All posts by James Clay

app of the week, iphone

PlainText – iPhone App of the Week

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PlainText – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various 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 PlainText.

For editing text on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. PlainText is a simple text editor with an uncomplicated, paper-like user interface. Unlike the default Notes app, PlainText allows you to create and organize your documents in folders and sync everything with Dropbox.com.

Free

PlainText is a simple tool that allows you to edit a text document and unlike the built in Notes app it syncs automatically with Dropbox so you can access your notes when you need to from your computer, another device or a browser.

You can type in text on your iPhone and once you have connected PlainText to your Dropbox it will “appear” there!

PlainText is an universal app so also works on the iPad. If you need something with more settings then the developer of PlainText has created WriteRoom.

If you want to make notes and sync them automatically to Dropbox and you are not worried about formatting or tags (use Evernote for that kind of thing) then PlainText is probably the right app for you.

Get PlainText in the iTunes App Store.

e-book

ebrary on Android

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I have reviewed the ebrary App for the iPad, and a few people asked if there was an Android version? ebrary is currently working on an Android app, in the meantime it is possible to read ebrary e-books on your Android device. You can of course read e-books on the ebrary platform through a browser on your Android device, however this requires a live internet connection, which is fine if you have wifi, or unlimited data.

Using Adobe Digital Editions on your computer it is possible to download e-books from ebrary and transfer them to your Android device using a compatible eReader application, myself I used the Aldiko app as a “bookshelf”. You can then read these books offline without needing a constant internet connection.

Alas it isn’t possible to download the books direct to your Android device, you will need to go via your computer. There is a “bug” that stops you downloading direct to your device, this may be fixed at some point.

You will need to first download and install Adobe Digital Editions and then sign up for an Adobe ID. This will allow you to “authorize” transfers from your computer to your Android device. On your device you will need to install a compatible eReader application. I used Aldiko as I already had it on my Google Nexus One.

Start Aldiko on your Android device, then connect to your computer and where necessary turn on USB storage.

Having connected your Android device then start Adobe Digital Editions, it should recognise your device and add it as a “bookshelf” to your library after you have authorised the device.

Once this is all done then you can go onto the ebrary platform, select the book you want to read, click the download link.

There are a few options, you can download a DRM-free PDF containing part of the book, or a DRM’d copy of the whole book.

It will download an acsm file, open this file and Adobe Digital Editions will start to download the book from ebrary.

Once downloaded you merely need to drag the book from your library to your Aldiko bookshelf, this will then transfer the book from ebrary to your Android device.

You can then read the book on your Android device. Remember though you only have the book for 14 days before the DRM “expires” the book and then you will need to delete the book.

As for the reading experience, well this isn’t a true e-book experience and I found it quite difficult to read the book on the small screen of the Google Nexus One.

However on an Android tablet with a larger screen I suspect the experience would be as good as reading on the iPad.

e-book, podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #083: Read This!

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Kindle

We are discussing Kindles, e-Books, iPads, iBooks Author and all manner of stuff related to digital books.

With James Clay, Lilian Soon, David Sugden and Ron Mitchell.

This is the 83rd e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Read This!

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Read This!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes


100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #84 Collaborating on a Wiki

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Working together in groups is a key part of most organisations, it makes sense from an educational perspective that learners work together on group assignments in preparation for when they will work in teams in the workplace.

The process of working together on a collaborative assignment brings a lot of challenges, one of which is where should learners collaborate when working on a document. There are various public tools such as Google Docs and public wikis that can be used. Most VLEs have a wiki built in to their functionality.

Regardless of which tools is used, the VLE can be the staging post that will allow the learners to jump into their collaborative document. Learners may choose to use the built in wiki, however as a group they may choose to use a tool such as Google Docs or a public wiki such as PBwiki.

Wikis allow multiple learners to work on a single document, you can break the document down into pages with links between the different pages.

Wikis allow learners to work on the document when and where they want to, at a time and place to suit their circumstances.

Wikis can often be edited and worked on using mobile devices, enabling easier access and collaboration when required.

Wikis are often more accessible than working together on a word processed document and will work with screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Unlike simple word processed documents, wikis also enable learners to embed rich media into them. Short video clips can be embedded, as can audio and images. You may also be able to embed other content into them, such as RSS feeds, slides from a service such as SlideShare, pages from other services.

Wikis can contain links, internally and externally to sources and other relevant content.

One nice feature of collaborative tools is the history that is recorded, it outlines not only the changes to the document, but who did what when. This feature can make it much easier to assess the final outcome. Of course when using the wiki within the VLE the assessor will have access to that history, when using other collaborative tools, access may needed to be given to assessor.

At the end of the day, wikis are a powerful tool that allow learners to collaborate together to complete a joint outcome. Whether they use the wiki on the VLE, one that offers familiarity within the interface, or merely use the VLE as a jump off point using an external tool, they provide many learning possibilities and opportunities of working together.

gloucestershire college

QR Codes on the noticeboard

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So there I was walking down one of the corridors in the college when I noticed that there was a QR Code on the noticeboard.

It linked to a survey by students on bands and music, they were using surveymonkey that works well on a mobile device. The questionnaire was a simple one so could be easily completed on your mobile device.

I think the only thing I would have changed may have been adding some idea of what the QR Code was about. Also I would have been adding a short URL to the QR Code for those that did not have a QR Code reader.

Interesting to see learners using QR Codes on their own accord.

app of the week, e-book, ipad, iphone

ebrary – iPad App of the Week

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ebrary – iPad App of the Week

Update: The app has now been discontinued.

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various 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 ebrary.

Researchers now have an optimized way to experience authoritative content – both online and offline – from multiple sources including e-books that their institutions acquire from leading publishers and materials uploaded and integrated by librarians.

Free

I have a bit of a passion for e-books. It’s not about replacing paper books, much more a way to provider greater access to books at a time and place to suit the learner.

The e-Books for FE from JISC Collections enables FE Colleges to start with e-Books through the ebrary platform.If you can it makes sense to provide authenticated external access, either through Federated Access or Athens.

One of the disadvantages of the ebrary platform was it was browser based, though that meant you could easily access the collection through a PC or a Mac, it did mean that it was either not possible or challenging to read them on a mobile device.

Recently ebrary have added a download feature to the collection, this means you can download either 40 pages as an unprotected PDF or the whole book for a 14 day loan using Adobe Digital Editions. This means you could transfer it to some e-book readers such as the Sony Reader.

ebrary have just released an iPad and iPhone App. What surprised me was how much better the app was for reading books than the browser based platform on the iPad.

Disappointingly the only way I could get the app to work was to link my account on ebrary that I use with Federated Access with my Facebook account and then link the App with my Facebook account. There didn’t appear to be a way of logging into the App using Federated Access (and I also believe it isn’t possible with Athens either). I guess there is a technical reason for this, but this could cause problems if your institution blocks Facebook for staff or learners (or both).

The app doesn’t “hold” the authentication for very long either, so as a result you do need to re-authenticate on a regular basis. So it’s not like you can authenticate at home and then use it in college, you would need to authenticate across the college network. Though if staff or learners have a 3G iPad then they could just use 3G to authenticate and then go back to wifi to access the book!

In my own college that wouldn’t be an issue, learners would have access to Facebook over the student wireless network and though we do block Facebook to staff, staff who have an “academic need” to use Facebook can get the block lifted. Using Facebook to access ebrary would be a legitimate “academic need”.

Once authenticated you can search and browse for books as you can on the browser platform.

The books download page by page which on a slow connection can be frustratingly slow. It makes much more sense to download the books, but to do that you need an Adobe ID for the Adobe Digital Editions. This is in addition to the other IDs. I can imagine that this could be complicated for learners in having to combine various IDs to use the app. Also if they have been using Ebrary purely through IP authentication on campus they may not even know they need an ID to access the books.

The books are quite large too, the ones I looked at were in the 70-100MB range which on a slow broadband connection will take a while to download. Once downloaded though, moving between chapters, or flicking between pages the experience is so much faster and better than trying to read the books “live” having to download each page. Also it doesn’t require you to re-authenticate so making it much easier to read books on the move. However once you have downloaded a book and it expires you don’t seem to be able to download it again!

I am looking into this limitation. You can return a book early, so I am guessing that is one limited solution. I have managed to re-download an expired book, but I suspect that there may be a watiing time before you can “borrow” it again. The ebrary help does cover some of this, but as the ebrary platform can be used for a variety of books and collections, the help isn’t always specific to the e-Books for FE or the iOS App.

You can copy and paste text from the e-books and what I do like (as it does in the browser) is it adds the appropriate reference to the pasted text. This makes it much easier for learners to understand and recognise the importance of referencing the text they cut and paste.

I will admit that the ebrary app is not perfect, but it does work and it does allow you to access the ebrary collection from your iOS device, there is an app for the iPhone as well as the iPad.

If you are subscribed to the ebrary collection, have a Facebook account and have an iPad, then get this app.

Get the ebrary app in the iTunes App Store. Update: The app has now been discontinued.

conference

Rates of Change

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Slides from my recent keynote at the Teacher Training and Technologies Conference 2012.

Cloud computing, mobile, tablets, 4G, internet TVs, social learning, learning analytics, game based learning, augmented reality and e-books are all being used now or are just on the horizon. Change is all around us and the modern teacher needs to be adaptable and innovative. The rate of technological change appears to be getting faster. Can our existing cultures allows us to take advantage of the potential of emerging technologies? Or do we need to change the way we change?

lwf12

Venue Issues

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So far I am finding the new venue for Learning without Frontiers both innovating and frustrating.

I really do like the inflated domes, they look great and a clever way of using space without needing to walk lots of different rooms. Nice and futuristic.

Nice that Ray Kurzweil is here in person #lwf12The theatre is okay, apart that there are too many chairs, so it makes it difficult to get a seat even though there are lots of spare chairs, as the delegates are sitting on the ends, and it isn’t easy to move pass them to the empty chairs. As a result a lot of people are standing up! Having said that even at the back, I can see the speaker and if they are using them, their slides on the three big screens. No live Twitter stream though?

The biggest frustration for me though is that downstairs from the conference is the Learning Technologies exhibition and as it is not closed off, the noise from the crowds downstairs is making it hard to hear the speakers. In the background there is this crowd noise that as the day progresses is only getting louder!

Of course the venue is only part of the deal and the content of the conference is what counts.

altc2009, lwf12, vle

VLE is Dead is alive and kicking

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Two and half a years ago at ALT-C 2009 we had an excellent debate on the role of the VLE in further and higher education.

The video of that debate is still very popular.

iOS Version

Today at LWF 12 there is another debate entitled the VLE is Dead, though I am not taking part I suspect we may re-hash the same arguments that we discussed back in 2009.

The thing is, since that time, there have been lots of discussions about the VLE and its role in formal education, however rather than been dismissed and forgotten, the use of the VLE as a tool to enhance and enrich learning has increased.

My view is we need to discuss less about how to kill the VLE, but work with practitioners and staff to use it more effectively.

Teachers use the VLE badly, as they do with most technologies, in the main as they don’t know how to use it effectively enable students to learn. Staff development is important to get teachers to get the most out of tools like the VLE, but also give them a better understanding how people learn.

VLE is Dead is today at 1.15 in Salon Foucault at LWF 12.

Further reading

“VLEs are crap”

Don’t kill off the VLE…

It’s not dead… yet…