iPad Personal Hotspot using Verizon

Have been at a Hospice House with my mother since Thursday and discovered that the Wifi won't connect.  It did connect with the iPad on Thursday, but not the iPhone or laptop :-(

Needless to say no Internet access results in frustration.  My brother let me borrow his iPhone hotspot but it would time out.  That meant I had to activate the Verizon cellular service account for the first time.  I was using the iPad to access one of my online courses, but responding to students postings was time consuming using the iPad without the bluetooth keyboard.

Setting up the cellular service was just as easy as it had been when using AT&T on the iPad2.  I looked at the Internet for information on how to establish the hotspot.  It looked easy, but it did not work because I was overlooking a simple step.  Fortunately my brother is in the Apple ecosystem, too.  I had not opened Settings > General > Network > Personal Hotspot On.  Once the hotspot was turned on, it showed up in the Settings menu under Wi-Fi.  When I clicked on the Personal Hotspot in the Settings menu, it was on, meaning the hotspot was discoverable.  The Wi-Fi password was displayed. Remember that the hotspot function only works with the New iPad.

So now you might imagine the Hospice room with not one or two iPads, but 5 (brother, sister, mother, me and my son).  You might think that WE brought down the wifi system, but we didn't.  Since we could not get the wireless system to work, only my brother and I were online using our personal hotspots.  

Zotero Update

One last update!  Zotero citation manager is now a standalone product!  That is really good news for the few people who  do not want to use Firefox or have problem using Firefox with Zotero.

The standalone installs Zotero into the Word menu when it installs on the computer.  That is especially good for my non-techie students who stumble over two different installs.

For more information, go to http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0

When I was demonstrating Zotero during a webinar last week - the menu did not show up in Word :-(
Yes, it had been working previously.  I found that the problem was because I had not downloaded the latest Firefox web browser.  Afterward a download of the most recent web browser - Zotero was there!!!

Now, if Zotero would only release an iPad app!

ScreenFlow Update

I used ScreenFlow window capture software to create some short videos for lessons on Excel and FileMaker Pro.  My first attempt was blurry!  I consulted my Apple guru to figure out why.  I had not set up the output to be in 16:9 ratio or 1280 by 720.

The tutorials for ScreenFlow were excellent.  It took less than 30 second to figure out the problems.  I make the corrections in a couple of minutes and uploaded the files to YouTube as HD videos - amazing.  I have a YouTube channel - but it is not designed for the general audience.  It was not a problem, because I used the embed script to add the videos to the lessons I designed.

My guru consultant advised me to add callouts (closeups) to the videos.  Although the videos are not professional quality - they should serve the instructional purposes that I had in mind.

Catching Up and more on FileMaker Pro

There is much to share and just not enough time! :-)

I have been working on four lessons for one of the classes I teach on how to use Excel and FileMaker Pro.  I wrote out the content because there is not a book that addresses how to use Excel and FileMaker Pro from a nursing perspective.  

The good news, is that I believe I have FileMaker Pro figured out.  I developed a Metabolic Syndrome Registry database and have incorporated calculations that:

• Calculate height in total inches height in feet and inches
• Calculate the BMI from height in inches and weight in pounds
• Analyze the BMI for World Health Organization Obesity classifications
• Analyze the weight goal based upon BMI classifications

The similarities between Excel formulas and FileMake Pro are remarkable.  Where you use a comma in an Excel formula, you use a semicolon in FileMaker Pro.  The creation of concatenation is identical.  Concatenation is where you link two fields.  For example if you have systolic blood pressure in one field and systolic blood pressure in another you can create a new field showing 120/80.  

I really like the fact that FileMaker Pro does not use words that are so "techie."  For example, the term layouts is used (the default is single form, running forms, and table view) for any table or queries.  The term "queries" is not used - just a different layout. The term "script" is used instead of "macro."

Standardized terminology SNOMED CT Update

Linda added the update for SNOMED CT® to the blog we maintain to support the Nursing and Informatics textbook at http://dlthede.net/Informatics/Chap16Documentation/chap16.html  Chapter 16 under Standardized terminology article.

Nursing Problem List Subsets of SNOMED CT. "The SNOMED CT® encoded Nursing Problem List Subset, intended for use in patients’ problem lists, is an output of the Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®) Metathesaurus® that is based on nursing diagnosis concepts found within the Metathesaurus."
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/Snomed/nursing_problemlist_subset.html

FileMaker Pro 12 vs Access Update

The past few weeks I have been learning how to use FileMaker Pro 12 so that I can teach it to students in a few weeks - there you go - the life of a teacher (learn one, do one, teach one).  The bottom line is that I really am liking FileMaker Pro!!  My son told me (sons are always smarter than mothers) that FileMaker Pro is more intuitive than Access and I have to agree.

FileMaker Pro makes fantastic use of "layouts."  Layouts are views of table and query data.  FileMaker Pro does not use the techie terms of queries.  The calculation formulas are identical to Access with the exception that FileMaker Pro uses semicolons ; instead of commas, in the calculations.

Okay - Microsoft - Access was the only app that kept me in the Microsoft system.  Since 1/3 of the students in the class I am teaching this summer are Mac users and I need to introduce them to database software - I am sucked into the Apple ecosystem.

I am also learning ScreenFlow software in order to show the students certain database functions.  Will have additional blogs on that software.  Learned an important lesson today on how the videos show up in YouTube in HD!  OMG!  Amazing!!  Thanks FL!!!!

Now if I could only do without any sleep I could be twice as productive :-)