May 24, 2013

App of the Week: Notability

What is it?

Notability is one of the best note-taking apps on the market. Notability allows you to do handwriting, typing and audio recording. It also has the ability to annotate imported or new pictures and PDFs.

What does it do?

Notability is a multi-functional note taking app. Features include: full-featured handwriting, PDF annotation, word processing, audio recording and media insertion. You can enhance your notes by adding pictures from your photo stream or taken with iPad camera, insert web clips, figures and drawing. You can crop, resize and draw on images to make them the way you want.

The app allows auto-sync with cloud service such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Box. This way you can always be sure that your noted are backed up. With the library organisation feature you can keep your note organised and protected. Notes can be imported as PDFs and RTFs from the cloud servers or web. Also, as .doc, .ppt, and .xls files as PDFs using Google Drive.

How can I use it in my teaching?

The apps is great for note taking during lectures, seminars and meetings. At York St John University we have also successfully used Notability to provide electronic peer feedback on each groups science display.

How much does it cost?

The app costs £1.49 and is available on the App Store.

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May 23, 2013

My iPads journey to Holland…

During my second year on the Business Management course I was required to complete a work placement within one of my modules. So, when the opportunity came to go to Rotterdam for this placement, I grabbed the two most important things I would need, my iPad and my passport, and jetted off.

During my placement, I was a representative for York St John as part of an intensive programme funded by the European Commission. In a group of 30 students from 6 European countries we worked together to produce a series of reports, a video, a training model, and a presentation looking at different business values within small to medium enterprises.

For the very busy two weeks I was there, the significance of my iPad became much more apparent. This lightweight technology allowed me to leave my heavy laptop behind when commuting across the city as well as making it easier and faster to access its content. The day to day uses of my iPad mainly included typing documents using Office HD2. Even though this app made it a lot easier to create documents and record notes I think having an iPad keyboard would make it a lot easier to type. As well as this, I will also be investing in Quickoffice Pro HD for my next academic year. It’s more expensive than the basic office package but I feel that the added tools it provides will outweigh the cost. I would reccommend this app to any student who uses their iPad for note taking. I also used the camera on my iPad to capture the events and sights of the trip.

While there, I noticed two other students from Belgium and Hungary had iPad minis with them. After discussions, they informed me that their main uses including receiving emails and making notes. As well as this, they claimed their calendar function was invaluable. It seems there was a lot more recreational use of apps than academic. However, they both agreed that having their iPad made accessing information relevant to their studies a lot easier. Also, having quick access to their calendars meant better organisation for assignments and lectures.

After an intensive and rewarding trip I can safely say that I couldn’t have been as efficient without my trusty tablet!

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May 17, 2013

App of the Week: iMovie

What is it?

iMovie allows you to create professional movies and trailers with ease from your iPad.

What does it do?

iMovie allows you to shoot and edit your video to produce HD quality (1080p) movies. You can record directly from the app or import video clips from the camera roll. The app has all the common functionality for video creation and editing including:

The ability to import sound, video and photos
The ability to set transitions
The ability to record audio (for voice overs)
The ability to add cast and credit pages
and built in theme for professional video production

Once you movie is complete you can share in on popular video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. You can also save the movie to your iPads camera roll – this can be opened in Fuse and uploaded directly to the institutions media library. If you are fortunate to have Apple TV available in your classroom you can use Airplay to stream the movie to a HDTV.

How can I use it in my teaching?

If you want your students to create professional videos using iPads then you should definitely consider using iMovie. Here are two examples of how students have used iMovie to create videos.

The first is by two video is by two Initial Teacher Education students (Joshua Burnell and Frances Sladen). They used iMovie on the iPhone to produce a video for there science related class assembly.

The second video was created by a Emma Crosby who used iMovie to film and edit her BSL portfolio.

The creation and sharing of video content is something that can be embedded across many subject areas. The use of video provides students with the opportunity to further develop there digital literacy skills, an essential attribute that all students should leave university with.

How much does it cost?

iMovie is only available on iOS devices. It can be purchased from the app store for £2.99.

The windows equivalent is Windows Movie Maker, and Android users should check out WeVideo.

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May 10, 2013

App of the Week: Dragon Dictation

What is it?

Dragon is a voice recognition application that allows you to speak and instantly converts your speech into text. It’s a quick and easy way of getting words “on the screen”. The app is available on iPhone, iPad and on second and third generation iPod Touch.

What does it do?

The app is very simple and easy to use. Just tap on the screen and start dictating. The app will provide a voice-to-text transcription of your speech. Using existing sharing features within the app you can easily use the text to message, email, facebook, tweet or just copy and paste wherever you need to.

For best result, you need to speak calmly and clearly. Dragon Dictation supports a number of foreign languages, as well as British and American Englishes.

How can I use it?

Dragon app is great for capturing ideas and dictating thoughts. It can be helpful for students who struggle with writing or typing. It’s also useful for hands-free text input for when you’re on the go. Note that Dragon Dictation requires network connection, wifi or 3G.

There is also a more advanced desktop dictation software available from the same developers, like Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Premium for Windows. Although the Dragon app can be used for dictating essays and longer texts, the desktop version is definitely better for it, is more accurate with voice recognition. However, it is more pricey ranging from £39.99 to over £100.

How much does it cost?

The app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is FREE.

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May 3, 2013

App of the Week: ReferenceME

What is it?

ReferenceME is an incredibly simple app that allows you create a bibliography by simply scanning barcodes of books and organise the list in in an alphabetical order.

What does it do?

ReferenceME app lets you scan ISBN book barcodes using a mobile phone camera and converts it into a bibliography. You can also manually enter journal articles and the app will format the information for you into a bibliographical entry. The app supports the major of referencing styles used by universities and libraries so that you can convert your bibliography within seconds. The referencing styles include: Harvard , Vancouver, Oxford, Chicago Arts, Chicago Science, MLA, MHRA, APA.

The app is great for maintaining your reference list up-to-date in an easy and effective way. The app will automatically organise the list in an alphabetical order. When you have logged in all the references you can simply email the list to yourself and copy-paste it into a Word Document. With an option of creating multiple projects, the app allows you organise your references within different folders. The app requires internet access for the scanning function; however you can always enter all details manually.

How can I use it?

Keeping an up-to-date reference list for multiply assignments or when writing academic papers.

How much does it cost?

The app costs £0.69 and is available from the following online stores:

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May 2, 2013

Our first iPad Cafe!

The iPad project team thought it would be a great idea to have a place for us to meet students from York St John and discuss:

how they currently use their mobile devices
apps that we use
what they think about iPads.

All students that had a device, be it a smart phone, iPad or other tablets were welcome to our meeting. We firstly spoke about the apps that we have discovered as a result of being part of the iPad project:

ReferenceMe - this is a great app for students who need to include a variety of references in their assignments. Students simply scan the barcode of a book using their devices, and the app will create the bibliography and citations in moments. You can also manually enter journal articles. ReferenceME then enables you to email all your references straight to your email account to then copy-paste into your assignment.

Pages - this is another great app for students. It works just like a word document where you can edit and create documents to record notes, write assignments, etc. However, as we discussed in the iPad Cafe, students with a smartphone may find it limiting to use this app due to the small screen. Pages is a lot more useful on a bigger screen such as an iPad.

Wunderlist - this is a very good organisational app that allows you to manage and share your daily to-do lists. For example, if you are doing a group presentation you can share tasks and sub-tasks with everyone within your group so they all know what they have to do as part of their contribution.

Socrative - the app allows teachers to create quizzes with multiple choice or short answer questions so that the class is more engaged in seminars. This app is available to use on the smartphone as well. It’s a great app for teachers to monitor whether students have understood the content of the seminar. There are a student and teacher apps.

The other students then spoke about the apps they use:

Skitch - one of the students mentioned that she uses Skitch a lot for her studies. She uses it to annotate PDF files. She said it was very visual, colorful and easy to use. This app is also a great one to use in the classroom for students to annotate fellow peers’ posters/presentations.

Evernote - another student spoke about how she uses Evernote. She uses this app to document her financial data, save her ideas for assignments and take notes on her lectures. She spoke about how she shares her ideas with her fellow peers.

Bible – a theology student mentioned how she uses a Bible app to aid her studies. She finds reading through it on her smartphone an easier way than reading an actual book.

We also discussed how they would feel about having an iPad for their lectures/seminars. Some said that they would find it a distraction and would end up going on social media sites and playing on games. Others said that they were used to multi-tasking and didn’t get too distracted by technology. They said that they would most likely check their Facebook/Twitter account but then be able to get straight back onto concentrating with their work. It depends on the person to whether they would be easily distracted by an iPad or not.

What students said they liked about iPads:

Light and can easily fit in your bag;
Great for reading books/journals;
Fast;
Amazing for organizing yourself;
So many apps to suit your needs.

One of the students mentioned that she had a an iPad session as part of the iPad project, and she found iPads very useful. She said they were very convenient for looking up information online whilst typing up notes onto the computer. It saved her from having to open loads of tabs on her computer and flicking backwards and forwards to different windows.

Overall, out first iPad Cafe was a success and we very much enjoyed interacting with students and finding out what they found useful about their own mobile devices. When we asked whether the students if they would like to use iPads in their lectures/seminars they all said they would love to!

We are looking forward to our next iPad cafe!

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April 30, 2013

First Business School iPad Session

Last Thursday, 25th April was the first time the iPad project team has been involved in the classroom with the Business School students. It was a session taught by Brendan Paddison on the Tourism and Industries module and facilitated by Lena Henderson from Learning & Teaching Development and myself, a 2nd year Research Assistant for the iPad project.

1st first year Business Management students worked in the groups using iPads to do a collaborative research online and then creating a presentation using Keynote app. When presenting, students filmed each other using a Fuse app that allows us to upload the videos on the YSJ Helix Media Library. This meant students can now view their presentations and review their performance in preparation for their presentation assessment.

Being a second year Business Management student myself, this session gave me a unique perspective into this classroom scenario, as I have previously completed the tourism module which the students were taking part in. It made me aware that something like this would have been so helpful to me when I was in the same situation as they are now. It would have given me the chance to really improve my presentation skills so that when it came to second year I would have been more practised.

The following day me and Lena Henderson ran the same session with a different group of students from the same course. Instead of recording the presentations through Fuse app we decided it would be better to first record through the iPad video recorder and then upload it to Fuse later. This meant we could play back some of the videos straight away in the classroom and discuss and analyse their performance immediately. At the end of the session we used an quiz app called Socrative. The quiz allowed us to gain instantaneous student feedback about the use of iPads in their session. Examples of student feedback attained:

“Quick and easy, very effective.”

“They gave access to multimedia facilities previously unavailable in these sessions.”

There have been so many ways in which my iPad has helped me in my classes, from my calendar to ‘office HD‘ for note taking. I think during the second year of the course when you have more work to manage and more pressure with the assignments starting to count towards your final degree mark you can appreciate everything the iPad has to offer and utilise it.

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April 26, 2013

App of the Week: Nearpod

What is it?

Nearpod is an interactive educational app that enables teachers to use their iPads to manage content on students’ iPads, iPhones or iPods. It combines presentation, collaboration, and real-time assessment tools into one integrated solution. It is reviewed to be one of the first teacher’s apps on the market.

What does it do?

This app has a multimedia platform which allows teachers create new presentations using built-in templates or upload existing slides, and add video, text, images or web pages for their lessons. Then using a Teacher app version, teachers share their slides with students, who connect to a Student app version on their devices. Teachers have control over the pace of the lesson and they can monitor and collate students’ responses to quizzes and polls.

How can I use it in my teaching?

1. Create Interactive Content: Use features such as quizzes, videos, polls, drawing tools, and more.
2. Engage: In the classroom teachers can share content with their students and manage the flow of the lecture.
3. Assess: Teachers can assess learning in real time, and personalize instruction for students. Additionally, teachers can log in to www.nearpod.com to access post-session data and obtain detailed activity reports.

How much does it cost?

Nearpod app is free and available only on Apple store for iPad, iPhone and iPod. Paid subscriptions are also available: ‘Gold’ with extended features ($10 per month) and ‘School’ with extensive support provided.

You can watch some case studies on Vimeo – http://vimeo.com/nearpod.

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April 23, 2013

Applied Theatre: Utilising Technology to Analyse Workshop Processes

Living in a ever-more technological world we often discover technological tools and apps, that can be applied to many different disciplines and practices. This morning a group of students from the BA Theatre course, who attend the Schools module, were introduced to an app – ‘Coach’s eye‘ to use for analysing workshop practice. The session was taught collaboratively between Kay Hepplewhite, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Dasha Zhurauskaya of Learning and Teaching Development here at York St John University.

The session began with students creating workshop scenarios that involved teaching younger children and some issues that may be faced when teaching. Using the ‘Coach’s eye’ app on the university’s iPads’, the students could record the workshop and then later analyse strengths and weaknesses of the workshop delivery. The app allows for a commentary to be added over the video, it also allows users to highlight specific areas in the video and to zoom in for deeper analysis.

In discussion after the session many of the students agreed that the use of the technology allowed for a closer critique of how a facilitator delivers a workshop. The app also could be used in general theatre practice for analysing live performances. Kay Hepplewhite asked students whether they would like feedback given through an app such as ‘Coach’s eye’. Many responded with positive feedback for use of the app commenting ‘it’s such an easy form to be able to display shortfalls and strengths of practice’. The videos created can also be easily shared on sites such as YouTube and the University’s Media Library.

Personally I can begin to see the benefits of the integration of technology when trying to analyse workshop process. It also stands as a form of documentation for a devising process for performance. After spending more time using the ipad and associated apps, it will become a useful asset for both an applied theatre practitioner and a theatre maker.

On behalf of the module participants, I would like to thank Dasha Zhurauskaya of Learning and Teaching Development for introducing the technology and both Kay Hepplewhite and John Merrylees for organising and facilitating the session.

Simon Bedwell
www.simon-bedwell.co.uk

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April 19, 2013

Project Update

There has been quite few things going on this week in regards to the iPad project. On Monday, 15th April, Daniel and I gave an invited talk at the Teesside University showcasing two case studies of using iPads for peer review and assessment. We thought the session went well and we got very positive responses from participants, which we collected using Socrative. The slides from the presentation can be found below:

We have worked with iPad Student Researchers on planning the first iPad café, which will take place next week on the 24th April. The iPad cafe will provide students with the opportunity to share how they use iPads to assist there own learning. We have had a lot of interest from students even though it’s a busy exam and dissertation time for many.

Now that the academic year is coming to an end there are only three weeks of teaching left. The iPads are booked out for a number of sessions over those three weeks, including some new ones which we have been planning this week. New sessions include the use of Coach’s eye for video reflection on a Applied Theater module and using ADOC app in OT seminars. Exciting!

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