Next Tuesday I am teaching a class of postgraduate (Phd) students on how using mobile technology (read IPad and IPhone) can help them with their research.
The class is entitled Mobile Technologies: Research on the move.
I have taken copious amounts of notes from the brilliant Apps4Academics by MIT but feel that it may be a bit overwhelming for them. Alot of the students I will be teaching came to my Free Online Tools class a few weeks ago, and we had a look at the tools on the internet. However, it is a little hard to demonstrate in a seminar room to people who may not have the IPad or IPhone with them.
I also only have an hour. I am also teaching to the other campuses via video-conference.
So here is where I need some help: What apps do I focus on- given I have to screenshot them and do a traditional powerpoint lecture? The productivity apps? or the ones that enable them to search say EBSCO or Science Direct? Our Catalogue? or Summon Interface?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
BTW: If anyone is wondering what tools I talked about the other week, I gave them this handout and picked out some to concentrate on (It was a 2 hour class). Please use / destroy / suggest others if you wish. Would love to add more / refine it for next semester.
Thanks for the MIT link. My personal opinion is that the use case for a iPad for research is reading and the activities around that while traveling. So reading/ annotating/ note taking. Are the students Science or humanities or a mix? My science guys are journal article centric so have been asking me mostly about PDF readers and annotators so Goodreader features highly. Lots of the search apps are limited in how they do better than Safari I think. Also they really want to be able to sync to their PC desktop/laptops for later so finding a reference manager which will do that is a key. Papers will only sync back to Macs so I have been recommending that they look at Mendeley. I would love to hear others thoughts on this too.
What about something like Dragon Dictation? You can dictate to it, it translates to text which you edit and then you can email, tweet, or fb it. Great for when you’re on the go and have a thought for a sentence or paragraph.
I used it a few weeks ago to write a speech for my friends wedding – was much easier saying it out loud than typing it up
I have that but have never used it – sounds like a winner – thx Kelly.
Ooh – sounds like something new for my ipad too!
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I would start with highlighting the database apps, as this is a great way of promoting the library. You wouldn’t need to spend much time on it, as they are so easy to use but very helpful if you need a paper on the go. If the people who attend are likely to be new ipad users, giving them an an overview of the types of apps that are available to support productivity will be better than lot of detail. Maybe an example of an app from each category your handout? The handout is a terrific support resource for exploring.
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Wow! Impressive stuff!
My top 4 would be:
Dropbox because that syncs with web and desktop versions
Good reader – definitely for productivity
Evernote for notetaking – syncs with web version
Ebscohost for a good all round mobile database – can recommend many others if necessary?
Some others that are also very good:
Soundnote is awesome for notetaking because it records the audio and syncs your notes at the point in time you wrote them
Dragon dictation is pretty good as long as you speak slowly and clearly
Kobo for reading, highlighting and annotating PDFs
Prezi for viewing prezis
popplet for mindmapping and visualising information
Good luck! Would love to hear how it goes!
Hi, sorry for blatant self-promotion, but there’s an iPad data analysis and statistics app called Variables (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/variables/id465029884?ls=1&mt=8). Maybe you could find it useful for the next semester.