Faculty Mobile Device Mixer

On September 20th Instructional Technology welcomed thirteen faculty, Center for Teaching Excellence staff and Library staff to our first Tech Snack for fall — “Mobile Device Mixer”.  We started off by using a mobile app Poll Everywhere to ask faculty to name their favorite app.  Poll Everywhere allows you to conduct a quick poll using any mobile device, including laptops.

Wordle with most popular app displaying as Evernote

 

 

 

 

 

No surprise that Evernote tops the list!  Evernote is a great productivity tool.  You can sync notes across multiple devices (Windows, Android, iOS).  You can sort notes into notebooks and tag them for easy searching.  Ann David shared an educational use for Evernote.  She uses Evernote for  Learning Logs for her Educational Technology class. Students make Evernote notebooks and share so she can see live what students are writing.  She can’t edit or make notes on their notebooks but she can give immediate feedback.  Students can include audio, images videos to record their experience. 

Ryan Hoover discussed the ease of using Google Drive across devices to share documents with students.  DropBox also has an app that lets you access files across devices.

We had a lively discussion on tools to annotate PDFs or ebooks via mobile devices.  Annotation of PDFs and ebooks is still challenging for some students.  Julie Sievers shared her favorite, iAnnotate, which is available for iPads and Android devices.

Other apps we discussed:

  • Quip –  a shared word processor so everyone is editing the same document.  You can add photos to create a collective photo album.
  • TalkBoard – a shared whiteboard, great for creative projects
  • SimpleNote – a note application available on iOS and Androids
  • vBookZ PDF Reader — Reads PDFs to you — great for commuting in Austin!

For even more apps check out the lists of productivity and educational apps on this site.

Faculty Must-Have iPad Apps #1: Evernote

Evernote is a multi-purpose app.  First, it’s a simple tool for taking notes in a meeting or conference presentation (for example).  Second, it’s a way to “clip” web pages, documents and images in much the same way as one would clip interesting articles from paper-based newspapers and magazines.

The above features are not necessarily unique.  However, Evernote is downloadable to each of your devices, from phones to iPads to desktops and laptops and synchronizes across all of them, which IS unique!  Essentially, this allows you to create notes on one device that, when synchronized (automatically once an internet connection is detected), becomes available across all of your devices that have Evernote.  In many instances, this can eliminate the need to email documents and other information to yourself.

Evernote.com

Tech Snacks: iPad Apps and Productivity – Tuesday, February 26 11:00 AM – Premont 110 (Faculty Resource Center)

Have you ever wondered how the iPad can be used for education and productivity? Learn about iPad apps that increase productivity, create to-do lists, calendars, and help you organize class or assignment schedules.

Tech Snacks, sponsored by Instructional Technology, is an ongoing series of short presentations and demos for faculty. Each session will emphasize the pedagogical use of a specific technology or software. Bring your curiosity, questions and an appetite for some snack foods!

Join us on Tuesday, February 26th at 11am in the Faculty Resource Center (FRC) for some snacks and learn more about iPads and productivity apps.