Openly Educating and Learning with iTunesU

Last week, we discussed a new iBooks Author app which Apple unveiled at its huge education event. By giving free authoring tools to educators, Apple aims to revolutionize the textbook industry by providing homegrown competition to traditional publishing companies. With educators creating their own multimedia e-textbooks for their students, Apple hopes to drive the price [...]

Publish your own eTextbook with iBooks Author

Apple dropped an educational bombshell last week by announcing a new venture into the textbook market.  Besides providing separate iTunesU access for course materials (more on this next week), the announcement included the release of iBooks Author, a free app for creating eTextbooks right on your Mac laptop or desktop computer.   With the iBooks [...]

Examining “what the pedagogy requires”

Educause recently published a comprehensive examination of technology ownership by collegiate students.  In the study of 3,000 students in 1,179 American institutions, Educause reported that almost 87% of undergraduate students owned laptops.  They also reported that 55% of students owned web-enabled “smartphones” that allowed connection to the Internet.  As a professor who teaches instructional technology [...]

Social Reading on your iPad with Subtext

It seems that almost everything is going social these days.  Want to watch an online video with friends?  You can do it through Facebook or in a Google Hangout.  Want to work on a presentation or a document with some colleagues?  Check out Google Docs.  But what if you want to read a book with [...]

Incorporate cellphone interaction with Celly

When I was twelve years old, my family purchased its first computer, a TRS-80.  My father was sort of a computer guy and first learned to program using punch cards on a mainframe at a local university.  He wanted his sons to learn to program as well and presented us with the TRS-80 for Christmas.  [...]