eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time » iPod

WordPress Plugin #14: Mobile-friendly Blog

David Hopkins — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:16:28 +0000

Note: In this series I’ll delve into some of the better plugins available for WordPress that I am already using, or about to start using. I’m aiming to highlight 30 of the better plugins.

We are truly at the edge of human endeavour, as Stephen Fry puts it, and the rise of the Smart Phone like iPhone or HTC Desire is testament to this. And so is our increasing need to access email, Twitter, Facebook, etc on the move (or certainly away from our cumbersome and heavy desktop or laptops).

This is where the ‘WPTouch iPhone Theme‘ plugin is really really handy. It can transform your WordPress blog, irrespective of the template you use, into a quick and easy format for the majority of smart phone users. Don’t let the name fool you, it does work “when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm mobile devices” too, although I’ve not got these devices so obviously haven’t tested them.

I have posted on this plugin previously, but I’ll recap it here since it has been updated with features for WordPress version 3 blogs.

The admin panel allows you to customize different aspects of your blog’s appearance to deliver a version of your blog to mobile browser visitors without modifying your regular theme. The plugin also includes the ability for your visitors to easily switch between the WPtouch view and your blog’s regular theme. The finished product … as viewed on an iPhone;

Reading “The iPad for Academics”

David Hopkins — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:52:06 +0000

This article, by Inside Higher Ed called ‘The iPad for Academics” is a good read, and followers neatly on from my previous posts.

I want to draw attention to the following statements, but I’m no going to say why; just that they struck a chord with me (either positively or negatively);

“The iPad represents the genuine retailization of academic content.”

“… publishers might object that piracy would be a concern, but honestly: If you’re selling content to universities that license it to tens of thousands of students living in highly-networked dorm rooms, is an app store really going to make the problem worse?”

“A key feature of the retailization of scholarly content is that it be reasonably free of digital rights management — and here academic publishing should learn from the music industry’s failed attempts to sell copy-protected music. The more open and reusable academic content is, the more reasons people will have to buy it. The great thing about PDFs is that, like MP3s, they are not copy-protected.”

“Overall by splitting the difference between dedicated devices and genuine computers, the iPad doesn’t show a lot of promise as a mobile platform for research and teaching. Of course if everyone is always carrying around an iPad already then they might start replacing voice recorders. It’s hard to tell.”

“While I can imagine some innovative pedagogic uses of the device, what academics do is still narrowly defined — and tied to institutional, political, and economic imperatives. Some imagined the Internet would cause us to rethink what it meant for a text to be coherent — and it has, to a certain extent. The academy might be too obdurate to be easily transformable.”

“Ultimately, academics need a world full of devices they can pour information in and out of. The more open and interoperable our new ecology of applications, devices, and content providers are, the more our learning will enrich human life — whether the people selling us our readers, software, and content are Apple, Amazon, or someone else entirely.”

I have also read through the current responses to the article, and there are some choice examples of people on both sides of the iPad and Apple love/hate divide. I recommend taking five minutes or so and scanning through them as there are some valid points.

If you have a iPad (yes, I’m ever so slightly jealous) and have been using it as part of your academic work, then please let me know how you find it, what apps your using, etc.

iTunesU; Do students like it?

David Hopkins — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:13:04 +0000

The list of colleges and Universities signing up to iTunesU continues to grow. Since I last wrote about it – “Another Success Story (UCL)” – the likes of the OU (for those reading outside of the UK, this is The Open University) have a reported World Record as the first to reach 20 million downloads (source: Bee-It) since starting to use iTunesU in the Summer of 2008!

As reported in the Bee-It post, the OU says that;

“mobile phones are increasingly being used to download their tracks. Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, says that the growth of the iTunesU concept reflects the changing ways that people are learning.”

Martin Bean continues by saying;

“The way people want to learn is changing. Many now actively seek out content they are interested in and which they can watch, read or listen to when it suits them. New channels are helping people to fit learning in with their lifestyles, and the OU has always kept pace with the changing world of technology.”

ReadWriteWeb report that iTunesU is “better than going to class“, but Jim Groom doesn’t think it’s going to make any difference. Jim has some good points (especially the one about “everyone is doing it”) but surely a bigger picture is that it raises the profile of the Institution and (hopefully) the quality and perception of the materials provided to enrolled students?

Personally, I would love to be involved in generating and managing an iTunesU account for the Business School; we have lectures recorded using Echo360, which are automatically created with associated MP3 and M4B iTunes Audiobook format, as well as other material recorded straight to camera tape or memory.

This is the kind of material that reflects the quality of the teaching staff in the Business School. Regarding the question of whether students like it or not, how about student work being (with appropriate permission sought and obtained) loaded that reflects the quality of student in the Business School? I haven’t seen any of that in iTunesU yet (or did I miss it?).

So do students like it? It’s difficult for me to tell as we at Bournemouth are not using it. From reading around the Internet it seems that, on the whole, yes they are, just look at the numbers above. I would like to hear about whether your students (or you, if you’re a student) like or dislike iTunesU, but please say why?

So, it’s worked for the OU … have you had any similar interest or success with your use of iTunesU, or has your Institution opted to not invest the time and effort? Please leave your comments below, or anyone of the ‘related posts’ links also shown below.

Image Source

Upgrading my iPhone to iOS4

David Hopkins — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:32:52 +0000

After hearing some pretty awful stories of the upgrade taking 2 or even 4 hours, with no end of errors and issues coming up at each stage of the upgrade I reluctantly (although with some excitement) started the upgrade procedure.

First up … check you have the latest iTunes 9.2 installed. No, then go get it (the usual way is just start up iTunes and it’ll say there’s an update ready for you).

Next up is connect your iPhone to iTunes and, on the phone screen in iTunes click the ‘check for updates’ icon (it’s best to wait until iTunes has done any back-ups or sync’ing first).

Now the fun starts. The updates will start downloading and you’re on the path to redemption (sorry, got carried away). These are the images I loaded to Twitpic during the upgrade process.

iOS4 update … updating iPhone software

iOS4 update … updating iPhone firmware

iOS4 update … restarting iPhone

iOS4 update … carrier settings update

And that was it. No problem, no issues, all my photos and notes were still available after the update, all my apps (so far) still work. It took just under 20 minutes from starting to download the upgradeed OS to the sync processing completing.

So, what does it look like?

So, how do you use these new wonderful features? I won’t bore you with the details, so I’ll let the below YouTube video do the talking for me – It’s just under 10 minutes long, but worth watching if you have iPhone;

I’ve not figured out anything on the new OS yet other than how to group icons together (touch and hold on the app you want to move, then drag it on top of another one – this forms the Group/Folder) and access open apps (double-click the ‘home’ button – mine used to access the favourite phone numbers in the phonebook).

Good luck.

Updated: I found this on Twitter after I posted the above blog entry: iOS 4 privacy policy updated - Apple can anonymously collect location data, you can take away iAds’ cookies.

“The company [Apple] can anonymously track the “real-time geographic location” of devices and is free to share that data with “partners and licensees” as well.”

You can also opt out of the iAds system, but when I tried it – you need to visit http://oo.apple.com – it didn’t work. Go figure!

iPad – more resources on whether it is any good in the classroom

David Hopkins — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:37:15 +0000

The iPad is here, and there seems to be no escaping the fact (even though it’s not in the UK yet). I wrote previously about links and resources I kept finding in a previous post – iPad, is it any good for the classroom or learning – at the beginning of April.

Here we are at the beginning of May and people are writing about it with more authority as they are actually using and trying it out. Here are a few I’ve found useful and think you might too.

Jodi Harrison; iPad on Campus:

“Within higher education, there are a variety of aspirations, expectations, skills, and abilities. The iPad will be helpful to some, and to others it won’t make the slightest difference. By focusing on what we do with technology, instead of the technology itself, we put our institutions in the best possible position to increase the value of what we provide to our students.”

Scott Weidig; Love your feedback – The iPad for English Language Learners:

“The overriding objective in providing the iPad, as opposed to a different computing platform, is to provide ELL [English Language Learners] students with current technology that will allow them to access thousands of learning applications. This access will positively impact their English language acquisition in ways that would not be afforded to them on conventional computing devices.”

Lauren Barak; Educators weigh the pros and cons of the Apple device:

“But ordering the devices for every classroom? That’s not on the immediate agenda. Knowing that applications are still being developed—with just 310 educational ones available on a recent check of the iTunes store—[Beth] Knittle says it’s critical to try the devices on a smaller scale before committing to larger integration.”

Miss Signal; iPad in Education:

“For a piece of technology that has created such a buzz through the world and the education sector it has been interesting to read through many articles and see the difference of opinions that are circulating about the iPad. The key to this conversation though is the students – it will be about what students think about iPad in comparison to the technology they already have access to in our classrooms.”

DigMo; The iPad in your classroom:

“As a parent I see the iPad as the perfect solution for my own children. An affordable alternative to buying a laptop and a media player coupled with excellent parental controls it seems to make perfect sense.”

Nick Provenzano; The iTouch and iPad in the classroom:

“As teachers, our job is to make the information as accessible to the students. The information is out there and the students can get it without us if they really want to. We need to teach them how to find the information and the true capabilities of the devices the have. It will always be tough for teachers to learn and manage new technology in the classroom, but this movement toward free flowing, social networking, global education is not going to go away. The iPad and the iTouch could be used to knock down walls and introduce our students to a world they would never see otherwise.”

Nick Provenzano; The iPad in my classroom:

“I feel confident that I could run my classes effectively and have even more students engaged in learning if I had a full set of these in the room. I would no longer be chained to the computer lab sign up sheet. My lessons would be able to flow freely to my students and back to me without all of the walls that separate the free flow of information.”

iPad in the Classroom: First Impressions of iPad in Schools:

“My 5 year old picks the device up, navigates to an app he’s familiar with, and begins to play. This bodes well for younger students who often spend a great deal of time learning what a mouse is, how to log in, how to open a program, and so on. More time learning actual content is always a good thing.”

If you have any experience of using it, and even getting students working on an iPad, then please share and share alike.

Dropbox: save and share files across the Internet

David Hopkins — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:55:21 +0000

Last year I left my 4gb USB stick in the socket of a PC that was sat on the floor (I know, silly me, but I was in the middle of a presentation). As I walked past I clipped the stick and bent the ‘sticky-out’ bit right back … damn!

The case broke and my heart sank – I use that for work and personal files to transport them between work and home (and friends, etc). I got home and was about to drop it in the bin when I thought I’d plug it in and see if it still worked. It did!

I taped the case back up, bent it straight again, and have been using it regularly since then. Until last week when something broke. And that was that (I’d expected it for a while so I’ve been using my iPod and iPhone for data back-up of the really important stuff).

So, instead of buying another I looked at online storage solutions and came across Dropbox. The free account gives you 2gb of online, secure storage (which you can get an additional 250mb for if you follow the simple steps during install and setup).

So now I have an online storage solution, available on work and home PCs, and on the iPhone (although I really only use this option to review files, other mobile devices are coming soon), and I can easily share and store files or folders with colleagues, friends, etc.

Here is a presentation I’ve put together on how to install and use it.

Dropbox – Save to the Cloud

iPad – is it any good for the classroom or learning?

David Hopkins — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:32:20 +0000

Well, it’s here; the iPad has finally landed.

I had said on Twitter that I wouldn’t blog about it until I actually had one (and I’m still thinking about it) but I have read quite a bit over the weekend about and wanted to bring together the various threads of thoughts and ‘research’ already out there on whether it will be good for students, and the classroom, or not.

I’ll start with my final words (!) and they are simply how can we be sure that the iPad will be any good if we’ve literally only just got it (not in the UK we haven’t!)? We may know how the theory fits in with technology and student fashion, but will it work, will the students buy one (or even can the afford one, given that they’ve already got a smartphone and high-end laptop?) and will they see the benefit to their education, or is it just another shiny Apple device? It could be that we, the educators and facilitators, are the only ones who see its potential, and talk to each other about it as the students carry on with their existing kit.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve found …

Tony Bates: Educational affordances of the iPad:

“Although the iPad suggests an exciting future for the design of teaching and learning, we need to bear in mind that many people still have limited broadband access, which is essential for such developments. So the iPad will at least initially further widen the digital divide.”

Elliot Masie: iPad First Look for Learning:

Frederic Lardinois writes on ReadWriteWeb: Colleges Give iPads to All Incoming Students:

“Seton Hill University plans to give every first year undergraduate student a 13″ MacBook and an iPad. Just last month, George Fox University in Oregon also announced that it plans to give its new students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad. The question, though, is if programs like this aren’t a bit premature, given that nobody has actually used the device yet and that we don’t really know how well the iPad will work for textbooks and other school-related activities.”

Brian Chen writes Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education:

“One hitch in the universities’ plans [see above by Frederic Lardinois] is that Apple has not inked deals with any textbook publishers to bring their offerings to the iPad’s iBooks store. So far Apple and publishers have only formed partnerships around e-books for fiction and nonfiction titles, like those available for the Kindle.”

Bridget McCrea writes Measuring the iPad’s Potential for Education:

“The fact that ninth graders like Nothstein are somewhat blasé about a device whose heavily anticipated launch attracted millions of eyeballs around the world isn’t exactly surprising. Call them jaded, but today’s K-12 students have the world at their fingertips when it comes to technology, and are only limited by budget when it comes to getting their hands on items like Apple’s new iPad.”

James Tubbs writes Powering Your Classroom with the iPad, Part 2:

“The effective uses of the iPad in the classroom will multiply as educators adapt to this exciting new technology and find ways to innovate their teaching methods accordingly. As Robert Reynolds notes in his article about the iPad’s future in education , the ultimate educational use of the iPad and similar technology will depend entirely on how students respond to it.”

iPad in the Classroom:

“Today, iPad is probably not the answer, but as a concept it is a stage-setter that gives us a glimpse of what the technological landscape may look like in the classroom of the not-so-distant future. While the iPad may need several iterations before it becomes a sleek and elegant classroom solution (multi-tasking?!?), this should be a wake up call for the educational publishing industry.”

Bob Brogan writes First Look at the iPad for eLearning:

“Another drawback for eLearning and purely from my viewing the initial demonstration, was the appearance of a lack of multi-tasking capability. This may also be a hindrance. Quite often someone wants to working on a document or some other material as they are reviewing eLearning content or sessions.”

Steve Kolowich writes iPads on Campus:

“The e-learning giant Blackboard, meanwhile, today is announcing that it is launching an app for the iPad that will allow students to access their courses from the new device. “

WISE Pedagogy: iPads for Education: How Much is Hype?

“Unless you are a devoted Apple fan who would use a new Apple device anyway, or you teach at a school that is giving each student his or her own iPad, you might want to wait a few months before you buy one solely for pedagogical purposes. Time may tell whether this new device will have enough advantages to surpass the others that are already available. Even if you and some of your students already do have iPads, it may be a while before we can expect to design lesson plans that incorporate them into course activities.”

Robert writes Is education ready for the iPad?:

“iPads are been handed out to students from three universities and faculty with hopes that Apple’s tablet will transform education. These universites … pre-ordered bundles of iPads with plans to experiment with how the tablet could change learning in the classroom. Officials from each university saw the iPad as having potential to render printed textbooks obsolete. One dent in the universities’ plans is that Apple has not inked deals with any textbook publishers to bring their offerings to the iPad’s iBooks store. So far Apple and publishers have only formed partnerships around e-books for fiction and nonfiction titles.”

Podcasts and Supervision (2.0)

David Hopkins — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:03:31 +0000

There are some choice quotes I want to raise to you this morning from the article on the Times Higher Education website ”Podcasts can lead us into the world of Supervision 2.0“.

Under the banner heading of ” exciting technological developments that can transform our learning environment and bring multiple benefits to all university students” the article continues to demonstrate and discuss the use of audio technology in aspects of education.

“For underconfident and inexperienced students, podcasts are an opportunity to connect theory and practice, thinking and doing. The advantages are clear: podcasts are inexpensive to produce. They build community and add emotion to education.”

“Academics are developing podcasts to deliver audio feedback on assignments and I conduct course reviews through sound. Instead of ticking boxes, I ask students to comment on what they have learnt. I create a mix from their words and upload it to a centralised portal so they can monitor the thoughts of their colleagues as they write the final assignments. It is a sonic snapshot of their semester and helps me to improve future learning opportunities.”

“Podcasting offered an evocative method for talking through intellectual options.”

“The literature on auditory cultures and sonic media is revealing complex, intricate and dynamic oscillations between hearing, listening and learning.”

Thanks to Steve Wheeler for point this out this morning.

Reading: “Self-learners creating university of online”

David Hopkins — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:00:42 +0000

I came across the article by Richard Woods this morning on “‘Self-learners’ creating university of online” and enjoyed it.

The basis of the open access podcast material that has been added to iTunesU over the past year or so has grown. Not only is it the volume of information that has grown, but also the participating Institutions and the quality of work being added.

In less than 1 year since they opened their iTunesU ‘doors’, Oxford University has achieved over 1 million downloads of lectures or other academic works: see the presentation by Peter Robinson “A Pocket University: Open Content and Mobile Technology – Oxford on iTunesU” for more details on this exceptional achievement.

Richard reports that;

“Podcasts that were scattered on the university’s departmental sites are now on iTunes,” said Carolyne Culver, head of strategic communications at the university. “We are getting many more downloads.”

Richard goes on to interview an Oxford academic (Marianne Talbot) who had been asked if she minded her lecture being recorded and published, only to then find herself the most downloaded clip;

“Talbot admits she was fortunate to choose an engaging title in a subject of wide appeal. Nevertheless, she describes the potential of such open access as ‘awesome’.”

Please read the full article on the link above.

Presentation: A Pocket University (or iTunesU at Oxford University)

David Hopkins — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:58:09 +0000

If you have any question about whether you and your Institution should think a little more seriously about getting involved in iTunesU, then take a look through this amazing presentation below from Peter Robinson and Oxford University. It was presented at the 2009 Future of Technology in Education (FOTE) conference.

FOTE09 – Peter Robinson: A Pocket University: Open
Content and Mobile Technology – Oxford on iTunesU