Automate your Dropbox with Wappwolf

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Cam Hocking

Wappwolf is a free service which connects with your Dropbox or Google Drive account and lets you set automated tasks. It has a number of useful features and is a handy way to automate many time consuming tasks such as file conversions or basic image editing. In particular it works very well when it comes to converting audio, e-book or picture files, which can then be saved back into your Dropbox folder, uploaded to Google Drive and Evernote or emailed automatically to an address you define. Because of the excellent integration with Dropbox these automations could be particularly useful for getting student work off an iPad or other mobile device.

Wappwolf works in similar fashion to If This Then That which we featured earlier this year. You can select a folder in your Dropbox that Wappwolf will watch. As soon as a new file is added to that folder the task you have defined will begin. There are a wide range of tasks that Wappwolf can complete. You can convert files, edit an image, turn a text file into a PDF or upload a picture to your Twitter or Facebook account. You don’t even need to have a computer running as all of the automation is done in the cloud.

As an example, you could set Wappwolf to watch a folder in your Dropbox and as soon as you add a picture to that folder it could be converted to black and white and then sent to Evernote. Or you could create an automation that automatically sends any picture you save in a folder to your Grandmother! A free Wappwolf account lets you define up to 10 different automations.

Here are some of the automation options available:

For audio files: Convert to MP3, WAV or MP4

For picture files: Stamp a logo on an image, Convert to black and white, Upload to Flickr

For documents: Convert to PDF, Convert ebook, Send to Kindle, Upload to Google Drive

An example action from Wappwolf. This action stamps a logo on to an image and saves it back to Dropbox.

There are many other options available for Dropbox and also options for Facebook, Google Drive or Box. The best way to understand the range of options is to explore Wappwolf’s features, so have a look at our guide to getting started and see how you can use Wappwolf to make you life easier.

Test drive: MyHistro

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Catherine Hainstock

There is a new timeline tool in town! Actually MyHistro is more than just a timeline – it has a built-in mapping tool too.

MyHistro allows users to build timelines around a theme or story with options for including text, video and photos. Every ‘event’ the user adds to their story can be geo-located on a Google Map. Stories can be developed by individuals or as a collaborative effort; the owner simply invites others to co-author a timeline. Comments are limited to registered users only. Registration is free with unlimited space and number of timelines you can create.

And if that isn’t wonderful enough, MyHistro has the added bonus of allowing your audience to view your ‘stories’ three different ways. Present them in a slideshow format, as a chronological stack or as ebooks with turn-able pages. Stories can also be embedded into blogs and websites or exported for uploading onto Google Earth.

Have a look at what others have been doing with the tool. The site offers three search options as well as a tag cloud for browsing the gallery. The gallery of stories is growing daily. There is a free app available for iPhone/iPads that allows you to edit your own stories and search others’.

MyHistro was initially blocked by our school’s filtering system because it was classified a social networking site. I asked and had no problem getting it unblocked.

I found it very easy to use once I understood the difference between events and stories. The Help section covered most of the questions I had and there is a new MyHistro blog with useful articles. I found the Terms of Use were a little confusing; when joining I had to tick a box confirming that I was old enough to use social networking in my country but on reading the Terms of Use it is very clearly written (in all caps!) that users must be 13 years old to register.

I can really see our History and Integrated Studies students using this to map migration stories, global events and issues, the spread of ideas from one culture to the next. English students could map out story-lines and hero’s journeys (or author’s journeys). I can also envisage uses in health studies such as tracking epidemics.

With so many possibilities you’ll want to pass this one on to colleagues in all subject areas.

Twitter announces updated widget features

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Cam Hocking

If you have a blog or website it can be a good idea to include a panel displaying your recent tweets. The process of adding a stream of tweets to your blog is now much easier with the addition of a widget maker in Twitter.

This new feature lets you choose between displaying all of your tweets, your favourites or even a search of a particular hashtag. We’ve included a sample widget below which displays tweets with the #vicpln hashtag. The widget also lets visitors to your site send you a tweet if they are logged into Twitter.

Tweets about “#vicpln”

To access the new widget option, login to Twitter and go to the Settings menu. Once you’ve set up the widget you’ll get a code to embed the stream in your blog. To help you with the process we’ve put together a guide to adding a Twitter stream to your blog.

Howard Rheingold talks about being Net Smart

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Cam Hocking

The Circulating Ideas podcast recently featured a fascinating discussion with author and digital literacy expert Howard Rheingold. Rheingold’s book Net Smart explores literacy in a digital age and touches on some of the skills that are critical for learning, particularly in regards to online information access.

You can download Steve Thomas’ interview with Howard Rheingold from the Circulating Ideas podcast stream (Itunes). In the interview Rheingold speaks about the role of Wikipedia in research, Facebook’s threat to an open web culture and some of the skills that all learners need to find reliable and authoritive information online. Rheingold also advocates for the importance of librarians in teaching critical literacy skills and modelling effective research techniques.

For more of Howard Rheingold’s thoughts about the topic you might also read an interview with him by Henry Jenkins entitled How did Howard Rheingold get so Net Smart? You can find links to the three part interview below and keep up to date with Howard’s work through his website and on Twitter.

How did Howard Rheingold get so Net Smart? Interview: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Why it’s worth picking Pocket

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Cam Hocking

Pocket is one of the many tools that aims to help you keep track of web content. This free app serves as a good way to save articles and videos and is particularly useful for storing content when you are on the move so you can then explore it at a more convenient time.

Formerly known as Read It Later, Pocket was recently renamed and redesigned. It offers a very smooth interface and a number of useful features. Bookmarks can be added via email, through a bookmarking button that can be installed in your web browser or through a number of different mobile apps that can integrate with your Pocket account. Many mobile Twitter apps and RSS readers now include a ‘Read Later’ option which will let you save interesting content to Pocket with one click. Considering many people read their Twitter feed when on the move or in a rush, being able to save this content for a more convenient time is very useful. One excellent feature of Pocket is that any links that have been added via a tweet will also retain the content of the original tweet. In this way you can save a link shared by someone, explore it later and then still be able to keep track of who shared the original link.

Saving to Pocket from Tweetbot on iPad

Pocket’s biggest competitor is Instapaper, which has been one of the most popular article saving options for quite a while. While the two services offer similar features, there are enough differences between the two to mean that you could make use of both. Instapaper is more suited for saving longer articles and provides a more elegant reading experience. But Pocket is perfect for saving shorter articles, videos or pictures. The reading list view (below) in both the mobile app and the web interface is also much more attractive than Instapaper. Unread content is presented in a magazine style layout, and once you select and view a link you can choose to either keep it by marking it as read, star it to keep it as a favourite or choose to delete the link permanently from your library. Saved content can also be tagged or searched.

Your unread links are presented in a magazine style layot

Pocket isn’t comprehensive enough to manage a large library of links in the way Diigo does, nor does it provide as smooth a reading experience as Instapaper. But the integration with a number of other mobile apps, as well as an attractive reading layout means it is the perfect option for keeping track of those video clips and short articles that you want to explore when you have more time.

Pocket for IOS

Pocket for Android (Google Play store)

Springpad

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Cam Hocking

In recent times there has been a deluge of online tools that promise to help you organise all aspects of your life. Many services keep track of your bookmarks, notes or contacts, but only a few services try to do it all. One of the best and most comprehensive is Springpad.

On first impressions Springpad seems very similar to Evernote as it organises items using notebooks and tags. Simple text notes can be created and then added to notebooks. However, Springpad has quite a few features not available in Evernote. Items can be manually added and then grouped into types such as recipes, books, movies, contacts, bookmarks or products. You can also make checklists or create events that can be synced with your Google Calendar.

Where Springpad really shines is the search function which helps you to automatically add an item to your collection. You can search for a book title, then add this to your collection, add a short note or review and mark the item as ‘read‘ or ‘want‘. Notebooks can be shared and collaborators can be invited, so you could have students creating their own wishlist of books or building a shared page with reviews of their favourite novels. With categories for film, television, books and recipes Springpad would also be a useful tool for shared curriculum planning for teachers across many subject areas.

Adding a book using search

One brilliant feature is the barcode scanner in the mobile app (available for IOS and Android), which lets you scan product barcodes and then add the item to your collection. It’s a great way to quickly index your personal library as the app will also search the web and find cover art and details of the book. This function would also be useful for students keeping track of their research. The app also includes a QR code scanner.

Barcode scanner in the Springpad mobile app

When saving a web page the Springpad clipping tool does a good job of recognising the type of resource you are saving. However, in terms of saving the full text of webpages Springpad is not quite as powerful as Evernote or a dedicated bookmarking tool like Diigo. It doesn’t clip an entire page and then allow you to search within that saved page. What Springpad does exceptionally well is saving recipes, books, films or products and then automatically adding the details of the item.

Saving an item with the Springpad toolbar

The lovely visual nature of notebooks combined with easy sharing and collaboration options means Springpad definitely deserves a place on your device. It’s the perfect tool for keeping track of many aspects of your life. With some minor improvements to the web bookmarking feature Springpad may well become the all in one organisational tool that many people have been craving.

Interactive Images with ThingLink

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Catherine Hainstock

Today’s post comes from regular contributor Catherine Hainstock of Vermont Secondary College.

Cliché: A picture is worth a thousand words.

But wouldn’t it be great if your students could embed those thousand words into the image to demonstrate their understanding or to elaborate on sections of an image? Well now they can.
ThingLink is a simple-to-use website designed to make images more interactive. Originally created for fashion marketing in Europe, it works similar to tagging photos on Facebook or Flickr but goes one step further by allowing the user to embed ‘media-rich tags’ into the image that link back to any web content.

Ulla Engestrom, founder and CEO of ThingLink said:
ThingLink is changing how people engage with photos by transforming them from a static image, into a navigational surface for exploring rich, relevant content that enhances the viewer’s knowledge and experience.

Scroll your mouse over the map of ancient Rome (below) from the ThingLink Gallery and you’ll begin to see the learning/teaching potential of this ‘in-image interaction tool’.

Enhanced images can be embedded into blogs or emailed for people to view. Site registration is free with a limit of 50 images. Once signed up to the site tagging the images is a simple upload, copy and paste process.
Imagine the possibilities for students to create character studies, enhance mapping, curate content, elaborate on mind-maps, or explain a design or creative processes. It could be a whole new way to annotate or a new platform for interactive storytelling.

YouTube video editor

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Cam Hocking

Recently a new Video Editor function was added to YouTube. It is available to any user with a YouTube account and allows for simple timeline based video editing from within your web browser. The editor has a similar feel to Windows Movie Maker and lets users create movies from existing clips uploaded to a YouTube account.

If you want to create a new project from multiple video files it is best to upload each file and set each to private so only you can view them. Then you can edit your project together and publish the final results for all to see.

The editor enables you to search for Creative Commons videos which can also be included in your project. Music tracks can also be inserted. Any edited video projects which are then published to YouTube also include an attribution of any music or videos used.

We had a look at the editor and recorded a short guide to getting started with this very useful new feature. The Youtube Video Editor is easy to use, has all of the basic features you’d expect and may be the perfect option for putting together your video projects.

Watch below for our Guide to getting started with the Youtube Video Editor. Please note- the video below shows us accessing the video editor through the Video Manager page. The button appears to have moved, but you can still access the editor by visiting http://www.youtube.com/editor and then logging in to YouTube.

School Library Association of Victoria

Category Archives: Web 2.0 tools