Group Discussion on the iPads

The students have now had the iPads for 3 weeks and it was time to get some initial feedback on how the trial was going. We discussed how the thought they had benefited from having the iPads and if they thought they were more productive and organised because of them ? The students were encouraged to share ideas, new Apps and alternative working methods.

A few of the group had been using FaceTime to make video phone calls to discuss work and stay connected with each other. Face time only works within the University College or over a shared wi-fi network. The University College’s network routes all connections externally through one port and Face Time requires a number of ports to be open to stream live video. Others are using Skype which only requires one open port so allows full video conferencing internally and externally.

A number of students had found ‘Job Search’ to be a useful App looking for extra work  for media related jobs or just casual work.

One issue everyone seems to find is the difficulty in finding Apps. There are now hundreds of thousands of Apps available and the Apple Store is not the easiest to navigate to find exactly what you want. ‘App Advice’ makes this process much easier.

One of the most popular Apps amongst the group was ‘Evernote’, a note taking App that lets you set up multiple note books for different purposes. You can make text, photo or audio notes and synchronise with your other devices easily. Notes also include geo-location information for mapping purposes.

A number of students are using their iPads to edit videos and are using the ‘Wordpress’ App to make blog entries. Being able to blog from any location is particularly useful and many of the group are intending to take their iPads to London this week for the courses trip to the Post Modernism exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. This should be a particularly interesting use of the iPads. ( Below students at the Post Modernist exhibition at the V&A spend their spare time researching).

Some of the group who have iPhones are finding the syncing of information between devices to be very smooth and useful, particularly since updating to iOS 5.0

A couple of people have been using the ‘Find My Friends’ App to check out where their friends are, but some of the group find this feature a little too obtrusive.

Wikitude is an interesting App, by using your camera and holding up the iPad you can see augmented reality displays of nearby services, facilities or even people tweeting nearby. In a large city this could offer some intriguing possibilities and new ways of locating a service.

Folders are a good way of organising your Apps and saving screen space. By keeping Apps of a similar type together it makes them easier to find. (Just drag Apps on top of each other to create a folder for Apps that you want to keep together.)

A really great drawing App which all the students have downloaded is ‘Sketchbook Pro’. This is a great creative tool for creating layered images and putting ideas down. There is a free version that offers many of the features but the full version offers a greater range of brushes and tools for just £4.99 Read a review here

“Message with iMessage is the new way to send text messages between iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users running iOS 5. It’s built into the Messages app and it’s free and unlimited over Wi-Fi.* So you can say as much as you want. Or as little as you want. Send a picture, share a video, or message everyone at once with group messaging.” This will solve a lot of problems with transferring files between iPads.

iMotion HD “is an intuitive and powerful time-lapse and stop-motion app for iOS.
Take pictures, edit your movie and export* HD 720p videos to your device or directly to Youtube. iMotion HD is free to download.” or £1.49 for the full version.

The new version of iOS 5 now includes Newstand which gives you access to a wide range of Newspapers and some exciting magazines. Wallpaper in particular is stunning, the Wired is published using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and works extremely well. Others like Harpers Bazaar are a bit disappointing merely being pdf transfers of the print magazine for £4.50.

Bebot “Part robot, Part synth – Bebot is a musical synthesizer with a unique multitouch control method and a versatile sound engine.” Great fun and points the way for new creative ways of making music.

Another excellent music App is IK Multimedia’s Amplitube, an App for guitar players that features a great collection of modeled guitar amps and effects pedals. These are some of the best modeled amp sounds you can get anywhere and used in conjunction with the iRig you can plug your iPad into your amp or mixing desk as well. There are two versions, the standard version or the Fender amp version. There are free copies of the basic App or the full version is still a reasonable £13.99. Considering that a version for your computer costs £218 this is good value.

There were a number of other good points that were mentioned:

• Battery life is very good and will easily last the whole day
• Easier than a laptop to carry round, smaller and lighter Having a camera, books, word processor and music all one device is a great help.
• Great personal organiser that helps to manage your time better.
• Take quick photos of documents or screens to make a quick record of something. (A quick easy way of visual note taking.)
• My Media allows you to download videos from youtube and vimeo.
• Quick, easy access to Internet for google searches.
• Mobile me invaluable for tracking a lost iPad.
• Easy to demo apps to try out first before you buy.
• Very easy for making quick updates to social networking sites like Facebook or to WordPress blogs.

A few negative points came up:

• Lack of USB or card reader, although it is possible to buy as an add on.
• Transfer of files difficult. Apps like Hoccer and Bump make this much easier.
• No flash player is sometimes a problem
• Finding apps is difficult too much choice
• Some apps can be a little ‘buggy’.

This is a great App for those time you want to use a white board, the great thing here is that you can record yourself as you draw on screen. You have the basic pen colours and eraser but you can add photos from your photo library or take a photo with the camera and draw over the top. Once you have finished your recording you can save it on line and share with the community or keep it private.
Click on the image above for more info.

Digital Publishing

Last week we started the new Digital Publishing unit and looked at a history of publishing from Gutenberg, wooden type, through to Letterpress and Hot Metal. Then on to copy fitting, IBM Selectric typesetters, Phototypesetting then the development of the Mac and Pagemaker. This was followed by the Today newspaper and  the print union strikes in the late 80’s and into Desk Top Publishing with Pagemaker. We finished up with In Design and the new opportunities with Digital Publishing. We also watched the excellent Helvetica movie to start the process of thinking about good design. Each student also had to research and prepare some content for the next session.

Today we followed up on last weeks intro to the Digital Publishing unit. The morning session with Chris Pegg looked at Apps and the students each presented an App they felt was of interest and offered something new. In the afternoon we split the group in two, half did an intro to x-Code and each student did a short bit of programming and produced a simple App. The other group were introduced to In Design and the Digital Publishing Suite. They all created Adobe accounts and registered on acrobat.com and photoshop.com. We then went through the whole process of designing and preparing vertical and horizontal pages for a simple 2 page spread. This was then uploaded to the https://digitalpublishing.acrobat.com site from Folio builder and published to the iPad. Each student then began the task of designing their own 2 page spread. We then swapped over and repeated the sessions with the other half of the group.

Here is the first little test we uploaded. A simple bio page on Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs RIP

What a blow, second day of the trial and Steve Jobs dies of cancer aged 56. If it wasn’t for Jobs’ innovation and single minded attitude over the last 30 years we wouldn’t be doing anything like this trial today.

Sad to lose someone as talented with so much more to give, he will be badly missed.

Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011 RIP.

Bump

Another way of transferring files between the iPads is to ‘bump’ them.

Click on the image above.

 

Hoccer

This was one of the first apps the students found. Transferring files between iPads is one of the more difficult things to do. You can e-mail them obviously or sync through iTunes but this is quick, fast and intuitive plus you can throw and catch data.

Click on the logo above.

• trans­fer between iOS and Android
• share pic­tures, con­tacts, urls, book­marks, text, music, and more
• one:one or one:many
• easy use, no address input needed
• no setup or user accounts required

First Day of Teaching

Today was very interesting, immediately we are seeing new forms of practice in lectures. Students were freely using iPads to take notes but more importantly to augment the lecture experience by looking up links and gathering additional information during the lecture. Young people today all multi-task and they were perfectly at home taking their first lecture on Principles of Computer Graphics whilst using their iPad. These are early days yet but we expect to be continually surprised by the students ingenuity and acceptance of the technology.

4th October 2011

Tuesday 4th October – the first day of the trial and the first day of the new academic year for First Year Digital Media students. The day also coincided with Adobe’s announcement of the new ‘Creative Cloud’ suite at ‘Max 2011’, which includes the new ‘Photoshop Touch’ App. I saw this a few weeks ago in an Adobe Education Leaders webinar but due to non disclosure agreements I was unable to talk about it before. We began the day by looking at the new Adobe Apps, (sadly they aren’t available for the iPad until January 2012).

‘Photoshop Touch’ promises to be the killer app for the iPad and Android devices. The potential for working in new ways and manipulating images with traditional tools but, with a touch screen interface is bound to bring out many new styles of working. The other exciting thing is the ability to mix the camera image with your Photoshop images, compositing in a completely new way. Saving to the ‘Creative Cloud’ also means that you can move your images between your desktop version of Photoshop and your tablet device or even Photoshop.com.

Watch a video HERE

After discussing the benefits of the new Adobe tools I broke the news to the students and understandably they were very excited. Students were required to sign up to the University College equipment booking system SISO (designed and programmed by one of our ex graduates, Steven Oates). This enabled the assets numbers to be recorded and iPads allocated to each student. This took 2 or 3 hour to give out 40 iPads and get them set up and registered to the students iTunes accounts. WE took the decision to allow the students to register the iPads to their own account so they can buy and download their own apps, this will give us freedom to try anything we want and evaluate their full use. Students will then be able to still keep and transfer apps to other devices after the trial. We can also suggest and ‘gift’ any essential Apps at a later date.

The important thing to note here is that the trial is very much about evaluating how students use these devices as part of their day to day study routines and to find out how these changes impact on their ability to learn and manage their time. It is hoped that students will become confident users of new tools but also use the broad range of apps to record and publish information in a way that has previously been impossible.

Once all the students had received their iPad and manged to register on line we hit our first problem, we brought down the wireless network for a short time. Although we have up to 48 wi-fi connections in the room, streaming video or other students working nearby reduced capacity to a snails pace. I really don’t think this will be a problem in future as students modify there browsing habits.

We decided to go outside and take a group photo with the iPads which you can see in the header of this blog. Inside of half an hour students were coming up with new possibilities and apps to enhance their experience. More of these later.

All in all a successful day the students took to the iPads instantly and there was no problem with the initial set up. The biggest problem was one student who did not have a debit card to set up an iTunes account but this was soon remedied.