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Monthly Archives: November 2010
Adobe Photoshop Express – iPhone App of the Week
Adobe Photoshop Express – iPhone App of the Week
This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.
This week’s App is Adobe Photoshop Express.
Adobe Photoshop Express software lets you use simple gestures to quickly edit and share photos from your mobile device. Enjoy having your photo and video library right in your hand — without wasting your device’s valuable storage space.
Photoshop Express is a companion to Photoshop.com, your online photo sharing, editing, and hosting resource. Create a free Photoshop.com account to upload and store 2GB of photos and videos online.
HAVE FUN ON THE RUN
With Photoshop Express, it’s easy to improve your photos. Choose from a variety of one-touch effects, or simply drag your finger across the screen to crop, rotate, or adjust color. Add artistic filters like Soft Focus or Sketch. And never fear: You can undo and redo changes until you get just the look you want—a copy of your original file is always saved.
Top editing features:
• Basics: Crop, Straighten, Rotate, and Flip
• Color: Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black and White, and Contrast
• Filters: Sketch, Soft Focus, and Sharpen
• Effects: Vibrant, Pop, Border, Vignette Blur, Warm Vintage, Rainbow, White Glow, and Soft Black and White
• Borders: Rectangle, Rounded, Oval, Soft Edge, Vignette, Rough Edge, Halftone, and Film EmulsionSHOW ON THE GO
Photoshop Express lets you access your entire online photo and video library directly from your Photoshop.com account. Relive memories with your friends and family anytime, anywhere. Show off all your favorite photos and videos with instant slideshows. It’s like having thousands of photos and videos right in your pocket!
Free
I do quite like taking photographs and as a result I have bought a fair few photo apps for the iPhone and the iPad. The Adobe Photoshop Express app though having many features of other apps is free. So it is worth the money?
The app is designed for both the iPhone and the iPad.
As you have a camera on the iPhone it is (despite the small screen) a useful app for the iPhone, whilst the larger screen of the iPad makes it a a great app for that device.
Once you have got the photo into the application, either via camera or from your onboard photo collection there are various tools and filters you can use. You can crop, flip, rotate and straighten your image. Adjust the image colours, tones and exposure.
Add a variety of effects and borders, including sketch, vignette blur and white glow! Adding borders for example is quite simple, click and choose.
For some of the effects you can adjust the intensity, however for the built in effects like white glow, you have just the one built in effect, with no ability to go in and adjust. For this reason this may not be the app for you, if you like to apply and adjust effects on your photographs.
Once you have edited your image you can save it back to your iPhone or iPad. You can also upload direct to Facebook or if you have one your photoshop.com account.
Personally though the app has a lot of features, some of the effects are quite limited and not all can be “edited” to add a subtle effect. However this is a free app and for that reason if you are looking for a photo editing app for your iPad or iPhone then Adobe Photoshop Express certainly has the key features that you will need, is quite easy to use and will meet most people’s needs.
It’s not too late…
Tomorrow the reading and activity week starts for the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference. This week before the conference allows delegates a chance to plan their time for when the conference starts proper, familiarise themselves with the Elluminate and asynchronous discussions platform, meet other delegates and presenters for a virtual coffee, view the have-a-go area and go on tours of Second Life.
It’s not too late to sign up and at £50 is really good value more money. There are many advantages to attending the conference, but reduced travel and accommodation costs, no travel time and no need to leave the office, is one key advantage.
100 ways to use a VLE – #68 Using handwriting
The future of education – are we having the right conversation?
From JISC.
We need to re-engage civil society in a debate about educational purpose. These are the powerful words of Professor Keri Facer, keynote speaker at the forthcoming JISC innovating e-learning conference.
Listen to the interview with Keri Facer.
According to Facer, we need to stop using qualifications as a proxy for a debate about educational success – “how many people need to get up to Level Two skills, how many people need degrees” – and instead start really thinking about the competencies, skills and attributes students may need to thrive in uncertain times.
In the context of the row over HE funding the UK has neglected the fundamental question about what institutions are for and instead has focused simply on the issue about how to pay for universities as they currently exist. Facer puts this in the context of the uncontested idea of the knowledge economy which has dominated the discussions about the future of socio-technological change. “For me the critical issue is that we have been working with one idea of the future for nearly twenty years. The idea of the knowledge economy seems to imply that if only we make sure everybody is educated enough and ensure that they have enough technological skills then we will have a future where everybody will be economically secure. I think this is contestable when we look at some of the economical and environmental developments that are likely to come about in the next ten years. If we look carefully at the lived reality of a future ‘knowledge economy’, for example, it may be one of radical polarisation, inequality and injustice. This is not necessarily an empowering future. As educators we need to start thinking about the other sorts of futures we may want to support our students to create and inhabit.” Facer encourages the audience to start imagining different futures and to examine the kinds of future lives that are offered by this widespread discourse of the knowledge economy.
She urges universities in their governance to be much more closely tied to the needs and aspirations of their communities and to set in place mechanisms for engagement in real debates about how to build sustainable economies. “If we want to imagine different futures we need to create the right kinds of spaces to be able to debate those, public spaces where people are equipped to get into a serious debate about the sorts of socio-technological trajectories that we will be looking at over the next ten to twenty years.”
Prepare for a lively debate on 23 November!
Find out more about the advantages of online conferences.
Why an online conference?
Last week I wrote a guest post on Marieke Guy’s Ramblings of a Remote Worker blog about the forthcoming JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference where I will be the conference blogger.
Here is a copy of what I wrote…
Over the years I have attended many conferences, online and in physical locations.
This November JISC are running their fifth online conference, Innovating e-Learning 2010. For the third year running I will be the official conference blogger, adding my thoughts and opinions on the conference and posting tips and advice to those new to the format. I really do enjoy attending these online conferences and find they do challenge me and my assumptions, make me think and influence my practice.
A bit of background perhaps may be in order.
At the 2006 JISC Online Conference I presented a piece entitled Mobile Learning on the VLE.
This was seminal piece of work that has had an impact on a lot of what I have done since. It was a key factor in my involvement in the MoLeNET programme and a big influence on how I view the use of mobile devices to enhance and enrich learning.
I really did enjoy not just presenting at the conference, but also taking part as a delegate in the other presentations. One of the key factors for me was the depth and breadth of discussion that took place, something that is often “missing” from a physical conference. This discussion was textual and asynchronous and took place over a day or so rather than in the few minutes for questions you normally get at a physical conference.
2007 saw me jointly present with Helen Beetham, more of a challenge, but I presented from Weston-super-Mare, whilst Helen presented from Devon. At various online conferences I have attended people have been able to present from all over the world. Any conference is going to have an impact on the environment. With hundreds of people travelling hundreds (if not thousands) of miles this will contribute to the carbon footprint of the event. Now it has to be said that an online conference can help reduce the environmental impact of an event. If you are like me you probably have a laptop with you at a conference, so if you are staying at home or in the office and using the laptop at the online conference this will have a negligible impact on the carbon footprint as you would be using the laptop at both kinds of events.
2008 was my first as the official conference blogger. This was a big change for me, as before I could focus one day on presenting and then enjoy the rest of the conference. As the official conference blogger I was expected to help in the build up and blog over the conference. I think when asked to do this my own e-Learning Stuff was only about a year old (though I had a blog in my previous role before then) and blogged a few times a week, so at first I wasn’t sure exactly what was wanted. I knew I would need to blog a quite a few times a day, so this was quite a challenge. I also had the “day job” so needed to fit it all around that too. So after much thinking, I really threw myself into the role, and as well as using text, I also made use of audio and video. I made short videos and uploaded them to the blog. Some of these videos were edited and put together in advance.
Others were shot during the conference (sometimes on a phone) and uploaded within minutes of taking them.
These video summaries were appreciated by the delegates as was my textual commentary, advice and help.
So perhaps it was no surprise that in 2009 I was invited back again as the conference blogger.
So here we are back in 2010 and once more I will be blogging at the JISC Online Conference.
So what is it about an online conference?
For me the main reason for attending an online conference, as well as the excellent presentations, is the engagement between the delegates. Most physical conferences I have attended have in the main been passive affairs, I sit, I listen, I think, digest and reflect. Discussion and debate does happen at these conferences, but usually informally over coffee. At the online conference the debate and discussion takes place using a textual asyncrhonous discussion forum over two days. As a result it allows for reflection, it enables delegates to refer and check other papers and sources, and for all delegates to read that discussion and if they want to, add their own comment.
Other reasons why I like online conferences, is that I can attend the conference even when doing other things. I can still attend meetings, see people in my office, teach, even go to other places. At the last two online conferences I have had to go to London during the week of the conference, and have using 3G and coffee shop wifi hotspots continued to take part in the conference even though I am away from my desk.
Having said all that it is useful too to make time for the conference, shut the office door, work from home for a bit, wear headphones, move to a different office, work in the coffee spaces in the college or university.
You can see presentations again, you can ignore them and (virtually) walk out without feeling you may be offending someone as their talk doesn’t relate to you as you thought it did.
Unlike a physical conference, the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference remains open for reading until the 31st December to allow participants to catch up on what they missed. So unlike missing the train to a physical conference or falling ill, it is possible to still get a lot out of the online conference.
There are advantages to attending the conference, but reduced travel and accommodation costs, no travel time and no need to leave the office, are additional advantages.
Of course the real value of the online conference is the programme, one that will inspire and challenge you. It has variety and interest.
So if it is proving difficult to attend all the conferences you want to, one you shouldn’t miss is the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference.
Eureka – iPad App of the Week
Eureka – iPad App of the Week
This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.
This week’s App is Eureka Sports Science.
The Eureka iPad application is a special digital edition of The Times’s monthly science magazine. In this app we ask how the science of sport is changing the human race. The app combines original journalism from our award-winning science and sports teams with all the interactivity of the iPad – including enhanced graphics, stunning photography and exclusive video.
This app features writing and commentary from Matthew Syed, Mike Atherton, Mark Henderson, Hannah Devlin, Owen Slot and many more.
£0.59
Wired magazine has shown what is possible with magazines on the iPad and I have looked at it here and here. Eureka from The Times is starting to show what is possible with magazines on the iPad.
From the very striking “cover” the mindmap style navigation makes use of the touch and swiping interface of the iPad. Whereas WIRED was very much a traditional magazine swiping pages and lots of adverts, Eureka is content and non-traditional access to that content.
There are audio introductions for each section and as you move through the content there is animation, videos, interactive diagrams, images and text.
It’s very simple to move to different sections and back to the main menu.
A minor criticism is that you are constantly turning your iPad around as some pages only work in landscape and others only work in portrait. One of the things about the WIRED magazine is that it works regardless of the orientation of the device. With Eureka you are reminded to rotate the iPad as and when required. It is annoying, but understandable why the Times have done this, as the programming and design work needed to allow viewing regardless of orientation would have taken a lot more time. They would have also had to virtually double the size of the App as they would have needed to put in images for portrait and landscape. As a result I suspect that this was the main reason for not providing content in both orientations. Part of me though thinks maybe they should have just stuck to one orientation instead of making the user constantly turn and twist their iPad.
One thing you will need to consider though is the size of the App.
This is a very large app and will take a while to download. The time will vary depending on your internet connection speeds. It is, we hope, worth the wait.
The App weighs in at 569MB which is huge for a mobile App and if you have a 16GB iPad you may find (as I did) you will need to remove other stuff to put it on.
This means it is not something you are going to download via 3G or if you have a slow broadband connection. The alternative for the Times would be to create a shell of a magazine that would require a connection to the internet to be useful. At least with all the content in the App itself, this means it will work when you have no connectivity.
So what of the content?
Well I am no sports scientist therefore I can’t say whether the content is superficial or dumbed down. This is a newspaper’s magazine so I am suspecting that this is not something that undergraduates would be using, however I do aim to show our Sports Studies lecturers to get their opinion on the content.
At 59p this is certainly good value for money and well worth getting if you are interested in sport and the science of sport.
e-Learning Stuff Podcast #064: Bringing innovation to life: From adversity comes opportunity
James interviews Sarah Knight from JISC on the forthcoming JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference that takes place from the 23rd to the 26th November 2010. More information on the conference.
With James Clay and guest, Sarah Knight from JISC.
This is the sixty fourth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Bringing innovation to life: From adversity comes opportunity
Download the podcast in mp3 format: Bringing innovation to life: From adversity comes opportunity
Heading down Dawlish way
Travelling down to Plymouth today by train made me realise that despite living in the South West now for nearly twenty years, this was the first time I had gone south of Weston-super-Mare by train (well except for once travelling to Bridgwater by train, but certainly no further south than that).
It’s not that I don’t go to places like Taunton, Exeter or Plymouth (even Cornwall) it’s just that I have usually driven down the M5.
Often the reason for using the car was convenience, time and speed. Many of the places I needed to visit were not in close proximity to the railway station and that would have meant getting a taxi. Other times I was carrying a lot of stuff, you would be surprised by how much stuff you need when demonstrating mobile learning! Other times it was time. When I looked at going by train to Exeter or Plymouth, the only “available” tickets were on the very slow trains that stopped at every station, and as a result it would take anything up to twice as long as going by car. I was quite surprised though this time checking the train that I could change at Taunton and catch the “faster” train making the journey time about the same as going by car.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I actually prefer going by train, especially like today when the train is not very busy and I have a table. If I am going to London I will nearly always go by train and going north (unless I fly) I will usually go by train.
I am not entirely sure if every journey in the past I have taken it was necessary to take the car, but what I will say is that the train route this way is spectacular especially as it passes through Dawlish.
So though this is my first time by train to Plymouth I don’t think it will be the last time.
Challenging Discussions
Virtually every conference you attend will have keynotes and presentations. One of the strengths of any conference is the level of debate and discussion that takes place, however symposiums aside, most of the discussion at a physical conference, aside from the few minutes for questions, takes place between small groups over lunch or coffee. With an online conference however you will find much more discussion and debate takes place than at a traditional conference. For me this is the real value and one of the key advantages of an online conference.
Due to the textual and asynchronous nature of the discussion it is possible to engage in the conversation either immediately or after a period of reflection over the two days of discussion for each of the themes. it’s a real opportunity to take the time to debate the issues that arise out of the presentation with fellow practitioners and experts.
You can challenge the experts as well as yourself and other practitioners. I do think that this is one of the real advantages of the online conference. In many ways it can be easier to engage with the presenters than it would be at a physical conference. You know the conference where the chair asks, “are there any questions?” and it can be intimating to put your hand up. Even if you do, there are usually others and there is very little time for lots of questions. Keynotes can be even more intimidating especially with six hundred odd delegates in the auditorium. It’s not that an online environment is not as challenging, more the online environment evens the playing field for delegates and presenters. It is, according to people I have spoken to, much easier to ask questions in an online conference than at a physical conference.
Another advantage of the online conference is that if you do have a question for the presenter, however you want to check something first, you can. Before you ask your question, you can go back and read that paper you referenced last year, check with a colleagure via e-mail that the evidence for the study is online, etc… try doing that in the “few minutes for questions” you get at a physical conference.
So if you haven’t already can I suggest you sign up to the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference. If you have never attended an online conference before, now is an ideal opportunity (and great value at £50). If you have attended a JISC Online Conference before, but didn’t engage, maybe time to give it another try.