Outside the Classroom, “Invisible Use”

There are many ways that I use the iPad outside of the classroom – and I would say that this is my primary usage. I use it to access journal articles using an app called Papers. It allows me to store, organize, and annotate journal articles. I use it to keep up to date on my subject area as well as teaching methodologies and pedagogy. This is highly portable and readily accessible.

I also use it to keep up with news and blogs via my Google RSS Reader (see my earlier post, “RSS Readers – Keeping Up With Your News & Blogs“). I like to use a program called Reeder, which has an iPhone, iPad, and Mac Application that all sync and it is hooked up to my Google RSS Reader. It’s a great way to keep up to date on current events, topics on your subject areas, and your friends’ favorite blogs – especially on the go. When I find myself in a long line at the post office, I will open up Reeder to catch up on the news.

Click here for the rest of Jen’s article…

Have you been using it? What do you think about it?  We’re about to try it for ourselves and would love to get your feedback.  Once we have our page ready, we’ll unveil it to you in all its glory.  In the meantime, tell us your thoughts about the new kid, Pinterest.

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Article by Lorraine Devon Wilke, Huffington Post

I’m late to this game. Didn’t even know it was being played. At least not till I noticed “pinning” going on at Facebook or Twitter and had no idea what this Pinterest thing was or why any of us should be paying attention (I tend to be on the slow side of the “new stuff” curve). When I finally stoked up the curiosity to check out the Pinterest site, my initial reaction was: “Oh God…another social media must-have that’s gonna to suck up even more of my time!” I wisely eschewed it with the hope that it would go away…like MySpace.

It didn’t. At least it hasn’t yet. Pinterest persists and in my finger-on-the-pulse effort to stay abreast of new trends for the purpose of marketing and promoting my various projects and platforms, I started the due diligence.

It appears some think it’s the wave of the future, poised to be bigger than Facebook or Twitter (don’t they all say that?). Some think it is just another social media platform, a passing fad designed to, yes, suck up our time but in a whole new way. Yippee. And some have started ringing alarm bells about copyrights and the fine print of usage and liability issues as they relate to the Pinterest terms of use and the “pinning” of the creative works of others without expressed permission.

Before I could even muster the energy to set up a page, photographer friends posted warnings urging visual artists to be wary of joining because of these issues, suggesting to those who’d already joined to be cautious about what they pin of other artists’ work; even the media has been frothing forth various views from users, lawyers and Pinterest spokespeople, slinging around enough pros and cons to completely confuse everyone. And when I discovered I actually had to be “invited” to join, I got a little snitty about the exclusionary taint of having to pass muster, so to speak, even just to leave a comment; not dissimilar to a sorority or condo board (neither of which I’ve ever actually had any personal experience with). Being too much the democrat to pursue a club one must be invited to join, I put the whole thing aside yet again and went off to tweet, thread and flog everywhere I could completely uninvited.

Then the Pinterest mountain came to me…

Click here for the rest of the article…

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Here are some programs that we have found and in some cases used to help us run our ship a bit more tightly.  Can you think of anything to add to our list?

Programs to Help You Backup Your Work (you know…that important thing that we all forget to do)

• Drop Box
• Mozy
• Carbonite 5.0
• Box.com
• SugarSync

Programs for Bookmarking, Clipping the Web, and Creating Screen Grabs or Swipe Files

• Snagit
• Del.icio.us
• Diigo
• Evernote

Online Calendars

• Google Calendar
• 30 Boxes

Programs for Collaboration

• Crocodoc
• Wiki Spaces

Programs for Creating Online Documents

• Google Docs (my personal favorite)
• PDF to Word Converter
• Zoho

Programs for Money Management and Budgeting

• Mint

Programs for Online Group Meetings

• Skype
• Go to Meeting
• Google+ Hangouts
• AnyMeeting
• Join.me

Programs for Password Management

• Last Pass
• Keepass
• Mitto

Programs for Project Management

• Basecamp
• Nozbe
• Project Bubble

Programs to Manage all your Social Media Accounts in One Place

• Hootsuite
• Friend Feed
• Meebo
• Socializer

Programs for Time Tracking and Invoicing

• Harvest
• Paymo

Programs for the To Do List Junkies

• Thoughtboxes
• Ta-Da List
• Remember the Milk
• My Life Organized
• OmniFocus

Programs for Visual Collaboration

• Creately
• Flockdraw
• Vyew

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1. Google+ - social network
2. Snagit - screen capture tool
3. Delicious - social bookmarking tool
4. Tweetdeck - Twitter client
5. Scribd - document sharing tool
6. OpenOffice - office suite
7. Storify - makes stories using social media
8. Hootsuite - social media dashboard
9. SurveyMonkey - survey tool
10. Poll Everywhere - instant audience feedback

Check them out…we look forward to hearing your feedback.

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Our grandparents went from the days of no television and just radios or they started with a boxed black and white television. Today we have flat screen TV’s that you can hang on the wall with pictures so real it makes you feel like you’re living the movie that you are watching.

Technology is advancing and there is nothing we can do about it but that is a good thing. Some people fear that technology will consume our lives and we will forget out the older and more traditional approaches to things.

One of those concerns is traditional books versus the new e-readers like the Nook and the Kindle. Some parents feel traditional books add value to the experience of reading a book. Some remember the excitement of going to pick their favorite book off the shelf at bedtime for their parents to read. It was exciting to grab a book from the shelf and say “here I want to read this one.”

Now with e-readers kids simply select a book they like and download. No pages to slip through. Now it just “let’s see what we can download tonight.”  The question is, do you feel this diminishes the entire reading experience between parent and child? What impact if any do you feel this evolving technology will have on the publishing world? We’d like to know your thoughts on this subject.

Here are ten of the most common e-learning tools that we’ve come across in some of the articles that we’ve read.

Eight Resources