There are a lot of great upgrades in iOS 8 but this one is my favorite. For years I have been saying that Apple should provide a way to do “ad hoc Airplay”  (like AirDrop) and now they finally have done it.

You can now connect to an Apple TV that is close to you, regardless of if you are on the same WiFi network.

This is huge for schools that use multiple SSIDs to segregate groups of users for security  reasons but have wrestled with the fact that AirPlay previously only worked when users were on the same subnet.

AirDrop, as many of you know, allows Mac/iOS users to wirelessly share files with people physically close to you. What you may not realize is that you can share a file with someone close to you that is not on your WiFi network. This is useful because many file-sharing protocols are limited to people on your WiFi network, but AirDrop uses another “channel”, above your plain old WiFi network, to share files. Now this works with AirPlay as well.

2 Things

1. I realize that some people used other methods to make AirPlay work across subnets before so you may not be too excited. For example I know that Xirrus Wireless systems have a settings that allows Airplay to work across subnets.

2. If you previously used separate SSIDs to segregate users and Apple TVs please don’t forget that is now “broken”. For example, your students can now select an Apple TV that you may have previously limited their access to by ensuring they were on another subnet.

Overall this is a great step for schools and for Apple. Good luck with things and please let me know how this new change works out for you!

For more information see the Apple TV website. (read the fine print at the bottom)

Twitter @davidwbeaty

image source: David Beaty

I was in charge of making a poster for our AES Minicourse trip last year. The first thing I did was to visit the minicourse office. The trip coordinator had told us that there were images in her office that we could use for making our posters. “Drop by” she said. And I did, bringing my USB flash drive with me. As it turned out, she had images, actual photos printed on paper and some blank posterboard and glue sticks. Yes, glue sticks. “No self-respecting tech person is going to make their poster with actual posterboard and glue stick” I thought to myself.

So I decided to make an infographic. A few tweets and Google searches later turned up a pretty substantial list of websites and tools, so I set to work. Jeff Utecht, in his video on making visually appealing presentations mentions that these more visually appealing presentations take more time than the old style boring presentations and I can confirm that. By the time I was done downloading, registering and testing the various infographic tools I was great to run back to that posterboard and gluestick. I even at one point tried the “build it from scratch in Photoshop” technique. But I stuck with it (no gluestick pun intended) and in the end I was pretty happy with the result.

I tried to keep it simple, incorporate humor and yet make it interesting enough to catch a high schooler’s attention among the many other posters. These posters, some 22 or more in all, are all hung up together in the high school breeezeway so there is significant competition among them. Yes, the idea is just to inform students about the trip, but there is no doubt they are meant to entertain as well.

In the end I used easel.ly. It was cheap, the tools worked well and the design options were what I was looking for. Save yourself the trouble and go straight there if you are looking to create an infographic.

Have a look at the result above and let me know what you think.