Signal Transduction

Happy New Year!

With the rise of mobile devices, it seems inevitable that the majority of students will use tablets and other non-computer based devices as the primary means to access online content and course related materials. I have been doing some loose thinking about what this means to my teaching and in particular this course. How would you use mobile devices to introduce new students to the world of content creation and digital creativity?

My holy grail is to have the course text be a native, interactive app that could be downloaded and installed onto my students devices. Conduit Mobile will allow me to get closer toward that goal, but I will need to become a better programmer to get a truly interactive mobile app. In the meantime, their app building suite allows me to deploy an app that aggregates blog postings, web pages, audio playlists and YouTube channels.

Ideally,  students would use mobile devices (iPads, smart phones, or just tablets in general) to connect to the class, generate content, and connect with one-another.  What makes the iPad a good choice for use in the classroom is due to all of the free infrastructure available for use in the form of apps. Here is a list of what I feel would be good apps to start with:

Twitter – Let’s start with the app that students either love or hate.  I like twitter as a tool to investigate rapidly changing resources through searches.  I can look for trends and fixes that arise when dealing with issues like Pro Tools or Final Cut Pro.  Yes, there may be a higher than normal amount of inane chatter, but that is true of many web-based resources.  Your results depend on your search queries.  With over 300 million users, I find it hard to believe that there is nothing to be gained from this tool.  Just remember that twitter is best thought of as a collection of bread crumbs to find your way and should not be your meal.

Facebook – This may seem counter-intuitive for many educators.  Why introduce the very app that we struggle against for our student’s attention?  I can think of a few off the top of my head, although I am sure you can come up with others.  The first is that it is probably the most ubiquitous piece of software around (operating systems excluded);  nearly everyone is familiar with it.  Last term I surveyed my students to see who was using Facebook and 22 out of 23 responses polled “yes”.  Those that are new to Facebook can figure it out in a short amount of time and posting or linking to media (images/video/music) is easy to learn.  For classes, I create pages in Facebook for students to post work to.  Students can then comment on one the work of another in a way that they feel comfortable with.  The result, discussions that happen more organically than what I see take place in traditional LMS forums.

Flipboard – Flipboard is a great app to roll your own magazine.  It can aggregate items from your social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  You can choose from news sites or other blogs to create a very compelling way to read that takes advantage of the swipe features of mobile devices.

Diigo & Diigo Browswer – So now that you have gathered all of this information and are successfully building your personal learning network, how can you access your resources/links on multiple computers or devices and keep it up to date?  Diigo is a social bookmarking service.  My first approach to this tool was to use it as a simple method of accessing my links no matter what browser or device I was on. I wasn’t so concerned with the social component when I first started using social bookmarks.  I am slightly more interested these days, but I also like being able to share them in places like my blog through the generation of RSS feeds.

Other apps that ideally would be pre-loaded for students to use would be:

• Facetime -OK, I know that this comes with the iPad, but I wanted to highlight it’s importance in conferencing/communication, especially when it comes to online instruction.  This app is a nice way to add a bit of your face to the course you are teaching, allowing students to put a live face to what can seem like an impersonal course.
• 123D sculpt – Maybe not necessary, but this app can give an easy (and currently free!) introduction to 3D sculpting
• PhotoShop Express – to do simple image adjustments.
• Evernote – Evernote is one of those must have apps that always makes top 10 lists and for good reason.  It allows you to take notes, record audio, video, and take pictures in a notebook format.  It functions like you wish Google Docs would function on the iPad.  Any notes or documents that you put into Evernote can be synced to any device or computer you have Evernote installed on or in other words, a cloud app, reducing the need for reliance on thumbdrives and lost access to data (provided you don’t accidentally delete notes).
• Kindle – The only reason I chose this app over the already installed iBooks is because of the price of some books that I want to use in the classroom.  I know that some folks may have reservations about Amazon, but when it comes to reducing the cost of textbooks, they are a factor to be considered.
• TED – Technology, Entertainment, Design.  If you haven’t heard about TED talks, be prepared to lose a few hours checking out some great talks by some of the folks at the cutting edge of technology and cultural production.
• WordPress – A native app for creating and editing WordPress template blogs, be they on the WordPress.com server or hosted on your own.  The cool thing about this app is that you can use media created on your iPad, although the HTML view vs. WYSIWYG view may be difficult for newcomers.
• Prezi Viewer – If you take your presentations beyond PowerPoint/Keynote and use Prezi, your audience will need this viewer to see your “slides” on the iPad.
• Dragon Dictation – It’s not Siri, but it can do speech to text, allowing the more dilatory students to type using only their voice.  It is not perfect, but for those that speak clearly, it may be slightly less work than typing by hand, especially since typing on the iPad can be slower for some.
• Google Search – In addition to giving easier access to Google Docs and Gmail, Google Search also has some interesting tools such as search by voice and search by image.
• lynda.com – If you take advantage of the excellent (subscription required) software training libraries at lynda.com, then this app makes a lot of sense.  Having this app running in conjunction with a computer with the subject being studied allows users to follow along with tutorials instead of just watching them.
• Dictionary.com – A native version of the dictionary.com website, replete with trivia, history and of course, the word of the day, which can be pushed or made a notification.
• Meriam-Webster Dictionary – Like the name informs, another dictionary app.  Like Google, it has search by voice, and audio files so the user can hear pronunciations.
• Pocket WavePad HD – A multi-track audio recorder for iPad, including effects processing (reverbs and compressors).  Files can be exported uncompressed, or to MP3.
• Scan (QR code reader) – There are other QR code readers with more frills, but this is a good functional app.  Not sure what a QR code is?  Click here to find out.
• Feedly – Similar to Flipbook, Feedly allows you to create an electronic magazine out of your Twitter, RSS feeds (like Google Reader uses) and Facebook accounts as well as content aligned along searches such as Design and Science.
• ScreenChomp – It may look like it is geared towards younger users (it is), having a whiteboard that can be recorded as a video should be a useful tool for students that need to demonstrate that they understand problems.  It creates videos with audio narration, much like screencasts, but using a whiteboard that can import images and use different colored “pens” for markup.
• coloruncovered – A cool app that talks about the science and theory of color.  This is really a lesson in an app, produced by the Exploratorium.
• SoundCloud – SoundCloud is becoming to audio and music as YouTube is to Video.  Have some lectures in audio format?  Post them on SoundCloud (up to 2 hours on a free account) and your students can ask questions and comment at any point in time on your recordings.  The SoundCloud iPad app allows you to record using the built-in mic or attached mics.  It also provides for interaction, sharing and commenting on other users work.
• neu.Draw – new.Draw is a free, easy to use vector drawing program.  I chose this as it gives students an easy introduction to the creation of vector graphics, or graphics that are resolution independent.
• Vimeo – Vimeo is a premium video sharing service.  I have found that the typical video producer that uploads to Vimeo is a bit more exacting in their production and choose Vimeo because it can be easier to get good looking web video.  If your students care about video, they will probably know about Vimeo.  This app allows users to upload, edit, title, view, comment and share video content. (iPhone native app)
• Instagram – Instagram is a photo sharing program and a social network at the same time.  Users can use this app to take photos, apply effects and share them.  The app can also work with existing photos. (iPhone native app)
• Bamboo Paper – A simple sketch application (with paid upgrades).  This can be a great resource if students are using a stylus.
• Photosynth – Want an easy to use panorama creator? Photosynth makes it as easy as moving your device around and letting it take the images for you.  This great free app is produced by Microsoft (revealing that fact seems to elicit surprise). (iPhone native app)

Nice to have apps:

• SketchBook Pro – A great, inexpensive drawing/paint progam.
• Eazel – A watercolor like program from Adobe.  It could use a few more features, but is an interesting approach to graphics creation.  A bonus is that you can “beam” your images to Photoshop CS5.1 or later.
• iMovie – For video editing, there are not many that are easier than this iPad native app.
• Garage Band – Arguably easier than the computer based app and for my part, more fun to use.  This is a great music and audio recording app.
• Pages – For document creation and page layout, this is my go to app when on the road with only an iPad.
• iDraw – A really feature rich vector editing program. This may not be Adobe Illustrator, but it has a large subset of what you are able to do with a high level program like AI.  If you are serious about creating vector graphics on the iPad, this is a good start.