THE App Of The Week
App of the Week is a new feature here on Faculty Focus written by Dave Yearwood, PhD, associate professor and chair of the technology department at the University of North Dakota. Dave is an avid collector of apps and is always on the lookout for new ones that can improve student learning or simply make academic life more organized, productive and fun. Through this column, he’ll provide tips for getting started, app reviews, best practices, sneak peeks, and more. Guest contributors will provide reviews as well.
CURRENT ARTICLE • May 18th, 2012
App of the Week: Sketch Pad
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
The Sketch Pad program is a must for several reasons: it is very easy to use, has several features, and it is very nicely priced. All of the tools can be controlled from their home location at the bottom of the screen or be made to float and positioned anywhere they are convenient.
OTHER RECENT ARTICLES
May 4 - App of the Week: Pages
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
Users of Apple’s Keynote should be right at home working in Pages, at least in the way it displays documents, creates or opens new documents, the location of menu items, the way folders are created and deleted, etc. And for good reason; Pages is part of the Apple’s iWork suite, which includes Keynote for presentations, Pages for documents, and Numbers for spreadsheets.
April 20 - App of the Week: Notes Plus for iPad
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
Product Notes Plus (Viet Tran) Category Note Taking Overview A feature-rich note taking, handwriting, drawing, and voice memo app that you will find yourself using every day. Learning Curve Fairly easy to use and there’s a good tutorial that explains available options. Rating (5 star scale) Hard to beat for the price and functionality! Cost
April 13 - Customize Your Home Screen with Beautiful Widgets
By: Tom Vodak in App Of The Week
If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your Android device home screen and stay on top of the time and temperature then a good place to start would be Beautiful Widgets. It is a simple and nicely designed app.
April 6 - Idea Sketch: A Solid, No Frills Concept Mapping App
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
Idea Sketch, as the name implies, is a way to capture ideas and organize them in some hierarchical manner — such as in a concept map or flow chart. Idea Sketch is a no frills app, rather intuitive, and best of all it is free! There is an upgrade option for $3.99 but if all I am going to get are a few more shapes, colors, and fonts, I am not sure that I would opt for a paid version. The free version, which works on the iPhone and iPad, includes a check spell option when typing but the app does not include a way to spell check the entire work when completed.
March 30 - Any.DO Keeps Your To-Do List on Track
By: Tom Vodak in App Of The Week
If you’re driven by to-do lists and have been searching for a productivity app that will be up to the task, you need to consider Any.DO for your Android device.
March 23 - Dragon Dictation Converts Your Speech to Text
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
Product Dragon Dictation (Nuance Communications) Category Speech-to-text conversion Overview A good app designed to convert what you say to typed text. Learning Curve Intuitive and extremely easy to use! Rating (5 star scale) No special training and the software does well with different accents. Cost Free I have never been truly impressed with text-to-speech software
March 16 - Evernote Acts as a Personal Mobile File Cabinet
By: Tom Vodak in App Of The Week
For those of you who have devices running on the Android operating system, you’ll be happy to learn that we plan to feature Android apps here on a regular basis. Google reported last month that there are more than 450,000 applications available for Android devices, but which ones are worth your time?
March 9 - Apple Keynote App: A Quick and Easy Way to Create Presentations
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
The first app up for review is Keynote, the little brother/sister to its full-blown sibling Keynote that runs on Macs and is similar in many respects to PowerPoint. Keep in mind that no app will ever run like the complete version you would use on a computer, this much you ought to know going into the iPad world of apps. That said, Keynote is easy to use and the Help section is very straight forward. In fact, you will be running your first presentation within minutes of purchasing Keynote!
February 23 - Introducing App of the Week: Getting Started
By: Dave Yearwood, PhD in App Of The Week
A search of the Web, specifically Apple’s website where all iPad apps are housed, suggests that there are more than 140,000 apps available for the iPad, a number that will continue to grow. That is a lot of apps! Granted, no one will ever get to use that many apps but on the other hand, I am not sure that I want to spend a lot of time running an inordinate amount of tests just to locate the apps that will make life easier for me.
