Students can now conveniently publish podcasts directly from an iPad app

Some time ago I posted about iPadio a web service that for years has been a key part of my students’ toolkit.  iPadio allows a student to record a podcast (aka “phonecast” or “phlog”) directly to the internet, for free, from an ordinary landline or mobile telephone.  In my experience this is a really easy, no-fuss way to get students to publish their learning orally, anywhere, anytime they have a phone at their disposal.

The service also provides the ability to automatically cross-post phonecasts to iTunes, Facebook or a class blog.  That’s what I had my students do, so that my students and I didn’t have to visit 25 different websites to listen to each others’ phlogs).

I was excited to recently get an email from iPadio, announcing that they have finally released an iPad app which means students, armed with an iPad and having an internet connection can now record and publish a podcast conveniently from the classroom.  The app is incredibly simple to use and the sound quality is excellent because unlike iPadio’s free phone service, the audio is recorded on the iPad at a relatively high bitrate and  subsequently uploaded (rather than using the phone network in real time).

The iPadio app is free and available from the iTunes app store.  It is necessary for students to create a free account to use the service and they should be reminded to take appropriate cybersafety precautions, remembering that their iPadio page and the podcasts on it will be available to the public.

iPad Microscopy

Being a science teacher, I have been experimenting with my iPad, trying to find a way of taking photos through the lens of an ordinary student microscope.  Science teachers whose students own iPads, will immediately see the benefit of this.  Rather than drawing what they see, students can take a photograph, and then import that into another app on the iPad to incorporate into a project.

The difficulty lies in (a) holding the iPad still enough to avoid motion blur, (b) lining the camera lens up with the microscope’s subjective lens (an alignment that must be exact) and (c), holding the iPad the right distance (about 4 mm) away from the microscope lens for the image to be in focus.  It’s not hard to glimpse a fleeting clear image, but holding that precise pose long enough to press the shutter button is frustratingly challenging!

The first time I tried to do this I did manage to get a good photo – but it took me ten minutes of trying!  That is not realistic in a classroom with year 9 students, who may not be as patient as I am!   Patience may be a virtue that we should encourage in our students – but I don’t have time for that!  What I really want is a simple solution that will work 100% of the time.

The solution I found is really simple.  It’s a $2 app called Fast Camera.  Fast camera shoots photos faster than an assault rifle shoots bullets!  I measured 720 photos per minute! (whereas an AK-47 fires a meagre 600 rounds per minute).  You hit the camera button and click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click… it goes.  With the camera firing like that, you can hold the iPad above the microscope lens, and move it slowly around until a clear image makes its momentary appearance.   Once it does, you can stop the camera, leaf through the hundreds of thumbnails, and choose the best one to save to the iPad’s photo roll.  The other several hundred ‘mis-fires’ can be deleted at the click of a button.

Once you have a great photo in your iPad’s photo roll, it can be imported, just like any other photo, into other apps like Pages, Explain Everything or NoteShelf for comment and annotation.

Photo imported and annotated in NoteShelf

Pretty cool, huh?

What Teachers Can Learn From Air New Zealand

If you have flown Air New Zealand recently you will be familiar with their latest air safety video. If you haven’t, watch it here.

Normally while taxiing to the runway, a bored flight attendant stands in the aisle and mimes a robotic demonstration of seatbelt fastening, and life vest inflation. This scheduled interruption to my reading, is only made tolerable because I can amuse myself looking at the faces of fellow passengers. Very few are really watching. Some, out of a sense of obedience/courtesy, are gazing in the general direction of the hostess – but they are not really watching. They are judging her hair style and guessing her age. Many passengers just ignore her and continue reading.  (I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the similarities between this and some classrooms).

Things are quite different on Air New Zealand flights. There, the cabin crew don’t perform the safety mime. Instead, safety information is delivered as preflight entertainment. The safety video is so creative and well made that passengers really want to watch. It’s far, far more effective than the live demonstration perpetrated on passengers by other airlines. Air New Zealand’s most recent safety video features characters from The Hobbit: elves, orcs, dwarves and wizards. Brilliant! It’s safety demontainment. By putting the safety message into a recording, they have presented it in a style that would be impracticable as a live safety demontration. In doing so, they have made it watch-worthy; memorable.

A second, but equally significant advantage is that the actual, human flight attendants are no longer tied up performing a dehumanised, routine act during those precious pre-flight minutes. Instead, they are able to move freely through the cabin, interating with passengers, asking if they are comfortable, and ensuring their seat belts are fitted and their baggage is stowed safely.

A recorded safety message has not degraded the Air New Zealand passenger experience at all. Quite the contrary, by automating the routine components of a traditional air hostess’ role, and freeing her to focus on the rest, the airline has made passengers’ experience at once more fun and more personal.

I think there is much we as teachers can learn from that. If a concept needs to be explained at all (a matter for a furture blog post), and if you find yourself explaining that same concept, in the same way, over and over, year after year. Maybe it’s better to record it once, really well, and thereafter instead, focus your attention and time in class on the things that can’t be automated because they are interpersonal.

Aside: If you live in Victoria, and are interested in attending a workshop on doing exactly that – recording your best explanations in ways that are more effective than if you presented them live in class –  I have several such workshops coming up.  Each has sufficient numbers to run already (Ie. this is not a sales pitch ).   If you’d like to attend, contact me and I will furnish you with the details.

Wonderful! System-wide iPad text expansion

“Frankly, I don’t know how I managed to overlook the power of this for so long!”

The Problem: Some characters cannot be typed on the iPad Keyboard!

I love the iPad for many reasons, but typing on it is like trying to pick up watermelon seeds. The biggest (not the only) issue I have with the iPad keyboard, is that there are some characters that you simply cannot type! It’s crazy! Try typing a © symbol, or a greek character like µ, and you simply can’t do it. Nor can you type subscripts. That’s right – NO SUBSCRIPTS! (can you sense my eyelid twitching?). As a biology teacher, I need to type subscripts!  (Apple, do you realise how hard it is to write about biochemistry when you can’t even type “H₂O”?!)  In my previous post, I discussed one work-around, using the Cymbol app, and that’s handy for one-off instances when you need to type something unusual.  But this is a MUCH better tip – especially for characters you need to type often.

The Solution: System-wide text expansion using Shortcuts

In my previous post, I mentioned TextExpander, which works well in the handful of apps that have incorporated it’s SDK.  In all others one needs to copy, switch apps and paste – a pretty clumsy workflow.  A much more elegant solution as I have discovered is using Shortcuts. Frankly, I don’t know how I managed to overlook the power of this for so long!

This doesn’t even require you to download an app!  iOS comes with a built-in customisable Shortcuts option in the Settings app (look in Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Add New Shortcut). The most obvious use for this (and what it was intended for) is setting short abbreviations for longer messages.  If you are the sort who is often running late you can create a shortcut “omw” that when typed into a text message will expand to “I’m on my way” (So that you don’t make yourself even later, typing out the full message on the virtual keyboard, then editing it because it was changed to something ridiculous by autocorrect).   BUT, and here is what I’m excited about,  that expanded Phrase in Shortcuts can be anything you’d like it to be.  It can be a whole essay or just a single Greek character!

Simply go to the Shortcuts section in Preferences, and type (or paste) the character or expanded text you want to appear into the “Phrase” field.  Then type your desired abbreviation into the Shortcut field.  Tap ‘Save’. That’s it.

For example, if I want to be able to type C₆H₁₂O₆, I paste that chemical formula into the “Phrase” field, and then type the shortcut “gglucose” into the Shortcut field. (see image). Strangely, even though you can’t type these things on an iPad, if you copy and paste them, subscripts, superscripts and special characters are maintained and work just fine. The trick here, is to create all the “Phrases” on your computer, then email them to yourself, open the email on your iPad and copy and paste them into the “Phrase” field of each Shortcut.

I make my Shortcuts a description of the result I want, with a double letter to begin with: “gglucose”, “ccarbondioxide”, “ccopyright”, “mmicroL”. Then when I want “5 µL”, I simply type “5 mmicroL”. This text expansion works system-wide, and is synced accross all my iOS devices automatically via iCloud.

If you are a science teacher, this is cause for rejoicing!  But for everyone else, it’s also useful for common replies you make to emails or other oft-typed tidbits of information. If, for example, I get an invitation to a school for a date on which I already have a booking, I type “ddateclash” and it expands to:

Thank you for the invitation.  I would have loved to present at your college.  Unfortunately I do not have that date available due to a prior booking. I do hope that your Professional Learning day is a great success, regardless.

Sincerely, Andrew

If someone emails to ask me for a photo of myself, I can reply with “pphotoofme” and it expands to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4495191/PhotoOfAndrewDouch.jpg – the download link for a head and shoulders photo of me in my dropbox public folder.

What a time saver!  The half hour I invested in creating my shortcuts, will be paid back to me with interest before the month’s end.

Apps That Improve the iPad Typing Experience

A number of comments on my recent blog post indicated that many teachers and students find the experience of text entry on the iPad to be one of it’s biggest drawbacks. I read those comments and found myself nodding.

iPad Typing Woes

As a touch-typist, I am more productive on a physical keyboard when writing more than a few sentences. It isn’t just the speed of typing. There are some things that you simply can’t type! For example, chemical formulae generally contain subscript numbers to indicate the number of atoms of each element in a molecule (eg H₂O). There is no way to type a subscript number using the Apple onscreen keyboard. The same goes for typing many mathematical symbols.

Many teachers don’t realise that pressing and holding certain keys on the iPad keyboard will bring up alternate characters (often the ones you would get by pressing the Option key on a Mac keyboard). For example pressing and holding on the 0 will pop up the option for a degree symbol. These are useful but there are many characters that you can’t access this way. There is no way to type the Greek symbol for Pi π, nor is there a way to type the copyright symbol ©.

Solutions

There are three apps that I’ve found though, which make the process of text creation much more efficient. The purpose of this post is simply to share those. No doubt there are other options which some of you have found. If so, I would love you to please share them in the comments.

I’d be lying if I said that these apps make typing on an iPad as efficient as typing on a computer. But they do make it much more efficient than without them. Whereas before I would rarely type much on my iPad at all (unless I had no choice), I’ve found since using these apps, if I’m comfortably seated on the couch, the bother of typing on my iPad is less than the bother of walking all the way into the other room where my computer is.

Textexpander

Textexpander ($5.49) is an iOS version of an old, incredibly useful Mac program which runs system-wide to enable one to create snippets of text that will expand when a predefined shortcut is typed. This neat little application on my Mac has saved me 17 hours of typing in the past 6 months (according to the built-in statistics it keeps). There is also a Textexpander app for the iPad. Unfortunately because of Apple’s sandboxing policies, Textexpander can’t run system-wide, although it can operate in other apps, if they have taken advantage of the Textexpander SDK but only a minority of apps have this (Byword is one example, see below). Despite the sandboxing limitation, you can open the Textexpander app, expand the shortcut you want, and then copy and paste the result it into another application. If you are a science teacher, for example, you can save a shortcut such as “ggglucose” which will expand to C₆H₁₂O₆ complete with the subscripted numbers. This solution does require you to have already created snippets and shortcuts for all the things you might need, ahead of time. You can do that on a Mac though, as your Textexpander database can be synced through Dropbox.

Byword

Byword ($2.99) is an iPad app for writers. It uses markdown syntax for headings, italics, bolding, lists and for inserting links. For me, it took half an hour of learning the markdown syntax, but then, it’s like a breath of fresh air to type on the iPad. Markdown syntax was new to me, but not at all difficult. For example, to *italicise* text you enclose it in a pair of asterisks. To make a first level heading you preface the text with a #.

The text in Byword is large, clear and full-screen (apart from the on-screen keyboard). Compared to typing in most apps it just feels really ‘open’ and clean. When typing on the iPad, half the screen is taken up by the keyboard, so the last thing you want is a row of formatting buttons across the top like you have in Pages, or for the app to only use 2/3 of the screen’s width (which is the case in most apps!). The image below compares Byword to three other commonly used text apps, in each case the text entry area is indicated by a dotted red line. A little bit of extra screen real estate makes a big difference.

It is also worth mentioning that Byword has built-in Textexpander support. So if I type one of my snippet shortcuts in Byword, it will expand to the full snippet. What a great time-saver if you have a large database of snippets saved in Textexpander!

The screenshots below show how the text I enter looks as it is being typed in markdown (and with Textexpander shortcuts), and how the text will look when exported to another app.

Cymbol

Another app that I think is very helpful if you ever find yourself needing to type characters that aren’t available on the standard iPad keyboard, is Cymbol ($1.99). This one is really simple. It’s really just an extra keyboard of characters that you can type. See screenshot below. There is nothing much to learn in this app. What you see is more or less what you get. There are many more symbols that could be included in Cymbol but aren’t. Nevertheless, it’s a great start.

Once you have typed the text you want, you can select parts of it, or simply hit the button that says “Copy All”. Then you can open any other app, such as Pages, Byword or WordPress and paste the text in. The superscript, subscript and other formatting is maintained when pasted.

There are a few “features” of Cymbol that I don’t like. But considering I haven’t found any other apps that do what Cymbol does – I have it on my highly recommended list.

Better Together

Each of these apps is useful in itself, and each worth the asking price. But when you combine all three, they together become very useful. For example, just this afternoon, I found myself wanting to write the chemical formula for Hydrogen peroxide. So I went to Cymbol, and used the features there to create the formula with subscripts. Then I copied that and pasted it into Textexpander (screenshot right) to create a new snippet for which i created the shortcut pperoxide. Then over to Byword, I can simply type and each time I type pperoxide, it expands to H₂O₂. Pretty neat.

A 20th Century Assumption Worth Questioning: School Provision of Technology

Why I Think BYOD Makes Sense

1. Practicality

Since we started using computers in school for teaching and learning it has been an assumption that the school would provide the technology. For a decade, schools were jostling for funding to get more computers. Now most schools have a student:device ratio of 1:1. What hasn’t changed in many schools, is the 20th Century assumption that the technology students use at school, should be provided by the school.

I think it now makes more sense for that responsibility to be handed back to students and parents. I think we should expect students to bring their own technology, just as we expect them to bring their own uniform, stationary, PE gear, musical instruments and other requisites.

Last decade that would have been an unreasonable suggestion. In the past, a computer was expensive (and the more portable, the more expensive it was). Software was also very expensive. Installing and updating software could be complicated if parents were not very comfortable around computers. In addition there was the issue of viruses and other malware which schools could keep a lid on, only if they wrested the responsibility (and right) of management from the kids. Then of course, students needed to print out their work (how else could they hand it in?), so each device had to be configured to access network printers. Plus in a multiuser environment, students need somewhere to save and back up their work other than on the local hard drive, hence network storage was necessarily provided, too.

But now many of those technological premises are all but gone:

• Hardware is considerably cheaper now in real terms than it once was, and in a surprising twist, the most affordable devices are now also generally the most portable! (MacBook Pro > MacBook Air > iPad > iPad mini).
• Most software is now free or cheap. This is especially true on the iPad but there are also many freeware, shareware and Web 2.0 options for laptops.
• Malware is of little concern on iPads, chromebooks or Apple laptops.
• Installing and updating software – which once could be too complicated for some parents – is now relatively straightforward (and on the iPad is a cinch).
• Printing work out on paper for submission to the teacher is a practice that we should be discouraging (It’s now the second decade of the 21st Century! Instead of asking our students to print work, we should be expecting them to publish it online to a real audience).
• Storage was once provided by the school on a server. These days, there are plenty of cloud options (DropBox, Box, iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive, to name a few) not to mention USB flash drives which are now priced as stationary rather than technology.

Relinquishing responsibility for provision of technology to students/parents, saves schools a LOT of time and money in tech support, freeing up technicians to work on improving the network (instead of maintaining computers) while giving the students more control, familiarity and ownership of their devices.

2. Pedagogy

In addition to those practical reasons for a BYOD policy, I think there are good pedagogical reasons, too.  There is still in many of us, a compulsion to have all our students using the same software, to do the same task at the same time, and a feeling that we ourselves should have mastered whatever software we are having our students use.  In the past, when there was a scarcity of computers and you had to book a computer lab two weeks in advance, it made a lot of sense to operate that way. But not any more.  I think as we go forward into this decade, teachers should be delegating the responsibility for choice of tools to students and focussing less on the technology itself and more on the learning processes that are taking place in the class.  The very diversity of tools in a BYOD classroom will encourage (even force) that into being.

(See also earlier post on 20th Century assumptions that are ripe for challenging.)

Turn your Class into a Game Show: Triptico (new version today)

I have used Triptico for many years and have always found it to be excellent. Essentially, it’s a collection of spinners, timers, quiz-templates and name-pickers for use in the classroom.  It’s particularly great for randomly selecting students to answer questions, or to perform tasks.

I’ve often hosted Year 12 “Biology study parties”; evenings when my students and I would get together and spend a few hours eating pizza and playing biology games, you know:  ”Pass the Par-Cell”, “The Wheel of Immune”, “Who Wants to Be a Biologist Hotseat”, and various games involving eggs, balloons, whipped cream, vegemite and ping-pong balls, where the most coveted prize was a custom-made Biology T Shirt.   I increasingly found some of the tools in Triptico (such as the name picker and scoreboard) augmented those fun evenings beautifully.

But they are also really  useful in the classroom – even on more serious occasions.  Even the simple circle timer is fantastic to have displayed at the front of the room while students are working in groups so they know exactly how long they have to finish the current task.  Likewise, I’ve also found name pickers are helpful for assigning students to groups when I want to mix things up a bit.  You can even have multiple tools open simultaneously.

Today, a new version of Triptico is available.  It’s free to download and use.  The free version contains lots of great tools.  If you want even more tools, you can get them too,  by paying $23 for a “Triptico Plus” account (in app).  Triptico Plus also gives you the ability to save your triptico apps in the cloud (so you don’t have to re-enter student names or images again next time, for example, and can open them on more than one computer).  Volume licensing for schools is available, too.

Triptico is an Adobe Air  application – so you can install it on a Mac or PC (needs to have Adobe Air installed), but you can’t install it on an iPad.

My advice: If you are a teacher, do yourself a favour and check it out at 
http://www.triptico.co.uk