#23 Evaluation!

It has been a great time doing 23 things this spring. I thought that I would do a thing a week, but it has been hit a miss. Here are some thoughts about the process. 

I have felt rather on my own with the blogging about each thing. It would have been nice to have a wiki where we could more easily share and read each others posts. I did go and look at a couple peoples blogs, but didn't get back to that regularly. I think that I could have learned even more if I were better connected to others in the program.

I liked being tossed several options for each thing. It is good to get out of your comfort zone and try new things, right?  So I did and learned that I like some of them. The one that I was glad to discover was Google docs for iPad. I have been looking for word processing app and that one finally does the trick!  

Another thought, is there are way to offer this program to teachers? Or could I copy/adapt it and use it in my school?  All of the teachers in one of my schools will have iPads next year and a program like this would be great. 

My thanks go out to all of the organizers of the program. It was a great learning experience!

#22 App discovery

I have been using Apps Gone Free all year to help the staff at my school find educational apps that fit our tiny budget.  It has been an easy way to find apps that I would like too. The apps may be for apple of android, iPhone or iPad. They are marked, so it is easy to tell what devise they are will work on. 

I also liked that there is a button that takes you to more information or to the app store of your choice for easy download. I was also able to click a button to send a link to staff who might like an app. We have discovered many apps that have been used in school this way. 

My favorite discovery was a brewery finder for my husband. He love to get a pint or a growler when we are on the road.  On our recent trip to Iowa, we found our way to Peace Tree brewing for a Hop Sutra. He was a happy guy. 

#21 What did I miss?

It is my turn to suggest an app?  I think that I have made lots of suggestions as we have gone along.  If I had to suggest an app that I use everyday, I would say Netflix.  I have loved being able to watch some of my favorite movies and shows without comercials. I am willing to wait for their release to DVD, too. I have recently tried Amazon Prime and like that as well. There is some corssover, but on a couple of shows Prime has newer seasons avaiable to stream. The apps are free but the content requires a subscription.  I think that I get my $8-10 a month out of each of them.  If my husband didn't want to watch live sports, I think that we would discontinue our cable subscription alltogether. 

The other apps that I use daily are Facebook and a couple games. I connect with friends and relatives regularly on Facebook, so that is a must!

#20 games!

Games are are great way to release tension or frustration. They can also be a nice way to take a short break from work that needs doing. I find that I can come back to a task and be more focused on it after a short game break. For this reason, I like games that offer short sessions or levels that I can work on and then leave. 

My favorite when I was in graduate school was Farmville. I would plant or harvest in between reading or writing or posting in my classes.  When Bejeweled came out I played that and tried all the variations, too. I still play Bejeweled Blitz once in a while on my phone. I love the one minute games that allow me to play as much as I like but give me a stopping place, too. 

My current favorites are Candy Crush and Farm Heroes.  They have the short levels that I like and challenging puzzles that keep me interested. 

I also have a free Sodoku game that I make myself play every week. I don't enjoy number puzzles very much, but I read that doing them is good for your brain. I can do it and if I pay attention, I can get a fairly good score. 

#19 hobbies

Ah, fun!  So nice to look for a thing for me!  I chose the Vivino wine scanner. It connects to Facebook where my wine club posts our events, so I hope that the others will want to use it, too.

I got started with a couple of easy bits of information. THe best part is that you don't have to key in any info on the wine!  Just take a picture of the label and the app finds it for you. A couple of times, I needed to adjust the wine or the year, but it always found the winery. Select the number of stars, add some comments and upload.  Connect with Facebook friends and find a store that sells it, too. 

Awesome!

#18 educational apps

I search for educational apps every day. At least I check Apps gone Free for educational apps daily. I do run across apps that are great and would be useful in the classrooms as well. I am surprised at many apps for education in that they are single user focued reather than mulituser. Schools need to be able to share devices and many app developers haven't figured that out yet. 

Some apps that I love for kids are from NASA, TED, Library of congress, National archives and the White house.

NASA apps are full of wonderful information in more easy to use bites than their website. I especially like the Earth app with its satalite images of volcanos, sand dunes, glaciers and other large landforms. There is excellent information to go with these images and some time lapse video that shows years of change in a minute or so. 

TED is just one of the best ways to find out what new ideas are out there. The fact that none are longer that 20 minutes makes them fit into my schedule.  The speakers are excellent the ideas are timely and the stimulation is wonderful. 

DocsTeach is a new one that I have only begun to play with. It is from the National Archives and has lessons available in connections with the digital versions of primary source documents. Such a great way to connect students with the real thing!

Another fun one for library and book fans is Storykit. This app lets you create and illustrate your own book.  Create the photos and text for a story and then load it for others to read on the website. Easy to use and professional looking product. 

There are lots more, but only so many that I can write about here. 

#17 local connections

I have been using the Mayo Clinic patient app since it came out. It has some great features for keeing track of your appointments and health information. I find it easy to use and helpful. I don't like it that I get sent out to Safari to refill my prescriptions, but it works so why reinvent the wheel? I especially like the test results section so I can see what my blood pressure levels are, etc. Good maps for getting to the clinic, too. I do remeber hearing that Google mapped the inside of the clinic, but I don't see those maps yet. It would be great to be able to input destinations inside the clinic and get directions. 

Today I added the Marquee Rochester app to my phone. I will enjoy that very much. I like the list of venues in my area and the daily line up of whats going on. I need to get out to more live music and this app may help with that. I will still have to plan ahead, get tickets and add the date and time to my calendar, but finding out what is happening is half the battle. 

Fun!

#16 audio apps

This is an interesting thing to me too. I play in a stirng quartet and we gig for weddings and other events around Rochester. We have been looking for a way to record our performances for our own listning and learning as well as to put some clips on our website. I have explored a couple of iPhone apps including Nana music, Musicians kit, Voice memos and Garage band. Most of them have been easy to use, but difficult to share with or send clips to others. I am going to give ipadio a try. It sounds like it will be easier to upload the clips to Google and other social networking platforms. I have a Google site for the quartet and hope that works.   I like the idea that I can record more than a couple minutes at a time. I will give this one a try on my own and if it sounds good, I will work on it with my quartet. 

Having tried ipadio, i am not sure that it is going to work for my purposes. It makes a nice recording and can upload it to the ipadio webpage for pubcation. I can follow someone whose "phlogs" I like, but I didn't see any way other that a link to connect my recording to another page. THat is really what I am looking for. 

I would want that for my school use, too. For students, though, having access to the recording just on the device would be fine. Recording is an easy one click and deleting to start over is just two clicks. 

THere are possibilites here!

#15 infographics

I tried i visual and info.graphics both in the thing. I was hoping for a great way to present some of the data that I collect during each year. I was disapointed. There are some nice image creators in i visual, but there is very limited space for text. I tried a couple different things and was disapointed in each. The graphs in Excell are better than this.

Info.graphics is nice if you want to find and share premade and pubished info graphics. THere are some good ones, but the collection is small, I thought. There was no way to create your own either. The biggest flaw was that the source links were not live. I wanted more info on one interesting graphic but I could barely read the link. That lack of reference makes me nervous.  I want to be able to check sources!

I will have a look at the other apps later this summer. A good info graphic app would be a big help in my library. 

#14 video creation

I know that I need to get into video creation, but I really do not like to make video with my iPad. I am always worried about droping it. I would worry more if my students were making them. I do think that students will be making more videos and will need intuitive apps to assist with the editing process. 

The app that I have used most is iMovie. It is a $4 app, but was worth the money.  It offers a variety of intuitive tools to help edit and format your movie. It also has uplaod connections to help get your movie to the patrons you want to see it. 

It is also possible to use the iPad camera to record and upload video to YouTube or other social media. Small clips can be emailed, too. I have done a couple movies that wya as well. If you mess up, you have to retake, just like with a real movie. 

I will attempt some more movies over the summer and think more about how these could be used in some of the projects that I teach. 

#13 presenting Haiku deck

I have tried Haiku deck and enjoyed using it as a tool for easy presentations. I enjoyed the ease of use in both images and text insertion, but didn't always find the images I needed. The app pull from a library of public domain images so some topics are thin. You can add your own pictures, but that can take time to find and upload them. I do that for PP, so it isn't a big issue. 

I do like the feature that only allows limited text on a page. Too much text is one of my biggest issues with most presentations. Using this app would prevent that entirely! It would also help kids be more consise in their work choice and force them to have notes to speak from instead of reading their slides. 

Great presentation practice. 

#12 Books! More Books.

I have a variety of book apps and have been curious to try more. The one that I use most is Overdrive since that is the platrom that my public library uses for ebooks, audiobooks.  I am delighted with the functionality and speed of access. I also have the Kindle and Nook apps, but I don't buy many books. I did have a Nook paper (reader) for a while, but found that I used my ipad more for reading abd lots of other things. I do like the Nook display for reading. It does not have a lighted screen and reads well in all kinds of light including outdoors. 

Of the apps offered for this Thing, I downloaded Free Books. I had used it before and ended up deleteing it from my iPad. It has a great collection of public domain books.  There are enough titles to keep you in books for years. I find the interface easy to use and intuitive. I have been finding the ads on the free site more intrusive lately. It seems that they are pushing their audiobooks which you can access "free" for a $3.99 access fee. Probably a good deal, but I am picky about audio books. I have to like the reader's voice if I am going to listen to them read for hours. I also don't have a way to pay for apps that are not free without urchasing them myself.  My iPad belong to my employer. 

I have discovered a collection of original Dr. Who stories that I am excited to try. They were written fairly recently so I was surprised to see them. Fun. I read science fiction and was happy to see some works by other contemporary authors included. 

I will keep this app on my iPad over the summer and see how much I read. 

#11 library apps

Destiny and MackinVia

The Rochester Public Schools elementary schools use Destiny library automation from Follett. They introduced an app with their upgrade last year. We got it in December of last year since we didn't have a programmer on staff who could assist with the upgrade, but it is all better, now. I have used the app and like some of the options that are avaiable to patrons, but don't find that it functions as well for library managers. It has a good seach and some fun lists for students to use. THe lists are 

Top 10 

New books

Public lists

My lists

Bookshelf

My account

I do like the new books list, because I can see which of the new books have been snatched up by students and which many need some selling. 

The bookshelf is a place to keep personal lists so I am not sure why I would use it. It is different than the Public lists and My lists, but my lists are both pubic and mine since I have mede them for my staff and students. 

If more of my students have access to iPads, I will have them give this app a try in the fall. It would be useful to have the OPAC in their hands as they browse the stacks. 

The other app that we are using is MackinVia. We are keeping our ebooks, audiobooks and databases there. Students access it with their district login and password both at home and at school. That access is easier than trying to connect all of the different media through Destiny. We tried that last year and really struggled with ebooks that wouldn't open or that sent patrons to different platforms each with their own login and password. In order to make school use easier, we have added a link to the banner on each school's homepage. It is still a challenge to get the information our to all our staff, but they are making good use of it this spring. 

MackinVia puts all our non-print media in once place with a federated search and a backpack to keep favorites and note taking and highlighting features. I believe that the more staff using it, the more they will like it. We just have to keep talking it up. 

Blogger Bother!

This has happened to me so many times while composing a blog on my iPad. I will start a post and then need to check something or take a picture to add to the post,  when I come back to Blogger, my earlier work will be gone!  I need to post and add more later, I guess. I have left without posting a couple of times, because of my frustration. Why isnt there an auto save or a save button!  

Okay, why is the save button only available after I click the Done button. That doesn't make any sense. Done should be ready to publish, not I need to come back to this. But, now I know where it is and can use it. Grrrrr.

# 10 photo sharing

Photo sharing is happening every day for me. I share photos by instant message, on Facebook, through email and on my website. I am sue that it is the same for most people who use mobile devices.  My daughter has a Tumblr bolg about our cats and posts photos and video every day. 

I explored Instagram for this post.  I found its features easy to use and the search seems similar to Pinterest. I discovered quite a few friends who already use the service, so it was easy to find people to follow. Today when I checked, I am being followed by two people. :-)

All that said, I see these friends photos on Facebook for the most part. Some through Google+. I can set Instagram to post to Facebook, twiter and other services automatically, too. I was disapointed that the app is designed for phones, though it can be used on the iPad. The format is portrait only, so my iPad doesn't stand up on it's own for viewing. I would think that more people are usign this app on their phones, though. It would be much easier to document events with a phone camera rather than an iPad. There is a nice set of photo options on Instagram, too. I don't tend to like to edit my photos, but it is nice that they are there and easy to use. Just a swipe of a finger and a tap on an icon to get to them. 

I confess that I probably won't use this app much on my iPad. I'm not sure how I would promote it to staff and students at school either. We would need to keep all the pictures private. This is possible, though and could be a way for teachers to share pictures to just the families of their students. I am not sure what today's parents would prefer. 

#9 photo creating and editing

Photos are everywhere. We are using them more and more with cameras on our phones. It is nice to have a camera with me all the time, though there are times that it would be great to just take a picture and I forget. My husband always takes a couple shots of everything because it is so easy to discard the bad ones. 

I use the Apple cameras and photo apps that came with my iPhone and iPad. I have found that kids like Photobooth, though I have not found it to be of much use personally. The effects are fun to play with. I experimented with CamMe and can see that the hands free aspect is very useful. It allows the subject to be farther away from the camera and allow everyone to be in the picture. I will try it will some students at school, but I am sure that they will enjoy using it.  A thought is to set up the iPad as a portrait station and ask kids to take their picture with the book that they are reading. 

The app that I have used the most in the library is called Picollage. It offers lots of ways to make photos into posters and add backgrounds and text. It is very intuitive and easy to use. I have made a couple of collages and will add one at the bottom of this post. I think that libraries could make great use of this app since it assists in the creation of posters. 

#8 social media management

Social media is an important way to connect to friends, family and colleagues. I have facebook, twitter, google+ and linkedin accounts. One of the best ways that I have found for connecting to all of them is with Flipbook. It doens't allow posting to all at once, but I want to keep my professional posts seperate from my friends and family. Google+ allows this with circles, but the others, seem more complicated. 

I like the flipbook feeds because I can read things in one place and then respond if needed. 

I also like that I can access news of the world and in my field in the same place. 

#7 bookmark collection and saving

I have used Pinterest, but have not found it to be a great site. I like the visual nature of it, but like text more. I do know many teachers who use it often for ideas and classroom content. A service that I am exploring is Symbaloo. I have it on my iPad, but it is really designed for iPhone and internet. I am hoping that it will be upgraded for use on multiple mobile devices. What I like is that it creates pages of icons each for a website that I use often. I can see many uses for this in my teaching and at home. Students are used to seeing icons and will find the pages easier to use than lists of favorites. I am planning to upgrade the grade level links on the work website to use Symbaloo. It will be neater and, I believe, easier for the students to use. 

#6 editing

I downloaded Quick office over the weekend and have been playing with it this week. I used it to create an agenda for a meeting next month. It worked well, in fact, just as well as Word. I am still adjusting to using the touch screen to copy and paste or highlight text, but that is me not the app. I did have to open the document on my PC to use the share feature. Maybe I just need to explore the options/settings in the app some more. I will use this more often, expecially in meetings where I can download the agenda.

Writing and editing.

Explain Everything is the editing platform that students at my school have been using. It is not an app that I purchased, but was highly recommended by teachers. It costs 2.99.

I use Notes the most of the editing apps that I have on my ipad. I try not to do much typing on the ipad. I have extensive files on my PC and can access them both at school and at home, so it is not vital that I be able to edit.

The other apps that I have tried are:
Skydrive
Smart Office
Penultimate
Evernote
Dragon Dictation
I have used them all but find that my go-to app is still Notes. I guess that I don't need the extra functionality in daily use. I do store documents that I'd like to access on the iPad in Skydrive. That way, I can view what I need from any device that I happen to be using. Skydrive doesn't allow editing on the iPad, but that hasn't been much of an issue for me.

Flipbook, a great news source

Flipbook has been my go to news source for school related things since the beginning of the school year. I honsetly don't remember when I found it, but it has made keeping up with new that interests me so much easier. I even moved my google reader there before the service ended. I don't use the magazine creation service.  I did explore it, but found that others do a better job than I could.

I read national news, School Library Journal, tech news, and follow facebook and twitter posts all in one easy to read place. I have been frustrated with some of the SLJ items. They seem like teasers with limited content. I guess that I need to subscribe to the print mag again. It is such a great resource. 

There are a couple of education related pages that I follow. Jackie Gerstein is my favorite. She posts and reposts many articles that I have forwarded to staff at my school. I also follow Joyce Valencia. 

Give this a try on your tablet. It will help you sort out the news you need and make it easy to access daily. 

browsers and search engines

I am a Google fan, I confess. I know that the company is collecting information about me every time I search.  I just like that the search is more specific to my needs. I have switched to the chrome browser at home and really like the apps that are avaiable. I also use google+ and gmail for many tasks. On the iPad, however, I find that my needs are satisfied by the Safari browser. I will move the google search button to the task bar and see if I am able to try searches using both this week. 

At school we have internet explorer and firefox avaiable. We have some preograms that tech support recommends firefox for. I don't see much difference in my daily use at school, though. More later after I have done some side by side searches. 

iPad tips and tricks 2

I was playing in several apps yesterday and discovered that I can't access the menu from below to adjust the volume in a video.  It will be interesting to see what works and what doesn't. I wonder if it is for music in the background so you don't have to close the app you are working in?

iPad tips and tricks

The library department here decided to invest in tech for the library media specialists.  We have had iPads for 2.5 years.  I have only had mine for 1.5.  While I like it and find it very useful, personally, i have found it to be of limited use with students.  The big issue for me is not having airserver or apple tv in the library.  Our students are not 1-1 yet, so it hasn't been a big issue, but one that needs to be delt with in the next year.  

As I watched the iPad tips video, I realized that I have been ignoring the two menus from the top and bottom of the screen.  I looked more closely at them just now and see that there are several features that I will use.  I was especially was happy to see the camera and volume controls. It will be much easier to get the camera ready using the menus rather than scrolling to the folder and opening it and then the camera.  There is always more to learn.

Thing 1

I am interested in finding out what my iPad can do to make connections with students. I have found many good apps for skills and reading, but not very many that connect well with information Literacy skills at school.  I hope to spend more time with different apps and connect them to my teaching. I also hope the the homeless apple tv gets installed in the library.

January 15

The title of the blog is not changeable, so I am stuck with my typo.  I guess that is the way of things.  Moblie it is.  Hopefully i will be able to correct the rest of my errors before they are permanent.

On to registration.