Extra 5-9-2014: Bing Classroom

Bing in the Classroom gives US K-12 schools the choice of ad-free search, so students have a safer, more private online environment.

When a district signs up for Bing in the Classroom:

• All the ads are removed from search results.
• SafeSearch with strict filtering to help keep out adult content is turned on.
• Enhanced privacy settings prevent use of search data for personalized ad profiles.

When a district signs up for Bing in the Classroom, Microsoft agrees to a publically available Terms of Service that lists in detail exactly how the program works and their commitment to students.

 Watch Bing in the Classroom Now Available to All Schools in the US

Your district must be registered by a district-level administrator for ad-free search to receive Bing in the Classroom.

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Extra 2-28-2014: Kingsoft Office for iOS

In October of last year, I shared Kingsoft Office Free 2013,  a no-cost, powerful  Windows alternative to MS Office. Earlier this month, Kingsoft Office released an iOS compatible with for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Kingsoft Office is compatible with and allows you to read and edit Word and PowerPoint documents and has the capability to view Excel files.

 

Kingsoft Office can sync with popular cloud services such as GoogleDrive, Dropbox, and others; transfer documents to other Kingsoft users over Wi-Fi; sync documents opened to your account from either your device or desktop without using any cable connection. File management allows creating folders, copy, move, delete, rename, and save as.

 

 

Kingsoft Office is free from the iTunes App Store. It requires iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

 

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Extra: 2-2-14 Microsoft Mathematics

Last week, I posted about the Grapher app bundled with Mac OS X. Though, not automatically included with any Windows OS, Microsoft offers a similar app as a free download.

Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that plots graphs in 2-D and 3-D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science.

 

 

Theset of mathematical tools provided by Microsoft Mathematics can help students get school work done quickly and easily. Students can learn to solve equations step-by-step while gaining a better understanding of fundamental concepts in pre-algebra, algebra, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, and calculus.

 

A full-featured graphing calculator, designed to work like a handheld calculator, is included in Microsoft Mathematics. There are additional tools help evaluate triangles, convert from one system of units to another, and solve systems of equations.

 

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Featured: 12-16-2013 Office 365 Education

Office 365 Education provides a school staff, faculty, and students free email, websites, online document editing and storage, IM, and web conferencing.

Office 365 Education lets schools and districts modernize their communications and productivity infrastructure on their terms.They can get needed enterprise-grade communication and productivity services with flexibility.

All Office 365 Education plans include email and calendars, web conferencing, instant messaging, file storage and sharing, team sites, Office Web Apps, privacy, security, and more.

 Watch the Office 365 Educationoverview

Two of the Office 365 Education plans include the latest desktop version of Office. The plans that do not include the desktop version of Office support Office 2010, Office 2007, and Office 2011 for Mac with the latest browsers across your devices using Office Web Apps. You can take advantage of the Office 365 cloud services such as business-class email, HD video conferencing, and file sharing.

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Featured: 6-17-2013 Kingsoft Office Free

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 for Windows provides a no-cost, powerful alternative to the MS Office monolith.

Smaller and faster than most other office suites, Kingsoft Office Free 2013, includes a built-in PDF converter and automatic spell check, as well as an innovative Paragraph Adjustment tool.

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 includes the usual modules for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations:

• Writer provides word and text processing with drag-and-drop paragraph editing, a section tab, support for .doc and .docx.
• Easily create and edit Spreadsheets, a calculator, graphing, and multiple other tools for complex data analysis, export to both .xls and .xlsx extension files.
• Presentation lets you create dynamic slides for speeches and presentations, with Flash, sound and animation effects, and artistic backgrounds.

 Watch a video introduction to Kingsoft Office

In addition to the traditional interface which resembles older versions of MS Office, Kingsoft Office Free 2013 gives you a choice of a new interface similar to the newer versions of Office. You can easily switch between the two versions according to your preference.

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Extra: Excel Surveys on Skydrive [Data]

Microsoft  Office Web Apps, available to those with a SkyDrive account, enables you to create surveys to collect data online. This feature is similar to Google Forms.

To easily collect everyone’s info using Excel surveys in SkyDrive, log into your SkyDrive account and click “Create -> Excel survey”.

Name your survey and the survey designer opens in the Excel Web App. The survey designer lets you add questions, set the type of question (text, multiple choice, date, etc), and move them around. You can also show a default answer or set a question so that a response is required before submitting the survey.

When you're finished building your survey, click “Share Survey”. You will get a link that can be shared by email or otherwise.  Clicking on the link sends users directly to survey, they don’t have to sign in.

Creating a survey in the Excel Web App automatically generates a spreadsheet to store all of the results. Under the Insert tab, “Recommended Charts” will recommend useful visualizations of your data.

Watch a video: Using the Excel Survey Web App on SkyDrive

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COD - 8/27/2012 - InstallFree Nexus [Tools]

InstallFree Nexus enables users to access common office applications on almost any device with a user experience optimized to the device.

InstallFree Nexus is a cloud-based platform that enables real-time access to office applications using HTML 4/5, and connects them to cloud-based storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, and Box.

Users of InstallFree Nexus can access Microsoft Office and/or Libre Office on desktops, laptops,  iPads, Android tablets, and any other device with a modern web browser.

InstallFree Nexus is a solution with no infrastructure to deploy. It is highly scalable, retains user customizations and settings, and is high performance. It is a highly flexible client supporting almost any device with a web browser. It includes device-specific optimizations, as well as being optimized for touch devices.

You can use InstallFree Nexus to share full-featured web-based viewers for your office and other documents, and you can use it to broadcast your application sessions to colleagues in real time.

Watch a video overview of InstallFree Nexus

InstallFree Nexus Includes the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation components of Libre Office 3 free, and when you sign up, you get a 60-day free trial of MS Office 2010. Adobe Reader X is used to view PDF files, and Paint.net to edit image files.

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Life in the Cloud Gets Even Better

Lots of news in the world of cloud storage today!

Microsoft released a new SkyDrive app for both Mac and PC, as well as an update for their previously released mobile apps. The Windows and Mac versions are both available for free. The desk/laptop version of the app appears to work very similarly to the desk/laptop version of Dropbox. You can add files to the SkyDrive folder and they will be uploaded the cloud.

SkyDrive's free storage limit is changing to 7GB, but if you are an existing SkyDrive user you can keep the 25GB you currently have, if you act now.

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Google today launched Google Drive, a cloud service that lets you create, share and store your documents online. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC to upload videos, photographs, Google docs and more to Google's cloud, and you can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. A Drive app for iOS devices is in the works.

 

Google Drive includes 5 GB of free storage, and upgrade to 25 GB for less than $2.50 a month. The service will launch with support for Windows and Mac desk/laptops as well as Android devices. An iOS client is in the works.

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Less dramatic, but still significant, you can now send a link to any of the files or folders in your Dropbox. Once you’ve saved a file to Dropbox, just make a link to send to anyone you want to share with and they can simply view (but not edit)  most file types online — no download required. But just in case they want to save that file for later, they can choose to either download it or save it straight to their Dropbox.

 

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OnLive Desktop Plus Offers More Service

OnLive Desktopfrom Microsoft, the subject of a recent post, gives you free, simple access to MS Office on your iPad from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Now OnLive has released a new service plan, Plus. This Plus plan costs $4.99 (US) per month. The Plus version adds Internet Explorer 9 to the software suite and access to third-party storage sites such as Dropbox and Gmail. You also get priority access.

According to a Macworld story, browsing the Web through Onlive Desktop and Internet Explorer is faster than using Safari on the iPad because your iPad isn’t doing all the processing required to render the page. The browser is really running on an OnLive edge server and your iPad isn’t doing all the processing required to render the page.

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COD - 1/23/2012 - OnLive Desktop [Cloud]

OnLive Desktop from Microsoft gives you simple access to MS Office on your iPad from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Get access to a secure, reliable, high-performance Windows 7 cloud desktop with the Office applications you use the most: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Full featured document viewing and editing with OnLive Desktop:

• Create or edit Microsoft Word docs on the go using touch, an on-screen keyboard, or handwriting recognition to view, edit, and annotate.
• Build PowerPoint presentations and show them directly on your iPad or connect to an external monitor.
• Manage fully functional Excel spreadsheets. Create graphs anywhere, then drag and drop to update your Office documents.
• Open multiple documents and copy-paste between them.

You need to first create an OnLive account on the OnLive Desktop website. (If you already have an OnLive Game Service account you can login with that.) Then download the free app from the iTunes App Store.

When you open the app and sign in, you’ll see a Windows 7 desktop on your iPad. There are icons to launch the MS Office applications and a handful of other programs. You can’t add anymore applications to or permanently modify the desktop.

Once you launch an application, it looks to be pretty much identical to that application running on a PC. The popup keyboard is NOT the native iPad keyboard, but a proprietary on-screen keyboard that I found adequate, though the keys are smaller. Considering that everything is running on distant servers, the OnLive Desktop seemed sufficiently responsive on my home wi-fi connection with minimal lag.

View a video introduction to OnLive Desktop

Versions for Android, PCs, and Macs are expected soon.

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Windows Live Search does the Math

Did you know Windows Live Search can solve linear and quadratic equations? I only tested linears and quadratics, maybe it does more.

Just enter the equation in the search box and hit enter. It's pretty fast, too.