Tech on the Side

Tech on the Side is a tech-tips show presented by Jason P. Heisel, who is known online as The Tech Spec, and it pays steady attention to learners and the classroom. Its backbone is the practical walkthrough. Heisel gives the exact path: open a contact, tap Edit, scroll to Ringtone and turn on the Emergency Bypass toggle, and that person's calls get through Do Not Disturb. A second setting does the same for texts. His Chrome trick, credited to a tweet from Tony Vincent, deletes the names from bookmarks so more of them fit on the bar. He offers it as help for a self-declared tabaholic who once counted 64 tabs in a single window. A font-pairing site is explained down to its sliders, its generate button and the lock that keeps a chosen typeface in place. These tips run in segments with names like Tech Tip of the Week and Tech Tool of the Week. The focus on learning is out in the open. Book creation in the iOS Pages app gets attention for what it could do for a learner's first try at publishing, now with Apple Pencil illustrations. Another episode looks back at a mini-series on cutting paper use in classrooms and ahead to going paperless again. One November episode covers NaNoWriMo and NaNoBlogMo alongside Medium's series feature. Not every detour is technical. Episodes cover research on improving mood, boredom, photos of school lunches from around the world that raise questions about what children are fed, and an interview that challenges the Eurocentric roots of how art is taught. The news comes with commentary, not just headlines. A CES segment lists robots that mix cocktails and fold laundry before ending on a $7,000 smart toilet with Alexa-linked speakers, ambient lighting and a heated seat. He looks past the clickbait headlines calling an Apple accessibility feature a spying tool, grumbles about Google's constant redesigns while admitting he half loves them, and urges listeners to install an iOS update soon. A roundup of articles from his Flipboard magazine takes in Snapchat's premium video series in the UK, iPad Pro comparisons and how to stop videos from autoplaying in popular web browsers. He calls the jokes 'under-caffeinated humor'. The show also reuses its own archive: one clip show replays Season 2's tips with quips in between, and a roundup brings back past tips that newer listeners may have missed. Heisel also asks listeners to send in a hobby or passion for a new segment, by tweet or through Anchor, and the sign-off heard across these episodes is 'stay tuned and stay connected'.