iAnnotate Meets the Cloud...

...and a paperless classroom actually starts to look possible! We've been hearing about going paperless for years, but, personally, I've found the available tools to be a bit clunky to use with students. Shared Cloud folders and files through services like Google Drive and Dropbox are great for sharing documents but don't allow easy annotation/grading and return to students. Also, managing classes is completely manual.

Then, my shiny new iPad joined forces with iAnnotate and a relatively new (great!) app called Showbie. Together, they have completely changed my workflow. 

iAnnotate is one of the best (in my opinion, of course) of many pdf management and annotation apps available. (I've tried quite a few, and I also really like WritePDF which has slightly different features.) iAnnotate has a wide range of different kinds of writing, typing, and highlighting tools for work on PDFs as well as the ability to capture PDF documents from other sources like the web. You can also modify your PDF in various ways and export/share in different formats. The app's integrated mangement of cloud services like Google Drive, Skydrive, and Dropbox is great for file access and quite good for annotating and synching files.

Showbie is a fabulous app designed specifically for teachers to manage the digital classroom. One sets up classes with student lists and assignments. Each student has a personal folder for each assignment into which they turn in assignments (PDFs, mp4s, photos, and lots of other kinds of files.) and receive files, notes, audio feedback, etc. from the teacher. I've only been using the app for about a quarter, but it has truly changed my work and thought processes.

Here are a few ways I've been using the apps together to go as paperless as possible. It has been great to make fewer trips to the copy room and carry a lot less to and from school.

1. Economics of Personal Finance is a very fluid class where students do 'quests' of various kinds for credit. This past weekend, I used iAnnotate to capture web resources on auto insurance for the students as PDFs which I uploaded to a new assignment in Showbie. The students will use the resources to answer questions about how they would set rates if they were an insurer. They can use any app they choose to formulate the responses including Explain Everything, Animator, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, or Notability. Then, they "Open In" to turn in their work to Showbie in their own personal folder that only the teacher can see.

2. A couple of weeks ago, I received a batch of Biology research papers through Showbie. While the Showbie pdf annotation tools are pretty basic (though improving), it is really easy to open the student's paper in iAnnotate and grade it there using iAnnotate's vastly superior annotation tools. I have a rubric that I've made big enough to write on with my messy finger handwriting which I upload to the shared folder in Showbie so it is there for every student. As I'm annotating the actual paper, I flip back to Showbie to add points to the rubric and total the grade. Then, when the paper is done, I "Open In" to return the paper to Showbie in the student's own folder. Another plus is that I don't have to require hard copies of sources any more. The students can upload the photos or PDFs of their sources to their own folder where they show up with their paper. I can also post verbal or written comments to a specific student or the whole class, and they can respond, starting a dialog about the assignment that stays in the student's folder.

3. iAnnotate is a great, slick app to just keep your files in one place as well as link in to your various cloud services easily. It is also a handy way to capture Word, Excel, and web documents as PDFs for all kinds of applications.

4. I've also used Showbie to post daily announcements, photos of critical whiteboards, and reminders knowing students will get a reminder email and we'll all have an archive.

Together, these two apps have been a powerful force for transforming my work as well as my thought processes as I design curriculum. The ease of creation has allowed me to be far more spontaneous for the students, capturing my thoughts and theirs and relating assignments to current events without creating a mound of extra work. 

I know a lot of you have also been using these apps, and I'd love to hear how they are working for you!

IAnnotate is a paid app is available for us through self service. Showbie is free for a basic account and paid for some of the advanced features.

Animator: Getting Your Artwork Moving

One of the really rewarding things about working with talented colleagues is the chance to pick their brains for new ideas. Having Holly Church in biology has been a prime example of this for me. One fun and content rich project she shared with me a year or two ago is the making of a flip book showing the stages of cell division using a pre drawn template of about 30 frames. The students would staple the book together and flip the pages to create a basic, old fashioned animation. It is a great project requiring students to draw the stages multiple times and hopefully engrave the images on their memory. We got some really fun, well done work from the students.

Then, last winter while surveying iPad apps, I found this neat app: Animator (there's a free version and paid version which allows longer animations). I immediately thought of Holly's flip book project, but we'd already passed that section last year. I'd mentioned it to Holly last year but had forgotten about it until earlier this week when she reminded me. We started exploring the app together, then she finished a sample of the project to show the students. (She's a much better artist than I am, but this app lends itself to artists of all abilities.)

Pros: easy to use, allows for importing pictures to use as backgrounds, changing color and size of pencil, duplicating then modifying the previous slide, and drawing filled shapes

Cons: changing settings for the pencil is a trifle awkward (done through the settings icon) and you must remember to save your flipbook regularly (no auto save)

Here's Holly's sample. (To view the video, use a computer or a Flash enabled browser like Photon on the iPad.) We gave the students the option of a hard copy project or digital. 

The free version limits the animation to 30 frames, but the paid version is only $0.99. Normal app requisition procedures would apply for classroom use.

If you are interested, here is are the original project and Holly's guidelines for numbers of frames for each stage of cell division. I've also played with variations like requiring labels and color coordination.

Photoshop Express and Simple Resize: for Easy Photo Manipulation

I never really thought of myself as a heavy user of the photo features of my electronic devices, but with the iPad, I find myself taking pictures of all sorts of things from my five year-old's art to classroom occurrences to a quick shot of a whiteboard done in class. Then, of course, I want to publish the photos in some way. Uploading them to Flickr, putting pictures in a Keynote or iBook, or just adding the photos to Showbie so students can see 'em are now daily occurrences.

Since the pictures aren't always perfect, a good, friendly editing app is a must. Also, when including photos in other documents, it can be important to consider the resolution of the picture to be sure the resolution is suitable for the way you are going to use it. Here are a couple of apps that I've used happily over the last eleven months since I've had the iPad.

PS Express: There are a "gazillion" different photo editing apps out there. I've tried a fair number of them, but I find myself going back to this one for ease of use and versatility. The app has lots of automatic effects, cropping, rotating, filters, and frames but is simple and intuitive to use. The app is free but does have in-app purchases for some of the filters and frames.

I enjoy this app, but I'd love to hear about other faculty photo editing favorites!

Simple Resize: Our iPads take gorgeous screenshots and photos for our retina displays! BUT if you're using the photos to create content or upload to the Internet, the high resolution means big files that can quickly explode the size of a file or project that includes them. For many applications, you can successfully cut down the resolution without noticeable quality loss in your final project. Simple Resize is an iPhone app that works fine on the iPad to resize photos one at a time. Simple and easy to use, it saves the new file to your camera roll in your choice of JPEG or PNG file formats.

For more on resolution of photos, click here.