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).

Embed Flickr Photo with Proper Attribution

One can easily paste the URL of a photo at Flickr into the window provided when one clicks the Add Photo icon in Blogger.  But is that the best way to add a photo?  One should always provide information about the photographer and the Creative Commons license which allows one to use the photo legally.  And this simple copy/paste method does not.  It is better to use the Embed code provided by Flickr.

At Flickr.com on the main page displaying a photo, one can click the Share button and choose Grab the HTML code.  Then back in Blogger, where you are creating your post, switch to the Edit HTML view.  Then Paste in the code provided at Flickr. The resulting photo will provide some attribution.  One can hover one's mouse over the photo to get basic info.  One can also click to go to the original Flickr page to get more information about the exact Creative Commons license.  Below is a test with the same flower picture in previous post.

This result appears to be the same as if one had used the Add Photo icon when composing a post in Blogger and then just pasted in the URL of the small size display page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24567741@N04/4784562251/sizes/s/).  But note that using the Share > Grab HTML method provides a link back to Flickr (as Flickr requests that one do) - by clicking on the photo.

If one does use the simple Copy URL and Paste into Add Photo window, one should at least provide some attribution and a link back to Flickr, for example,

      Photo courtesy of cronegeek at Flickr 
      under Creative Commons License 2.0

Note a similar formulation can be used for Photos from other sites.

Proper Attribution for Creative Commons Photos

It is easy to find photos with a Creative Commons license which allow one to legally use the photos in blogs and on Websites, etc.  But how does one give proper credit and document that one has legal permission to use?

After much research, it appears that at minimum, one should indicate the photographer, the Creative Commons license and link to page where found and/or photographer's profile page on Flickr.  So the minimum attribution for the photo below from Flickr would be   Photo used under Creative Commons license from cronegeek.  (Note Flickr wants one to provide a link back to Flickr. And many other web sites also want you to provide a link back to page where photo appears.)

Alternatively, when working with Flickr photos, one can use the app at Imagecodr.org to produce a photo with the attribution at the bottom as seen below.  [For this photo I displayed the small size at Flickr and then input the URL for the small size page into Imagecodr.org.]

"Stella d’Oro Daylilly - full size" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by cronegeek

On the Get Code page at Imagecodr.org there is a button that you can drag to the toolbar on your Web browser for instant access to Imagecodr..

To search for images with a Creative Commons license one can go to

• http://search.creativecommons.org/ where you can conduct searches from Google Images, Flickr, and other places and have your results limited to only images with Creative Commons license. You can also specify whether you want images that can be modified (legally) and/or used commercially (legally).
• http://compfight.com which also searches just Flickr, but tends to give more images than either of the sites above. 

Updated 1/26/17 to use newer, current ImageCodr attribution code.

Embed Video: Angela Davis

Students commented on how neat it was to find videos in several of the blogs by women of color that they visited. They wondered if they could embed videos in their own blogs. Since most of them blog at blogspot.com, so we did a demo in class using the YouTube video you see below. Titled "Tribute to Angela Davis," the video provides basic info about her life in a graphically pleasing manner.

Method:

1. After typing something about the video in your Compose window, hit Enter 4 times and move your cursor so it is on the 2nd empty line (you want to leave room afterwards for more typing).
2. Click the "Edit Html" button at top right of Blogger's compose window. Open the YouTube video you want in a separate window.
3. Click on the Embed code to highlight it, then righ-click and choose Copy.
4. Return to your post in Blogger and click Paste.
5. Click Preview and/or Publish and you should see your video.

Note can use a very similar process for slide shows at Zoho Show, videos on Blip.TV, or Voicethreads.