Interesting Items – December 20, 2008

• You Can't Afford to Lose Mobile Readers

– This is a great article about the importance of mobile devices… This has a real effect in Education realms as well!

Interesting Items – December 19, 2008

• Stickler

– Good article about multi-lingual chats – “Chatting, Chatten or Chattare: Using a Multilingual Workspace for Language and Culture Learning”

Interesting Items – December 18, 2008

• Ace Your Finals with Flashcards from Study Stack [Flashcards]

– Perhaps a little late for finals around here, but this looks promising.

• National Survey of Student Engagement and Online Learning « Higher Education Management Group

– “Students taking most of their classes online report more deep approaches to learning in their classes, relative to classroom-based learners. Furthermore, a larger share of online learners reported very often participating in intellectually challenging course activities.”

Interesting Items – December 17, 2008

• WWW.MAKAYAMA.COM

– This is a new iPhone application that streams live video. I thought it was especially good for this audience because of the content. It has lots of news, and France and Germany TV shows. Great for students learning a foreign language

• New in Labs: Turn an email into a Google doc

– Another great addition to the Gmail suite of growing cool productivity stuff!!

• New Protest

– The last protest for Lively from the Digital Dream Team is planned for tomorrow (Thursday) from 8:30-9:00am.

Ironically they are holding it in a graveyard… That’s great!

Annotating Documents iTouch/iPhone – U.S. Historical Documents Application

Anyone that has read my blog for any amount of time knows that I am a big fan of digital books… but I am also a big fan of annotation and marking up documents and text. I especially love things that combine the two into one! That is the case with a recently released application called “U.S. Historical Documents.” (iTunes link, Website). (Cost is .99 cents). 

I have been a user of their Scriptures App for a while and am glad to see them branching out their AWESOME highlighting system to allow the ability to annotate other documents!  Here is a description from their site:

“U.S. Historical Documents contains over 100 of the most influential documents in U.S. history and they will be stored directly on your iPhone/iTouch. Quickly and easily find any text from any document with the fastest and most powerful search engine available on the iPhone. Watch the documents scroll automatically for you in both portrait and landscape mode. Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline. You can even assign bookmarks to any paragraph in any document for future reference. Highlight important words or phrases using the best highlighting system available.”

INCLUDED DOCUMENTS:

• Magna Carta
• Christopher Columbus Letter
• Virginia Charters
• Mayflower Compact
• First Thanksgiving Proclamation
• Stamp Act
• Declaration of Arms
• Declaration of Independence
• Fugitive Slave Law
• US Constitution
• Star Spangled Banner
• CSA Constitution
• Gettysburg Address
• Emancipation Proclamation
• World War II Documents
• I Have A Dream
• All Inaugural Address of All Presidents
• State of the Union Addresses
• 9/11 Documents
• And many more…

MAIN APPLICATION FEATURES:

• Auto-scrolling (both timed and tilt) – Helps me read books faster!
• Adjustable fonts, size, colors, margins, spacing, and alignment (you can even adjust the font size by using a pinching gesture while reading!)
• Highlighting – 12 background colors, 12 foreground colors, bold, italic, and underline  – Helps me really interact with the text!!
• Night (low light mode) – Black background with white text
• Application tips
• Bookmarks and bookmark folders
• Last location in each document is remembered
• When re-launched, you’re returned to the exact location you were last at while reading
• Search by words or phrases with instant search results
• Powerful advanced search options
• Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline

This really is a GREAT app… I highly recommend it and look forward to some more releases!  As you think about eBooks and education you can really begin to see the potential for eBooks replacing traditional books. 

I’ve said it before… and I’m sure I’ll say it again.  When you can use technology to do something better than real life… that is when you really have succeeded!! This is a perfect example of that!

Interesting Items – December 16, 2008

• SlideShare Presents Your Newest Social App: PowerPoint

– As we move more toward social applications, this is a great additions. The ability to create powerpoint presentations in PowerPoint and directly share them online with SlideShare…

Awesome!

• Steve Hargadon: Finding Conversations on the Web

– Steve created a great custom Google search engine that searches across all the Ning networks. I did a couple of test searches and it works great. A lot of really good information for educators in there!

• ZeptoPad handwriting notepad for iPhone

– This looks like a very interesting app that allows you to sketch brain maps and project it on a screen.

This is just another step in the direction of mobile devices becoming the main computer!

Interesting Items – December 15, 2008

• Memoreasy Lite

– This seems like a great application for learning! Uses voice to help students learn!

Interesting Items – December 13, 2008

• Wired Campus: 3 of the Funniest E-Mail Messages From Students to Professors — and What They Say About Technology – Chronicle.com

– This has some fun emails in it from students, but what is really telling about this article is the comments.

A discussion starts up between PhD’s and Techie’s. They both seem to attack each other for their own inferiority. For the Techie’s it’s the lack of a higher ed degree (according to the PhD’s). For the PhD’s, it a lack of knowledge about computers (according to the Techie’s).

This actually makes me a little sad since I have always seen us as colleagues. Can’t we all just get along and do our best to move the goals and visions of the University and academia forward? 🙂

• 10 Things About Lively

– This is a list created by students about what Lively (Google’s Virtual world) taught them. Good list for any virtual learning.

• iSpring Converter | Converter PowerPoint to Flash Converter

– This is a nice new way to convert powerpoints to flash for presentations. There is a freeware version as well! Thanks Neil for finding this!

• John M. Perez.Com: The 25 Best Alternatives To Your Enterprise Applications & Functions

– As we move even further into hard economic times, these open source alternatives are becoming even more important! Great collection here I got from a colleague!

Interesting Items – December 12, 2008

• Tar Heel Reader » Welcome

– This is a really great projects a professor did here on our campus. It is a huge collection of easy to read books make from Flickr pictures. I really like it and read a couple of books with my son off of my iPhone last night!

Interesting Items – December 10, 2008

• Digiteen Dream Team

– This is the blog the students created to protest the shutting down of Lively.

You know… if nothing else, this really teaches the students some GREAT lessons on real life and what to do when something doesn’t go your way.

They will release the transcript later this week from what they talked about today… stay tuned!

• Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Five Reasons Why Google Should Reconsider Lively

– A group of students created a virtual world in Lively and now it is shutting down. Today I attended a protest in Lively to have it not shut down! It was awesome to see students doing this!

They really did a great job with the protest! I hope they can figure out something with Google to keep this going!

Come on Google… listen up!

• Google For Educators

– Ancient Rome 3D Curriculum Competition. This is a great way to use virtual spaces to really help the students visualize!