This is part II of our Raspberry PI Google AIY Voice Kit project.  You can read part I here.  We received our Google AIY Voice Kit from Amazon.ca the other day.  The kit contains the following:

We are going to start our Raspberry PI Google AIY Voice Kit project. The objective is to convert a Raspberry PI Model B+ 512mb unit that has been sitting in a box for the past 3 years into a Google Assistant using the Google AIY Voice Kit.  The Google AIY Voice Kit includes the following:

I had the pleasure of travelling to Niagara Falls with my colleague Jean Giroux to attend and present two workshops at the Bring IT Together 2019 (BIT19) conference.  This is a great conference designed to bring educators, education IT professionals and technology vendors together.  I attended BIT18 as a participate last year and enjoyed the whole conference.  This year I decided I wanted to be a presenter.

Your digital footprint is becoming a bigger concern for most people today, especially for young people. The content you post or content that is posted about you can have a major impact on your future opportunities. 

Coding is a scary word for some people. It invokes visions of computer geeks hunched over dimly lit keyboards madly typing strings of characters into some type of funky code editor.  This Hollywoodesque version of coding makes most people want to run away from anything that has to do with coding.  I am here to help you find a place to start with coding in your classroom.  In this blog, we are going to specifically focus on starting with coding in a K-3 classroom.  

Vlogging is a new thing for me.  I started doing it about 6 weeks ago but started planning to do it in the spring.  I started by doing a lot of research on YouTube and on the internet in general.  The first thing I looked for was a camera to record video.  Just using my iPhone XR was an option but I didn't want to rely on just my iPhone.

It is my opinion that a lot of us don't give a second thought to the privacy we give up when it comes to app data. I include myself in this blanket statement.  The new iOS 13 update on my iPhone includes a feature that tells me if an app is tracking my location, even when I am not using the app. 

As someone who travels a lot with their laptop, I am serious about laptop backpacks.  I have had more than a few over the years, but have a couple of favourites I would like to review for LearnTechGuy.com.  Please note, the newest bag I am going to talk about today is about a year old.  None are new and all have been field-tested extensively. 

In Ontario, there is a lot of debate about personal devices in the classroom.  The current Ontario government has even gone as far as to attempt to ban these devices in the classroom.  

"Ontario's students need to be able to focus on their learning — not their cellphones," she wrote. "By banning cellphone use that distracts from learning, we are helping students to focus on acquiring the foundational skills they need, like reading, writing and math." - Lisa Thompson Education Minister (Source: "Ontario to ban cellphones in classrooms next school year", By Allison Jones, CBS News, March 12, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-school-classroom-cellphone-ban-1.5052564)

I found myself in the market for a new Chromebook last week.  Truth be told it wasn't for me, it was for my 14-year-old daughter Ella.  She had been working off a decade-old 15'' Macbook Pro I had handed down to her.  The MBP was a great machine but has begun to fail and with the new school year already started it was time for a replacement.