Apps Collection

Summly Summly (but just been bought by Yahoo, [1]) Free Available on iPhone An app I have used for quite some time, the look and feel is beautiful, one can understand Yahoo buying this app out for several thousand, [1].   However it has meant the android app has been shelved.   The app deliveries summaries of the news from leading on-line official news sources, for example The Guardian,etc.  The news articles are summarised down to typically to 140 words, so the news is easier to digest on your iPhone.   The app enables you to scan the news and gain an appreciation of the key world news. This is a useful app if you are an academic that uses news articles in your lecture to assist in making your subject area more current. However unlike Flipboard and twitter news stream with an embedded web link, when you click on the summarised article in Summly it will not take you to the full article.  Just occasionally users may wish to read more and in more de...

MailBox Orchestra Free Available on iPhone The popular email management system for Gmail launched this year , ideal for students at out institution as the student email account is Gmail.   The app enables the user to quickly swipe through your emails to ·          bin junk mail, ·          file as done into archive (i.e. when read and acted upon) ·          reset to be read or act upon from later evening, tomorrow, next week, month, someday ·          set to buy, read and watch ·          see whole email conversation Suddenly you can easily manage your inbox efficiently never lose the important emails in the sea of emails in the inbox, enabling you to organise them to be acted upon later when one has time to address appropriately and correctly.   Feedback from one studen...

Vintagio By MacPhun LLC £1.49 Available iPhone and iPad One the assessment tasks I like to set my students at second year, rather than presentation or pitch, is a standalone presentation.   This can use standalone functionality in Prezi or Powerpoint.    However I like to encourage my students to actually make a video, challenge themselves technically to communicate effectively to the audience.    My assessment brief state the presentation can be any genre. Vintagio enables students to easily make a silent video, provides the functionality to record, edit and publish the films in formats from 20’s, sepia to 70’s yellow tinged footage.    The app equally supplies appropriate and a choice of period soundtracks for each film effect.    The pro editing facility is excellent you can: ·         add footage film, photos, to the timeline ·         add text cards (however you cannot...

Mobiletag By MobileTag Free Available for Blackberry, Android, Kindle Fire HD, Windows 8 mobile OS and iOS mobile platforms Reported to be the first mobile QRCode reader, admittedly I have had this app on my iPhone since 2009, when there was choice of two QRCode reading apps.    The advantage of this Mobile code reader is that it can scan QRCodes, Barcodes and Matrix codes, 3 in 1 app. For learning purposes why would I recommend anyone ensuring they have QRCode app on their mobile device.    In reality it is now common place for magazines, newspaper, books and posters to have QRcodes.    QRCodes present publishers with the opportunity to provide additional copy on the web without the print and ddistribution cost or dynamic web based information for example a video, podcast, animation, live data stream or changing data resource.    Practical learning examples; ·        QRCodes could be used in a Maths text book to enab...

Diigo By Diigo Free Available on android and iOS platform Diigo is another app connecting to Diigo on-line service that offers another type of app to manage your website bookmarking, network of connections, working groups and wider community.    One could describe it as Mendeley meets LinkedIn , a library social bookmarking tool.    Like any social media service, you need to register with the service.    There are different membership levels from free to paid. The mobile apps enable the user to view, edit and share social bookmarking in Diigo library.    However the iOS versions offer a functionality that Mendeley the ability for the user to install additional bookmarking features in the Safri, enabling one touch solution to bookmarking website to your Diigo library, which fulfills are students requirements of a simple ubiquitous learning solution.    The iOS bookmarking features: ·         On the iPh...

eClicker by Big Nerd Ranch eclicker Presenter (tutor version of app) £10.49, eclicker audience (student version of app) free available on iOS eClicker is another audience clicker response app for tutors and students.    However there are number of issues that would inhibit the app adoption: ·         only operates only on apple proprietary systems, Mac/iPad/iPhone, therefore ideal for schools who have introduced app TV, iPads for every member of staff and student ·         staff and students in HE are tending to use their own smart devices, not necessarily on the iOS ·         price of the teacher’s app, though the learners app is free , as most staff use their own devices, more unlikely to invest in such an app for work ·         Socrative’s teacher and student apps are free.   However the eClicker has additional functionality to tha...

Colwiz By Colwiz Free iOS and Anroid OS. Colwiz (Video) , shows that Colwiz is a desktop and mobile application designed and developed by Oxford academics to enable academics and students completing research projects to manage, organise and control information and work flow.    The desktop app provides the functionality to: ·         Free 2Gbytes cloud space ·         Invite the research team (local and international) to join colwiz; ·         Private cloud communication space for the research team; enabling team to chat, share data, equations publications, documents, and survey results on-line chat communication; ·         Private organisation space to define task lists, and calendar events that can be shared with the team; ·         Import, add and manage your research project reference sources, and sha...

EAW By Morriscooke and Constructivist Toolkit LLC $2.99 Available on iPad Explain a Website (EAW) enables you to browse in the app a website, and to write and/or draw annotations on a website; the website dynamics are still operational so you can browse through the site making annotations on the each page.   The app provides recording facility so you can create a screencast recording of your annotations, verbal comments and navigation around the site.    This subsequent file can be exported as PDF (series of stills images without the audio is supposedly exported, however when I exported the file no program on the desktop or iPad could open the resultant file) or as a video to email,   DropBox or Evernote.   The video format is compressed MP4 codec. In terms of education the app has potential to enable academics/teachers to feedback on student website assessments submissions, but also assessment submitted electronically to the VLE, as can browse the VLE in t...

Dictionary By Dictionary.com Free or however to gain full functionality £1.49 iOS and Android OS platforms This is not the standard dictionary supplied by the mobile phone OS provider, but an additional app that you can download for free or £1.49 version with additional features. The app provides the user with the ability to search for spelling of a word by typing in part of a word and presents the user with a list of words to choose from or the user can speak the word, and the dictionary spells the word. Once the user has the desired word the user is presented with; ·         Comprehensive list of the meaning of word ·         Visual display of the Synonyms (Synonyms displayed in blue are words in dictionary app that can be clicked on to find the definition of that synonym) ·        Sample sentences of the word being used in context (feature of paid version) ·   ...

Mail/Gmail By mobile OS Free pre-installed on mobile device Available for Blackberry, Android, Kindle Fire HD, Windows 8 mobile OS and iOS mobile platforms Today’s blog may seem like a weak entry, but equally not to mention the communication app   that has quite frankly revolutionized how I and others work would be equally foolish. This app has significant importance as without its ability to sync to your education provider email the benefits of using Recorder Pro , Notability and Explain Everything as an app to provide timely and constructive good practice feedback would become a bit thin.    Email app provided is a critical app that underpins practicality of other apps for learning. It should be noted though I currently use a blog, forums and twitter to communicate with the wider educational educator community in UK and internationally.    My preferred methods of communication, with colleagues and students, are email and Blackboard announcements.   Emai...

Prezi by Prezi Free to all Prezi Licenses Holders (Education license free to anyone in education) on iPhone/iPad, (there is an unofficial app for $1.96 on android app) Available for iOS/iOS mobile platforms, unofficial app for android I have used Prezi on-line via my desktop for over 18 months after being introduced to the cloud based dynamic presentation tool by my students in student presentation.   The dynamic nature of Prezi presentation tool is such that any other presentation tool now appears flat and jaded in comparison.   The impact of seeing you first Prezi presentation it inspires you to use immediately, last year it went; My students used Prezi for an assessment presentation to myself and  industrialists in Nov’12; Few days later I used Prezi to present to across University audience of Pro-VCs, Heads of Department both academic and administration; Head of HR was in attendance, who subsequently recommended to my student to use Prezi which he did f...