Appy holidays

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Cam Hocking

Apps to get you started

With Christmas and the holidays fast approaching, there’s a chance that many of you may be unwrapping a shiny new phone or tablet this weekend. So after the obligatory first step (downloading Angry Birds) what apps should you download next?

Here’s our list of some of the great apps to download so you can make the most of your new toy. The list includes apps for Apple (IOS), Android, Windows mobile and Blackberry devices. Let us know your about your own favourites on Twitter or in the comments section.

Feedly (IOS, Android): Feedly integrates with your Google Reader account and presents your feeds in a clean, attractive interface. You don’t need to create an account as you can just login with your Google account, and any changes you make to your feeds and folders in Feedly are also updated in Google Reader.

Tune In Radio (IOS, Blackberry, Android, Windows mobile): Tune In Radio allows you to listen to thousands of internet radio feeds from across the world. There is a free version but the paid version adds the ability to record and save content for later.

Hootsuite (IOS, Blackberry, Android): The official Twitter app has come in for quite a bit of criticism, so we recommend Hootsuite as a great Twitter alternative for mobile devices. It’s reliable, allows you to access multiple accounts and also allows you to add columns which monitor hashtags. Tweetdeck is another good option and offers similar features.

Flipboard (IOS): Considered by many to be the IPad’s flagship app, Flipboard takes your RSS feeds, social network accounts and curated content to create a beautifully presented, personalised magazine. Flip through your articles, tap on content to browse and pinch to close. It’s a great example of why tablets are so good for consuming content. Zite is another good option for IOS, while Google is also testing out the newsreader market with its upcoming Google Currents app.

Evernote (IOS, Blackberry, Android, Windows mobile): If you haven’t signed up for Evernote yet, then prepare to be more organised than ever before. Evernote allows you to store notes on multiple devices, including your computer, and keep them all synced and updated. The mobile app lets you record voice memos and take pictures. All notes can be tagged and text is fully searchable, making this one of the most powerful organisational tools available.

Read It Later (IOS, Blackberry, Android) or Instapaper (IOS): Both of these apps allow you to save articles on your computer and then read the text version on your mobile device. The articles are presented in a clean, simple interface and are stored on your mobile device so you can read them even when you don’t have an internet connection.

Dropbox (IOS, Blackberry, Android): Dropbox gives you 2 gigabytes of online storage for free, and the mobile apps allow you to access your files on the go. This can also be a good way to get files to your IOS device without having to sync your device with a computer. Another powerful tool for transferring many types of files to your IOS device is GoodReader, which removes much of the hassle of trying to get documents from your computer to your IPad or IPhone.

Strip Designer (IOS): A powerful yet straightforward comic design tool, Strip Designer allows you to use your photographs and pictures to create comic strips. Add text, export directly to Facebook and make the most of your photographs.

Star Walk (IOS): Inevitably when you are showing off your new tablet someone will say “Well it doesn’t do anything a computer can’t do.” This is the app for putting these people in their place. Star Walk is a paid app, but it’s worth it for the wow factor when you hold your Ipad up to the night sky and see a full, interactive map of the stars and planets. Search for constellations, learn about the universe and more importantly get envious glances from your non tablet-toting friends.

Volumique

Posted on December 6, 2011 by slvadmin

Volumique is a French publishing company that explores book creation as a new computer platform, with particular emphasis on how physical paper books can interact with smart phones. They also experiment with interactive story telling and game.

With projects like Pirates (paper board game using smartphones), the book that disappears (a book you have 20 minutes to read before the pages turn black) and Balloon (an Ipad virtual reality pop up book), there are lots of lovely ideas to explore.

It’s wonderful to think that artists and publishers are thinking so creatively about where books can go in the future and how technology can augment the experience of storytelling.

To see more of their recent work, take a look at the Volumique Vimeo channel.

QR codes: Ria Coffey

Posted on November 9, 2011 by slvadmin

Guest blogger Ria Coffey, teacher librarian at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat, shares some ideas about using QR codes.

QR codes (abbreviated from Quick Response codes) are a great way to communicate with students and staff. QR codes are a form of barcode you can link to things like websites and read with your smart phone.

They have become popular because they can transmit a lot of information, including geo-coordinates, urls and text. You may have seen QR codes in magazine adverts, on a billboard or website.

To create a QR code, use a QR code generator like Kaywa.

For example, this is a simple message I made for students at my school.

To read the code, download a free application from the iTunes store to your smart phone. QR codes are free and fun to use and the students love reading the messages.

15 second place: new media tool from ACMI

Posted on October 27, 2011 by slvadmin

15 second place is a new website and mobile application from ACMI that lets people create and share 15 second videos, often based on themes and challenges. For example, a recent challenge involved moonwalking from one side of the screen to the other. When edited together, these videos will make one continuous moonwalk!

You can create playlists, add and search by user generated tags and view other people’s favourite videos. The site offers students an opportunity to use mobile devices to share moments and experiences from where they are, anywhere, any time. For more information, you can also visit the FUSE projects blog.

Act Wild

Posted on October 3, 2011 by slvadmin

Act Wild is a website, m-site and mobile app providing opportunities for students to take simple real world actions that benefit wildlife.

It offers information in a range of formats such as videos, fact sheets, images, and habitation mapping, and offers online actions that students can take if they want to get involved in saving the Sumatran Tiger or the Growing Grass Frog.

It also includes feeds on recent web or mobile initiatives by the Zoo and other wildlife organisations (for example, the use of iPads in Zoo learning activities, or new apps launched recently).

Act Wild is a partnership between Zoos Victoria and Greening Australia and is funded as part of the digital education content initiatives and strategies of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) through the Find Use Share Education (FUSE) project.

Foursquare in education

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Rachel

Foursquare encourages people to get outside and explore and share their environment, whether that be a city or a town. They do this by using their mobile device to share check-ins, tips, and to-dos, while earning badges and discovering new things. It is a geo-networking tool.

How this can be used in education as a tool for learning seems to be debatable. It is now linked with Google Earth, and perhaps may be great for geography teachers, and as an orientation tool for year seven students new to the college, to familiarise themselves with buildings and areas. It could also be a brilliant tool for school camps (especially excursions to cities). Furthermore, you can create apps using foursquare’s API, so media teachers may like the sound of this. The apps that have been created are listed in the 4sq app gallery (great incentive for technical-minded students).

4sq app gallery

Accredited Online Colleges have a post on their blog called ’30+ ways to use foursquare in education’. There are some good ideas listed, especially in the ‘field trips’ section.

Purdue University has a page in its wiki repository that details foursquare, including its history, how it relates to other applications, and its real world application. The real world application section includes lesson plans from geography, economics, technology, and music.

Foursquare seems to be a great networking tool for universities, with many getting on board. If any primary and secondary school educators are using foursquare as a teaching and learning tool, please leave a comment and share your experiences.

Evernote tips

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Rachel

Evernote cuts-back the time taken to collect, find, and organise your information. It is a really worthwhile tool that can be accessed on nearly every computer, phone, and mobile device. It enables you to save anything, from something you have seen in a website, to an image, sound, or scanned document. When you need to retrieve information again, you can search by keyword or tag. Below is Evernote’s introduction to what it has to offer:

Shep McAllister, a contributor to Hack College, believes that it is an ideal tool for school and has written ’10 great ways students can use Evernote to study smarter, not harder’:

I love the idea of students (and educators) working smarter not harder. Evernote would be a very useful tool for those teachers finding it hard to keep track of all the resources for various classes; for students trying to collate material for study notes; for art students capturing images on an excursion; for students collecting information from various resources on a subject, and; more.

Evernote

Posted on November 10, 2010 by slav

I’ve been using Evernote for a while now and so I am convinced that it is a terrific tool for library staff and students (in particular.) Anyone who wants to sync documents, websites and notes between their devices will find Evernote just so useful and user friendly. It’s kind of like cataloguing your entire computer’s contents and the ability to access them from all of your devices.

What does it do? The Evernote website explains more:

1. Capture everything.

Chances are, if you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you remember it. Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. Evernote will keep it all safe.

2. Organise it (or let us do it).

Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

3. Find anything fast.

Search for notes by keywords, titles, and tags. Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too.

Infinitely useful.

Put your thoughts, ideas, inspiration, and things to remember all in one place. Use Evernote for work, for play, and for everything that’s noteworthy.

Evernote is available for:

Mac
PC
iPod touch
iPhone
iPad
Android
Blackberry
Windows mobile
Palm Pre/ Palm Pixi

This video explains more.

Oh yes, and it’s free! There is a premium account, but you’d have to do an awful lot of web clipping and note saving to need it.

The iPad has landed, well almost…

Posted on January 28, 2010 by slav

The Apple iPad has landed. At 5am this morning (Melbourne time) Apple launched their latest creation, the iPad. It looks like a large iPhone or iPod touch.

It has a 25 CM display screen. One really cool demo covered the New York Times where users can read a copy that is laid out exactly like a real newspaper. It also has embedded video to add to the stories and menus to access other pages quickly.

A full size keyboard pops up when you use it in landscape. It has high definition video and lots of application for gaming. Photos can be added directly to Flickr and Facebook.

But the big thing for us guys is iBooks. The iBook store is on the iPad and Apple have already partnered with Penguin, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon and Schuster. Interestingly some prices for books were pictured during the launch. Although in US dollars, Twilight and The Lovely Bones were listed at $4.99. That’s very appealing. Obviously a full colour screen so covers display as per the real thing. Fonts can be changed and enlarged to suit individual readers.

Bad news though; iBooks is apparently only available in the US upon the release in March. This is a serious problem for any Apple market outside the US, but understandable really due to publishing territories. Wonder when other territories will come onboard? No doubt this will happen though, as iTunes wasn’t available to other territories at one stage.

But the most important and fairly basic question that we as library professionals and educators have to ask is will the iPad bring more people to reading? I think the answer is yes and surely that is what we are all about, what we strive for in our work every day.

A view of the bookshelf and eReader

iWork, a suite of applications has been added to the iPad. iWork includes speadsheets, documents and presentations and is compatible with Microsoft Office. The spreadsheets look amazing and a numeric keypad pops up for data entry. These apps will cost (US) $9.99 each, whereas the iWork complete suite for Macs cost a$129.

As there will be a full sized keyboard dock for the iPad, it makes using the iPad as a regular computer so much easier.

The device weighs approximately 680 grams and according to my calculations is just over 1 centimetre thick. The iPad will come in 16, 32 and 64GB. There are WiFi and 3G models. The 3G are unlocked and should be able to use any carrier.

Pricing starts at US$499 for 16GB, $599 for 32 and $699 64GB WiFi models. 3G models add an extra US$130. The WiFi model will be on sale in 60 days, this availability is worldwide. We won’t have to wait here in Australia. The 3G model will be on sale in 90 days, but international pricing for plans or prepaid accounts will take until June or July to be locked in. As the 3G model has a Sim card tray, here’s hoping that we’ll be able to use the Sim card for mobile broadband access.

The pricing here is important in terms of the Kindle DX. Currently at A$489, the Kindle will face stiff competition from the full colour multi-faceted iPad. Will be interesting to see how the availability of book titles pans out on the iPad. Perhaps it is no surprise that a free Kindle app for iPhone and iPod touch was released today.

Apple’s specifications can be accessed here. A VoiceOver screen reader should mean that vision impaired people can use the iPad. It seems there is no camera for video conferencing or Skyping and the rumour of solar power was just that. The Engadget people covered the iPad launch event live, so for lots of news, photos and specifications, head over there. And here is a short video of the launch:

Questions about how the iPad may impact on school libraries are pondered here.

Here is the official Apple video of the iPad.

Horizon Report 2010

Posted on January 20, 2010 by slav

The 2010 Horizon Report has been released. If you are new to the Horizon Report, it looks at the future impacts of technologies on teaching and learning.

The six technologies to watch that have been chosen for this year’s report are:

Near term (within 12 months)

Mobile computing
Open content

Second adoption (2-3 years)

Electronic books
Simple augmented reality

Far term (4-5 years)

Gesture-based computing
Visual data analysis

Of particular note to school libraries is possibly mobile computing and electronic books. The Horizon Report adds that:

Network-capable devices that students are already carrying, are already established on many campuses, although before we see widespread use, concerns about privacy, classroom management, and access will need to be addressed. At the same time, the opportunity is great; virtually all higher education students carry some form of mobile device, and the cellular network that supports their connectivity continues to grow. An increasing number of faculty and instructional technology staff are experimenting with the possibilities for collaboration and communication offered by mobile computing. Devices from smart phones to netbooks are portable tools for productivity, learning, and communication, offering an increasing range of activities fully supported by applications designed especially for mobiles.

Electronic books have been available in some form for nearly four decades, but the past twelve months have seen a dramatic upswing in their acceptance and use. Convenient and capable electronic reading devices combine the activities of acquiring, storing, reading, and annotating digital books, making it very easy to collect and carry hundreds of volumes in a space smaller than a single paperback book. Already in the mainstream of consumer use, electronic books are appearing on campuses with increasing frequency. Thanks to a number of pilot programs, much is already known about student preferences with regards to the various platforms available. Electronic books promise to reduce costs, save students from carrying pounds of textbooks, and contribute to the environmental efforts of paper conscious campuses.

Some other important points made by the report are

Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.

Institutions increasingly focus more narrowly on key goals, as a result of shrinking budgets in the present economic climate. Across the board, institutions are looking for ways to control costs while still providing a high quality of service. Schools are challenged by the need to support a steady — or growing — number of students with fewer resources and staff than before. In this atmosphere, it is critical for information and media professionals to emphasize the importance of continuing research into emerging technologies as a means to achieve key institutional goals. As one example, knowing the facts about shifting server- and network intensive infrastructure, such as email or media streaming, off campus in the current climate might present the opportunity to generate considerable annual savings.

New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate
metrics for evaluating them increasingly and far too often lag behind.

It must be noted that currently Higher Education authorities in the US are not promoting the Kindle due to its limitations for blind and vision impaired students. Thanks to Helen Boelens for this article.

School Library Association of Victoria

Category Archives: Mobile technology