For this Thing, I have all three portions to cover.
1. ELM Mobile
It has been years since I checked out ELM, and I was very impressed with the mobile site. It is much cleaner in appearance than I remember. I think I'm going to do some further investigation into the site and probably link it from my media center website. After having completed the first year of our research curriculum in grades 4 and 5, I know quite a few students who may find the research calculator of value and would give me another "voice saying" that these steps need to be completed in this order and prioritized in such a way to make the due date.
2. Library apps
I live in Anoka County, and very close to the Ramsey County system, but am very biased as a former employee of Hennepin County Libraries. That being said, I have chosen not to use their apps, but to always navigate the websites. The apps feel clunkier to use. Maybe it's because I used the websites for so many years before the mobile apps were developed. I also don't care for how certain information is displayed, like My Account. For example, the list of my requests isn't as visually informative and in the past I've accidentally deleted requests and had to get back on the list.
3. Vendor apps
I have ebooks in my collection both on FollettShelf and in MackinVIA. It is a developing collection of ebooks and interesting how even in the same platform, the individual titles will act differently in their readers. I was very excited when I initially heard that the Follett Destiny app could be used for "remote/mobile" circulation, but when using it on an iPad, a 3rd generation is the minimum requirement for the camera to be able to scan barcodes...and there is a significant lag time which did not make circulation on the iPad an efficient option. Our district will be upgrading versions of Destiny this summer, so we'll see what's available in the fall.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Mobile Thing 9
I've learned something about myself during Thing 9 and 10. I'm a huge vacation photographer, but could pretty much care less about capturing my day-to-day life. I tried all the suggested apps and liked half of them. I do make a lot of gifts for family and friends, and do like to record the finished products before I give them away. Color Splurge gave a neat effect to some of these photos.
While I was intrigued by the concept of CamMe, I had a really hard time getting it to work in the selfie mode without having a significant distance. I watched the video and saw that the devices were propped up to get full-length shots. This is a scenario I can't envision, but will probably keep the app...you just can't ever be too sure.
Between the two photo editing apps, I definitely preferred Aviary over LINE Camera. LINE Camera seemed more putzy to use whereas Aviary was more intuitive. What I thought was interesting (strange) was that if you click on More for sharing from Aviary, some of the choices are apps that basically do the exact same thing. Here's the image I did in Aviary:
Why would I share this image out to Skitch or LINE Camera? The arrows and labeling are what I would normally/previously have done in Skitch. I really like how the images can be shared with the variety of cloud storage like Drive, SugarSync, Dropbox, Box, etc. and in apps like Doceri and Springpad ( :-( which is not around for much longer).
Between the two photo editing apps, I definitely preferred Aviary over LINE Camera. LINE Camera seemed more putzy to use whereas Aviary was more intuitive. What I thought was interesting (strange) was that if you click on More for sharing from Aviary, some of the choices are apps that basically do the exact same thing. Here's the image I did in Aviary:
Monday, May 12, 2014
Mobile Thing 8
Hee hee hee, I was so tempted to title this post the "Social Media Thing for the Anti-social". I scrolled through the list of apps in Thing 8 and caught myself saying, "Um...no thanks!" way too often. I'm on Facebook, and check it mostly on my iPad, but am VERY selective of my Friends and maintain tightly set privacy settings. I've attempted to become a Tweeter a handful of times, but always peter out quickly. I honestly don't care enough about what I'm doing to bore other by putting it out into the Twittersphere. I maintain my account for when I need to do an instant save on The Voice.
A friend recently sent me an invitation to join LinkedIn, a month after she retired! When I retire, the LAST thing I'll be doing is professionally networking. I don't really want people knowing where I am at any given moment (Foursquare), and I just don't know if common tv watching interests are enough to connect with (tvtag). Besides, I have enough to do to keep up actually watching episodes of Game of Thrones, to communicate and network with others over it is more time that I can spare from my life.
I can see where some of the management tools would be useful if I was using multiple social networks to streamline the time and enable simultaneous postings, but that isn't currently the case for me.
A friend recently sent me an invitation to join LinkedIn, a month after she retired! When I retire, the LAST thing I'll be doing is professionally networking. I don't really want people knowing where I am at any given moment (Foursquare), and I just don't know if common tv watching interests are enough to connect with (tvtag). Besides, I have enough to do to keep up actually watching episodes of Game of Thrones, to communicate and network with others over it is more time that I can spare from my life.
I can see where some of the management tools would be useful if I was using multiple social networks to streamline the time and enable simultaneous postings, but that isn't currently the case for me.
Mobile Thing 7
Woo-hoo! Love me some Pinterest! This is one of the few social networking tools that I appreciate the social networking aspect. Normally I have enough of my own stuff to keep track of to a) not care what other people are looking at, saving, tracking, etc and b) figure that others could care less what I have. I was first introduced to Pinterest by a friend who had recently become addicted to pinning. It's also one of those sites that family members and friends who use no other social media are on and I'm able to connect with them casually.
Diigo is my bookmarking site of choice, but there is something about being able to distinguish between text content to be saved and returned to as it updated and those visual reminders of something that you want to archive. I've sporadically used Bitly to shorten urls, more often choosing Goog.le, but hadn't considered the function of archiving and organizing the urls shortened.
Diigo is my bookmarking site of choice, but there is something about being able to distinguish between text content to be saved and returned to as it updated and those visual reminders of something that you want to archive. I've sporadically used Bitly to shorten urls, more often choosing Goog.le, but hadn't considered the function of archiving and organizing the urls shortened.
Mobile Thing 6
I've moved to working almost primarily in Google Drive for all my documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms, so Quickoffice seemed the most applicable app for me in Thing 5: Creating & Editing Docs. That made it even more confusing when I realized that I still couldn't edit Google presentations. For documents and spreadsheets I could view, but was then sent out to either the Google Docs app or Sheets app to edit. It reminded me of my issue with the Google Search app...why have a single app that then launches a multitude of other apps for each action? Then I went back and actually read the description (I say it all the time, but teachers are the WORST students!) "Quickoffice is Google's app that allows you to create and edit Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations..." At that I opened a Powerpoint I hadn't converted when I uploaded it into my Drive and was able to edit the text and images directly in the ppt...pretty cool! I don't know if it was the ppts. I chose to open and save, if they are especially large files or graphic heavy, but the loading and saving was pretty slow.
I also tried CloudOn, reading in the reviews that most people were connecting to their Dropbox accounts. I was happy to see that Drive was also an option, along with Box, but again since the majority of my work these days were created in Drive, it's a little redundant.
After playing around slightly in SignNow, I don't have a current use, but am going to keep it installed for possible future needs. If anything, I can use it to practice my finger signature, since more and more stores are using iPads and other touch screen devices for transactions and having customers sign with their finger on screens.
I also tried CloudOn, reading in the reviews that most people were connecting to their Dropbox accounts. I was happy to see that Drive was also an option, along with Box, but again since the majority of my work these days were created in Drive, it's a little redundant.
After playing around slightly in SignNow, I don't have a current use, but am going to keep it installed for possible future needs. If anything, I can use it to practice my finger signature, since more and more stores are using iPads and other touch screen devices for transactions and having customers sign with their finger on screens.
Mobile Thing 5
I am a total notebook, notepad, post-it note, to-do-list kind of girl! I've found though that I have the same issue with note taking apps with the traditional paper versions. I don't have access when I really need them, like leaving the grocery list on the kitchen counter. At the point where I finally break down and switch to a smart phone with a data plan, the usage potential will skyrocket exponentially. Whenever I choose to drag my iPad around in the purse, I'm thankful to have the info at hand and grateful I took time to enter said info.
Years ago I installed Remember the Milk and used it briefly, never really getting into a groove with it. I felt like I needed something much more "in my face". I also installed Dragon Dictation, years ago, but hadn't even opened it until this evening. I did a test dictation, which worked pretty well and I'll keep it more in mind for those "hands free" moments.
Bamboo Paper has been on my iPad since I bought it two years ago, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'd choose Penultimate for basic note taking because Bamboo Paper makes me want to be more/too artistic, rather than getting the job at hand done. Without having made any in-app purchases, the limited options of brushes, pencils, colors, etc. in Bamboo Paper distracts me to sketch and "fix and fancy" my journals. While both Bamboo Paper and Penultimate are both very responsive, I find that my handwriting isn't as controlled regardless of using my finger or a stylus.
I recently started using Springpad, and have found a niche for my life style. I have a lot of different interests and collections and had recently run into the issue of purchasing items, only to get home and realize that I already owned that exact item. I've created a Springpad notebook called "Already Have", in which I've added lists of different collections to have with me when I'm in stores. I also like the notebook "store"/gallery to download pre-formatted notebooks. My next venture in Springpad will be to create a searchable "database" of my shoes! ;-)
Years ago I installed Remember the Milk and used it briefly, never really getting into a groove with it. I felt like I needed something much more "in my face". I also installed Dragon Dictation, years ago, but hadn't even opened it until this evening. I did a test dictation, which worked pretty well and I'll keep it more in mind for those "hands free" moments.
Bamboo Paper has been on my iPad since I bought it two years ago, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I'd choose Penultimate for basic note taking because Bamboo Paper makes me want to be more/too artistic, rather than getting the job at hand done. Without having made any in-app purchases, the limited options of brushes, pencils, colors, etc. in Bamboo Paper distracts me to sketch and "fix and fancy" my journals. While both Bamboo Paper and Penultimate are both very responsive, I find that my handwriting isn't as controlled regardless of using my finger or a stylus.
I recently started using Springpad, and have found a niche for my life style. I have a lot of different interests and collections and had recently run into the issue of purchasing items, only to get home and realize that I already owned that exact item. I've created a Springpad notebook called "Already Have", in which I've added lists of different collections to have with me when I'm in stores. I also like the notebook "store"/gallery to download pre-formatted notebooks. My next venture in Springpad will be to create a searchable "database" of my shoes! ;-)
Mobile Thing 4
So much for the Lenten goal. Lent is over. But as it's May and it seems spring still has not arrived in Minnesota, why not stay on the theme of "spring cleaning"? I have inventory done at school, got some cleaning and organizing done around the house this last weekend, so it's time (again) to bust out a handful of blog posts! Just a little tweaking to my original schedule, but I WILL have 23 done by the June deadline.
Keeping up... ha ha ha...hysterical! I was actually trying to catch up on blog feeds the other day in Feedly, sending roughly half into Pocket for later real reading, when I read Morgan's post on Thing 4. Btw. thanks for the shout out, Morgan! I desperately needed a new RSS aggregator when Google Reader ended, and for the second time I didn't get around to transferring my subscriptions over before Reader went down completely, and a quick search for a replacement steered me to Feedly. I then desperately missed the tagging feature Reader had (although I had already lost all my saved, tagged posts, so why be so picky?) and that's what brought me around to discovering Pocket. Still tweaking my "madness methods" for working between two apps, when I had a system for working within one.
I'm of the same thought as Morgan, in that I didn't care for Flipboard, but do like Zite. I liked the variety of topics/themes at set-up. If there is one area I'm lacking information it's knitting patterns (HA HA HA), so have really appreciated having more of those types of things delivered directly to me.
Keeping up... ha ha ha...hysterical! I was actually trying to catch up on blog feeds the other day in Feedly, sending roughly half into Pocket for later real reading, when I read Morgan's post on Thing 4. Btw. thanks for the shout out, Morgan! I desperately needed a new RSS aggregator when Google Reader ended, and for the second time I didn't get around to transferring my subscriptions over before Reader went down completely, and a quick search for a replacement steered me to Feedly. I then desperately missed the tagging feature Reader had (although I had already lost all my saved, tagged posts, so why be so picky?) and that's what brought me around to discovering Pocket. Still tweaking my "madness methods" for working between two apps, when I had a system for working within one.
I'm of the same thought as Morgan, in that I didn't care for Flipboard, but do like Zite. I liked the variety of topics/themes at set-up. If there is one area I'm lacking information it's knitting patterns (HA HA HA), so have really appreciated having more of those types of things delivered directly to me.
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