Friday, May 16, 2014

Thing 23

My reflection and evaluation of 23 Mobile Things-

I was participating in this for 2 reasons: 1 was for a grad school class and the other was because part of my job at the school library where I work is to research apps that might be helpful for our school to  get for our sets of iPads.  I was able to find quite a few helpful apps that we are adding to our collection and learned a bit more about apps that we already had but I had never worked with.  I can now help teachers figure out how to use some of the apps that we have, like educreations.

My favorite Thing was finding out about Quickoffice because I hate trying to work on documents on a mobile device and this has made things much more easier to edit and work on, this is one of the apps that my school has added to our iPads.  I also like the StandApp because it helps me to not sit too long at my desk at work or sit too long at home.

My grad school class was participating and we would talk about some of the apps during class sometimes and I would also mention this program to the tech and library staff in case they were interested.

One thing that I was disappointed in is that some of the apps did not work really well or at all so I had to find another app to choose.  It was kind of a bummer that I couldn't use my first choice because of these flukes.   One other thing was that I had to create quite a few profiles and my digital footprint has grown more than I had hoped it would.

I would definitely participate in another program like this because it was a lot of fun, it was self paced and it was great that you had a lot of different choices to explore and be able to figure out how to use these both personally and professionally.  I think that it really helps people see that these apps are not only good for professionally but that they are can also be used in one's personal life.  

I would describe my experience as eye-opening, engaging and enjoyable, a completely worthwhile experience.

Thing 22

For Thing 22 - Discovering Apps, I chose the app, Apps Gone Free to look at, this app give a list of the apps that usually cost money but they have gone free for a brief period of time.  Some of the apps are free for a day and some you get free access for a couple of days or weeks, depending on the app producer.  You can also see back to what apps have gone free for quite a long period of time,  I was able to go back to October 2013 before I stopped seeing how far it would go back.  

This is a great app to watch because you never know when an app that you might want could be put on this list.  Also you could find a great app that you didn't know about and lucky you if you get there in time it will be free instead of having to spend the money to purchase it.  This is important because some people are on quite a budget and spending money on apps is not something they can spend money on.   This will be especially helpful to schools who might want an app, but they don't have it in the budget.  It is also a great way to check out apps to see if they will be useful without having to pay and then find out that you don't like it and then you have wasted money by buying the app and are stuck because they don't give refunds.

One thing I wished is that app creators would allow places like schools try out an app for a week to see if this would be helpful to students,  after a week they would have to purchase the app or it would disappear from the iPads.  It would be like checking out a eBook, I think that this would be a very great way to help schools, but until something like this happens this Apps Gone Free isn't a bad way to start.

Thing 21

For my Free-for-All all I chose one of my Mad Libs apps.   I have always loved doing Mad Libs, which are stories but you add different: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and other things and then you turn the page and read what words you chose into the story they have and it is really silly.   I love having this as an app because you can easily do the stories over and over again without having to erase or create the list on another piece of paper.  Plus the stories are all on one app and you don't have to carry around many books.  This is the eBook version of Mad Libs, the app is free and they only give you so many stories free but you can buy other books for $1.99, but you get 25 stories at least per book and if you bought the book in a store it would be about $7.00, so it is really quite a deal.

I love being able to take these with me on trips and do them with my friends, we have many laughs over the fun stories we create, you can save the stories and then email or share them with friends.  This is also a great tool for children to learn what nouns, verbs and adjectives are and how they are used to create a story.

Thing 20

For Thing 20 I chose a game that was not listed, it is Plants vs. Zombies 2.  This is a free app and you have to choose what plants to use to keep you safe from zombie attacks.  There are different areas and each area has 24 levels along with a final challenge to defeat the head zombie (there is one in every area), and there is also an endless zone in each area.    This is an excellent strategy game because you have to plan out where to plant the plants.  You have five "sidewalk" type areas that zombies travel down and you don't know where they will come from and you don't know how strong the zombie will be until they come on to the screen.

I completely enjoy this game because it is a challenge sometimes, I have had to redo a few levels.  My only problem is that it is a fairly new app so not all the levels seem to be written yet, so right now I am playing the other levels over and over again, but it is helping me build strategy and I think if you like playing games which also will help your brain stay sharp then this is the game for you.  It is a challenge even for adults!

Thing 19

For Thing 19 - Hobbies it was also hard to choose which one but I settled to check out one for my love of wine which is Vivino Wine Scanner.  This is a way to keep track of wines that I like, which is great because I have a book where I could write these things down but I don't always have it with me.  So I have forgotten a lot of wines that I love because I couldn't remember it when I got home and I didn't have anything to write down the name of the wine.  Not that I have my iPad on me all the time, but now that I know about this app, I just might make sure to so I can update my wine list.

Personally I can't wait to start creating my list of wines.  I have a friend who is also a fan of wines like me and she would enjoy this app as well.  I like that you can go in and rate the wine, because that would help someone like me because right now I pick the wine based on the bottle.  I know that it isn't the bottle art that makes the wine good, but there are only a few instances where they have have not been a good bottle of wine.  I also like the fact that I can share my favorites with my friends, I could create an awesome wine group and use this app to help us rate different bottles.  This is also helpful to when I am looking for a bottle of wine to give as a gift because I don't drink red wine but I have friends who do, so this would help me find out what they like if we were sharing our wine ratings.


Thing 18


For Thing 18- Education, I had trouble trying to figure out which one I should talk about because there are so many great apps that were listed, but I chose to look at Today's Document which is an app that has 365 documents or photographs about American history from the National Archives.   
This is a great app, it opens with a document for the day, but you can also do a search for anything that you would like to find out about.   You can also share these documents via email, Facebook or Twitter.

Personally I love history, one of my undergraduate degrees is in History so I love being able to look at historical documents or information.  Being able to have access to information without have to be at the National Archives is a great and an amazing thing brought on by technology.  It just amazes me by the different things that we now have access to and how easy it is to see these documents and photographs from history.

Professionally this is a great thing to point out to students or patrons who are looking for primary source documents or for historical information about our country.  It is a great way to have access to these documents or photographs.  This will also appeal to people who just love to look at the historical documents or anything to do with history.   Like I said above this helps people have access without having to be in the actual National Archives.

Thing 17

For Thing 17 - Connecting to Community, I chose to look at the Explore MN app.  I chose this app because I love exploring Minnesota and having this app will give me all the up-to-date information about the things going on in our lovely state.  This app is much better than ordering all the paper brochures plus you can create a list of places to visit.

Personally I would use this to make lists of places that I want to visit, find festivals that are going on in the different areas and new places to take photos.  This would also be helpful to me when I have out of town guest come to visit, because I know I have lived here all my life but there are many things that I still have yet to experience or things that I don't even know about that would be fun to see.

Professionally this would be helpful to guide people to who are in the library looking for travel information about Minnesota.  This would be great to point out to patrons because then they don't have to carry around the bulky travel books and all the information is current.  This would be great in a school library because it would help students who are doing a report on Minnesota find out about places in our state.

This app seems to be a little temperamental right now, but hopefully there is a bug fix coming soon.

Thing 16

For Thing 16 - Audio, I used the app ipadio which allows you to record unto 60 minutes and then you can add titles and images and then you can upload your finished product to many different social media accounts.

Personally I can see myself creating great creations about photo trips I took and add thoughts or feelings about the trip.  I could also use it to create a historical collaboration about the places I visited.  It would also be a great way to create a family album and narrate the family history.

Professionally this would be a great way to create book reviews or record how to information.  This is a great way to create interesting book reviews for patrons to see/listen too or make great how to "videos" about how to use the library catalog, how to access the databases, or how to cite sources.  It is great to give people visuals, but some people need that audio format to help the grasp things.

I think that this is a very helpful app and would be fun to use to create family histories or document an audio of a place you visited.

Thing 15

For Thing 15 - Infographics I chose to use the i Visual Info Touch Lite app.  I have already had some experience making infographics using a web based program and it was not bad but I had only done this once.  Infographics are a great way to display information without having to write a long paper but include just as much research as if you would be writing a paper.  It is also a great way to display information for people to see.

Personally I could use this to create "posters" to display images or information for my wedding or about a baby being born.  This would be a fun way to make those announcements and send them to people.  Especially since you don't have a whole lot of space to work with on the app.

Professionally it is a great way to give directions, show statistics, show book reviews, and show other types of information.  You could use it to make posters for new books and include brief information about the book and author.

While I think this is a great way to display information, this app is really limiting.  You can put in shapes, text and change the background but that is about it and you can expand beyond the space of the screen.  But it is very easy to use, unlike the web program that I had used before, which was slightly tricky to figure out.   But recently I found a great new way which is very easy to create infographics, and that is using PowerPoint.   PowerPoint is very easy to create infographics and it takes about 20-30 minutes.  Someone created a slideshare presentation about how to do it and since then I have created 2 infographics and I have 3-4 others in the works.

Thing 14

For the Videos Thing, I had a lot of fun with the Magisto app.  In this app you can put videos and photos together into a movie along with music and effects and then send it to friends and family.  All you have to do is select the pictures or video clips (you get 10 in the free version), the layout, the music (they have choices or supposedly you an add your own music), then you create a title and then it makes the movie for you.

Personally I would use this to create cute, short movies of photos of friends and places I have visited that I could then share with others.  I chose a bunch of photos that I had on my camera roll and I wasn't exactly happy with the way they displayed each photo.  Some had important parts of the photo cut off and there was no way to change how the photo was displayed because the app created the movie.  I would rather use different software to create movies for friends or family, also because you can only use 10 photos in the free version and it wouldn't allow me to use any of my songs from iTunes even though it showed that it was an option.

Professionally this would be a great way to have students or kids/teens create a book report.  You could have them find 10 images that would tell the story and then you could have them showing on a screen in the library.  This is a great way to show them that a book report doesn't always have to be a written paper and a great way to integrate technology into lessons.

Thing 13

For the Presentations Thing I chose to use Educreations because it is an app that we have on our school sets of iPads and I haven't had a chance to really explore what the app can do, so this seemed like an opportune moment.

This is a great app to create presentations and share ideas with students, co-workers and use at professional conferences.  You can add images, text, audio, etc. and it is like a electronic whiteboard. You can also share what you have created by emailing it, on Facebook or Twitter.  This is a very easy app to use and it I can see how it would be very helpful to professionals and educators.

Professionally I could use this to create information that I could present to the students about new books, citation help, copyright and many other library topics.  I can also show teachers how to use this app so that they can use it to create lessons for their students, this would be very helpful in a flipped classroom model.

Personally I could use it to create a timeline about the family history or create collection of photographs from an event and share it with people who attended.  This app is harder for me to think of ways to use it personally because I can clearly see it being used more in the professional realm because there are so many other apps that allow sharing information or photographs.

Thing 12

For Books, Books & more Books I chose to look at both the Free Books and Audiobooks apps.  For people being able to have access to books is essential, whether it is for school, work or pleasure, reading is fundamental.  Both this Free Books and Audiobooks app will make having access to books much easier.

For Free Books, there is access to over 23,000 books which are ones that are mostly in the public domain, so there are a lot of classics, and you can read the books directly from the app.  This app also has access to the audiobooks and for $3.99 you can have access to the 4,727 audiobooks in the collection.

For the Audiobooks you have access to 5,533 audiobooks that you can listen to on your device, they also have premium ones that you can purchase for $.99 or there is a premium unlimited for $7.99.  This is for streaming of their collection only, you can't add your own audiobooks to the collection.

Personally both of these apps are great because I can read or listen to a great collection of books for either class, work or pleasure.  I will have access to these and I won't have to worry about due dates so I can finish them on my own pace.  I also won't have to waste money or shelf space on books that I might read only once.

Professionally this will be helpful to many people or students, who have devices, gain access to tons of free books to read or listen too.  Another great feature for the Free Books app is that you can take notes and highlight sections.  This feature will be great for people who are reading the books for school work because they can leave notes about important things that they will need to know or possibly write in a paper.

Thing 11

For the Library & Reference Thing I chose to use the Ramsey County Library App.  With more people having smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices it is important for these libraries to have a mobile app to reach all of its patrons.  This makes sure that the materials they have in the library, along with any events or other important things happening are available to every patron, and not just those who walk through the library doors.

Personally I am excited to be able to easily access the library catalog, see what events are happening at my local branches, follow the library on Twitter and Facebook and even ask a librarian a question.  A great feature is you can scan a barcode of a book and see if the library owns that book,  this feature will be great if you are at a book store and are not sure if the book you are looking at is something you would enjoy and you want to see if the library owns the book so you can borrow it instead of purchasing it and finding out you don't like the book.  This app is also easier to have access to the library catalog and your own library account that using the website to access this information, being able to type in the fields is much easier.

Professionally I would make sure to put the local library catalogs for the students at the school where I work on our iPads so when they are doing research they can easily find access to these different public libraries.  Our school library is great and we have Destiny Quest on the iPads but we don't have every book that they student might be looking for so it would be great if they had just as easy access to the public library systems on the iPads too.

I think that when we do our next updates for the iPads that I will suggest doing this, I would never have known about this if it hadn't been for the 23 Mobile Things!!  

Thing 10

For the Sharing Photos Thing I chose to use Instagram.  This is an app where you can share photos with people in your groups that you create.  You can not only take photos but you can crop and filter them before sharing.   There are a lot of places now that have photo contests that use Instagram as the way to share the photos.  I have been curious about this because of some of those contests, but I haven't tried it until these 23 Things.   I am an amateur photographer so anything that I can learn about photos, editing them, and how to share them with others is greatly appreciated.

Personally I would use this to share the photos I take on trips with my other photo "geek" friends and share photos with family and friends.  It seems like a much easier way to do this because it doesn't take a lot of time to upload them to a site and you only have so much space to attach photos in email. This way you know that the person instantly got the photo and then they will be able to do whatever they like with the photo.

Professionally this would be great to do a project in your class about watching the butterfly life cycle, planting a seed and watching it grow, or watching eggs hatch.  You would be able to have students take daily photos and share them with the group.   You could also have the students do a scavenger hunt and have the students look for certain things, take a photo and then share them with the class.  Also if you had preschoolers you could have them learn the ABCs by finding things that start with the letter of the week and take a photo and then share it and finally put together a group book of all the things they found that start with each letter of the alphabet.

This app will be helpful to educators if they can just see the many different ways that you can use this technology in their classroom.  I hope that some educator are going through these 23 Mobile Things and seeing all these great apps that would work for them in both their personal and professional life.

Thing 9

For the Taking & Editing Photos thing I looked at 2 different apps.  I originally wanted to use the Color Splurge app because I could think of many things to do with this app.  However the app had way too many problems, it would turn the photo black and white, but in order to have just one color stand out you had to paint that color onto the picture.  I have used other tools where you choose the color and it turns everything else black and white that are much easier to use.   Also there were way too many ads that popped up way to often.  Lastly the app kept crashing, I am kind of bummed that this app didn't work, I love being able to add or edit photos by making one color pop.

So I decided to choose a second app, the LINE Camera app.  This app allows you to have fun and edit your photos by adding filters, text and make collages.   This app did not crash and was fun to use, but it is very basic.   If you had a class set of iPads you could have the students take photos and create collages of people or things.   You could also take a photo of each child and they could use the "beauty" setting to manipulate their photograph.  They could see the different ways that you can alter a photograph to make it look "better", but this also is a perfect option because you can manipulate the photograph and it can look really creepy.  Personally a person could use this to edit photos of their own or if they do amateur photography as a business they could use it to tweak those photos of a wedding or other event that they shot.

There are lots of different photography apps and photo manipulation apps out there, the point is you need to check them out and find out what will work best for your needs.  There are a lot of ways to use this app both personally and professionally.   These apps, while cheaper then buying PhotoShop or some other photo editing software are great but they also have their limits and should be practiced with a lot before just deciding that this will work and trying to use the app and finding that it doesn't.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Thing 8

For thing 8,  I chose to write about the Facebook app, which I already had prior to signing up for 23 Mobile Things.   I have only just recently obtained a Twitter account and I am still getting used to my Google+ account.   I like being able to have my Facebook account accessible where ever I had my iPad and could find a Wifi connection.   It makes it very easy to change my status and see what everyone else is doing.   However it also makes it much easier to get lost checking status updates instead of interacting with actual people.

Personally I use Facebook all the time to see what family and friends are doing, play games, and enjoy photos of my niece who I get to see maybe once a year.   It is also a place where I can post cool things and photos.   It is a great tool to keep in touch with people instantly and all over the world.

Professionally I could see posting library events or book trailers for people to check out, but a lot of schools have the internet blocking any social media so it would only work where you worked did not have it blocked.  I see this more as a personal tool, but I know that it is used professionally at times.   Event though I love it,  I also see that it leads people to interact virtually instead of face to face more often.

Thing 7

For thing 7, I looked at the Pinterest app,  I already had a Pinterest account but I had only used it on a computer.  I have enjoyed using Pinterest and I found the app great because I could be searching and not be sitting at my desktop computer.  I love being able to have the freedom to check out things and post them to my Pinterest account from anywhere.  The one drawback was that it seemed to take up a lot of space on my iPad so I had to delete the app and only use the web version.

Personally I use Pinterest to locate different crafts and other things that I am interested in and be able to keep them all together.   I have been able to try a few things and I love having them all in one place instead of having to do a Google search.

Professionally we have created a Library Pinterest page which has links to helpful library and research tools, fun library ideas and crafts, and library celebrations.  It is a great and fun way to get people connected to the library and see the different things that you have to offer them.  We are creating a middle school makerspace next year and I have a ton of ideas that I have put on our Pinterest page that will give the students ideas and let them know of the fun things we are going to do in the library.

Thing 6

For thing 6,  I chose to use Quickoffice and I must say I am a total fan!!!  At the school where I work we have Google Drive along with 2 carts of 30 iPads each, but it it not easy to edit documents on mobile devices.   Once I got this app and tried working on documents on my own iPad it made editing and creating documents on a mobile device so much easier.  It is a really easy app to work with and will make editing documents on mobile devices much easier.  The best part is that it works on both Apple and Android devices, so it doesn't limit who can use it.

Personally it is helpful to me while creating documents for my own personal use and for grad school, because I don't have to always be sitting at my desktop computer to edit these with ease.  Professionally this is great for being able to access and edit all documents that I would need for my work.  I would be able to do some work or edit something on my iPad if my computer wasn't working or I was in a meeting and only had my iPad with me.

We have added this app to the iPad carts so that students at the school where I work can easily work on their documents for their classes.   Next year the middle school will mostly have access to only iPads as the high school goes one-to-one and they are getting rid of the computer lab and adding another cart of 30 iPads.  The middle schoolers will need to be working on documents and be using our version of Google Apps, and now having this app will make this process so much easier.

Thing 5

I used Dragon Dictation and before I used it I thought about this app.  I think that it would be very helpful for when I wanted to make note of something but I didn't have a piece of paper at the time.  It would also be helpful if I needed to have my notes for a class dictated, this would be an easy way to do so.  It does state that it is not perfect and you may have to edit your notes to change the words that it cannot figure out, which is great that it has that option.

After trying the app it did pick up a lot of the words I said but it did have trouble translating a few of the words I said.   I would use this personally to dictate things that I want to remember if I couldn't find a piece of paper (but providing that I had my iPad with me) and I would also use it for making lists of things to accomplish.  Professionally I would use this to take notes while watching a webinar or reading an article, because it says that it is easy to share it through email.

I think that this app would be very helpful especially if you had a iPhone or smartphone because you would always have it with you, but you might not carry around an iPad everywhere.  This app would be very beneficial to those who have it on their cellphone, but I could only see it useful on the iPad if you were using it for note taking after reading an article or watching a webinar.

Thing 4

For this thing I looked at the Flipboard app and I thought it would be quite helpful personally as well as professionally.  For personal and professional use I  could see myself putting all of the different things I am interested in from different sites so that I have it all together and can easily find where they are located.  I think this is a very helpful app because I can put together things that I want to look at but might not have the time to do so at this moment.  This will be very helpful professionally because I can put journal articles, ideas and other important information that I want to look at or read and then look at them when I have time or be able to go back and reread them if needed.   It is helpful because you won't have to try and remember where you found that information because you can put it in your Flipboard and have everything under one location.   This would also be helpful for students because they would be able to keep track of information that they need for school.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Thing 3

I looked at 3 of the utility apps on my iPad and they were all amazing.   The first one I looked at was the free wifi app which locates the free wifi spots that are the closest to you.  This app will be helpful to me personally because I can locate a place that has free wifi so that I can find places where I can work online when I don't want to work at home.  Professionally it will help me tell the students where I work where they can go and get free access to wifi, because everyone doesn't have access to wifi at home.  

The other app that I looked at was RedLaser.  This app allowed me to located deals, stores, and coupons that were close to my location.  I like the fact that there was a spot to put my rewards cards so I wouldn't have to carry them with me all the time.  I will never use that function because I have an iPad and I don't carry it with me when I am out shopping, and I like carrying the cards.  But I can see how this would be helpful to people who have a smartphone.   Professionally I can use this to locate books and other supplies that I need.  I will be able to compare prices and find the best deal, and when working with a budget that is very important.

The last app I looked at was the StandApp.  This is great because I can set it up to remind me to take breaks at work more often and stay healthy.  Someday the time just flies by and I don't realize that it has been hours since I have moved.  The best part is that you set the alarm or intervals.  Tis will help both personally and professionally to get me to stand up and exercise more often.  I really want to stay healthy, and this app will help take that small baby step to getting there.

I had never heard of these apps and I wish I had earlier. They seem to be pretty great and I can't wait to use them more often, plus they are free so you don't have to spend big bucks to get them, which is always a plus!  

Thing 2

For this post I looked at The Best iPad Tips and Tricks (iOS 4 to 6) – for those of you who haven’t upgraded to iOS 7 (or can’t on your device) here are some tips for iOS 4 to 6.  I have not had a chance to upgrade my iPad mini to iOS 7 yet.  I have had my iPad for almost a year so I knew quite a few of the tips, but I did learn a few new handy tips.   One thing that I learned and will be happy to pass on to the students at the school where I work is how to type with special characters.   I never knew these existed and it will be helpful when the foreign language classes are using the iPads.

I also am glad to learn that you can undo deleting text by shaking the iPad, carefully without dropping it!  I wish I had know about this earlier when I had accidentally deleted some typing without knowing that I was deleting stuff.  I would have been able to retrieve what I lost had I known this trick.

The last one that I was grateful to learn and test was being able to locate my iPad.  There have been times when I accidentally left it at work and didn't realize until I got home.  If I had known how to do this I could have just logged onto my computer and located it using my apple id and the iCloud, which I had installed but didn't realize that was one of its features.

I am so glad that these help tips are out there because then people can learn all these tips.  It will also be helpful to those schools where they have one-to-one iPads.  If my school had 1-to-1 iPads I would definitely show this to the students.   I am going to bookmark this page for when I upgrade to iOS 7 so I will be able to learn the new tricks and be able to smoothly use the new iOS.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Thing 1

With this program I hope to gain more information about apps that I do not know much about and apps that would be helpful to use for students at the school where I work.  I am a fairly new iPad user and I don't know a whole lot bout the things that are out there.  I am hoping that I can find and learn more about apps that would be great for middle school age students and how they work.  

 I also hope that after completing this program I will be able to take what I have learned and share it with my colleagues at the school where I work.   I want to let them know that these tools are out there, how they work, and how they will help expand what they are teaching.  I can't wait to begin looking at these apps and figuring out how to use them.

End note, signing up for a blog was very interesting.  I have never done that before and it was quite a challenge, but I feel good having learned how to do it.