50 GB free on Box.net

For a limited time, Box.net is offering iPad and iPhone users 50GB free online storage.  Box.net is very similar to Dropbox.com, which I know many of you love as much as I do.  There have been other competitors, but Box.net seems to be one of the better alternatives I’ve seen.  It has a free iPad app, and more apps are starting to incorporate Box.net features.  Never hurts to have other options, right?

Here are the details:

http://blog.box.net/2011/10/12/were-giving-ios-users-insane-amounts-of-free-storage-box50gb/

New Kindle and Kindle Tablet

Amazon had a press event this morning announcing their new line-up of ereaders – some still with e-ink, and one with a color touch-screen Android interface.

To see pictures and pricing …

http://www.macworld.com/article/162550/2011/09/amazon_unveils_199_kindle_fire_tablet_79_kindle_touch.html

Short Sneak Peek: Windows 8 and iOS 5

For all you early adopters, here is a video preview of a Windows 8 tablet against an iPad running iOS 5 (the major update coming out in October). 
Two differences I noticed – the size of the tablets and the keyboards. Enjoy!

http://www.winrumors.com/ipad-ios-5-vs-windows-8-slate-video/

Magazine App

I like Zite as a personalized magazine app. I can select news topics that interest me. It is very easy to set up and just as easy to make adjustments. It has similarities to Stumble with a like and dislike toggle, allowing Zite to “learn” what the reader “likes” and adjust content feeds accordingly.

Adding, deleting, customizing personalized lists of content categories is easy. Set up is an easy step by step (tap by tap) process.

Amazon to Introduce Library Lending for Kindle

From The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Notes from Bev’s Visit

President Bev Wharton came to our session on Monday to share her notes from the Academia Apple Conference that she and Bill attended in California just a couple weeks ago. Hopefully Apple will be sending out presentation notes / slides soon and she will forward those along when she receives them. These are just quick bullet points from the notes she shared, which were also quick bullet points, so if it seems like there is some context missing, that would be why. I have added links and additional information where I could find it.

Apple Academia — Invitations went to private colleges

• 100 colleges represented, BCU was the only Siouxland university with both President and VP of Academic Affairs
• It was two to three days long, lots of presentations

Presentations from previous Apple Education Leadership Summits (http://education.apple.com/summit/):

• Teaching & Learning in the 3rd Information Age, Abilene Christian University
• Learning Powered by Technology, U.S. Department of Education
• Call to Action: Challenge Based Learning in the Classroom
• Katie Morrow, O’Neill Public Schools
• This presentation is amazing. Since it’s a PDF, we don’t see the videos, but the slides about the Challenge Based Learning projects that the students completed are inspiring. Definitely worth a look.

Presentations covered aspects of technology in education, with some Apple influence

John Couch, VP Education at Apple

• Learning is changing for students
• “We believe every student is uniquely gifted, learning model is changing”
• Past – compliance, attendance, correction and one size fits all
• Future – participative, personal, motivating, individual
• Before returning to Apple, he turned around a school system from low performance to high
• Apple’s culture of leading edge change: Apple has or is changing the computer, music, publishing and education industries
• Apple is putting more faculty development material online:
• http://www.apple.com/education/professional-development/
• Apple says iPad is content, not technology
• Future – professors will be connected to students in dialogue, as a guide
• Learner centered education

St. Thomas University, St, Paul – putting the MBA program on the iPad

• http://www.stthomas.edu/business/degrees/ustmba/healthcaremba/currentstudents/iPad_pilot.html

Anya from FastCompany

• http://www.fastcompany.com/user/anya-kamenetz
• http://diyubook.com/
• student loan debt exceeds credit card debt
• Message about cost of education, reducing it is difficult
• Flat World Knowledge, open textbooks (PDF), open study consortia like MIT
• Murder Madness Mayhem class in literature
•  Students had to write an entry on Wikipedia and make it stick
• Anya does do Skype presentations if we’re interested : Diyubook@gmail.com

Ron Johnson, Retail and Marketing at Apple … The stores

• … Making the stores a social experience
• … Need to create a lot of ideas, don’t let people suck the oxygen out of ideas
• … Apple says no a lot to stay focused but more and more ideas encouraged, improved
• Audience challenged the speakers on learning assessment
• “don’t let middle age ideas stop the students from learning”
• Great brands inspires people’s spirit; Culture of Relentless innovation, innovation takes belief that you can do it, skeptics settle for just improvement of existing methods
• For Apple, Open = loss of control in quality of product
• When they make a decision to change products, they don’t keep making the old one

Presentations from Duke and Seton Hill; iPad has changed the conversation on campus for both students and faculty, didn’t force it on people but after a year, even naysayers were interested in getting involved

iPad leveled the playing field – now everyone has the same thing, Seton Hill is a Title III school, use grant funding for iPad project

Seton Hill University: http://www.ipadonthehill.com/

Duke University: http://www.studentaffairs.duke.edu/ra/programs-services/ipad-enabled-programs

Martin Been, Vice Chancellor, Open University, England http://open.edu/itunes/

• Facebook – how many of us would be in in our jobs if it had been around when we were young
• 12 year old said, school is like an airplane … Sit down, trust the pilot, and turn everything off
• Grounded in social justice
• Technology enables engaged and relevant learning

Jason Ediger, iTunes U : http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

• Spoke about mobile devicees … mobile internet access will be higher than desktop internet access by 2014
• Transforms the classroom, changes how subjects are taught but not a substitution
• iTunes U
• Discovery Education for K12
• apps and digital books
• Flash is a click and keyboard based interface, will have to change for touch based interfaces
• Have moved beyond content consumption into content creation

Notes and News

If you had to miss one of the sessions recently, you’ll find the summary notes on the Training page ( https://bcupilot.wordpress.com/training/ ) in the Shortcuts of the sidebar. This week’s notes are already up in time for our 4pm session this afternoon and there are some news announcements so be sure to check those out. See you all soon!

Drawing or Sketching on the iPad

Turns out today is the iPad’s first birthday so more apps on going on sale, such as the drawing app “Procreate” which has dropped from $8 to free: http://appshopper.com/entertainment/procreate

Another free drawing app is Adobe Ideas, but probably the most well-known and best developed drawing app is Brushes, which – sadly – is not on sale and usually runs about $8. Even if you’re not an artist (I am certainly not), drawing on the iPad with a stylus is a lot of fun, especially when you experiment with lots of colors and brush styles without needing all the equipment.