display the picture. We're continuing to work on fixing these slight problems. Even with these small limitations we are pretty excited about this feature.
A few small issues - note that you will lose the lower ~10% of the photo depending upon your screen resolution. Basically the word problem takes the top portion and pushes the photo down. We will need to work on other layouts in future releases to provide options.
We've been trying to get the videos to project but have not yet debugged the code so this may be in a future release if possible.
Note that for home educators you can display this to more than 1 child at a time.
Furthermore the adapter works for the iPhone 4 and the new iPod Touch so you can display problems from the small screen to a very large monitor or TV and use this in the home.

What's Hot?

iLiveMath Speed and Animals of Asia are on What's Hot under iTunes #education this week.
iLiveMath Oceans is featured in Back to School Apps on iTunes

iLiveMath™ Speed (to be updated to 4.0 - all free updates)

Current Version: iLiveMath Speed now shows our 5 star ratings - thank you all for your support.

Next Release: New airshow photos being sorted through to be included with Speed.

iLiveMath™ Animals of Africa plus Ford Cars, Animals of Asia, Farm Fresh, & Trains (to be updated to 4.0 - all free updates)

We are working on updating iLiveMath Animals of Africa to 4.0 with new HD photos and external VGA display abilities for classroom collaboration.
This was our very first iLiveMath app and currently has not been upgraded since 2.x - it has some bugs that have been reported by users which will be fixed with this upgrade.
All others will then be upgraded to 4.0 - listed above.

iLiveMath™ Winter Sports (awaiting content and inspiration)

The Winter Sports app will need to take more thought as we determine the next phase for content.
Many of you know this was inspired originally by the Winter Olympics earlier this year in British Colombia, Canada.
The original release of the app had much more content but we had to remove all Olympic related public domain photos per Apple's Review Team. So even if photos are in the public domain they cannot reference the Olympic sports and themes.
Therefore going forward we may move into changing "Winter Sports" to just "Sports" however so far the NBA, NFL, NCAA, and FIFA have not given us permission to move forward so we are focusing on the newer apps below and may circle back to upgrade Winter Sports to "Sports" in the new year when we have better content.
Meanwhile the word problems are still good for practicing averages and basic math.

iLiveMath™ Entomology 4.0 (Available mid-September)

iLiveMath Entomology is in the Apple review team queue... very excited about this newest app which our children have been testing out.
Our 7th grade Product Manager has been challenged by the Level 3 questions which use bee pollination flight patterns to teach quadrilateral and triangle geometry and dragonflies to teach circle geometry.
Metamorphosis is also introduced in word problems to look at the number of days in the lifecycle of a Monarch Butterfly.
Other insect and arachnid facts are incorporated into the math word problems such as # of legs, # of eyes, # of aphids eaten by a lady bug, and kg of honey produced by hives.
4.0 also features the VGA adapter support to an external projector/display monitor for classrooms and home.
Promo Codes will be made available upon request to teachers, reviewers, and special promotions.

Cheers,
iHomeEducator Team

VGA Projection from iPad Tips and Tricks

2010-10-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

We've recently received a couple support emails regarding the picture not showing up using the VGA adapter from an iPad. Both questions have been specific to iLiveMath Oceans so we have tested the following procedures with our own VGA adapter.

Try these steps:

Download the latest iLiveMath Oceans from the App Store
Plug-in the VGA adapter - the TV/projector will show a "blue screen" or "no picture" - the picture does not load until you select the level # and hit "Enter"
After you hit "Enter" - you should see the 2 dolphins photograph projected to your TV or projector/SMART Board.
Then when you hit "Start" - you should see the "word problem" and the photo under it while the answer key is popped up on your iPad.
The controls then operate on your iPad to page to the next problem and photo.

Now we have seen some anomalies where the picture may be cut off at the bottom or the right bottom quarter of the photo. This is sometimes due to the connection of the VGA cable or missing bits we believe. What we do is unplug the VGA adapter from the iPad, exit the app completely.... then plug in the VGA adapter and start the app again.

Usually this clears up the "half/quarter" display of the photograph.

We hope this solves your problems in the classroom projection to SMART Boards and thank you for sharing our apps with your kids!

Classroom Collaboration with iLiveMath coming in version 4.0

2010-09-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

We just finished preliminary testing and wanted to share our results on an exciting new feature.

Schools in Maryland and Chicago have emailed us specifically asking if we can support their current Smartboard and Promethean Whiteboard technology. This was a challenge! On September 5th we received our most recent request from a 2nd Grade Teacher in Chicago asking if we could support the Promethean Whiteboard because classes started on Tuesday... this is what we prototyped in 24 hours.

First, Apple sells an iPad to VGA adapter in the Apple Store for $29.00, however this only works with iTunes movie content, Youtube, photos, and Keynote. The apps are not displayed unless the developer makes certain modifications in their code.

After some rapid prototyping... above you will see two screens in our simulator on our desktop:

(left) TV Out - 1024x768 : This simulates the external monitor and/or projector to the classroom. Thanks to our 2nd grade teacher in Chicago and her quick responses she has confirmed her key requirements are to project the "word problem" and the "photo".
(right) iPhone/iPad Simulator: This simulates what the teacher sees. The "Teacher's Answer Key" will automatically pop-up with the formula and answer.

We're very excited about the possibilities of this enhancement as it allows the entire classroom to work together in answering the question. Possibilities include a student round robin "game" or students can work in parallel on their own using scratch paper. The teacher will be able to end the questions at any number and email/blog the "Answer Key" for future reference.

This feature will be included in our iLiveMath Entomology 4.0 release (ETA end of September, 2010). Our plan is to roll all iLiveMath apps up to the 4.0 platform release so that all apps will benefit from this new projector/display feature for "Classroom Collaboration". All updates are free!

Thanks again to Maryland and Chicago schools for making the request.

We appreciate your feedback.

Please also collaborate with us on Facebook.

NOTE: This VGA adapter will also work with the iPhone 4 and maybe the new iPod Touch.

We do not plan to display the videos as the Youtube App already provides this capability.

Whale Watching Adventure! - iLiveMath Oceans 3.1 - What's New?

2010-08-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

This past month our extended family decided to literally take the plunge and head down to Monterey Bay for a whale watching trip the weekend before the start of school. This is something we've always wanted to do but never had the opportunity. Furthermore, the krill population in the bay was unusually plentiful and there have been numerous sightings of Humpbacks, Blue whales, and dolphins.

So we shopped around for hotels and boat tours and after some research we found a great deal on www.Groupon.com with Randy's Whale Watching (50% off which resulted in $15.00 per person!!). Once we arrived at the pier we were slightly disappointed to find out that they didn't have our reservation for the morning tour so we were rescheduled for the afternoon tour, which was a mixed blessing as the sun did come out and it was a gorgeous day.

The kids were so excited as we headed out 5 miles from shore. We raced along the water... sprays of sea water hitting our face. Arlene's father unfortunately started to turn green. Then we saw a glimpse of a whale fluke followed by another whale... it is no wonder sailors of old thought they saw sea monsters especially if there was more than one whale surfacing... it would definitely look like a long serpent.

Wikimedia Commons - public domain

As our captain raced up ahead trying to catch up with the whales, they would dive and surface 5 minutes later somewhere else... we waited anxiously... then my sister-in-law yelled - "turn around!!! turn - a - round!!!"... a whale was headed right toward us.... First its hump rose out of the water and then submerged... our hearts were pounding... We could hear the deep moan of it's song as it headed toward us... the resonant frequency hitting us in the chest. It rose again even closer and then arched its back to reveal the majestic fluke with dangling barnacles approximately 20 feet away . We were so excited, my mother-in-law was shedding tears of joy.... my father-in-law gathered the energy to watch it submerge.

We want to share these photos with all who have iLiveMath Oceans. Our own photos have been added including humpbacks, dolphins, sea lions, etc. Related public domain photos of the whales feeding and underwater photos have been included. We've also linked in a series of educational humpback whale videos bringing the total videos to 70+.

New questions have been added which span Level 1 to 3 which introduce terms like spyhop and breach... Also in Level 3 we use round bubblenet's that whale's make during feeding to teach the area, radius, diameter, and circumference of a circle. We've kept it relatively simple for now and did not resolve π (pi).

Finally in this release we updated the Graphical User Interface: behind the word problem is a shadow gradient versus a transparent screen. This way you can enjoy the photo better!
Hope you like the improvements to our most popular iLiveMath Oceans app. If you like the app please give us a rating - we would greatly appreciate it!

Please also collaborate with us on Facebook.

If you already have iLiveMath Oceans this update is FREE.

If you would like to purchase it the app is available on iTunes here.

How can we help enrich our children's education?

2010-08-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

November 3rd, 2010 marks the 1 year anniversary since the launch of iHomeEducator's first app and we look back on this little "family project" which started with a question:

"How can we help enrich our children's education?"

We are part of a public charter school which provides us the flexibility to teach at home and we love the personalized education of our three children (K - 7th grade). iHomeEducator started around the dinner table as we brainstormed:

"How can I help you teach? How can I help you learn?"
"What are some of the challenges we see in education?"

iHomeEducator decided to tackle math and word problems... what a ride it has been.

Why word problems?

Word problems are hard - They are typically more difficult because the student must understand what the problem is asking before solving the actual problem. It prepares the student for higher learning.
Real-Life Learning - We love taking the concepts taught in the classroom and weaving them with real life topics, bringing education to life. For example we will be launching an "iLiveMath™ Farm Fresh" app in the next couple weeks using fresh fruits and vegetables. Level 3 introduces volume concepts (i.e.: bushel, peck, pint, liter, etc...). Level 2 brings to life the Stone Soup folktale. Level 1 is for K level counting of fruits and vegetables. We compliment this teaching through our own home gardening and plan to implement an aquaponics system as a homeschooling project this year.
Increase Teaching Opportunities - Word problems open the door to science, history, reading, etc... Themes, terms, and topics can be introduced which prompt kids to ask questions which create teaching opportunities. "What is hydroponics? What is a mach? What is a group of peacocks?" We want our children to interact, explore, and ask questions.
Language Arts - The natural language generator is customized for each iLiveMath app and automatically produces questions which are relevant to the theme. Through the variation of nouns, verbs, and variables the resulting combination of sentences provides an endless stream of questions which are fun mental puzzles.
Being Green - The app automation helps reduce the need for paper consumables in our efforts to be green. The app also leverages email and blogs for "cloud" storage of each test session. For example a family can set up their own private blog and configure the apps to send test results privately to their own blog or to our public blog: http://www.iLiveMath.blogspot.
Incentive and rewards - The problem-based learning requires a different level of rewards. Our kids are so engaged with videos, documentaries, cartoons, etc... so why not reward them with a short educational video which then supports the entire multi-media learning experience. Studies have shown that in complex problem solving the best reward is "autonomy, mastery and purpose" (see Daniel Pink's book, "Drive"). So unlike MathSpin™ there is no timer in iLiveMath™ to avoid "drilling and rushing" our kids, this allows the student some more time for exploration, autonomy and mastery. Also the theme provides a foundation and purpose to the problem-based learning process.

iHomeEducator® Team roles:

Arlene, Chief-Mom, has a teaching credential and the responsibility of curriculum and daily instruction. Her role is to vet every subject and question in our apps as applied to California teaching standards between K and 7th grade. "We want the student to really work for the answer and not guess. We wanted a tool to help build upon the educational foundation laid in the school curriculum. Also we wanted to make the problem-solving practice fun and engaging."
Abby, our 7th grader is the Product Manager. We gave her a stack of post-it note pads one morning with the question, "What themes would you like to see in an app?" and by that evening she had over 30 ideas posted across the wall, each rated and categorized.... this became our product roadmap. Abby carefully tests every question and provides input on the Graphic User Interface (GUI) usability, audio, photos, video, and educational links. Abby's confidence in problem solving has been truly improved using iLiveMath Series Level 3 problems.
The two younger ones became testers, project managers, photo coordinators, and the iLiveMath Series Level 1 users. Before iLiveMath Trains was released we would hear the constant reminder, "Dad, where is my app?"... and "Dad take a picture of this for our app!".
Andy, Dad, is the part-time programmer and innovator. "I pass knowledge to my children through the apps and in the process the rewards are priceless. We hope to continue to release apps in lock step with where our kids are in their learning."

In summary, "Our kids are the ultimate passion, priority, and purpose behind each app." Through this we hope to help other kids master mathematical concepts combined with engaging social studies, science, history, and literature themes. Let's take our children to the next level of higher learning. We thank you for all your support over the last year as we continue the journey.

Sincerely,

iHomeEducator®
http://www.facebook.com/iHomeEducator
http://twitter.com/iHomeEducator

Facebook and Pragmatic Mom - a Sincere Thank You!

2010-08-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

We are back! Sincere thank you to Facebook for restoring our accidentally deleted business page. We are back at the link below with just over 60 followers. We had a temporary FB page "Apps by iHomeEducator" which will be phased out over time.

http://www.facebook.com/iHomeEducator

Please follow us for updates, releases, promotions and giveaways!

We are so grateful to everyone... especially Pragmatic Mom:

Pragmatic Mom has written two great reviews for iLiveMath Speed and iLiveMath Trains! Her observations on the details of our apps are spot on. We really like the quotes she has made including the following:

"...So it’s not surprising that I LOVE the iLiveMath Trains app for iPhone, iPad, or iPod. The theme for this app is trains. It’s a very effective theme for boys and maybe less so for girls but still the photos and images are colorful and fun and there are a train noises as you move from screen to screen....

I also like how that the user answers the questions using a roll-y thingy with numbers in numerical order. You can’t guess the answer; you must find the correct number. And when you do, the app says that you are correct AND shows you the number sentence you have solved (perhaps in your head) but it reinforces the logic by which you solved the question. You do not get the number sentence until the problem is solved correctly."

iHomeEducator writes: The "roll-y thingy" was exactly designed for the purpose of preventing kids from guessing. We dynamically create the selections in the picker so that each time the correct answer is reassigned. We also increase the number of selections at the higher levels. Guessing between A, B, C, and D often becomes a crutch for kids as they are told... if you don't know the answer just guess C... well in our app you can't - kids need to really work for their answer.

"I don’t know about you, but I really struggled through Pre-Med college physics and had to get friends to help explain basic concepts to me (i.e. see how we are walking at the same pace? That’s speed. Speed = distance X time [miles per hour or mph or km per hour]. Now we are walking faster. Acceleration is the increase in speed. The formula is acceleration = force / mass. Force = mass X gravity.) Yikes! It gets complicated quickly so it is nice to introduce these concepts in a fun way such that it becomes intuitive rather than a memorization of formulas. This app doesn’t actually cover acceleration but by teaching Distance = Rate x Time, it’s an appropriate and intuitive introduction to physics for an elementary school student."

iHomeEducator writes: This was also a great observation of iLiveMath Speed - we really wanted to just give our 6th grader a preliminary introduction to physics. The problems could get much more difficult with 2 objects traveling at different speeds... or 1 object traveling at different speeds... combined with acceleration... maybe this is something we can tackle in our next advanced high school app... Our intent is to continue to develop apps that challenge our own kids who are in Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 7th grade... so we'll do our best.
Thank you Pragmatic Mom! Definitely check out her blog!

Pragmatic Mom writes about herself:

My background includes an A.B. from Harvard in History and Science (yeah, very obscure I know — I was an unhappy Pre-Med) and an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at U.C.L.A (that was more fun). I also have an entrepreneurial bent as one of the co-founders of Aquent (www.Aquent.com), a talent agency for marketers and designers. To learn about SEO, I recently launched a group blog at CoffeeShopBloggers,The S.O.S. for SEO, which is based on a blogging group that I run (the best thing I ever did was form this group! )

Facebook is down but we are still alive!

2010-08-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Hi iHomeEducator® Friends and Followers,

Can you believe it? We accidentally deleted our Facebook page and now we are trying to re-establish it through FB's FAQ help page (it does not look like FB has a live customer support number). Unfortunately from everything we read it looks like it is not retrievable so we are waiting patiently after sending email notifications through the help page. We had 59 followers at the time of the business page loss... :(

If we need to start over and rebuild our fan base we will be reaching out to many of you and hope you still remember us. We may add a FB button onto our app.

Meanwhile we are continuing to build up our existing apps and new apps.

iLiveMath™ Oceans 3.0

We updated iLiveMath™ Oceans to the 3.0 iLiveMath platform and included 20 new videos including several from the Ocean Census Feature Video. The 3.0 enhancements include:

Improved random question generation,
iOS4 settings fixes for sound effects ON/OFF capability,
iOS4 settings fix for video threshold capability - default is now 1,
various other format and GUI improvements.

iLiveMath™ Transportation Trio

Then we launched the transportation trio:

We hope you like these as we featured rate=distance x time, mpg, km/h, mach, knots, weight, currency, countries, mean, median, mode, range and history of the 100+ year old Model T to today.

iLiveMath™ Animals of Asia 3.0/3.1 Updates:

Afterwards we went back and updated iLiveMath Animals of Asia to the 3.0 iLiveMath platform.

Sincere apologies to all iLiveMath Animals of Asia 3.0 users... regarding the Tiger Cub video... After listening to the background lyrics carefully we immediately felt it was probably not the best choice of songs by the Woodland Zoo Youtuber. The 3.1 release will include a new Feature Video of the Siberian Tiger Conservation efforts - only 400 Siberian Tigers roam wild today in Northern China and Southern Russia. This seemed much more appropriate for our Educational app so 3.1 should come out this week - plus we updated all photos to HD and added more tiger documentary videos.

What's Next?

We're researching and collecting content for a new series of iLiveMath word problems... we hope they are fresh and fun new ways of teaching math concepts - "literally". As we choose different themes we are always keeping in mind topics which help us teach not just math but provide a foundation of problem-based learning which is engaging and fun for our kids and yours...

Stay tuned for more information! Hopefully our FB site will be up soon... Thank you again for your support.

Here's a hint of our upcoming iLiveMath series...

Sincerely,
iHomeEducator® Team

Blasting off with Speed!

2010-07-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hi it's me, Abby!

Pssshhhhh!!! Blast off!! Speed has been launched! This app was inspired by the Amgen tour that passed by our house and the Air Show that we went to last year. Both were related with the term Speed, which started our big splash of ideas for this app.
In this app, kids will learn Mach, a nautical mile,sonic,miles/hour, kilometer/hour. There are great pictures of bicycles to space shuttles; Feedback sounds give the student a feel for different transportation vehicles.
(Like the zoom of a race car, toot of a train, and the blast off of the space shuttle.)
So far Speed has been featured on iTunes's New and Noteworthy.

I hope you have fun learning math with our iHomeEducator apps!

Abby
Product Manager of iHomeEducator.

Ah, The Long Days of Summer

2010-07-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

It has been many months since I last blogged and now that we are in the middle of summer, I have more time and energy to write a new post. I apologize for the long break between entries and I have no other excuse except that it was a busy school year.

We decided not to continue education this summer because, quite frankly, we all needed a break. The kids were tired of our school routine and needed to rest their minds from education. I was exhausted from juggling the schedule of teacher, mom, housekeeper, and wife. It has been refreshing to be free of the daily schedule that is school and do fun things - like swimming, watching movies on a weeknight, family outings, and not having a set schedule each day.

I started looking more closely at history and language arts curriculum this afternoon. Our daughter starts the seventh grade this fall and I want her to be well prepared for the upper grades that will lead to university study. I am at a crossroads this year that is different from previous years. Do I continue the CA standards curriculum for the core subjects or pursue a classical education? I am drawn to the classical education approach to these subjects because I think she will be better prepared for higher education. I will have the CA standards curriculum on hand and checking to make sure that the standards are covered.

I hope you are enjoying the summer and taking the time for refreshment before the school year begins again.

Blessings to you,
Arlene
Chief Mom

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5-6

iLiveMath Speed "the Need for Speed"

2010-07-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

iLiveMath Trains - All Aboard!

2010-07-07T20:45:00.002-07:00

iLiveMath Oceans - Update Version 3.0

2010-07-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

iLiveMath Speed - HD movie - teach math, reading, and science - iPad Demo

2010-07-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

The Blue Angels

2010-06-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

Can't wait for this year's airshow!!!

Plus can't wait for our newest app iLiveMath Speed which will feature "The Need for Speed"!!!

Fertile Green Valley's

2010-06-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

We live in this valley surrounded by all these bountiful fruits and vegetables... great educational video... maybe for our next app :0)

Last year we started our own vegetable garden too - "Farming does get into your blood"... we love it.

We are actually working on a new app which will try to teach various topics around farming and all the things God has blessed us with from this green earth.

Marine Mania!

2010-05-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

Hi it's me Abby!

My family and I just visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is well known for their marine research. We were able to spend 3 days there. You will probably think " that's a long time", but we had membership which made our day.

The marine life was beautiful. The otters, seahorses, and cuttlefish are my favorite. The aquarium was really packed except on Thursday, the day we arrived. The exhibits were very cool and the fish were amazing. Though the kelp forest with the wave motion made me seasick :(. But the rest of the aquarium was just fine.

The seahorse exhibit was really beautiful. We saw baby seahorses as small as a centimeter or smaller and weedy sea dragons the size of my hand. The penguins were quite funny. We were able to see them being fed. There was a really funny looking penguin who kept following one of the aquarist who was carrying a mirror. I thought it was very cute.

I hope you have fun playing with our apps - especially iLiveMath Oceans...

Abby

The End of a Long School Year!

2010-05-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hi it's me Abby!

Known as Product Manager of iHomeEducator.

School has finally ended for the sixth time in a row.

Thanks to iHomeEducator, I have improved a lot in my Math.

Our latest app, iLiveMath Oceans, has been a BIG hit! Oceans is a fun and relaxing game that can be enjoyed by anyone. With multiple seaside feedback sounds and detailed pictures of creatures in the ocean. Students can imagine that they are really there enjoying the aqua blue world above and under the water. In this app you are able to zoom in or zoom out on the picture, research the animal through Wikipedia, and email, tweet or blog your results.

Personally, this is my favorite app so far out of all the apps iHomeEducator has made and I hope it becomes your favorite too.

Have fun doing the math with iHomeEducator!

iPad Universal App (iLiveMath Animals of Africa/Asia)

2010-04-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

To all our iLiveMath users, we want to let you know that you will have the ability to run the app very very soon on an iPad at no additional cost.

The new iLiveMath Animals of Africa and Asia apps were completed this weekend and updated to be "Universal Apps"... This means the apps will be able to run on an iPhone/iPod touch as well as an iPad.

Universal App?

What is special with a Universal App and how does it help me? Well for one you do not have to purchase another app for an iPad if you already have purchased an iPhone/iPod touch app. The app will automagically run differently on the iPad by repositioning buttons and increasing the photo sizes. Some highlevel changes:

Images will stretch to the full size of the iPad - you can pinch and zoom in on the image. In the future we may increase the size of the photos but we were also concerned about app size so the images are actually still the same between the iPhone/iPod and iPad...
Many have seen different larger sized apps being released for the iPad which means you have to purchase another app. We decided not to do this and release a Universal App.
Some also have seen a significant increase in app size with the iPad apps. We also tried to maintain the app size and so the images have not been increased in size. With the new Explore feature your student still has the ability to drill down to a wiki page and download a higher resolution image if they want to pinch and zoom in on very detailed images.
Buttons have been repositioned in the top right of the iPad in a group - so hopefully you don't have to click around too much and your hand is positioned somewhat in the same area of the screen for picking answers and triggering the next question.
We have provided the ability to rotate the iPhone/iPad to landscape position and you can then just pinch and zoom the image. At this time the word problem and buttons are hidden in landscape mode.
The iPad view transitions have been modified to be consistent across the apps to slide up and down... versus an animated page turn... this made it easier for us to maintain and we found the transitions to be quicker for the users.
In the iPad we had more room so in the Intro view we added a comparison of the concepts taught in the iLiveMath apps... our plan is this will be enhanced over time to show all concepts per app as they are released. Clicking on the icons for the apps will launch you out of the app into the iTunes App Store.

Here are some screenshots of the earlier iPod Touch/iPhone app and the new iPad app layout.

Sincerely,

iHomeEducator

NOTE: iLiveMath Winter Sport is still not yet modified to be a Universal app but will run on an iPad in compatibility mode.

Formal and Informal Learning

2010-03-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Value Proposition
The value proposition for Mobile Apps in education is growing:
Flexibility: Teaching opportunities are not limited to the classroom. Teach anytime and anywhere.
Ease of Use: Touch screen devices empower a much younger audience. Our 4 year old asks for the iPod Touch all the time.
Feedback: Applications automatically provide feedback and constructive progress scores.
ROI: Teachers and parents are starting to use iPods as a lower cost option to compliment laptops, netbooks, and text books

Our logo - "Three colored hands"
One fall day in 2009 we decided to roll out the paper and paint...then with great joy each of our children started making hand prints in their favorite colors. They had a blast and these colorful hand prints still hang from our dining room walls today. Each child's handprint was then digitally photographed and used in our logo. Our oldest daughter's hand is the largest purple hand. The pink and blue are our younger daughter and son respectively. We wanted this to truly represent our intent to build educational apps for our kids... Designed by kids and for kids.

Mission Statement
iHomeEducator's mission is that “Kids are able to hold the world in their little hands.”

Our intent is to help all educators with better formal and informal learning tools. With each app we hope to blend engaging topics such as math and science at different levels of learning allowing the student and teacher to adjust the learning experience. We have many enhancements planned for each app as well as new apps on the horizon. Please join us at iHomeEducator.

Feel Free to register with us on the iHomeEducator Online Community. REGISTER HERE

332 Downloads of iLiveMath Animals of Africa Yesterday -- Some Tips and Tricks!

2010-03-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Wow! Thank you to Moms With Apps and all the Tweets, Examiners and bloggers that wrote about us yesterday to get the word out. We're in direct email contact with many of you as we continue improving upon the apps.

We know many of the parents are beginning to screen test the app so here are some clearer directions - hopefully.

General Instructions:

(1) Review word problems which are dynamically and randomly generated. Answer by hitting the '?' button. Spin to your answer and hit 'done'. The 'Answer: #' will show your selection and you will be given immediate feedback on your right or wrong answer. Each answer as well as the equation for the answer is tracked in test results. So be sure to mail the final test to yourself to see the test results which includes percentage correct/incorrect/unanswered as well as test equations and answers.

(2) Share your question and answer summaries on our community blogsite www.ilivemath.blogspot.com just by clicking the 'mail' button in the lower left. This will show the total questions, correct formulas, and also show your answers (both incorrect and correct). This will allow educators to track progress and determine next steps to teaching concepts.

(3) Email the test results questions and answers to your educator for review. Remember to enter your email for ease of use each time. You can also enter a 'First Name' which is used in the subject title of the email. The email address will be kept private when blogged.

(4) Or tweet a single question to followers and friends. Remember to enter your Twitter UserId and Password. These are also kept private.

WARNING: There are TRICK questions :-):

One screen testing parent emailed us this morning with the following problem....
Problem~ Level 2 (2nd question that came up)
Last month we saw 19 gorilla. This month we saw 7 times as many gorilla. How many total gorilla were seen?
My answer... 133
That comes up as incorrect..??? This could be frustrating...
Just wanted to let you know~

iHomeEducator Reply:

:-) Yup I make the same mistake and I wrote the question...

Here's our explanation:

The answer is: 19 + 7 x 19 = 152

not just 7 x 19 = 133

The problem attempts to teach the meaning of "total" -
Also the above shows order of operations - multiplication before addition.
Arlene and I felt it was a way to teach both concepts.

The answer is found when you click on the "mail" button.
While the answers are being asked - the answers are automatically being tracked. The correct formula is also being tracked...
Then when you hit "mail"... it will create a test results report...

The report will show the question and answers.
The report will also show the incorrect/correct answers.
You can then email the test results to yourself and also blog it to reinforce and track progress.

Here are examples of other test results:
http://www.iLiveMath.blogspot.com

Have fun educators and we welcome any and all feedback!

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Forgot to mention there were 38 downloads of the app on Thursday so technically the "total" number of downloads was 370 - trick question :-)
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Moms With Apps Promo Video

2010-03-25T00:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the founders of Moms With Apps a grass roots group of parents developing mobile apps for kids. Scott Weiner, developer of Family Matters produced this video for us.

Baby Giraffe in Sonoma, CA at Safari West

2010-03-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Our kids are going to love this video! We went to Sonoma West last year with our kids... we'll need to go back to visit Stretch their new baby giraffe.

Home Educators Directory - a special resource for Homeschoolers

2010-03-23T18:19:00.000-07:00

We've been very fortunate lately to make some great connections through social networking. One of the most recent connections is the Home Educators Resource Directory.

This directory's creator has personally connected with each vendor. We could tell that through her experience and special care that she really does care about the success of her partners and most of all the homeschooling community.

In today's world of social networking you rarely get to talk to someone on the phone and we were fortunate as well as impressed to be able to speak with her over the phone and get to know her. Being a homeschooling parent she has put together this site through passionately building relationships for over 6 years.

What's special about this site:

This is the one-stop Directory for information, supplies, services and support for the homeschool community. Organized by local, national, global resources, local events calendars, special offers, newsletters, educational articles and homeschool support groups. Over 5000 individual vendors are listed.

We will be joining this directory as well and as homeschooling parents ourselves we hope to share our tools with the larger community.

Helping Home Educators

2010-03-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

Given that "kids are able to hold the world in their little hands", the value proposition for mobile apps in education continues to grow:

Flexibility: Teaching opportunities are not limited to the classroom. Teach anytime and anywhere.

Ease of Use: Touch screen devices empower a much younger audience. Our 4 year old asks for the iPod Touch all the time.

Feedback: Applications automatically provide feedback and constructive progress scores.

ROI: Teachers and parents are starting to use iPods as a lower cost option to compliment laptops, netbooks, and text books

Digital Media Learning (DML) also states, “…participatory learning refers to young people’s learning that:

is intrinsically motivated because it is connected to their interests and passions;

is inherently social in nature because it involves interacting, providing feedback, and sharing with others; and

typically occurs during tangible, creative activities, that are open and discovery-based, involve tinkering and play and are not highly prescriptive.

iHomeEducator joined Moms With Apps in late 2009. This group has rallied together caring parents to solve problems through mobile apps for traveling, education, parenting, etc… Each developer brings a personal touch to their apps and has a personal story to tell.

Our User Stories:
Because we wanted to help our 4, 6, and 11 year old children appreciate math we developed MathSpinK, 1, 2, and 3 which includes spinning math dials, timers, and counters for counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and inequalities. MathSpin1 uses Chinese and Mayan numbers to spice up the math with culture. We then found the spinners allowed more freedom in learning as our children began to pick problems on their own.

Our 11 year old struggled with word problems in exams so why not try to make it fun so we developed iLiveMath Animals of Africa, Winter Sports, and Animals of Asia

Each has 3 levels of difficulty for 1st to 6th grade

Randomly generates over 1 million word problems from basic math to advanced order of operations, percentages, time, averaging, etc.

Photo images are used to build interest and encourage future exploration.

For participatory learning and tracking of progress all questions, answers, counts, % correct/incorrect/unaswered can be shared to www.iLiveMath.blogspot.com and/or email.

Collaborate with friends and followers using Twitter by tweeting questions

Below is our latest app welcoming in the Year of the Tiger: iLiveMath Animals of Asia teaches time concepts including the use of the Chinese Zodiac animals and calculation of differences between years.

iLiveMath Animals of Africa was developed for our children after a trip to Safari West in Sonoma, CA.

iLiveMath Winter Sports was developed as a teaching opportunity during the Winter Games in Vancouver with a twist to make the sports more kid friendly, such as snow ball fighting and snowman building.

This post was written by iHomeEducator, a family run business headed by a full-time mom/teacher with 3 kids, part-time hobby programming dad, and 6th grade Product Manager. Visit us at www.iHomeEducator.com, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook.

Latest #iLiveMath Updates

2010-03-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

Improved behavior in tracking incorrect answers:

* An Incorrect answer results in the question mark button to appear again. This allows the student to try to answer the question correctly. If the student decides to give up and move on they can at any time.
* Incorrect answers are then tracked in the email. Teachers can then see whether the student has been guessing based upon the incorrectly answered questions.
* Educators can also determine if the incorrect answer is due to a misunderstanding in math theory - such as order of operations or the student is off by a few numbers.
* Incorrect answers are tracked in the email and also can be posted on the blog.

Also we updated the following in our last submission which is available currently:

Greater ease of use and bug fix:

* Level 1, 2, 3, difficulty settings are now available from the home page
* Email Address is configurable from the Mail View directly.
* First Name for the Subject of the Email configurable directly.
* Tweet UserID and Password are configurable directly.
* Mail2Blogger config status is displayed.
* Answer is displayed as a label versus within the text field.
* Picker is launched through a button - versus a text field - which fixed a bug
* Modified instructions
* Sound ON/OFF still requires configuration through iPhone / iPod Touch settings
* Mail2Blogger ON/OFF still requires configuration through iPhone / iPod Touch settings

Time for the Year of the Tiger!

2010-03-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

Hi It's me Abby!

I'm 11 in 6th grade and in charge of product ideas as well as QA testing here at iHomeEducator.

iLiveMath Animals of Asia makes a fun "action" packed app full of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and now TIME! This new app includes the Chinese zodiac, time, days, weeks, months, and years. It is perfect for grades 1-6+.

According to the Chinese Culture Center of SF: "Tiger people are sensitive, given to deep thinking, capable of great sympathy. They can be extremely short-tempered, however. Other people have great respect for them, but sometimes tiger people come into conflict with older people or those in authority. sometimes Tiger people cannot make up their minds, which can result in a poor, hasty decision or a sound decision arrived at too late. They are suspicious of others, but they are courageous and powerful. Tigers are most compatible with Horses, Dragons, and Dogs"

I personally don't believe in such superstition, but it's fun to flip through. :)

I hope you have fun with iLiveMath Animals of Asia!

Available on the iTunes App Store iLiveMath Animals Of Asia 1.1, a collaborative educational math and zoology app for Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

About Us:

iHomeEducator was founded in 2009 by a credentialed California State Board of Education teacher and parent. We currently home educate three children through Horizon Charter School. Through this personal experience we are able to provide tools for home educators. Our applications provide a means of personalized learning and fun independent study serving students from kindergarten through 12th grade. At iHomeEducator, we believe every child can excel by leveraging today's modern mobile wireless technology and collaborating through social networking. Copyright (C) 2009-2010 iHomeEducator. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.