Digital immigrants(Ed. – hate that description) are still trying to come to grips with all the digital innovations that are unfolding in today’s world. And even for those who have succeeded in making the digital transition, they still have an urge for the old days of pen and paper practices. That is probably why even with the prevalence of touch screen devices, some people still prefer to use a stylus when working on their tablets. While stylus does satisfy the craving for holding a pen in your hand, it still does not function as expected.
English: Apple iPad Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So if you are one of those people who like to use their fingers to take notes on iPad, the list below will be of great help to you. I have curated several useful apps that will allow you to experiment with your handwriting right on your iPad screen.
English: The Google search homepage, viewed in Google Chrome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Google I/O, the company’s sixth annual developer conference, got officially underway in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was an eventful day. It took the company every minute of its epic three-hour keynote to unfurl a laundry list of announcements and updates, seemingly across every product category in its arsenal — from Android, Chrome and Search to Maps, Google+ and Hangouts — each with a fresh coat of paint. We even saw the arrival of Google’s very own subscription music service, today, which is already being touted as a potential Spotify killer.
Amidst Larry Page’s triumphant return to the stage (after addressing his much-discussed vocal issues yesterday), Google’s soaring stock price and sexy smartphone demos, it was easy to miss an important announcement concerning Google’s foray into a considerably less sexy market: Education. (And K-12 education, no less.)
Android Engineering Director Chris Yerga took the stage to introduce Google Play for Education, through which Google hopes to extend Play — its application and content marketplace for Android — into the classroom. The new store, which is scheduled to launch this fall, aims to simplify the content discovery process for schools, giving teachers and students access to the same tools that are now native to the Google Play experience.
The official online color is: #A4C639 . 한국어: 공식 온라인 색은: #A4C639 . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Android has overtaken Apple in the world of apps. Look for the same thing to potentially happen in the near future as well. You can’t talk about tablets in education, smartphones in the classroom, or really education technology in general without mentioning Android.
Whichever platform you prefer, it’s worth always knowing what’s out there. Don’t wall yourself into an Apple-only or Android-only environment. It’s hard to switch, for sure.
But it’s worth knowing what the competition is doing.
Remember, you are probably not an Apple or Google employee. You aren’t obligated to use one operating system over another. Both of the leading OSes are so darn hard to switch out of, however, that it can seem like an insurmountable task. The mere thought of having to re-purchase all your apps for a different platform is enough to make most never even consider switching.
So if you’re an Android user or perhaps an Apple user looking to stay in the know about education apps for Android, check out this useful list and stay informed.
If you’re looking to spread your digital wings a bit, you probably want to find some of the highest quality educational iOS apps available. You probably head over to the official Apple App Store on your chosen iDevice and check out the ‘featured’ area and perhaps the ‘Top Sellers’ list. That’s great and a solid way to see what is being used on devices around the world.
For the most part, though, all those top apps are either just big names or have had some recent promotion. As someone who once made an iPad app, I know what it’s like to try and get your app onto one of those promoted areas in the App Store. You would do just about anything because, as I found out, your sales and download numbers skyrocket as soon as you crack the top 100 apps in your category.
So how should you avoid the crazy featured and top sellers lists? By becoming familiar with the category filters, of course!
The Microsoft Visual Studio .NET logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We talk a lot about building and designing consumer apps but what about line of business apps?
The new features in Visual Studio LightSwitch are designed to help you build beautiful, mobile business productivity apps without having to write a lot of code. You can create SharePoint apps and HTML5 client apps – the LightSwitch templates provide the fit and finish so you can get your app up and running pretty quickly and WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow to Blend for Visual Studio have recently been added to the toolset.
One of the blogging activities that I often suggest in my workshops is having students record and share on-the-spot observations during field trips. To do this your students should have a mobile blogging application on their iOS and Android devices. If your students dont have iOS or Android devices if they have a mobile device that has a web browser or email client they can post via email to Blogger. Heres a short run-down of mobile blogging options on the blog platforms that I usually recommend to teachers.
Image via CrunchBaseOne of the undoubted successes in the application and game development world has been iPhone/iPod Touch development. The recent announcement of the one billionth download from Apple’s App Store is testament to that fact. For th…
One of the undoubted successes in the application and game development world has been iPhone/iPod Touch development. The recent announcement of the one billionth download from Apple‘s App Store is testament to that fact.
For those just getting started, or wishing to include iPhone development as part of their course Stanford University has released an iPhone Application Programming course. Comprising a set of PDFs with accompanying lectures available on iTunes the course covers everything from the basics of getting started with Cocoa to publishing on the App Store.
Definitely worth a look.
CS193P – Cocoa Programming | Announcements
