I Love My iPad
This blog post is written by Eli Lesser, Director of Summer Academic Sessions.
The iPad has changed the way that I work, and it has truly become the computer device that I have always wanted. It is allowing me to be more focused on my work, keep organized, and feed my insatiable need for information, as it has become known my “media diet”. The iPad like all computers is just a highly designed frame and platform, although out of the box it does allow for email, web surfing, and a few other basic tasks what drives the iPad are apps downloaded from the integrated app store.
The first app that I want to discuss is Evernote, a cloud based note-taking app. I have used Evernote for more than two years, well before I owned an iPad. The app allows for note taking, web clipping, and multimedia storage. (you can take a look at my WIC tutorial for Evernote here). Before I had an iPad, I would lug a laptop to meeting and be that guy clicking away while everyone else talked, or I would carry a variety of paper based notebooks which would then pile up on my shelves rarely referred to once they were full. On the iPad Evernote really shines, for the first time I can really have all of my notes, files, and ideas in one easy place for meetings I hold in and out of the office. Since Evernote syncs with the notes that I take on my iPad they appear on my desktop, and are easily tagged and searchable allowing me to find ideas or thoughts in a neatly complied and accessible format. Evernote is free to download and use, on all platforms.
Next up is Goodreader, the ultimate article reader app for iPad. This intuitive app provides me with one place to read documents in almost any format, Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), Acrobat (.pdf), and even images and movies. What amazes me most about the app is its ability to provide a number of access points to load documents. It can connect to almost any cloud based server (Dropbox, Google Docs, etc), you can generate a Wi-Fi session and load documents directly from your desktop/laptop, or you can connect directly to your email account(s) and Goodreader will automatically pull only the messages with file attachments. On top of all this you can import a zipped file. The app will automatically unzip and prep the files for reading. Goodreader is just as it’s name implies a reader, you cannot edit a document. But, you can annotate (only pdf docs) by highlighting, adding notes, and using other common tools for marking up a document. This makes the app perfect for reading academic articles and even grading student work. A recent update has allowed for your annotations to be sync’d back to the file server you have the document on, or you can always email the document right from the app as a file attachment. Goodreader does cost $4.99 (about the price of a grande soy latte)
I love my iPad! I am not ashamed to admit it, well I am a bit I did remove the “Sent from My iPad” from the mail program.
Epub File Creation
I recently created my first .epub file. This is a type of e-book file that can be read on Android devices, the Nook, Sony Reader, and portable Apple devices among others. The files are a little odd in the way they need to be formatted. Here are a few resources I found helpful when creating my first document.
http://calibre-ebook.com/
Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. This program allows you to convert between several different formats.
http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
Sigil is Google’s free multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor.
Adobe TV ebook creation using InDesign
This is a link to a series of three videos on Adobe TV about ebook creation using InDesign. These are what I primarily used to get started, and they helped a lot, although you need a little bit of an InDesign background to get started. You also need to be using InDesign CS4 or CS5 to export the .epub file.
Gadget Day, March 18
Come to our annual Gadget Day this Friday, March 18.
This year we’ll be demonstrating a mixture of hardware (iPad 2.0, LiveScribe pens, Smart phones) and software (Evernote, Facetime).
For more information, including a detailed schedule, see:
http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicshops/gadget03182011.html
Trying new stuff during Spring Break
Spring break offers the opportunity to spend a few minutes checking out interesting (and sometimes even useful!) new software. Here are a few things that I’ve tried and liked:
Evernote is a very popular utility for keeping track of notes, to-do lists, snippets from web pages, documents and just about anything. It is available for Mac and Windows PCs, but its real advantage comes when used on a mobile device. It’s free, easy to use and a real productivity booster. Lots of people love it; I’m a little late in getting to the party, but I am not starting to use it on a daily basis.Sigil is a free, open source utility for creating documents in the ePub format for display on iPad, Kindle and other readers. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux, easy to install; good documentation available. Jutoh is another inexpensive ($40) option for creating ePubs.
- Google Document Viewer is a free utility for presenting PDF documents in the format the Google uses for its online books. It’s not really all that useful, but it’s dead simple to use and lets you claim the moral victory of having published something in an electronic book format.
Sophia is a brand new system intended to help people easily share tutorials and other instructional materials in brief “packets.” It’s an intriguing tool and I’ll be curious to see if it gets much traction. Be sure to read the Terms of Use carefully before posting any content, or inviting your students to do so. When posting content to the site, you are effectively giving the site operators license to your material. From their Terms of Use statement: “… we ask that you not send us any User Generated Content that you do not wish to license to us, including any confidential information or product ideas.”- CMap Tools is a free, intuitive tool designed to generate concept maps. Concept maps are a good way to visualize complex relationships among a variety of factors. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and include collaboration features. The CMap site includes good information about the tool itself, and the theory of concept mapping in general. After just a few minutes of playing around with CMap, I was able to generate this simple chart which I’m using to help me understand how to get better outcomes from technology initiatives (click the graphic below to expand to a bigger size).
Dan Cohen, Ivory Tower and Open Web talk, 2/25/11
I’m looking forward to Dan Cohen’s presentation next week here on his new book The Ivory Tower and the Open Web. It’s been almost a year since Peter Decherney first suggested bringing Dan to Penn. In that time, we have been in touch with several faculty on campus who are exploring the tools that Dan has helped to create such as Zotero and Omeka. I’ve also enjoyed the YouTube video of Dan’s presentation at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) fall meeting.
Dan will speak in the Class of ’55 Conference Room on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center on Friday February 25 from 10:30 to 11:30 am. Then he will join some members of the Weigle Information Commons Faculty Advisory Group and Program Partners Group for an informal lunch.
This will also be the Weigle Information Commons’ first event to be simulcast via a web broadcast with a twitter back channel for questions. It will be interesting to see how that works out! We are asking folks watching online to use the hashtag #dancohen to send in questions during the live lecture. Go to this page to watch the live broadcast.
Connecting People and Ideas through PennLaunch
“Penn’s Weiss Tech House has created an online database for Penn students, staff, faculty and alumni who want to find people with specific skills for jobs or projects, or advertise their skills to others.
The Weiss Tech House put up PennLaunch the week of March 11 and began advertising it the week of March 18.” – Philadelphia Business Journal
PennLaunch was developed by “A group of individuals at the Weiss Tech House [so that] members of the Penn community can connect with each other to ‘develop projects, products, services, ideas, anything,” said Wharton and Engineering junior Abhiraj Modi, one of the PennLaunch creators (Daily Pennsylvanian).
Several members of the Penn community had discussed the idea of a collaboration platform for people with similar ideas at the “A Whole New Mind-Inspired Event entitled Creating and Collaborating across Universities” back in October. I’m really excited to see that someone has felt the need for a similar service and took the initiative to see it through – I’m especially excited to see that the initiative involves Penn students. Thanks to Mary Conger from GSE for sharing the following resource: New Penn website connects projects and people.
