App Swap at The University of Cambridge

Andy Tattersall

 I've run several App Swap Breakfasts at the University of Sheffield and had the opportunity to run one for librarians at The University of Cambridge earlier this week as part of their on-going professional development programme. App Swap Breakfasts began life at The University of Brighton and instantly caught my eye as a great way to share good practice with mobile devices but also highlight useful apps that peers might be missing.



I gave the presentation to about 16 librarians from across the various campuses and started by talking about some of the really useful peripherals you can buy for your mobile device. These included my Lightning to VGA connector (I have a HDMI one too), my X Mini speakers, and the tripod stand for holding your tablet device straight and give you a free hand. It was a good opportunity to discuss the issues around having apps and was interesting to find out that more than half of those in attendance didn't have a tablet device - thankfully I had a second one for them to look at with some of my featured apps installed on it.

I gave the presentation below on 20 featured apps which focused on pure library apps, ones for communications and productivity as well as those to help with teaching and research. It was good to showcase the likes of Ad

obe Voice and Haiku Deck as well as Explain Everything for screen capture and Hootsuite for Twitter curation. The full list and presentation are below. I also met with an ex Sheffield colleague afterwards and was given a short personal tour of the campus and city which as you'd imagine was really nice. It was interesting to find out that Cambridge has no less than 114 libraries and that until recent times new starters had to sign a charter to say they would live within five miles of the university.

It was a long round trip of about eight hours, but well worth it to visit such an impressive campus and deliver a workshop around apps, even though there was no breakfast. You can see which 20 apps I chose to showcase in my Haiku Deck below.

Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

5 Must-Have Peripherals For Your Tablet Device

Andy Tattersall

There are an increasing array of mobile apps and technologies that learning technologists, teachers and academics can use within the institution. Added to that are a growing number of peripherals that can be employed to make teaching and content production an easier process. In this blog post Andy Tattersall looks at five that you should take note of. The five pieces of tech below are not necessarily the best ones for each task, but are ones Andy has employed personally with his iPad. There may be cheaper and better options available out there should you wish to explore further.

Be louder

CC BY NC ND 2.0 Gibbyll http://bit.ly/1kRw3Rs

All too often when going out to present or deliver teaching you can find the room facilities non-functional. There may be no sound coming from the speakers attached to the teaching lectern, or just no speakers at all. One way round this is to have your own set of speakers with you. Naturally you do not want to be carrying around a big heavy 4kw sound system, so need something small and lightweight. One alternative is the X-mini speakers series http://www.x-mini.com/

There are various models and all allow users to chain link multiple ones together to increase the sound output. Many give an output in the region of 2kw, which can be built upon with more speakers. For a small to mid-sized seminar lecture room they give enough audio to ensure you won’t be put off playing videos in your class ever again. You can get a pair of good quality x-mini speakers for about £15.

Stand Tall

When trying to capture any content, whether it be yourself in front of your tablet camera, or using it as a reading device you are often limited as to where you can prop your device. Even doing something like relaying your teaching over the web using Twitter video conferencing tools like Periscope or Meerkat it can be quite tough. This can be negated by buying a tablet stand, which looks not too dissimilar from your typical music stand. The Ezi-Tech Music Stand Mount, priced around the £30 mark is a good one which works with Apple and Samsung devices. It allows the user to free up their hands to hold a paper, or maintains a consistency when trying to record a piece to camera, whether that be video or just audio.

Be Heard

Tablets have come on a long way from the first wave of smart devices from a few years ago. One thing they have improved on is audio capture and recording, yet there is always room for improvement. Often sound can be the most important aspect of a digital artefact, as users may want to only hear what you are saying rather than watch. Content can be stripped down to a podcast, so good quality audio is essential. Using a USB microphone can help improve on your audio capture and can give a richness of sound when it lacks. A good series of microphones is the Rode USB, which comes with a tripod stand and pop shield. It works with Windows and Mac OS and connects, as you would suspect from its name, via USB. It is important to note that iPad users would require an Apple adaptor cable for the USB which costs about £25 http://amzn.to/1OKFcYo. The mic, which is powered by the tablet device, costs somewhere in the region of £100 upwards http://www.rode.com/microphones/nt-usb

Project Yourself

CC BY 2.0 Paul Hudson http://bit.ly/1kRvsiD

If you use the likes of Google Slides, Haiku Deck and Nearpod to present then it should make sense to use your tablet device to deliver them from. Just because you have a tablet device, and not a laptop, does not mean you cannot use your own little bit ot tech to deliver your slides. For Apple devices with the miniport you can use it to connect to a VGA device like a projector, which costs about £30 http://cvp.com/index.php?t=product/apple_md825zm-a Android users can hardwire connect to projectors by using a mini HDMI to HDMI cable if the projector supports it. http://cvp.com/index.php?t=product/besteady_extra-mini-hdmi_ Obviously there are an increasing number of ways to mirror and connect devices to big screens without the need for cabling, but not everyone has access to that just yet.

Be Seen

CC BY 2.0 Dave Taylor http://bit.ly/1kRuvH8

A useful technology with real potential that has appeared in the last year or so is Swivl. The little round, flat Swivl robot allows your teaching and presentations to be captured and shared live as it follows you around the room while you present. By wearing a small dongle that picks up on your voice, the device hosts your tablet device allowing it to capture your teaching and either record it or deliver it to elsewhere remotely. Swivl costs somewhere in the region of £450, so is not so cheap. Nethertheless, if you do a lot of teaching, flip your classroom or have online learners and want to maximise your output, it could be a worthwhile investment. Regardless of how fast you try and move the Swivl does a really good job of trying to keep up.

http://www.swivl.com/

App Swap Breakfast #4 Video and Audio Apps

The latest App Swap Breakfast this week at yet another venue, our fourth in as many sessions. This time round we focused on apps and technology relating to video and audio recording, capture and playback. The event returned to a more informal setting and agenda from the previous one that was held at the University TELFest event back in January.

We hosted the ASB in the View Deli Cafe which overlooks large parts of Sheffield and gave colleagues the opportunity to grab a coffee and pastry whilst discovering new apps and technology tips.

We started with Pete Mella from the Technology Enhanced Learning Team who gave a presentation on the collection of useful Adobe Apps. Pete showcased the brilliant Adobe Voice animation tool with a live demo to show how easy it is to get good quality results. Pete showed the 20 or so colleagues in attendance what can be achieved on an iPad (as these apps are only available on IOS sadly) with very little effort. Pete has already blogged about Adobe Voice here and I was especially grateful for Pete showing this tool at the third ASB in January. It was a tool that I had heard about from colleagues but had not tried, seeing Pete’s demo sold it to me. As a result I have used the app to create over 40 short animations titled Research Hacks, which are designed to help researchers use technologies and find smarter ways to work. The collection of videos can be viewed here.

We then had a demo from my colleague Claire Beecroft who showcased a tablet device tripod that we had purchased for ourselves. The tripod cost £20 from Amazon and can be used in a variety of settings from being a camera stand to a autocue for reading text. The one that we have is the iStabilizer tabMount Tripod Adapter available from here. Claire talked about the ease of using such a small, lightweight device and the benefits of using it when all too often people fumble about trying to hold them when recording content.

I gave a presentation on a few tools that had been around for a while but were nonetheless still very useful for staff and students. Firstly I showcased the YouTube Capture app that allows users to record directly from their tablet device and upload straight to YouTube. In addition I showed another tool, that despite not being free, but is worth having in your collection as a teacher or student with Explain Everything - Formerly Explain a Website. This allows users to capture any website and screencast it, the recording will capture the user zooming in and changing pages as well as add their own notes and annotation. Jesrine Clarke-Darrington from the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Dentistry shown how students were using this app to annotate and draw on medical diagrams to explain a problem or intervention. As with many of these apps, you often find that if you cannot devise a good use for them someone else is, and Jesrine proved that very well.

I then showed a tool that was getting much publicity at the moment called Meerkat App. This app allows users to broadcast live or schedule one later to their Twitter followers. A url is created in your Twitter timeline and you can then broadcast live to who sees it, or at least is given an advance link. The tool has much potential and already some major stars are using it for impromptu broadcasts to their fans. The app could be used to broadcast live events and talks to Twitter followers for those who do not have the means to do this within their departments.

David Read gave us an excellent demo of the Swivl robotic platform for learning his department has purchased. The robot hosts a tablet device which can they track the movement of a speaker via a dongle they carry based on their voice. The robot tracks the person through 360% whilst the table can be set up to record the presenter as well. Thankfully my colleagues in ScHARR have now purchased one of these which will be interesting to use. David also talked about two apps/extensions he uses to annotate video. The first one, developed by The University of Minnesota is called Video Ant which allows users to add descriptive and analytical text along the timeline of a video recording. We also discussed videonot.es which again allows users to annoate videos and save these notes directly into Google Drive.

Graham McElearney discussed the option of using the University’s iTunes U platform to create and store podcasts. At present, iTunes U is all too often seen as a video only platform, yet there are plenty of options for uploading audio versions. There are even occasions where a video and audio version can be uploaded, therefore giving more opportunity to listen to the audio recording whilst travelling.

Claire Beecroft talked about her extensive use of AudioBoom (previously known as AudioBoo) to capture short audio  commentary by herself. Claire uses the app to record audio feedback for students as well as creating segments and audio introductions for modules and lectures. By doing this Claire is able to add an extra dimension to her feedback and interaction with students that goes way beyond that of text.

The latest App Swap Breakfast was a great deal of fun and hopefully attendees took something useful from it. We certainly covered a lot of tech and at times it felt like an episode of The Gadget Show, which is no bad thing. Certainly a big positive for the future of App Swap Breakfast was the number of attendees, the quality of talks and the venue. Certainly the plans will be to run future App Swap Breakfasts at The View Deli from now on. The next App Swap Breakfast is likely to take place in June and will look at the topic of infrastructure and legacy. Without sounding all Olympics 2012 about it, the session will be a platform to discuss how an institution like Sheffield addresses issues like support and purchasing of mobile devices of apps. About how we deal with security and privacy and how do colleagues manage a good work/life balance of using tools that increasingly creep into our private life. Obviously we will look and share apps relating to these issues whilst we sip coffee, looking of the city of Sheffield. What’s not to like?

Apps covered in this App Swap Breakfast

http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/catalog/mobile.html

https://www.youtube.com/capture

http://meerkatapp.co/

http://www.morriscooke.com/

https://www.apple.com/uk/education/ipad/itunes-u/

https://audioboom.com/

http://www.videonot.es/

http://ant.umn.edu/

http://www.swivl.com/2014/01/re-introducing-swivl-robotic-platform-learning/

App Swap Breakfast at TELFest

I co-delivered a one hour App Swap Breakfast as part of the University of Sheffield’s TELFest last week. TELFest is a three day long festival of learning technologies hosted by the Learning Technology team from our Corporate and Information Systems department.

The aim of the event is to encourage staff to find out more about the many technologies, in house and otherwise they can use as part of their teaching. It is a way of showcasing the expert knowledge of the department at a time when students are just returning from their Winter break. As you can imagine with an event called App Swap Breakfast TELFest had put on a nice breakfast of hot and cold drinks and a nice selection of pastries to help everyone get going.

I was invited to co-deliver a session by CiCS Learning Technologies Manager Farzana Latif in tandem with the University’s Senior Learning Technologist Graham McElearney based on the App Swap Breakfast model I’d started on campus last year. As previously blogged, the idea of the App Swap Breakfast came from Fiona MacNeill and colleagues from The University of Brighton. It’s an idea that has been adopted by other campuses including our own. The model is very informal and involves interaction from all participants discussing and sharing apps they have found useful in an educational setting. In addition discussions revolve around issues relating to mobile technologies such as platform choice, costs, privacy, connectivity and ethics to name but a few.

At the TELFest workshop we asked delegates to form into groups and asked them to design their own perfect mobile app homescreen for education. We gave them a blank A3 printed tablet screen and a bunch of blank app icons along with some coloured pens. Delegates were asked to argue the case for which apps should be included and how they would be used. As a clue we gave attendees a criteria list of the various applications they should be aiming for, such as apps for curation, productivity, communication etc.

Image © Farzana Latif

We also asked that the delegates avoided choosing obvious apps that colleagues would have heard of, such as Evernote, Facebook, Blackboard and Google Drive.

It was interesting hearing the many apps that were proposed by both groups, with the productivity app Trello being the only one to feature more than once. I got to find out about new apps which was useful but even more useful for finding out how people had used three apps I have on my iPad but have not as yet properly tried. After the session I will certainly explore these installed apps, those being Adobe Voice, YouTube Capture and Skitch. I was also impressed with the ‘to do list’ app Wunderlist which one participant had made great use of across various platforms. Some of the apps delegates curated for their home screens are listed at the bottom of this blog post.

We then got one member of each group to feedback to the room the apps they think should be included on a learning and teaching homepage. In total there were about 16 apps suggested, pretty much all of them useful. We had apps suggested for recording audio, such as AudioBoom and apps for keeping files accessible and secure on the Cloud with Google Keep, whilst the much underrated QR code reader got a mention.

I delivered a short presentation based on the one I’d given the previous week for the Faculty of Social Sciences Ignite sessions on 12 apps to use as a new year resolution, which can be viewed below.

The one thing for me that comes from this session and others like it is the sheer amount of tools and technologies out there and that they will continue to grow at a rapid pace. No longer is it possible for one person to stay in touch with new technologies as they happen, it is simply impossible. For Web based productivity, creation and social tools that pretty much ended about five years ago. For a while it was possible to discover alternatives to established technologies, i.e. Prezi over PowerPoint, Google Docs over Microsoft Word. Now there are dozens of tools for the simplest of tasks, reading journal papers, taking notes, creating to do lists or capturing video. Add to that the issues relating to digital literacy, privacy, who pays for the apps and devices, security and how do you connect these devices to projectors. Whilst the number of apps and platforms have increased, how do you find out what is the best app for the job you want to do. Everyone regards their time as previous and investigating new ways of doing things can be very rewarding yet incredibly time consuming. This is where something like App Swap Breakfast can help and just one hour first thing in a morning, an hour often lost of chatter, email and idle distraction it can be very rewarding to discover a new way of doing something which in turn speeds up processes. 

Below is a list of the apps curated by the two groups

Group 1

Idea Catalyst - productivity and management

Trello - project management

Wunderlist - to do list - collaborative

Popplet - collaborative mind map tool - easy to use, used in schools

Skitch - take photos, annotate

Adobe Voice - digital storytelling app - ipad only but free

Voice Recorder HD

AudioBoom - used to be Audio Boo -

Responseware - i.e responding in class

Group 2 -

Voicethread - visual presentation/digital storytelling

Storehouse - IOS only - storytelling tool - take pics, vids etc, build story - Journo students actually using this

Pixlr - very good image editing tool - better than all the others according to Angie

Capture - good video tool linked to YouTube

Notability - PDF annotation tool

QR code reader -

Quizlet - flashcards

Trello - again

Google Keep

One thing is for certain, no one has created the ideal home page of learning and teaching apps. They might think they have but right now someone has developed an app that you need but just don’t know about, the chances are one of your colleagues will have it already! That said it is not about the fear of missing out apps, which is a problem many suffer in relation to email and social media, in that people are scared of missing some important snippet of information. It is very much about finding a good way to navigate the mobile technology highway, a highway that is traversed by many other colleagues. By crowd sourcing new technologies and peer-reviewing them in a learning environment we have a much better chance of getting more from those little mobile devices than just email and Candy Crush.

The next App Swap Breakfast takes place on March 18th at 9am in the View Deli within the Student Union. At this session we will take a look at video and audio apps, especially those for creating, editing and sharing, we would love you to join us.

More blog posts from the TELFest can be found on the CiCS Learning Technologies Blog.

http://learningtechnologiesteam.blogspot.co.uk/

App Swap Breakfast - Changing Landscapes Webinar

I was lucky enough to be invited to contribute to a UCISA (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) webinar last week focusing on the growing interest in App Swap Breakfasts which we have started at The University of Sheffield. I'd come across the idea after presenting at the UCISA conference Changing Landscapes back in January at The Edge in Sheffield. I'd seen an inspiring presentation by Fiona MacNeill, Beth Hewitt and Joyce Webber from the University of Brighton talking about initiative. The event was run by UCISA and was a continuation of their Changing Landscapes, hosted by Jane Hetherington and featured reflections from myself, Fiona, Joe Telles from the University of Salford about our own App Swap Breakfasts.
The recording of the webinar can be viewed/listened to here:


Webinar recording - http://adm-leeds.adobeconnect.com/p4phqrf9r85/
Fiona MacNeill et al's presentation from the Changing Landscapes can be viewed here:

UCISA Case Study Slides: App Swap Breakfasts: Pedagogy, Mobile Devices and Learning Discourse over Breakfast from Fiona MacNeill

In addition I was invited to give a presentation to University of Sheffield staff as part of CiCS LeTS Snap, App & Tap lunchtime series to help colleagues get more from their mobile devices. I ran a session on tools to help staff and students carry out research on the go and looked at Mendeley, Evernote, Harvard Reference, CLA search amongst other useful tools. The slides are below, and I will be looking to turn this into a future ScHARR Bite Size event.

Future dates for the remaining Snap, App & Tap can be viewed below and signed up for via the University's Learning Managament System.

Weds 3rd September: The Collaborative Classroom: This session will give you a taste of how mobile devices can be used collaboratively and/or interactively in a classroom setting. You will get the chance to experience a lesson learning something which may be new to you and seeing how it feels to be a student using these technologies. The session will cover some / all of the following - synchronous use of Google docs, Nearpod, Feedback tools such as Poll anywhere, Socrative, Google moderator and Blackboard mobile.

Weds 10th Sep: Reading on your mobile device - a good idea? There are differences in the way that we read electronic texts and paper-based texts. There are also differences between reading on a computer screen and on a mobile device. How do these differences affect our experience, our work and our students? What are the advantages and disadvantages? The session will look at which options are available for reading on a mobile device, what advantages there are, what the options are for annotating and sharing reading, how the screen size affects our ability to read, accessibility / disability and reading on screen. 

Weds 17th September: Keeping a diary, journal or reflective log on a mobile device. A mobile device can be the perfect tool for a journal, diary or reflective log as it is often with you wherever you go. This session looks at the tools available for keeping your notes and how they can be exploited for academic purposes. It covers the apps available for diaries, journals and reflective logs, how notes can be moved from one place to another and tools available to transform your notes into valuable data.

Weds 24th September: See Hear! You or your students can create audio-visual resources on your mobile devices. This session will cover the reasons why we may use audio-visual resources and look a various tools that are available such as iMovie, Explain Everything, voice recorder.

App Swap Breakfast #2 - Curation Tools

The second App Swap Breakfast (ASB) took place with CiCS and looked at curation tools. As with the first ASB there was a good turn out with lively discussion that looked a few more issues relating to the use of apps and smart devices in the University. One issue that had arisen before the second ASB was that of presenting apps on a big screen. Many staff had experience of presenting slides and Web tours using their tablets and smartphones remotely using such as Haikudeck and Nearpod amongst others. Actually projecting apps onto a screen is not so straightforward but luckily a kind soul in our Corporate Information and Computing Services sourced us a cable in time for our iPads. It raised another of many questions, what cables, projectors and other infracture does an organisation need to do this fluently? Does it need cables given we are increasingly able to present wirelessly? For our session to get the apps on screen we did need a cable, but another question had arisen in my mind. How can we screencast and capture apps, especially when trying to demo them. Recently Apple announced that this will be possible on their new Yosemite OS, although early tests showed it was still not perfect for capturing apps. Even sites like Techcrunch and their tech reviews still often have a person holding the phone or tablet whilst showing the app to camera, but hopefully that will all change. That said, this approach is not all bad.

At the ASB Daniel Villalba Algas from the Department of Politics explained how he used Evernote to capture everything from meeting notes to useful Web links. Evernote is a simple note taking application that is available in a range of different devices, it is even available on the University's managed desktop.

Daniel explained to the group and writes below that he uses Evernote to take quick and simple notes that he later uses to produce more complex documents. Daniel listed some of the key benefits of the app:

• It allows you to record one hour of sound for note so if you are going to a meeting or conference you can record the sound while you are taking your notes. Daniel said that he was aware of his department’s students using it to record lectures while they are taking notes.
• You can also attach images to a note if it is easier than typing.
• With all these systems it is useful if you can sort and manage your notes and in Evernote you can create notebooks, tags or event link a note to a specific location so it makes very easy to find the notes that you are looking for even by geographical information.
• Comments are stored in the cloud so you can always have access to them regardless the device that you are using.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evernote

I looked at two tools I have championed for the last few years that help teach students and staff organise and manage their research papers.

Mendeley

Mendeley is a social reference management tool that has its own alternative metric for measuring scholarly papers. The application is available across most platforms as official and unofficial versions, with a desktop and Web version being the mainstay of the software. The mobile version sits in between both versions in terms of functionality and usage.  For any student or researcher working on the go and in possession of a tablet the app allows them to save new references and attached PDFs with the option to read these PDFs. Unlike the desktop version there is no option to annotate or highlight the PDFs, but nevertheless it is a useful reader. Users can tag references and access their references and papers within their groups.

The app is free and has an official IOS version, whilst there are unofficial Android versions, Mendeley say they are working on an official version. There is also a version for the Amazon Kindle which allows you to read papers in your Mendeley database.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mendeley/id380669300?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kmk.Referey

http://www.kinsync.com/

http://dev.mendeley.com/

The next tool I looked at was Readability which is more of a PDF reader than anything. The real value from Readability is by using it on your Web browser as it allows users to turn webpage articles into clean looking PDF type articles that you can read offline on your tablet device. Readability is able to turn a website from the one below into the pdf below that. It is a great way to stockpile interesting articles you may discover browsing the Web or Twitter and turn them into a reading list.

https://www.readability.com/apps

Before Readability

Afterwards

Claire Beecroft talked about two apps she uses to create and discover materials as part of her teaching. Claire captures below what it is she likes about these two apps; firstly the micro-podcasting tool AudioBoo and the journal browsing app Browzine.

Audioboo:

Audioboo appswap - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Audioboo is an app for Android and iOS and can also be used via  browser. Its free. You can record up to 10 mins of audio and embed the results in a neat little player in MOLE. Great for distance/blended learning, i.e: introducing a module, LO’s or a discussion topic, or for setting assignments or doing topical things related to current affairs.

audioboo.fm

Browzine:

Browzine is an app that allows you to ‘browze’ the e-journals at your institution. It links to the Uni’s e-journal subscriptions and allows you to browse broad subject categories for journal titles, then more specific sub-categories. Nice for current awareness and a more serendipitous approach to search. Reminds me of the old days of directories like Yahoo. http://thirdiron.com/browzine/

The third App Swap Breakfast will focus on sound and vision an will hopefully take place in July