A round-up of favorite new apps, trends, and oldies but goodies in the world of technology for instruction and scholarship.
PDF Annotation
- Preview – if you’ve only used it to read PDFs, check again. Look under the Tools menu for options to annotate your PDFs.
- Adobe – the free Reader has some annotation features, the not-free Adobe Pro has even more. Just remember that if you annotate your PDF with a video file, tell your students to read it in Adobe Reader. Preview will not be able to show the video.
- Resource doc – “Guiding Student Readings with Annotated PDFs“
Annotations beyond PDF:
- ThingLink – annotate images online (example: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/520653660015820800)
- Augmented Reality (Aurasma, an example at UVM)
Mapping
- Galileo – display your route by walking it
- Fieldnotes – mark your location, make notes, attach pictures/videos,
- Open Street Map – a project to add crowdsourced information to maps (What is crowdsourcing?) http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=4/38.01/-95.84
Screencasting
- Screencast-o-matic – free or really cheap but full-featured screencasting tool. Limitations: records well from microhone but needs plug-in to capture system audio. Cannot import .mp4 files to edit. But for everything else it is easy, works well, and is well-documented.
- Camtasia – more tools, good integration with PowerPoint (Windows only), imports .mp4, records system audio, Windows version can create embedded quizzes.
- Explain Everything – iPad/Android app to build presentations with hand-drawing, typed text, pictures, and video, and record them as a screencast.
Digital Collection Building/Publishing at UVM
- WordPress – the UVM hosted blog. You can create multiple sub-blogs as well.
- dSpace – for building collections of images, documents, etc. (http://badger.uvm.edu/dspace)
- Omeka – student-built exhibits (http://badger.uvm.edu/omeka)
- ScholarWorks – UVM’s Institutional Repository (http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/)
Reading
- Instapaper – save it now while you are online, read it later when you are offline
- Overdrive – sign in to your local library and borrow ebooks (how to connect: http://help.overdrive.com/customer/portal/articles/1481620)
Writing
- Hemingway http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ to suggest ways to tighten up your writing
- Write or Die, Selfcontrol – keep writing, don’t get distracted
- iBook Author, Calibre – when you are ready to create your own ebooks
Continuing Trends to Watch
- MOOCs – now that the “hype” phase is over (“MOOCs will save/destroy education as we know it!) how will MOOCs really impact traditional education. (lots of articles at https://delicious.com/hopegreenberg/mooc)
- Flipped Classroom/Hybrid Courses – creatively rethinking how online can work with offline to improve learning (lots of articles at https://delicious.com/hopegreenberg/flipped)
- Curating – aggregate, notate, and share your finds (see Delicious, Diigo, Scoop.It)
- Learning Analytics – What can we learn from student assessment data that can help us tailor our teaching to those students? Should we? What about privacy (FERPA)?