Archive | App Reviews RSS feed for this section

App Review: PDF Expert

7 Sep

Summary: This app is designed to do all things PDF. It is compatible with Preview, Adobe Acrobat and any other PDF reader I could find. You can highlight, add text notes, draw with your finger, and save the PDF with these annotations. You can save files in to folders and back them up to servers such as DropBox.

Best features:

  • User friendly
  • Easy annotations
  • Excellent organization
  • Backs up to other file storage systems
  • Fill out forms
  • Opens files from almost anywhere (Google Docs, email attachments, downloads, etc)

Notes:

  • Does not work with Evernote or other note organization tools I’ve found.

Cost: $9.99

 

Tags: , , , , ,

App Review: Inspiration

7 Sep

I started teaching just about when Inspiration became a hit. Every class I had encouraged us to use it with students and demonstrate for the class.  Of course, once I graduated and started teaching I never worked in a school that had Inspiration and everyone had failed to mention how expensive it was. Eh..

Today’s Inspiration!

So, now Inspiration has an app for the iPad. It’s WONDERFUL. For those of you not familiar with Inspiration, it’s a mindmapping/brainstorm tool.  You can use it for a variety of purposes, but the really helpful thing about the iPad app is that you can do it yourself. I imagine a group of students would really benefit from working on an outline using this app. I personally use it when I’m reading to take notes.

Key features:

  • Templates-for a student who does not know where to start, a template is helpful. I’ll be honest that I haven’t used them myself and that they seem a little too specific. It would be nice if a teacher could create a template and share it with the students to use that is related to their coursework.
  • Outline to bubble format and back-There is great fluidity between these two views. You can easily switch views and your information transfers. For students it’s helpful because they can visually describe a paper, topic, process, etc. and it automatically sets it up in outline form.
  • The free one is good, but of course the paid one is better.  These types of tools work best when used regularly.

Tags: , , ,

An iPad Only Summer

7 Sep
This summer I decided to see if I could spend the summer only using my iPad. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to force me to rethink ways I have been using technology. However, it forced me to learn the ins and outs of every day apps.  Now my iPad is my main computing device.  Just like with any new technology, I needed to changed some ways I did things.

Top Things I Learned

Typing-I must admit, it was tough at first. The first couple times I typed an email on the iPad, I definitely cringed. Typing on the digital keyboard is clumsy, but forgiving. You just have to accept this. If you’re really struggling consider purchasing a bluetooth keyboard.

Switching between apps-I’m a multi-tasker. There’s two tricks I use constantly: Trick 1. Click the bottom button twice to pull up a list of recent documents. Trick 2. Use four fingers to swipe the screen from left to right and switch between apps.

PDF Annotation-I’ll post more of an app review later, but simply put-this is the tool I use the most! Used with a scanner, you can organize just about anything this way. Take notes directly on the document, share it, highlight it, upload it to Dropbox, and more.

News and Magazines-I love Flipboard, Pulse, and Twitter apps to organize my news. It’s a great way to stay connected and curate news according to what matters most to you. Not to mention the efficient design.

Google Everything!-I have everything backed up, networked, shared, blah blah blah on Google. I’m a huge fan of Google docs for collaboration. The app I’m using for this is G-Whizz and Open Office. Open to better suggestions though…

My Conclusion: The best part of this experiment was getting rid of all my paper (most of it…)! I pretty much live in a paperless house and office and I’m more organized for it. Everything is indexed, searchable, and easily accessible.

Things I wish I could do on the iPad: Use Zotero to organize citations and have the options of a powerful word processor. Really, that’s it.

Tags: , , ,

Simple apps for simple solutions

11 May

There’s a ton of apps out there. They can do everything from scan your arm to create professional style movies. Here’s a list of apps that are EASY and do SIMPLE things for use in your classroom.

iBrainstorm – Use this to replace the old school post-it note assignments. Students can connect to the screen and add thoughts and drawings on a shared “corkboard”.

T-chart – It’s just that. An interactive t-chart. Great for showing the pros and cons of any topic.

Mitosis – Quick, easy demonstration of mitosis. Must have for all biology teachers.

Inspiration – “Back in the day” when I was getting my bachelor’s degree Inspiration was da bomb. We were granted free trials and training. Then I got a job and realized that no school could afford it. It’s a great program and now it’s available for free on your iPad. What a deal!

ScreenChomp – Screen shots and screen recording. View my ScreenChomp here! Still hoping for an embed code some day!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 197 other followers

%d bloggers like this: