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.

Seeing things differently

When I first came to the UK from Sweden I got a job as a Guest Porter in a fancy hotel in Cambridge. This was a real learning experience for me particularly when it came to day-to-day language. For example colleagues would ask, pretty much daily, if I was ‘alright’. Now this may not seem like an odd question to most, however, I felt that although they may be concerned about my well-being, I certainly was ‘alright’ as there was nothing wrong with me mate. Today I see what they meant. Strangely enough I was never lynched.

In a similar vein, the 3 minute talk below deals with those simple issues that can very easily be misunderstood although you wouldn’t think that asking for direction could be so different?

What are you doing, you know, generally?

I came across dawdlr whilst browsing Russel M Davies’s blog. According to Davies, he wanted to create a really slow version of Twitter. In his view:

Something less rushed and immediate but still brilliantly rich and daft.

To contribute to this tiny global community you must answer the simple question:  What are you doing, you know, more generally? – on a postcard and send it to Russel Davies. When Davies means a ’slow’ version of Twitter, he really means slow as he scans each postcard and uploads it to dawdlr every 6 months. The point, according to him, is to see how far something this slow can become viral or if it will stop all together. Ingenious.

example from dawdlr

It would be very interesting if this was replicated for education. Perhaps if it was aimed at students the question could be:

What have you learnt in school, you know, that you can use in life?

Or if it was geared towards teaching professionals, perhaps something like this:

Have you made it relevant enough, you know, so students really got it?

If you can think of more creative ways of using this approach, just add a comment. By the way, what are you waiting for, head over to dawdlr and get the address!

If you find these videos interesting why not also take a look at the Eat.Sleep.Teach channel on YouTube.com?

There are hundreds of apps to use for teachers and students. The problem is that many are either of poor quality or, let’s be honest, too pricey or pointless. I have compiled a brief list of excellent apps that work in the classroom and/or as independent tools for teachers, presenters and other professionals. This post builds on another review of mine about iPhone apps that enhance productivity.

1. Air Mouse Pro

There are free apps that will turn your iPhone, iPad or iTouch into a remote but they are not as powerful and simple to use as Air Mouse Pro. Perhaps the most effective feature for me is the ability to just move the phone to move the virtual mouse on the screen – great for Interactive Whiteboards. The features of this app is too long to list but here’s a quick video to demonstrate what you get:

As mentioned above, the best feature is the possibility of controlling the Interactive Whiteboard from the back of the classroom and allow students to add content to the board from iPod Touches. Air Mouse Pro is worth the £1.19 (!) and you won’t regret buying it.

2. Audio Note

This is one of the best apps for note-taking and recording that I have come across recently. By synchronizing notes and audio, AudioNote automatically indexes meetings, lectures, talks or study sessions.

It is simple to use and whilst you record you can quickly add text and annotations (drawings, diagrams and the like) all of which are added next to the time of the recording. Sharing is possible either via WiFi or email – great resource for both teachers, students as well as people who need a dedicated tool to document meetings, talks and so on.

If you want share the recording over a WiFi connection you will be provided with the address where you can download an HTML file with drawings, text file, PDF or an audio file.

3. Cram

This creative tool provides the teacher or student with the opportunity to create Flash-Cards and Multiple-Choice questions which can be saved on the iPhone/iTouch or synced with the  Mac (separate software). The strongest feature of Cram is the possibility of adding images to your activities as well as keeping scores of past tests. There are other free alternatives available to download on the AppStore but this one gives the teacher or student the power to customise tasks to suit your class or exam – simple and fun.

4. iVocabulary

Create your own content for language lessons with this simple tool. You are provided with a wide range of activities (constantly growing but last count: 2500 tests!) for different languages but you can also create your own text-based tests, Flash-Cards or Multiple-Choice with the typical iPhone buttons, sliders and menus. There is also a free software to download and use to create activities for the iPhone, though you’d need to buy the app (£3.49) for them to work. The beauty of this app is the ability for teachers to create straight-forward tasks that are customised for their students and the added bonus of using the free software to do so from your laptop.

5. iStudiez

This handy little app gives students the possibility of organising themselves using a suite of useful features including:

Timetable: colourful built-in planner lets you input and easy manage all types of schedules including classic, alternating (A & B weeks), rotating and block schedule. Different classes or courses can be colour-coded.

Homework and assignments: iStudiez Pro uses Push Notifications which allows students to set general alarm time for classes and separate alarms for each of their assignments and homework.

Today View: provides a summary of upcoming classes and homeworks.

Back-up: a handy little feature which allows students to email themselves a copy of the timetable at the click of a button.

6. Air Sharing Pro

This is one of the most powerful apps I have come across. It uses your WiFi connection to open up a gateway between your iPhone and Mac or PC. Accordingly, as a teacher you can then transfer documents or other files between your work laptop and home computer, amongst other uses. See the video below for more ideas.

“Air Sharing Pro makes using the iPhone as an external drive easy as can be. Any iPhone user who needs to view and move files on the go should download this app.” — AppReview

Check out this video on using Air Sharing Pro (note: not advertising).

I hope you also found these apps useful and exciting to use in the classroom. If you have come across other ones do leave me a comment : ) . Please also see another post of mine on iPhone apps to enhance productivity.

Creativity and Innovation

This fifth post looks at ways in which students and teachers can improve the way they express ideas and communicate their understanding of key issues. I have also mentioned how cross-pollination into different spheres can help improve our practice as teachers – if you find this topic of particular interest please visit EatSleepTeach.com for more ideas.

Create Kaleidoscopes for Learning

I came across the FoldPlay website  in one of @creativetallis‘ Tweets (well worth following for great ideas). This creative tool lets you upload a number of images and then download  a .JPG kaleidoscope of your creation including instructions for putting it together – very cool. There is also a slideshow with still images which shows you step-by-step how to construct it. This would be a great addition to a task for students where they have to convey their understanding of a concept by selecting a number of images that together shape the meaning of that particular concept.

Here’s an example:

Making a Point

In Ideas for Learning and Creativity #3 I added the superb poem/talk by Taylor Mali as it shows how powerful public speaking can be with the right script and preparation (amongst other things). The following clip involves a different type of public speaking and demonstrates that age does not have to be an obstacle to a sincere and compelling speech. Truly inspiring.

Cross-Pollination

I have always tried to keep an eye on what other industries get up to, apart from education, for example how business view CPD, collaboration and the way they present information to customers. This cross-pollination of ideas is essential, in my opinion, so that our teaching practice and pedagogical ideas do not become insular and we can instead progress and explore new avenues. There are many books that can help you explore and make cross-pollination a regular aspect of your work, see this list. I also subscribe to different newsletters/RSS feeds or podcasts to keep in the loop of the ever changing world of innovation. One particularly useful source of information which I was suggested by Scott Hewitt of Real Projects recently, is the Harvard Business School – Working Knowledge . This website gives its readers insight into the cutting-edge thinking and research that is taking place place at Harvard and covers a wide range of topics and interests – well worth looking into even if you’re not interested in Business or Technology as they cover many other areas as well.

ICT and E-Learning

The Creative Beast

It’s hard to think of easy-to-use and cheap methods of producing high-quality media.

This is one of the most simple but creative ways of using text, images and post-its to communicate a message. The potential for using this format is immense whether one uses frame-by-frame animation in Adobe Flash or with a camcorder or digital camera, the results could be tremendous and the creative output for students very positive.

Besty Streeter blogs at Betsy Streeter .

WeToku: interviews made simple

WeToku was set up, according to the founders of this Korean website, because one of the team members, James, insistence that he was a true celebrity but found interviews face-to-face too inconvenient, so they made it easy for him by creating the website. Whatever the reason behind this nifty tool, it is a good resource if you want to invite someone for a meeting or to interview them for blog as you can record and then embed the video immediately afterwards. This has real potential particularly if you’re brave and decided to invite someone you’re inspired by for an interview – can you think of someone, I definitely can! WeToku can really make your blog even more interesting – I have scheduled an interview already.

Here’s an interview with Guy Kawasaki – discussion about the quality of the interviewer’s questions and prep is discussed on the website…

Clever Online PDF/PowerPoint Viewer

Have you ever tried the Google Docs Viewer ? This is a superb tool if you want to display PowerPoint presentations, like in SlideShare but without having to sign up, on your webpages. You can also embed PDF files which is a handy little feature, like this:

This third post on Ideas for Learning and Creativity explores ways in which both teachers and students can communicate in a range of different ways; from public speaking, writing, composing or using technology to make an impact on their audiences. This post contains more video clips than other post in this series (see #1 and #2 for more ideas) but each one is definitely worth watching.

Creativity and Innovation

So, what do teachers make in a year?

In this powerful 3 minute clip, the poet Taylor Mali defends the teaching profession at the Bowery Poetry Club (Nov. 2005). Mali’s explanation is an uplifting – yet with a bitter undertone – explanation about what impact we as teachers can have on students’ learning. It is also a great example that creative public speaking does not have to lengthy to be either convincing or powerful.

Reading is Changing

I ran a couple of sessions at the Norfolk Schools ICT Conference last week where Steven Moss of Partnerships Schools discussed the significance of using technology in the classroom whilst pointing out the fact that not all use of ICT is effective (you can download his presentation here ). He went on to argue that we need to rethink and re-structure the way we teach young learners as we are using the same pedagogies we used at the start of the century but that students have changed the way they learn. This is a very potent issue as students now have an array of sources to learn from, unlike 20 years ago. They are now learning through interactions, new ways of communicating, instant feedback via webinars, VLEs, Skype, IM and so on.

I came across the following video clip from TVO.org (Ontario, USA, public educational media organisation) a while ago and it continues the discussion raised above and centers around the question: Is technology destryoing students’ ability to write? This is a very interested clip and it looks at how far technology has improved students’ ability to work with text e.g. that WEB 2.0 has provided learners with the opportunity to access material; and brings up the issue that, in many respects, students perform their ideas and thoughts in different ways than by just writing and that our methods of teaching must begin to meet these new ways of learning.

Is technology destryoing students’ ability to write? from TVO.org

Audience Participation

I spotted a link to this video on Twitter a few days ago when it was posted by Dughall (worth following for great links, ideas and discussions). It shows how a simple scale can engage an entire audience whilst at the same time compose a piece of music together. There is a lot we can learn from Bobby McFerrin’s in this clip about engagement and how to bring out the best of whole class teaching.

Whole class participation is a difficult task to achieve both in terms of logistics, outcomes and your patience (!) but a worthwhile endeavor. Some subjects are more difficult than others but as a starter activity it can really get a class excited about the lesson. For example, try getting students working in ‘character’, attempt whole-class composition or deconstructing text, use active learning when piecing together essays and or for assessments. Take a look at these ideas for whole class participation:

Create ‘interactive diagrams’ with the whole class

Discuss the Grey Matter: Continuums involving the whole class

More ideas in this book: Exam Class Toolkit - how to create engaging lessons that ensure progression and results:

ICT and E-Learning

Games as assessments

Games are essentially assessments – but games do not seperate learning from the game unlike traditional education where pupils learn and then they are tested. – James Paul Glee

The game manual is sometimes as complex as a standard textbook. James Paul Glee, for example, gave up reading the manual as it was too complex. He played the game for a while and then returned to the manual and suddenly it all made sense because he had seen what the terminology was referrring to in the game. Like a textbook, the words are connected to a game, for example the game of History – what historians do like source analysis, unveiling mysteries of the past, interpreting information. He then used the game manual as a reference in case he wanted to look something up or tweak something he knew but wanted to explore further. Glee states that you should do the same with a textbook, use it to look up and reference material. Very interesting video.

Technology that Matters

Terry Haydn at the University of East Anglia showed me this superb viral video produced by MoveOn.org under the fake name of CNNBCVideo. It was created to show what could happen if people didn’t vote for Obama in the general election. One segment of the video asks the question “How long until we nuke Iran? Experts say it may be as early as Saturday, around lunchtime“.

This is a very interesting clip for many reasons, not only because of the importance of political change, but it also shows students how powerful media and technology really can be. It can also encourages students to explore using ICT in more creative ways and consider how technology can assist in conveying key messages or clouding the accuracy of others.

How Google Search Works

I came across this Youtube video on Steven Anderson’s blog WEB2 Classroom and thought I’d share it with you – great to show students how (apparently) a search engine works.