iAnnotate for Grading on Tablets

In Grading with my iPad author says he first converts all his students’ papers (submitted digitally) to PDFs, then imports them into iAnnotate ($10 for iPad, free for Android) which has lots of tools such as text comments, lines, and stamps (for importing a graphic). Apparently you can use your fingers to “write” annotations in iAnnotate as well as using iPad’s keyboard.  Author uses a Pogo Sketch stylus to make writing on the iPad easier. In Prof. Yearwood's article "App of the Week Review: iAnnotate PDF", which provides a comprehensive description of the features, he claims you can also add a voice recorded note.

iAnnote's usefulness is not limited to grading.  It is also handy for annotating articles you wish to study or adding notes to PDF versions of PowerPoint.  iAnnotate syncs with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, thus making a wide range of PDFs easily available.  According to an article at PRweb, iAnnotate is used by 600,000 people worldwide and has been purchased by many universities for use by their students.

From the description of iAnnotate in the ProfHacker blog (6/4/10), the tools in iAnnotate look very similar to ones I use in the free PDF Xchange Viewer (download desktop version from Tracker Software or a portable version from Softonic).  Both apps allow the saved annotated version of the PDF to be read in Adobe Reader, etc. with all the annotations visible.  iAnnotate is only available for tablets, while PDF Xchange Viewer is limited to Windows computers. I like the text annotation tools in PDF Xchange better because comments can be placed in any white space available and are always viewable.  With iAnnotate, the text Comments are in a special box which is only visible when you click a red bubble in the text. See screenshots for both apps below.

 Some useful tutorials at YouTube for iAnnotate:

• iAnnotate to Take Notes on iPad   Very clear about how to highlight and how to write margin notes with a stylus (helps if you enlarge document first)  
• iPad– iAnnotate PDF – Fall 2010   This tutorial, prepared for students in a geography course, is a very detailed demo showing how to add a text comment, highlight, underline, and handwrite on slide.  
• iAnnotateDemo 2  Very clear on how the text Commenting function works.  Also shows how to download add’l PDFs.   

Simple Technique for Online Video Lesson

Just discovered "Picturing Information" a 4 minute video which analyzes an Infographic depicting per cent of mothers of 4-year-olds who work outside the home. After pausing to give viewers time to study the infographic and make their own analysis, author analyzes the infographic: Why does child have sad face? Why is mother pictured as a professional (vs blue collar job)?

As you can see from the video below, this is a very simple technique for creating a video to serve as an online lesson.  In many discussions of the 'flipped classroom' (where instructor records and posts a lecture for students to study before class so that classroom time can be used for actual discussion or hands-on activities), the tools involved are quite sophisticated and/or expensive.  But the technique here is easily available to anyone sitting at their home computer who has a smart phone or digital camera that records video.

One can easily adapt the technique of this video to use with widely available PowerPoint.  Just insert the infographic (or poem or short text) in a slide, record your narration, then convert to video (this function included in MS Office 2010 and later).

College faculty NOT preparing students with Web skills.

Lisa's (Online) Teaching Blog of 12/25/11 investigates a study by Pearson and Babson Research, published in April 2011, which reports that “over 90% of all faculty are using social media in courses they’re teaching or for their professional careers outside class”.  Are faculty really so involved in Web use?  By delving into the study, Lisa found Figure 15, which shows that less than 10% of faculty require their students to actually create content on the Web.  Students are not being given practice in Web skills that employers will find useful - ability to create & post video to YouTube, maintain a blog to involve customers or clients of employer, etc.

Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals

Many have asked why a Women's Studies program should include a course teaching computer skills and Web tools.  Aren't today's students already familiar with Microsoft Office and masters of the Web?  While students are definitely adept users of Facebook, most seem to lack experience with web tools more relevant to their future employment.  Few of my students have heard of, let alone know how to use, web tools such as:

• Blogs - used by many nonprofits, advocacy groups, and businesses
• Social bookmarking sites like Delicious - a handy research and networking tool
• RSS Readers or Start Pages -  to aggregate recent articles and blog entries in specified topics, very useful for keeping up-to-date with latest developments in your field
• Social media like Facebook and Twitter -  for professional networking and the promotion of social causes

While all students regularly use Word to compose essay assignments, few know how to use Heading Styles to provide a handy navigation aid for a long report (think of preparing quarterly sales reports or annual summaries of activities at a nonprofit agency).  All have prepared PowerPoints for class, but few have a clue about avoiding "death by PowerPoint" (avoid the same boring Microsoft templates, more single images & less bulleted text).

With so few job openings and so many candidates, students who can demonstrate some of the above skills provide added value to employers and are more likely to be successful in their job search. 

The skills described above are also useful for active citizenship, whether students only desire to be well-informed voters or intend to be participants in advocacy groups, political parties or trade unions.

It is not only WS majors who would profit from acquiring these computer and web skills; they are equally relevant for gerontology students, aspiring social workers, sociology and other liberal arts majors.  Perhaps social service programs and liberal arts departments should consider combining to offer a "Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals" course to their students.

Resources and Examples:

• Delicious and Social Bookmarking - a Common Craft video
• About RSS Readers - a Common Craft video 
• Start Pages - Go to www.protopage.com/wscomputers to see  how one can access headlines from favorite blogs, bookmark useful web sites, display latest video on subject of interest, etc. Click on double down-arrow extreme right near top to view more pages – some directed to educators, some to non-profit organizations, some to Women’s Studies. 
• Using Heading Styles to Organize Notes in Microsoft Word 
• PowerPoint:  "Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book" - be sure to click to display Speaker Notes  
• PowerPoint:  Corvida Raven: Geek Girl Storybook - use of images, musical background, converted to video.

Demise of Women & Computers course

I will no longer be teaching the Women and Computers course at my university; it has been dropped from the Women's Studies Major.  The WS Program wanted to strengthen its international perspectives and decided to require all majors to complete a course in Transnational Feminism.  There is a practical limit to the number of required courses, so something had to be dropped.  Certainly we would not want to drop Feminist Theory or Research Methods, so Women and Computers was eliminated.  Hard to argue with prioritizing Transnational Feminism over Women and Computers, although I believe the skills taught are a valuable addition to a student's future employment and activist tool kit.

I haven't yet decided exactly what I will do instead.  For the present, I will continue this blog, expanding the coverage somewhat to encompass computer and web skills in the classroom, web tools for activists, and gender perspectives on computing.

Final Projects: Intersexuality using GoAnimate

Another student had done a lot of research on intersexuality, but wanted to present the information in a non-academic manner that might reach more of a general audience.  She chose to use GoAnimate.com to create her "movies."  Since free movies are limited to under 2 minutes at GoAnimate, she had to create two movies to cover all the material.


GoAnimate.com: Intersexuality Part I by ashleemoz23

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Intersexuality Part 2

GoAnimate.com: Intersexuality Part II by ashleemoz23

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Final Projects: "Hooking Up" at Xtranormal

For their final projects, students were asked to create something of use beyond the classroom.  Many chose to create educational projects using visual media.  One student explored the phenomenon of "hooking up" using Xtranormal.com's free movie making facility  (pictorial backgrounds and characters provided, you add the dialog via typing).

Here I have used the Embed Code from Xtranormal.com, but one can also upload the "movies" one creates at Xtranormal to YouTube - useful on websites that only embed YouTube videos.

What is hooking up?
by: ware0701