One app that would interesting to see in higher education is an app that shows students how much of their tuition is being wasted if they skip a class or something similar to that. This app’s purpose is to show students the dangers and costs of procrastination. If the students want it could give tips on better ways to allocate their time. The content would be clever and humorous. I’d like to call it CrnchTime.
(Late post because I need CrnchTime too)
I would like to have more control over the sound that my iPad (re)produces. While I’m listening to music I like to have some control over the low, mid, and high frequency mix. It would be great to have access to an equalizer that I could adjust, depending on the audio that I was listening to. Since there is such a wide range of audio quality on the www, it makes sense to me that the iPad would give the user the ability to make adjustments to improve the listening experience, including a general “signal boost” slider for uploaded audio that is hard to hear, due to low recording levels. I know this used to be a standard feature for windows – unfortunately, I think it’s always been missing on Mac.
With all of this newfangled technology that’s being offered to us as students in 2015, there sometimes seems to be a disconnect between what’s helpful or good to use and how quickly we can actually use it. It’s 2015 so there’s no reason to not immediately reply to a text (even at 4:36 am), no reason I should not immediately know an answer in class, no reason I shouldn’t have an immediate comeback to someone else’s wit, and no reason I should have to wait on a table at 7 pm on a Friday night at T.G.I. FRiDAY’S. You know I’m joking, but people often forget to take a moment to breathe and realize that not everything has to be so immediate–if you’re shooting for a comeback, that’s another story. Funny is as funny does after all.
One thing that can be sped up, however, is productivity on mobile devices. Mobile apps were created in part to make things faster for the consumer. For students in particular, Google Apps for Education has been a great addition to our productivity toolkits. The problem with using them on a mobile device is that they’re often limited versions of the actual programs. Another issue (even when on desktops), is that the user has to create a project in one program, save, export, and maybe be able to upload it into another program for further edits. I propose a Course Management Software not completely unlike Blackboard or Moodle, but one that is based on Google Apps for Education.
This app would have all the general functionality of another CMS, but is set apart by the affordances of Google. When a professor uploads a PDF of a reading, I would be able to open and annotate without saving it to my device and opening in another app. I would be able to record my lectures and tag them appropriately for followup. One of the best parts about a Google-based CMS is the data creation portion. Instead of having all the Google Apps as part of separate programs, they would all appear on one main screen as a “toolbar selector.” For instance, I begin a new document and type out what I want to say (Docs toolbar), then I want to add a nice visual so I click on the LucidCharts toolbar option and immediately my toolbox items change, but my document remains. When finished with the document, I would have the option of saving in a variety of formats (depending on what media I used to create my project).
As a student that has been using an iPad for a few months now, I feel that I can adequately navigate through iOS quickly and efficiently. That being said, I often am just waiting on my apps to swap over (or to figure out how to export and reopen elsewhere). With a fully integrated app, I can probably save an entire 2 minutes a day. It may not seem like much, but over four years of education that’s almost 11 hours of time that can be spent elsewhere–quite possibly used to make even better work.
I think an iPad app that is missing from what students in higher education need is something like a clicker but an application for smartphones and tablets. The app would be able to be installed on a student’s cell phone or tablet and allow them to answer clicker questions in lecture halls, instead of having to purchase a separate clicker.
The app should also have a section for note taking, voice and video recording to record lectures. I think it would also be interesting if the application included a geolocation based chat where only people within that classroom or lecture room could share and exchange notes and lecture slides. It would allow for an open dialogue between students without having to actually disrupt the flow of the classroom. The application could work in the way that airdrop on Apple products does. Students near each other would be able to share their screens and/or airdrop files to one another, all while being able to answer clicker questions and interact with the professor in class.
The app would allow for students to schedule and meet with study groups with different people in their classes. Essentially, the app would be one main outlet for students to take and record notes, share them with others, and arrange study time outside of class.
I am finding my modular method of working with the iPad to be quite successful. Some of the interesting features I have discovered in explain everything is the ability to record actions on each slide and publish it on YouTube. I am also able to drop videos directly into the presentation, write and draw over them and include all of the interactions that I have on the screen in the recording creating a completely customizable presentation. I also found the app cute cut to have some greate features including the ability to layer videos and change their transparency. The only downside to this app is that the free version leaves a watermark on the video and has a limit to the length of the video that can be made. An easy fix for this is to place these clips in iMovie for final arrangement and to add music.
Aside from these tools, I have been using my iPad for most of the lectures that I do and have been finding it to be an overall enjoyable and smooth experience. I still needed the ipad for photoshop instruction and to play DVDs.
I’m still encountering issues with the google drive app for iPad. I’ve had to remove the account and re-add it to get new content to appear in the drive. This issue is killing my production team’s willingness to rely on technology. It seems that I am not the only one experiencing this:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/wTb-ERraipQ
On the bright side, I’ve got a new project for the iPad– controlling stage lighting, remotely, with the iPad.
More soon!
I’ve been using an iPad for several semesters, mainly as an individual, personal organization tool that keeps my notes and research for many classes all in one place… but thanks to the visit from the Apple people I have a new appreciation for the iPad, specifically as a collaborative tool, by using the app called BaiBoard:
We experimented with this app a bit in class and it facilitates interactive brainstorming and creative dialogue. I’d like to experiment with this app for some group projects in the near future to confirm my intuition that this can be a effective tool for improving effectivity in group projects and team work. There doesn’t seem to be that much of a learning curve in terms of the features that the app offers.
A couple of weeks ago when Apple came to visit our class, I was very excited to really jump into creating content on the iPad. I was disappointed, however, when much of the class was spent on “lecturing” about identity. I was personally taken aback by this as I must have been confused about the reason of their actual visit. It was occasionally disconcerting because of the inevitable Apple advertising.
Eventually we did get into creating some content–that being said, we did not do much creating, ourselves. For me, the most beneficial part of this presentation was the discussion about Keynote. I was surprised at how “perfected” this PowerPoint app really was. I was especially impressed at its ability to create a mock app. As a hyperlink-driven application, I see Keynote acting more as an interactive presentation rather than one say, for an actual keynote or other address. Another app that I would be curious to look at more for actual presentations is Quip. The representatives from Apple did not do a full walk-through, but did mention that it was a very effective app. I hope to eventually explore this one further.
Over all, the effectiveness of Keynote harkens that the iPad be considered further in terms of using it in education. I appreciate the fact that students can create an accessible overview of a project while on the go.
Technically Yours,
R.
P.S. Why yes, yes I did use the word “harkens,” and although Google does not accept it as a modern word and insisted on underlining it with that nasty, squiggly red line, it is the perfect word as it can be read into further.
Earlier on in the semester I mentioned how the iPad native keyboard needed some kind of swipe function. After doing some research I found SwiftKey. SwiftKey is a nice keyboard. It functions how it’s supposed to. It connects with your facebook to learn the words you use and learns from there. There have been times where I needed to delete words and reswipe them. Some things this app could improve on is the insisting autocorreit.
Overall. 8/10
If you want a swipe I keyboard on your iOS device SwiftKey could be the app for you.
When I started working on this project I found that creating a movie with the mobile iMovie app was fairly simple. Of course there are things that I do not know how to do, but for the most part everything was straightforward. I have one issue however: I made my video (purposefully very simple), but each time I saved it the audio was messed up. For the first portion of my video I had two audio tracks playing at two different tempi. This only happened after saving…not before. After spending a couple hours on this, the best solution was to delete that entire portion of the video and start from scratch. Luckily, I was able to get it edited back down to the two-minute time limit with not much trouble!
Will I continue using the iMovie app for the iPad? Probably not, but as a student in the media arts, I have had the opportunity and access to learn professional grade software–at this point, I just choose to make videos that require a bit more precision than an app can give me. That being said, I found iMovie for iOS to quite fluid (as much as Apple can be with directory routing information) and think it is a great opportunity to get into video making or make quick and [attempted] easy videos like this.