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/

Work Those Apps - 18 New Year Resolutions for your Mobile Device

Last week I was invited by a colleague in the Faculty of Social Sciences at my University to deliver a Ignite presentation on learning technologies alongside some of their colleagues. I'd never delivered a Ignite presentation before and only ever gone as far as presenting two Pecha Kuchas previously, one in Sheffield and one in Barnsley. Pecha Kucha presentations are 20 slides of 20 seconds that auto-progress, Ignite presentations are slightly shorter where each slide gets 15 seconds each.

So thinking it was another good challenge I set about it and delivered the presentation where I suggested 18 new year resolutions in the guise of apps that colleagues could try on their mobile and tablet devices. The sides are below and even though some may not seem obvious as to their educational credentials, you wouldn't have to search far on the Web to find out how they are being employed in education. For example, Pinterest used to collect info graphics, Evernote as a lecture note taker complete with slide capture and audio recording.  

Work Those Apps - 18 New Year Resolutions for your Mobile Device. from Andrew Tattersall

Mobile Apps for Higher Education Videos

There has been a lot of discussion over the last year or so on the Web over the merits of using tablets and apps within education, more notably primary and secondary schools. In higher education there have been various initiatives to encourage staff and students to get more value from their smart devices going beyond the stock use of email, calendar and Social Media. Yet there is an increasingly growing conversation on the Web that the tablets have not changed learning and teaching in the way they were heralded a couple of years ago. Some academics are reaping the benefits of their mobile devices by using a multitude of apps, but from my own personal experience these are in the minority. Part reason for this is there are still only a small number of good quality academic apps out there, or ones that can be applied to higher education. 

Again for the most part staff are using their devices as bigger screen versions of their smartphones to access emails and calendars with some taking and reading notes. Tablets represent a great example of the Gartner Hype Cycle, although according to the technology forecasters we were on the slope of enlightenment a year ago and probably should be somewhere near the plateau of productivity any time soon. It may be the case for many uses for tablet devices, as I said school education, there are no shortage of useful apps for kids (when you remove the U.S biased ones), in addition to apps on cooking, consuming, playing and communicating. Whilst some of these can be applied to higher education, the list of really useful, mass-appealing academic apps remains just a handful and rarely used by most academics and students. The reasons for this lack of uptake is many, that some of the apps are no good, poorly designed or just do not do enough compared to their desktop/laptop counterparts; that it could be argued that the app was created for the sake of having an app. That staff and students do not invariably have the time to explore these apps beyond the ones key to their work, email, calendar, PDF reader and those they are instructed to use institutionally, Turnitin, Pebblepad etc. There are of course exceptions to these rules and communities, student doctors use tablets increasingly to diagnose patients and check medications, whilst for anyone working out in the field, archaeologists, engineers and suchlike there is greater uptake. For the majority of mostly office and lecture-theatre based academics and their students there is still so way to go before they truly do reach the heady heights on the plateau of productivity.

Whilst tablets will increasingly seep into our working environment there needs to be a better understanding of not only how they work, how to stay safe using them and maintaining them but what apps are out there and how can they be employed within a university environment; in a streamlined process rather than just for the sake of it. The reality is that most apps have very small learning curves and are often just lightweight versions of software packages, that an awful lot of them are free and some are hidden gems not always spotted by certain communities. Take Evernote for example, the tablet version allowing for note, image and audio capture are perfect for students in classrooms and academics at conferences, yet many do not apply an academic use for it beyond taking meeting notes. 

The Evernote issue is understandable as with many applications it often takes a colleague or friend to explain and show the benefits of using a certain technology. It very much feels like the period shortly after Web 2.0 had arrived in 2005, and a couple of years later when innovative platforms like Prezi, Mendeley, Dropbox and Twitter appeared and where starting to gain popularity, yet the academic uptake was still fairly low. The reason behind that takes us back to the Hype Cycle again and reasons behind many technology adoptions, that users are wary of new technologies, cannot afford them, do not have the time to explore them and can often feel overwhelmed by them, the same is happening again but on a bigger scale as we have more platforms than before.




With regards to apps there have been Initiatives at our own institution through workshops, short seminars and such as the App Swap Breakfast idea. Another option is by making short videos that not only explain an app's use but also that it exists in the first place, awareness at least opens the mind to the possibilities. At present I have created just seven short videos hosted on the Information Resources YouTube channel and later on the University's iTunes U, but the intention is to create more. The videos explain briefly Evernote, BibMe, Harvard Easy Referencing, Mendeley, Readability and Browzine - the series can be viewed here.

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

App Swap Breakfast #2 30th May 9-10 am - Hawley Room CiCS

This Friday we're having our second App Swap Breakfast in the Hawley Room at CiCS, between 9 and 10 am. Following on from the success of the first ASB we will use this second informal session to look at a few tools focused around curation. Again as these sessions are informal, the discussion will hopefully be led by the group and will cover anything app related. A few of the apps we do hope to look at on Friday will be Mendeley, Evernote, AudioBoo, Readability, Scoopit! and Browzine.
Coffee and possibly pastries will be on offer, so please feel free top drop in and discover a bit more about what your mobile device can possibly do for you.

My Health Apps

We wrote about the European Directory of Health Apps on this blog back in October 2012 as we noticed what an excellent resource of health apps it was and that there was a real gap in knowledge in this area. Since then the NHS have pooled together their own, smaller collection of recommended Apps. Working at ScHARR we're very interested in the use of technologies for health care as part of our research programmes, we've even got a section who focus specifically on the topic of research into rehabilitation and assistive technologies

Web and mobile health technologies are heavily focused in the teaching carried out by members of Information Resources, especially myself, Claire Beecroft, Angie Rees and Louise Preston. So I was especially pleased to find out via a comment on our blog by Alex W that the site and Apps had been updated. I'm taking a guess that Alex W is in fact Alexandra Wyke from Patient View who oversee My Health Apps. The PDF document is now a website in its own right and can easily be browsed by one of 11 categories. Each app is recommended to the site by consumers, patients, carers, patient groups and charities. They are rated on the site with the highest rating being five hearts and the ratings explained below.

Helps you control your condition /keep you healthy 
Is trustworthy 
Is easy for you to use 
Allows you to network with people like you / who understand you 
Can be used regularly

Alex explained in her comments how the site had evolved:

1. All of the initial 307 apps appearing on the myhealthapps.net site have been selected by 456 distinct patient groups, disability groups or empowered consumers as their favourite apps. The reviews from these groups are supplied for each app, as well as weblinks to the groups themselves.

2. myhealthapps.net unique ‘heart’-rating system. The health apps on the site have been allocated ‘heart’ ratings, according to the extent that each app exhibits 5 consumer/patient needs (weighted according to level of importance). These 5 qualities are attributes that patients and the public look for from their health apps, as determined by a 2013 PatientView study of 250 patient, disability and consumer groups from 16 countries around the world. People’s requirements from health are:• Give people more control over their condition (or keep them healthy)• Easy to use• Can be used regularly• Allow networking with other people like them (or with people who understand them)• Trustworthy.

27 of the 307 health apps included in the initial version of the website gain a top ‘heart’ rating of 5 out of 5.
myhealthapps.net is opening with 307 featured apps. This number will be increased every month to include other favourite apps from patient groups, disability groups or empowered consumers

ScHARR Bite Size at UCISA Conference - Changing Landscapes

This week I was lucky to attend and present at the UCISA one day conference hosted by the University of Sheffield at the excellent Edge conference centre. I didn’t know much about UCISA when I was asked to submit an abstract based on their theme Changing Landscapes back last year, and was pleasantly surprised by what an innovative and interesting conference it was and how much of it mattered to my own work.

UCISA’s aim is: “to promote excellence in the application of information systems in support of teaching, learning, research and administration in higher education.” The presentations came from a mixture of learning technologists, educationalists and IT experts and myself an information specialist.

The morning plenary was delivered by our own Dr. Christine Sexton the Director of the Corporate and Information Services based at the University. Christine’s talk looked back over the last couple of years where her team has seen rapid changes mostly thanks to Google Apps, rise of Social Media, customer demands for immediate and flexible services, security and growing appetites for wireless connectivity across a large university campus. We heard about the two little robot cleaners in the computing centre (one of them allegedly called Christine) and how even when a student cannot get an online computer game working in student halls it it treated no different from if their laptop was faulty. The ethos that the students are in our care and are our customers and therefore we have to support them quite rightly and very much heralded.  Christine touched on the Internet of Things from her use of the Nike Fuel band that talks to her scales which in time will talk to her fridge. It all makes for an exciting if not cumbersome future where we spend half of our time setting this tech up and then updating malware, but that’s a different story. Christine as ever was good value and reinforced the idea that Cloud Services are not about saving money but improving services and systems - it is a no brainer for the modern organisation.

Christine has blogged about her talk and you can read about it here.

Next up was the winning case study for the conference, Anna Armstrong from Nottingham Trent University who talked about their initiative to develop digital skills through flexible practice. The focus of talk was their work at Nottingham Trent to encourage a large group of staff to develop the digital skills and knowledge to deal with a huge number of phone calls using software to help students gain places via clearing, no small feat.

I then attended a superb presentation by Fiona MacNeill, Joyce Webber and Bethany Hewitt on their App Swap Breakfasts. This is a great idea, and felt like it had the same ethos as ScHARR Bite Size in that it is about making new technologies and ideas available that don’t eat into people’s time with a real informal fun feel about it. Their presentation was delivered on the superb nearpod app which I hadn’t seen before but will make a point of using in the future. The app allowed for voting and audience interaction via being able to draw remotely on the slides on your own tablet device whilst the presentation was happening live - I was sold on the idea and plan to try and start our own App Swap Breakfast on campus very soon.

After a lovely lunch which featured some nice cake I went to see The University of York’s presentation on their migration to Google Apps in 2012 delivered by Mike Dunn. The presentation resonated with many of the audience who too had come from organisations who had moved over to the technology giants productivity and communication suite. The University of York had first moved their students over to Google Apps before finally moving their staff over. Mike explained the many considerations the university had taken in their decision to move over, very much like Sheffield and like my own institution have not looked back since.

I then delivered my own session on ScHARR Bite Size - something visitors to this blog will be all too aware of. It was well received and and I got a few interesting questions about location, timing and how I generate new sessions. This is probably the last time I will deliver a talk about Bite Size as I hand it over to someone else after four years at the helm, it was the fourth time Bite Size had featured at a conference and was a nice way to sign the 20 minute method off. My slides from the presentation are below.

UCISA - Changing Landscapes - ScHARR Bite Size Presentation from Andrew Tattersall

After another break where I was able to catch up with the University of Sheffield’s ex learning and teaching manager for CICS Sarah Horrigan (now at Derby University) for a chat and share some ideas about pedagogy, digital literacy and technology. After that it was back into the main conference hall to hear the final plenary from Doug Belshaw from the Mozilla Foundation talking about digital literacies delivered on the big screen via a Google Hangout. It was a great presentation, very interactive and thought provoking - Doug discussed the ideas about digital literacy spanning back to his time as a teacher, employee of JISC and through his own PhD. studies. Doug listed the eight key elements of digital literacy, that being; cultural, cognitive, constructive, communicative, confident, creative, critical and civic.

His presentation on the big screen reminded me of a scene from Big Brother, or the old Apple advert from the 1990s where a big face on the screen dictates to the nation. Except on this occasion it a good man trying to help us all understand how we can actually navigate around this massive technology and information maze better.

@dajbelshaw speaking at Changing Landscapes

I have to say my expectations were more than met by attending Changing Landscapes, I didn’t really know what to expect. What I got was a collection of brilliant presentations, lively debate and great people. I always recall speaking to Christine Sexton at the Online Information Conference in 2012 as I was about to talk about Google Apps at our University. Sadly the conference is no longer with us, and it was one of those conferences that someone in my profession gained a lot from. Christine commented that it wasn’t really her crowd (professional peer group) so to speak but that she got a lot of knowledge from being there. I think I can say the same about Changing Landscapes, despite it not being a collection of individuals I’d really come across on my various travels and networks, I did actually come away with a lot of ideas, thoughts, questions and a few connections. What more can you ask of a one day conference?

The European Directory of Health Apps

This will be of interest to any one involved in health technology in particular mobile applications in health. Press release taken from:  Patient View

DOWNLOAD 

The European Directory of Health Apps

This first edition of the European Directory of Health Apps was launched on October 3rd 2012 at the European Health Forum Gastein 2012. Gastein is a key event in the Brussels healthcare calendar—an annual gathering of European-level policymakers, academics, industry and patient groups http://www.ehfg.org/home.html

This unique Directory contains facts about 200 smartphone health apps capable of helping patients self manage their medical conditions. The Directory represents not just the first occasion on which such information has been gathered together on a large number of medical conditions—the key difference about the Directory is that the health apps it lists have all been recommended by patient groups and empowered consumers, then categorised and indexed in several ways (including by local language), to make the details easy for readers to find. Another distinction about the Directory is that it lists health apps on all of the major operating systems (Android, Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Windows Phone), not just apps that are carried on one. Robert Madelin, European Commission Director General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect) has written the Foreword to the Directory.

ScHARR Bite Size for Research #16 - Mobile Phone Apps for Research - PLEASE NOTE 3pm start - 19th October - Eric Wilkes Room

Posted by Andy