Discussion Group 19th April 2013

Small but useful.....

We had a smaller than expected gathering this time round, but certainly enlightening and fun!  Chris Maher, Broome business man and political candidate extraordinaire,  came along armed with his iPhone and a heap of tips on how to use social networking for marketing.  Perhaps not directly relevant to the daily business of a KTI lecturer but definitely transferrable to some of our tasks, and also generally useful information for anyone wishing to promote either their private business, or their KTI business or class.  In addition, we all shared our favourite apps which I found useful.

Chris Maher's Tips and Tricks

Chris shared CatchNotes - a fabulous app for organising your ideas with notes, photos and voice recordings, all organised with different coloured tabs so they are easy to find and keep track of.  You can send web content to your notes via email and share and collaborate with others.  I found this the most useful app I have heard of in a long time.  I use the normal "Notes" app on iPhone but they are a hodge podge of notes with no real system or order.  CatchNotes allows you to organise your notes into topics or projects, and share with anyone you would like to collaborate with.  I'm sold on it!

Chris also gave us valuable insights into how he uses FaceBook and other social networking sites to promote his businesses and also how he used them in his campaign.  Basically he creates small cogs of promotion within Facebook, links them to other cogs in other social networking sites such as Pinterest, Instagram,  blogs, and uses Google+ as a tool to promote to his networks and beyond, creating lots of little cogs, then he uses paid advertising judiciously as the bigger wheels, and the whole thing meshes together into one powerful little publicity machine.  At least this is my picture of Chris's publicity dynamo.  I think we can all learn from his model not only in terms of promotion and marketing, but also for our work with our students, to get them engaged and active in our courses.

Another tip from Chris is to use Google Image Search if we are wondering who someone is when they turn up on our social networking sites.  Google Image will take you to the person's details, which can sometimes be useful - for example if you suspect there is some spamming happening, or if the person is a negative influence on the site, or in a more positive light, if you think the person might be useful for your promotional activites or a useful contact in some ways.

Monique Ellis Uses Face Time and CyberSmart

Monique Ellis uses FaceTime on her iPhone a lot for personal use and some of us were able to see that this could be a useful tool for communicating with distance students.  It is like Skype but simpler, and it can operate from wireless where wireless is available, lessening the impact on cellular data. 

Monique also informed us of a Federal website for internet safety called CyberSmart - a fantastic website full of resources to inform children and teens of everything needed to be safe on the internet.  This is an absolute must for any lecturer using open sites such as blogs or social networking, to engage their students.  Monique has a great blog called Fishbytes  and she has introduced all of her students to this CyberSmart site.

Michelle Haber and her amazing LLN tools

Michelle Haber, LLN lecturer, uses a range of LLN iPad apps for her Access students in the Youth Engagement Project.  She says she follows an eclectic approach, picking apps that suit her students individually to encourage them into independent study.  Apps she uses include Money Smart, calculator, photo editing apps, Maths Party.

Gary Lienert - Apps to find your way

Gary Lienert likes Find my iPhone and says it has saved him on a number of occasions when he mislaid his iPhone.  He also uses navigation apps like Tom Tom and Google Earth with his rangers.

David Broun's Cam Scanner

David Broun explained further how he uses the Cam Scanner app which is a mobile phone pdf creation app,  to capture brainstorms that have been recorded on whiteboards or butchers paper, or documents that he wants to share.  It is available for iPhones as well as Android devices, and it is more than just a scanner, as it has smart cropping and auto-enhancing functions and advanced document search and management functions as well.

Jill's App Discoveries

I shared some apps I recently discovered that might be useful in an educational environment.  One of them is Tappestry, which on the site is described as "a mobile-first application that helps learners capture and track what they have learned and what they want to learn. Organizations can measure and track these informal learning events."  As an individual you can use Tappestry to document your learning as you go.  It seems to me it could be used for RPL evidence gathering as an e-Portfolio, and/or for reflection.  Definitely worth exploring.

Another app I learned about last week in the TCC online Emerging Technology Conference, is one called Nearpod.  Nearpod is a website that provides tools for teachers to create interactive multimedia presentations using a Cloud-based Nearpod content creation tool.  Students can download the content to their mobile devices and take part in interactive activities either in the class room, or at a distance, using their mobile devices or any web browser on a pc or laptop.

My latest personal app is Viber, an app that allows you to call or text anyone else in your contacts who also has Viber, for free, using wi fi.  This is especially great for international travel, where you can end up with large bills from your carrier if you don't disable your cellular data. 

I am wondering also, would this be a good app for lecturers to use (setting up a dedicated account that is different to their personal account) for staying in contact with groups of students?  Something maybe we can discuss further....

Google Hangouts

There was a discussion about Google Hangouts which provides free video conferencing for up to 10 people. This is definitely an area we all need to explore further - Skype does not allow this many simultaneous particpants (at least the free one doesn't) and it might be simpler for some purposes than Collaborate.  Google Hangouts is part of a suite of Google webtools in Google+, again something worth exploring to create circles or groups, and bigger communities, and communicate with them.

What did we learn?

As well as learning about a range of individual apps that may be useful, the main conclusions from our discussion were:

• The huge range of resources out there that can be used or adapted to an education and training environment to make our job easier and also to engage our participants
• That not one size fits all is a definite.  The range of apps is so huge that we can pick, mix and match a large range of apps to suit different purposed and target groups
• Regular research to update our knowledge is vital in the changing world of emerging technologies
• With social networking sites we need to consider privacy and security issues for our students, so with the range of great social networking sites available that allow us to share our thoughts, ideas and images, we just need to investigate each site's privacy and security settings, and inform our participants on how to protect their privacy, as well as the security of their information.

Join the discussion - comment below!

We would love you to join our discussion and your ideas and knowledge in the comments.  Ask questions, put your thoughts forward and let us know of anything you are using in your teaching or other life that you feel is useful or fun!