All posts by James Clay

app of the week, ipad

Eureka – iPad App of the Week

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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.

jisc, jiscel10, podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #064: Bringing innovation to life: From adversity comes opportunity

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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

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

stuff

Heading down Dawlish way

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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.

conference, jiscel10

Challenging Discussions

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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.

e-book, kindle

Kindles are wonderful things

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Though we know books are wonderful things they do have a few disadvantages.

They are heavy! Okay carrying a single book is probably okay for most people, but think about carrying all the books in a bookshelf? Yes not a practical solution to carry them all in one go!

You have to buy books, either from a book store or Amazon. Regardless of the route you take it will still take time to either find and buy the book in a bricks and mortar store, or wait for Amazon to deliver it. I have bought books from Amazon.com and it takes weeks for them to be delivered from the USA unless I am willing to pay an arm and a leg for speedy delivery.

Of course if you don’t buy the book, you can always borrow from your local library. Well you could borrow from your library under two assumptions. First that they have a copy, second that no one else has borrowed it. Yes you can request a copy or reserve a copy, but once more that takes time. In academic libraries the problems of scarce real books can impact on the learning process. I recall from my undergraduate days when as soon as a lecturer mentioned a book in a lecture as “essential reading” the entire cohort of students would literally run to the library to get out the single copy available… The library did sometimes under the direction of the academics add the book to a “special collection” that allowed the book to be borrowed for one hour! No more, just one hour! The focus moved away from learning and onto book borrowing and logistics!

One advantage given to paper books is the ability to highlight words or phrases, annotate sections of interest or fold over the corner to bookmark a page. This is fine if this is your book, but can change how someone views the content of the book if they use a book that already has annotations and bookmarks. Their view will be skewed by the previous reader. Also if you annotate or bend pages of a library book then the librarians rightly get a little upset.

If you talk to lost property offices at railway stations and airports you will realise that people lose books all the time. Once lost, the only way to retrieve that book is to buy a new copy.

Finally though for many, books are an accessible format, for some the small text and black on white printing can be inaccessible.

The e-book reader is a technological solution to some of the issues we face with real paper books. There are many models out there from the new Sony Reader with touch interface, the Nook and the well received Amazon Kindle. These e-ink devices allow you to read books anywhere and at anytime, well under the assumption it isn’t dark!

You can put onto these devices an entire library of books. The Kindle is only 241 grams (8½ oz.) so weighs less than a single paperback book, but can be loaded with three and a half thousand books.

The Kindle (and now some other e-book readers) allow you to buy and download books over wifi or 3G without needing a computer and without needing to wait for delivery. A single click and the book is there in almost an instant ready to read. You can also download sample chapters, try before you buy. Well you can do that in a bookshop, but I find the shop assistants always look at me weirdly. In my local book shop, which has a coffee shop inside, has put up notices asking customers not to take books from the shelves into the café area and read them whilst drinking coffee.

Some educational institutions are now providing learners with a Kindle and filling it with the requisite text books, literally providing them with a library on the move. Libraries that use e-book readers, no longer need to guess how many physical copies of a core text will be needed they can provide copies on demand as and when needed. Many e-book readers like the Kindle, allow you to highlight, annotate and bookmark an e-book. However these can be easily removed if you are using a borrowed e-book reader from the library for example.

If you lose your Kindle, you’ve not lost your library. You can replace your Kindle and then re-download your library to the device.

In terms of accessibility, the ability to change text size and contrast on e-book readers ensures that they are more accessible than paper versions. The Kindle also has a text to speech capability, though it has to be said, some publishers do not allow their books to be read in this way, they would I guess prefer you buy the audiobook version.

Having said all that e-Book readers are not there to replace books, they enhance and enrich the reading experience. Just because I have a Kindle doesn’t mean that I am never going to read another paper book again! Far from it, I suspect that reading sample chapters on the Kindle will probably result in purchasing the paper version… likewise though I will admit I can see myself clicking the “buy” link now and again.

e-Books also have a few disadvantages in that once I have purchased a copy of an e-book, it is nigh on impossible to lend that copy to a friend… it is impossible to donate the e-book to the local Oxfam shop… it is impossible to impress your friends as you can with a books on the coffee table or the bookshelf when they come to visit…

e-Book readers, like the Kindle are wonderful things, but still, the iPad is the future of reading…

A version of this article originally appeared on the FOTE10 website.

app of the week, ipad

Lights, Camera, Capture! – iPad App of the Week

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Lights, Camera, Capture! – 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. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is Lights, Camera, Capture!

Lights, Camera, Capture! for iPad is based on the popular book by Bob Davis. Like the book, it helps aspiring photographers learn to achieve the best possible images with minimal lighting equipment. The app features over 100 videos, compelling interactive diagrams to help you understand the effect of lighting and equipment settings, workshop videos, high resolution images, and the full text of the original book, integrated seamlessly.

The author is a professional photographer whose high-profile clients include Oprah Winfrey and Eva Longoria Parker, and whose work has appeared in Time, O, and People magazines. Along with his invaluable advice, this beautiful and engaging app includes hundreds of video clips with Bob teaching you how to see the light so you can achieve studio-quality images in any situation. He covers the elements of lighting, shows his lighting setups, and shares his two-strobe technique that lets you create studio-quality lighting anywhere with minimal equipment.

The title includes incredible interactive exhibits to help you understand the effect of f-stop settings, lighting positions, light strength ratios and more.

This book covers and includes:
* Professional tips and stunning full-color images
* All the key elements of photographic lighting, with informative illustrations and lighting grids
* The author’s pioneering two-strobe technique
* The relationship between aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and the effects of different lenses
* Tips on how to achieve studio-quality lighting outside the studio
* Videos from the author’s three-day lighting and photography workshop
* Author commentary on his photography and how he captures his images

Note that video streaming requires an active Internet connection.

£5.99

In many of my previous blog posts and presentations I have given over the last year, I have written and spoken about how devices such as the iPad will allow books, magazines and newspapers to evolve. To provide a different and more enhanced reading experience.

One publisher I have mentioned before is Inkling. Lights, Camera, Capture! is the first of their “books” I have downloaded and looked at. Unlike their Inkling App, this book is a standalone App, however it is also available within the Inkling App too.

So how does the reading experience shape up?

Well like any good book, it has an index, making it very easy to find different chapters and sections within those chapters.

You can highlight sections, access a glossary, make notes, add bookmarks and see where you have been. Now you can do some of that with a printed book, however this iPad version allows you to do some of it quicker and smarter.

Not all good news, though as every time I tried to add a note it crashed the App on one of my iPads, however I could get it to work on the other!

As you might expect with a book on photography there are a fair few photographs. With virtually all of these you can click on them to make them larger, but not that much larger!

There are also videos of Bob Davis explaining how he took particular shots. Now this is where I think they missed a trick. These videos are very simple video clips (well the ones I watched and I have not read the whole book at this time). They are simply Bob in front of a computer screen explaining how he took the shot. Personally I would have liked to have seen him taking the actual shot, where the camera actually was, the lighting, models, etc… All I actually get is a talking head, a diagram and the actual photograph.

Or are videos of presentations from workshops, where the quality is quite poor in terms of what you can see and hear.

In other words it doesn’t add much to the experience of reading, it becomes listening, rather than watching and understanding. The reason you use video in a book is not to duplicate what is written, but to enhance and enrich what is written to improve understanding.

I am also surprised that the videos are online and not part of the App, I am surprised as the app is in excess of 300MB in size, which is huge, and I thought this was down to the videos, it isn’t! So if you are not on wifi or want to watch your 3G data limits, then this App may not be as good as you thought it might be.

As for the actual written content? Which is the main reason for buying such a book.

Well I have learnt a fair bit about various things, especially lighting that I didn’t know (and I do take a fair few photographs).

However I think it could be a lot better, as I said above, don’t just have a talking head, use the power of video to show and explain how to do things that are difficult to explain in just text or with diagrams. It would have been nice to see more interactive diagrams to show the impact of changing lighting, exposure or aperture. This is something again which is difficult to explain with plain diagrams in my opinion. There were some, but not as many I would like.

So is it value for money, well the print version of the book has a RRP of £29.99 though you can get it on Amazon for £15.00. So for £5.99 I do think this is value for money compared to the print version.

Overall, a good first attempt at an enhanced book, but in my opinion it could be so much better than it is.

jiscel10, podcast, youtube

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #063: I’m the Mayor of Morrisons….

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Bits and pieces of news from the realm of e-learning. James gets all excited over the MacBook Air. QR Codes are back in fashion and are flavour of the month. Does the top ten YouTube videos a symptom of the death of user generated content? FOTE 10 and videos and combining video with Twitter. Some more commentary on the Kindle. James really doesn’t understand FourSquare, or to be honest Places on Facebook. James however does like Instagram. Finally James talks about the JISC Online Conference 2010.

With James Clay.

This is the sixty third e-Learning Stuff Podcast, I’m the Mayor of Morrisons….

Download the podcast in mp3 format: I’m the Mayor of Morrisons….

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

fote10, ipad

Books are wonderful things…

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Gloucestershire College LibraryThere is something very beautiful and sensual about a new book. Anyone who has ever bought a new book will know what I mean. Whether you open the parcel from Amazon, or remove the book from a bag of a high street bookseller, there is something about the smell of a new book, the feel of the roughness of the paper between your fingers as you slowly flick from page to page. As you open it for the first time you can feel the stiffness of the spine of a book that has never been read. The smoothness of the dust jacket, the rough texture of the cover, combine to produce a tingling feeling of excitement as you realise you are about to open the book and start to read.

There is even something about a used book, or one from a library. What is the history or legacy of the book? Who read it before you? Where did they read it? How did they feel when reading it? Did they share it with others? Even the annotations, that can be annoying, give a flavour of how previous readers of a book felt and used the book.

Books are extremely portable, they can be easily carried to any location and used. They fit into a multitude of bags and can be used whether you are a passenger in a car, on a train or flying in a plane. You can use books at home, in a coffee shop, on the beach, in a library, a classroom or in the park.

Books have an unique user interface that has never been adequately duplicated on any electronic device. You can flick from section to section, page to page. You can highlight and annotate. Put sticky notes on specific pages. Use a series of physical bookmarks to identify sections.

Books are also easily lent, libraries know this, but I am sure you like me have lent a book to others. You want them to share that feeling you get when reading a book for the first time, something you can’t get back when reading a book for a second time.

Books are indeed wonderful things, but still, the iPad is the future of reading…

A version of this article originally appeared on the FOTE10 website.

kindle

Holding onto my Kindle

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I was looking through my old Evernote notes seeing what I had noted and what I needed to keep and what could go. One notebook had some blog article ideas, one of which was entitled:

Why I didn’t get a Kindle for Christmas

This made me smile, as at the time (March 2010) I was dead set on getting an iPad and did not think I would ever use a Kindle. Another factor that convinced me I didn’t need a Kindle was the thing about having to buy it from the American Amazon, and buy American Kindle books. This was something I thought I probably could cope with, but would the average person really feel comfortable with this. So though I liked the Kindle I couldn’t see myself buying one.

Well…

Things change…

In July, Amazon announced that they would be released a UK version of the Kindle that would be lighter and smaller, and they also announced a UK version of the Kindle store.

As I was doing lots of stuff around e-books I decided that even though I had my iPad, I would order and buy a Kindle.

It arrived just in time for ALT-C where I was presenting a symposium on e-books and e-book readers. I loaded it with some free books and I even bought a few too.

Now a couple of months later where am I with the Kindle?

Well I am not using it as much as I would like to, but when I do, ir works for me. I find it easy to read, just as easy as paper and much easier than reading on the iPad, though I do like the fact that I can read my Kindle books on the iPad. I like the fact that I don’t have to charge it up all the time. I really like been able to buy books on demand and download them really quickly. I like been able to download sample chapters for free, really nice way of getting free reading. I like how I can buy a newspaper on my Kindle.

Anything I don’t like?

No backlight! I know that’s the reason I don’t have to charge it up so much, but does make it difficult to read in poor light.

It’s not quite there for reading complex documents, but for simple text it really can make it easier to do work, typing on the laptop and reading on the Kindle.

app of the week, ipad

WIRED Magazine – iPad App of the Week

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WIRED Magazine – 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. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is WIRED Magazine.

Free with each episode costing £2.39

I know, I know, I can hear you saying, “haven’t you done this one before?”

Well yes I have.

I reviewed the Wired app when it first came out and at the time I did wonder if I would buy any more issues…

Well here we are four months later and yes you can ask what’s happening with Wired now.

Well the first thing that was changed was changing the app from a app that was a whole magazine to an app that allows you to purchase and download individual issues within a single app.

This means that you have a single icon on your iPad for Wired rather than an icon for each issue. What was annoying was that I had to re-download issue one again!  The size of each issue has dropped, the first issue was something like 500MB, newer issues are about 250MB. Still big and something that you wouldn’t want to download using 3G. So you can see why I was initially annoyed with the change in app format.

So have things changed?

Firstly I have bought more issues, that is something that I think is quite telling in terms of how I feel about the app.

So yes I am buying further issues.

Though I am reading the magazine, I am not seeing huge leaps in the interface or sophisticated exciting ways of engaging with the content.

It has to be said that the content is more interactive and engaging than the content on the web. I don’t think this is a feature of the iPad or the iPad interface, more that publishes aren’t really using the web in a similar way. Most magazine articles I see on the web are just text versions of the printed article. Occasionally I see links and embedded video, but more often it is just text.

Though what I am seeing with Wired is more of the same type of engaging and interesting content, that I don’t see on the Wired website. The content is the US version of Wired, no UK version available.

I am pleased to see that each issue on the iPad is cheaper than the paper version (though I know that is not the case with all iPad magazines).

So based on my experience of using the Wired App over the last four months, I am still buying issues of Wired, I am still reading Wired.

I am still impressed and enjoying the reading experience. In many ways it was a similar experience to reading WIRED magazine, but the enhancements did add to the experience.

This is though, still very much old media trying to use new tools to sell a traditional old media type experience.

I would recommend it, if the type of content you find in Wired is your cup of tea.