Idea Flight Is Back In Business (And Classrooms)
December 10th, 2012 by Melanie Rivera
It’s with great excitement that we announce, Idea Flight v2.1.1 is now available and ready for you to update in the App Store! V2.1.1 addresses:
  • Local File lists – Open your PDF content using email, iTunes File Sharing and/or Dropbox Public Folder
  • Bluetooth – Connect with up to 3 Passengers using Bluetooth
  • Max file size – Upload and access files larger than 3MB
  • Pilot Controls – Highlighter and pinch/zoom features are now smoother than ever
  • UI improvements – Eraser now functions as a handy Undo tool
  • iOS 6 compatibility
  • And MORE!
And like before, Pilots and Passengers can:
  • Wirelessly and effortlessly sync devices to connect and share content anytime, anywhere
  • Opt to sign into Facebook or LinkedIn for a more personalized meeting experience
  • Take notes
  • Save to iBooks for revisiting (with Pilot’s permission)
As always, these updates and fixes would not be possible without dedicated users like you. We want to take a moment to thank every single person that wrote to us and provided feedback while we were working on this latest update. As you know, technology can be both intricate and unpredictable so your patience was appreciated throughout this whole thing. Keep the feedback coming and, as always, thanks for your support. Enjoy!

 

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Pilot Mode Fix: (Aka Some Aircraft Maintenance)
March 22nd, 2012 by Melanie Rivera

In response to the feedback we heard regarding Pilot mode freezing, we’re happy to announce that a new version addressing this issue (2.0.1) and is now available in the App Store.  We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.  Please be sure to update to 2.0.1 before your next presentation. And don’t worry; all your in-app upgrades will be restored.  If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at ideaflight at condenast dot-com.

Download Idea Flight 2.0.1 here
Download Idea Flight Enterprise 2.0.1 here

Again thank you to all our users who were so prompt in giving us feedback and spreading the word about our update. As soon as we heard Monday afternoon about this problem from users like you, we were able to respond and get a new build out by Tuesday evening.  As always, we value your feedback and any suggestions you have to make Idea Flight and Idea Flight Enterprise better. We couldn’t do it without you.

 

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The Much-Anticipated Iteration of Idea Flight is NOW AVAILABLE
March 19th, 2012 by Melanie Rivera
You know how the old saying goes–good things come to those who
wait–well, we thank you for your patience, loyalty and suggestions and hope
you think we’ve delivered good things in return.  After a number of
months of development and testing, we are proud to say Idea Flight and
Idea Flight Enterprise 2.0 are both now available in the iTunes App
Store. 2.0 has a number of new features (some are in-app upgrades
depending on whether you have Enterprise or not) which will enable you to
engage an audience even more (and to even more of an audience).

New Features and Upgrades in Idea Flight and Idea Flight Enterprise 2.0
include:
Flight Controls: Pilots can access this dashboard of tools that
includes: Highlighter, Pointer (but this is not your average red dot),
Eraser and more so they can call out areas of special interest or
emphasis on their content.*
Call Button: Passengers can signal to their Pilot that they have a
question or comment regarding a specific slide. These signals will appear
in a list format in the bottom right hand corner of the Pilot’s screen ­
accessible at anytime.*
Passenger Plus: Pilots can now connect to 30+ Passengers depending on
network connection and file size.*
Connect Using Facebook: Now Pilots and Passengers have the option to
join the Passenger List via Facebook in addition to LinkedIn.
And like always we are eager to hear your feedback, share your stories
with us and send us your thoughts.  We’re especially interested in your
experiences connecting more than 30 Passengers so stories, photos, video,
whatever you’ve got… Send them our way: ideaflight@condenast.com.

Last important item: This update is pretty important, even if you’re a
Passenger only as there is no backwards compatibility support. This means
if you’re running this version and you’re trying to connect with someone
on a previous version or vice versa it’s not going to work so make sure you
take the free update. You’ll thank us later, as will your future Pilots
and Passengers.

Have other questions? Check out our updated FAQs for
Thanks again for supporting Idea Flight, we hope you continue to allow us
get your great ideas off the ground.
*non-Enterprise users will need to upgrade to access these features.

 

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Idea Flight Hits the West Coast
March 15th, 2012 by Melanie Rivera

Over the past couple of months, our Idea Flight team has been on the road (and in the air), travelling the country, looking for new and innovative products scheduled to hit the market this season.  Along the way, we’ve also gotten the opportunity to meet some of our biggest fans and influencers! Here’s a look at where we’ve been:

Idea flight’s first stop was the Instructional Technology Strategies Conference (ITSC) in the beautiful Portland, OR. Since inception, ITSC, organized by the Organization for Educational Tech &Curriculum (OETC), has demonstrated the advances of using cutting edge technology specifically in the classroom. Educators and their colleagues, visited from all over the country to explore potential tools that will not only maximize classroom productivity but also do so in a cost effective way.

We were fortunate enough to speak at ITSC about the new and exciting features coming to Idea Flight Enterprise v2.0 and discuss in depth the results of our Beta Program. We heard first hand, what teachers were looking for in their classroom and what features they particularly wanted to see in our upcoming iterations. All awesome feedback!

A few weeks after our stop in Portland, we headed out for round 2 on the west coast for the Launch Festival in San Francisco, CA. Over 1,000 attendees, including 42 start-ups, flooded the Demo Pit and stage to debut or launch their new products (find a complete list of companies that launched, here) – some really impressive stuff! Oh yea – did we mention the President of Isreal made a stop to speak at the Fest? We had a great time demoing the new features in Idea Flight v2.0 to fellow techy friends and industry professionals alike.

Hoping to continue to get the Idea Flight word out there at these conferences so stay tuned for more coverage here on our blog or on Twitter: @ideaflight

 

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Beyond our wildest dreams
January 20th, 2012 by Juliana Stock

Like many things in life, the plan that you start with is never what you end up with… And if you’re really lucky it ends up being more than you could have ever imagined.

Late last summer we launched Idea Flight Enterprise (to get background on this, read this post).  We developed this version of Idea Flight for the educational market after hearing directly from teachers that they wanted this tool for their classroom.  What is so amazing, is that the education community saw potential and the ability to fill a need that we couldn’t have identified on our own and we knew we needed them to go further.

The Idea Flight team then enlisted the help of four amazing educators all from different parts of the country—Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana and New York—asking them to help us by using Idea Flight with their students in a classroom environment and be brutally honest in their feedback.  All we sent them were some loaner devices, a presentation giving a high level background on the app and it’s features…the rest was up to them.  After each group concluded their testing period they completed a survey and we Skyped with the teacher alone and then had a separate session with the teacher and students to go more deeply into their feedback.  What we never expected was that each teacher would comment on Idea Flight’s ability to surface and effect students with everything from visual impairments (some of which were unknown), to helping focus and engage students that are easily distracted and empower students who normally were self-conscious about presenting to their class.

If that wasn’t enough, we were also blown away by the incredible creativity these classes demonstrated in uncovering a new way to use Idea Flight to make presentations more impactful.  A great example of this was Paul Bogush’s 8th Grade Social Studies class at Moran Middle School in Wallingford, CT.  I could explain what they did, but he does it better in his blog post about the experience:

“There were many neat ideas.  Most groups came up with ways to not just use one iPad as the pilot controlling one presentation, but multiple iPads as pilots The students put four iPads together–each controlled by different students in the audience. Four presos had to get made so that when each slide was changed it fit in flawlessly with the other three.
“Another group took six iPads and put them together on a table and had the audience stand around them.”

 

We’ve had very smart, talented and creative people using Idea Flight, but this use of the application had never been surfaced to us before and we were blown away, so much so that we gave the iPads to this class for a few more weeks to see what else they could come up with…we may have more updates so stay tuned.

There’s no doubt technology has impacted education (and still continues to) and has transformed the lives of those with special needs, see an amazing example of this here, (be forewarned, you will need tissues).  What’s amazing is the profound impact connected tablets–like iPads—have made to become a game changer, like for this boy and his family.  Late last year the Vancouver Sun reported on how teachers are using iPads to reach autistic kids and the incredible results a Vancouver teacher is seeing, Technorati wrote about it’s impact on the blind and Education Week wrote about it’s impact on a student with Down Syndrome… But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We have been humbled by the experience of working with these classes and amazed at their creativity and how diligent they were in providing feedback.  We are also inspired by the idea that the app we created may have an impact on students, their teachers and ultimately their families and thank our willing participants who contributed to the future evolution of Idea Flight Enterprise and opened new doors of awareness for us that we never imagined possible. What started out as a fact-finding mission turned into a profoundly different experience and had we tried to plan the end results we certainly would have short-changed ourselves.

If you have a classroom that would like to test drive Idea Flight, contact us here. Below is a listing of the educators who participated in this initial test program and their blogs:

Carla Beard: webenglishteacher
Adam Bellow: edutecher (see his Educational Tech Commandments–we were blown away by them)
Paul Bogush: blogush
Vicki Davis: coolcatteacher

 

 

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