Essential iPhone Apps for Students and Educators

MacWorld published the “Ten Essential Back to School iPhone Apps”. While they chose very good apps, they might have left out a few other interesting apps as well. A possible improvement on the “top X apps for students” post idea would be to have different school levels (Pre-school, Middle School, High School, Higher Ed., etc.)  AND different subjects in subcategories (General Apps, History, Math, Politics, Books, etc.) as well and list the apps that pertain to those categories only. This process would probably make it even more useful for students’ specific needs.

I still think that Education iPhone apps have to do a lot of catching-up to do in order to achieve the same level of excellence of other apps such as the games we now see on the iPhone.

However, there are some other good apps out there for Education such as the “100 Words Series” to help you sound smart in that test or paper. The iPhone seems to be a good platform for word lists and dictionaries, thesaurus-like lists, etc. (even Dictionary.com has their own apps).

For Educators, check out this list of “Top 50 Apps for Educators” from the Online Education Database.

Uses of Second Life in Education

Excellent list on the SLEducation wiki on the use of Second Life for immersive learning. Some very interesting islands are highlighted like the ISTE island.

Explore the list here.

Twitter Tags

I have just found out how useful Twitter tags can be. I have for a while been a skeptic of the use of microblogging for Education and in general, for that matter, Although I am a believer in many aspects of social media (Web 2.0) and that it can in fact provide tools for the creation of authentic and collaborative learning environments and opportunities, the use of Twitter for irrelevant content such as “I am going shopping now” or “I need a new haircut” never impressed me. 

Many might already know that there has been a gas outage in the Atlanta area for a couple of weeks now. With my car’s tank almost empty I decided to Google “find gas Atlanta” (without quotation marks) and was surprised to find this link with search results to the #atlgas Twitter tag. It impressed me that people are using Twitter for effective sharing of useful information besides trivial status updates, forming a network of like interests. I simply added the name of my city after the tag and found a few local gas stations that had just gotten a fresh supply of gas. I immediately used Twitteriffic on my iPhone to send people an update with the Google map of the location that had gas.

I would like to ask my colleagues that read my blog to help me catalog tags that are being used on Twitter for topics such as Instructional Technology, Instructional Design, Instructional Design and Technology (IDT), learning 2.0, social media and learning, virtual worlds in education, virtual worlds in general, etc.

Please reply to this thread as we might find some interesting information like I did today.

Microsoft Doesn’t Believe in Open Source Virtual Worlds

As seen in this article from PC Magazine reported by ITExaminer, Microsoft (via Craig Mundie) doesn’t seem to believe in Open Source virtual worlds such as Second Life. 

While I agree that (open) virtual worlds are still very limited, I believe in the potential of such environments on a long term basis and I don’t think that users should be discouraged to go in and experiment with them. If the first attempts at playing with DOS had been discouraged, Microsoft wouldn’t be making billions with Windows and their other products  ;)

When we discuss Education it gets even more serious since, in general, the education sector can’t afford expensive closed technologies and have to experiment with open source and free (of charge) ones. Open virtual worlds also offer the opportunity of easy creation of custom worlds and enforce the sense of community and collaboration which most avant-guarde educators believe in now.

So, Microsoft, let’s not discard Virtual Worlds just yet, no one said they were perfect.

List of Buzzwords in the Classroom

I always rant on and on about buzzwords in Education and how many people just use meaningless words brought to them by a fad or they try to create it themselves.

I came across this interesting, funny list of those true definitions of some buzzwords specifically for those educators that work in the classroom setting: http://www.illinoisloop.org/buzzwords.html

iPhone Educational Apps

A while back I thought of creating a blog to review only educational apps for the iPhone.
Suddenly I noticed that not only did just a few developers try to create educational apps but also the quality of those that are there isn’t what you’d expect…

So, I’m still considering reviewing a few iPhone apps for learning, but if educational developers don’t learn to create good apps it will be a tough job…

The state of the so-called “Education” apps on the iPhone is hazy. So many applications for the iPhone utilize the revolutionary technologies available for that platform (such as the Shazam app that recognizes which music is playing at an environment and populates the app’s screen with metadata on that song, or the Aurora Feint series that utilizes the accelerometer to control the blocks on the screen), etc.

The educational apps are still on the “flash card” side of things… let’s see what INNOVATIVE ed apps will appear in the upcoming months, years, decades…

Another buzzword: EduPunk

It is ridiculous… it seems like all people focus on these days is on coming up with the next stupid “buzzword”… even if all it means is to dress up old concepts in to new clothes… seriously… I feel sorry for those who are still trying to come up with Web 3.0 and such… or should I call them WebPunks? 

The definition of edupunk, as see in Lisa Neal Guatieri’s article on eLearn Magazine from July 2008: “an educational approach that combines creative drive with a maverick attitude…in which the educator—or possibly the student—designs the tools for teaching and learning.” While a valid definition for innovative and creative educators/learners, this creation and re-creation of technology for learning situations, as also stated in the same article, has been happening for quite sometime (if not throughout all of mankind). It is called Instructional Technology, being the people involved innovative or not, being the technology being flawed or not… I, particularly, see no need for such buzzword… But that is just my humble opinion…

From Steven Downes’ blog.

From Wired Campus.

Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland and The Immersive Education Grid

The Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative led by Aaron Walsh from the Boston University has been on the cutting edge of virtual environments experiments for a learning purpose. They hold constant meetings in Second Life, have been experimenting with different virtual worlds and not was Wonderland’ turn for a more “official” educational event run by the Immersive Education participants. 

I’m pasting some of the thoughts fellow bloggers have had on their posts about the event:

 

 

First Educational Gathering in Wonderland

By timwang

(…) over 60 avatars gathered on the Sun’s island in Secondlife, cuing up to get a “ticket” for the first experimentation of the Wonderland Project by Sun’s Microsystems. The event was organized by the MediaGrid which is a computational grid platform that promotes 3D virtual learning environment. (…)”

On Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog 

 

Wonderland Works!

By Katherine W. Prawl:

“Friday was a red-letter day. I attended an event in Second Life for an education group, hosted by Sun Microsystems, which was intended to introduce the group members toProject Wonderland. Especially exciting was the fact that Sun and its partners (which include NMC) are exploring the possibility of allowing avatars to navigate from theEducation Grid running on Wonderland servers.”

On the NewMedia On the Go blog

 

Sun’s Wonderland & Education Grid Demo

by Chris Collins

“Today the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative launched the Education Grid onSun’s Wonderland platform.

Aaron Walsh from Media Grid launched the initiative from within Second Life and the island quickly filled up with many more avatars waiting to get in to join the demonstration.”

Fleep’s Deep Thoughts blog

 

Web 2.0 in Education

There is so much controversy over the term Web 2.0. Some people state that the digits “2.0″ determine a version, and that the Web is continuously evolving without need for a “label”. They claim that the assertion that Web 2.0 is more user-centered and interactive than Web 1.0 is not true. While new technologies (e.g. AJAX, a group of technologies that make possible for so-called Web 2.0 tools to be created) do mke teh Web more interactive, this interction and user-centered content generation was envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee since the beginning of the Wolrd Wide Web, not being a standard for this phaseof the Web only. https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2006-May/000399.html 

I do believe that the interaction made easy, the collaborative tools and the (normally) cleaner user interface of tools (visual literacy) make it possible for a more learner-centered learning approach mediate by these new tools. 
Vygotsky’s, Piage’s and other contructivist learning frameworks can be easily implemented online by means of the Read/Write Web. 

Resources such as “social bookmarking”, “social networks”, “group blogging”, “video/image/audio sharing”, wikis, tagging, and many other emerging tools enhance interaction on the Web. 

This interaction can bring more meaningful learning into place, learning that happens through social interaction, sharing of knowledge, etc. 

Web 2.0 tools you can try right now: 

create a social network on www.ning.com 
create a blog on www.wordpress.com 
create and share slideshows on www.slideshare.net 
create and share videos on www.youtube.com 
create and share a wiki on www.wetpaint.com 
create a microblog on www.twitter.com 
create microblogs for your classes on www.edmodo.com 
join Second Life on www.secondlife.com 

my blog on http://tweaklearning.wordpress.com 

If you don’t want to join anythign right now, just visit websites like these and you will see how much fun and interactive they can be… 

Educators should care about everything that helps their learners learn in meaningful ways… most teachers agree (or am I wrong) that learnign can be improved with social interaction (or am I wrong?). Research talks about informal learning being the means for most of our learning. Why not give it a try? These new Web tools matter to us because they matter to the learners. 

Oui, Wii…

I finally found at Wii at Target today. I had visited both a Target and a BestBuy yesterday (Saturday) and they said they’d have it this morning, which  I thought was weird for them to get new shipment on a Sunday. Anyway, I don’t know how shipping really works in these retail stores but apparently many Targets got a new set of Wiis since I called another Target closer to where I live and they had it this morning. So, I asked them to reserve it for me as I would be there later this afternoon, they did so. No need for it: apparently no-one was aware of the fact since I only saw one couple buying a console and they seemed to have plenty left to sell. The Wiimotes even came with silicone cases around them, nice!

My wife and I played a bowling match (we got home late and needed to go to bed).

This gaming system is so motivating and fun! Many people are experimenting with new things using the Wii and its accessories (as you could see in a previous post of mine). And here are a couple more examples:

Wii in hospitals.

Wii as a Platform for Learning (Brandon Hall).