Keeping your blog up-to-date, stylish and packed with interesting content have become much easier with the advent of smart phones like the Android and iPhone. The apps noted below build on my previous posts 11 iPhone and iPod Touch Apps for Enhanced Productivity and Top iPhone Apps for Teachers and Students, and will show you more useful and effective tools that will help updating and tweak blog posts much easier and also show you specific examples of how some of these applications can be used successfully for both teachers and students.
1. Ego
If you’re looking for a quick way of finding out how many readers that visit your blog, Vimeo, Tumblr, Twitter and others, be sure to download the Ego App for the iPhone. A very simple app in many respects (there are other that will provide more detailed analysis of your visiting stats) and that’s why it’s very useful to have as Ego will provide data on daily, hourly and monthly visitor numbers on one screen.
2. JotNot Pro
This claims to work like a scanner for your iPhone and I hesitated a little before deciding to buy this app as I questioned how it could improve the overall quality of a photo I’d taken of a book page, poster etc. There really was no need worrying. Since buying it I have been using it regularly, particularly when reading magazines, books or even if I’ve spotted an interesting quote somewhere. It’s also great for scanning students’ work and then uploading to the Learning Platform or Department website . It does improve your record keeping (and cupboard!) tremendously particularly when it comes to ‘awkward’ or bulky pieces of work like posters and models. Once you take a photo of a section of a book for example (or import a photo), you just choose which area of the photo that should be scanned. The final image is much clearer and larger so scanning a whole book page (or poster) works very well. There are also several settings you can modify to get the image you seek – although I have not needed to do that yet.
3. Dragon Dictation – Free
If you haven’t yet installed this stop reading and download it. It’s that good. And it’s free. Once installed you will be able to send emails, SMS and updates to Social Networking sites like Twitter and FaceBook and all you do is speaking into the phone. Better still, why not put the phone next to you and continue doing other things whilst sending off a host of messages (yes I can multi-task…).
4. Comic Touch
This is a fun app if you want to create images with speech bubbles and captions. It is very good if you’re in education and want students to create comic strips, freeze-frame stories or interesting caricatures. Simply import an image or ask them to take one and then add captions, thought or speech bubbles as well as effects.
5. TiltShift
Perhaps one of my favorite apps and a real Starter-Generator : ) . TiltShift can transform a scene/photo into a miniature world by simulating a tilt-shift lens that tricks your mind into viewing a photo as a miniature scene like a model railroad for example. You can create stunning images for your blog but as a teaching aide it’s simply superb. For example, import an image of a painting and blur out everything except from the main character and get students to guess the artist; take snaps of presentations and focus in on the core message(s); or ask students to decide which elements of a story they feel are the most important.
Here’s one example of a Y9 History starter: What’s happening in this image? Discuss, then show the final image.
6. iBlogger:
For those of you that blog using other than WordPress, iBlogger can help you connect to most other blog engines using your iPhone e.g. ExpressionEngine, MovableType, TypePad, Drupal many more (incl. WordPress). It also enables you to use Pictures, Tags, Categories, Links as well as Location.
7. ByLine
I started using free RSS Reader apps but none of them cached posts including images for offline reading which is very useful if you travel a lot or live in an area with poor network coverage. ByLine solves that problem and syncs directly with Google Reader, divides posts up according to folders, starred items and categories. What’s particularly ingenious about this app is that it enables you to swipe through posts with your fingers and caches pages that are linked in posts! This is very useful.
If you use other ones which would be worth mentioning please add a comment below.
I used an iphone/ipod touch app that records students scores and attendance it’s called teach mate. It is useful for me as a teacher since I no longer bring my grade book/class record with me.