My Failure to Convert to all Apple Products

Okay, I admit it.  My love affair with Apple products is fading.  I thought I wanted to be a full-on Mac user.  The iPad was the first step.  Then, convinced by my daughters that I would become even more efficient with an iPhone, in May, I submitted.  The iPhone is handy, and I do feel that I have gained some efficiencies by having them both, although I have not yet been able to see how they play out during a time when I am juggling teaching along with all of my other work commitments! 

Having the iPad and the iPhone meant that the next logical step was a Mac computer.  I envisioned being able to sync all of my devices and seamlessly go about both my professional life.  I would be able to work on a document on any one of the three devices and not have to worry about version control or compatibility.  So, three weeks ago, I got a Mac Book Pro. 

Things have not gone smoothly.  The syncing and seamlessness I imagined remains elusive.  This is in large part, I think, due to the fact that I have been working at the same institution for 16 years and I have a file structure and digital organization that has worked well for me.  I have yet to master how to effectively integrate cloud storage (mostly “icloud” and “dropbox”).  Add to that the use of “time machine” for the Mac on an external hard-drive and new mouse/keypad motions and I’m all messed up!  Additionally, my habits of fingers and keyboard shortcuts are extremely ingrained.  I can’t seem to convince my fingers that to cut (or copy) and paste it is no longer the “ctrl” key plus “x,” “c,” or “v”, but rather that key just to the right of the “ctrl” key.  URGH! 

My ultimate goal (perhaps it was a fantasy?) was to use the iPad in place of my laptop (a super light-weight Dell) for most traveling and work at home.  I know that to do that I would need a full keyboard for the iPad.  I don’t mind purchasing that item, but I have come to accept that I have a bigger problem. After 16 years of being an academic, I have a system for how I research and write my articles and books.  I like to think that I am efficient.  The mechanics of the writing task don’t consume much brain space, which is good because I need all the brain space I have to actually work on what I’m going to say!  The Mac has consumed far too much of my brain during the past three weeks.  I can’t afford to give up that kind of time to the task of learning a new digital working environment.  I’ve got writing projects to finish!  And, new semester is upon us.  I have a system for how I prepare for class.  While I like to try new things – hence my interest in this iPad for education project, I remain concerned about all of my powerpoint slides that I have created for my classes.  How are those going to play out in a Mac environment? 

So, I admit it, I am a Mac failure.  I am returning to my Dell PC. At least for now.  I might still get that keyboard for my iPad, and I am going to work on finding ways to sync my files better with icloud and dropbox.  But for now, I’m going to keep one foot in each camp – Apple (iPad and iPhone) and PC (laptop).

Mapping with smart devices

Just a quick post, relayed to many in this group via email, of my recent iPad-related work on mapping; see here for a quick review of some mapping apps, and here for an upcoming 2012-13 initiative I'm pursuing in conjunction with NITLE. Others at Lewis & Clark welcome to participate! Please contact me if interested.

Penultimate, as a artists research tool

This summer, I have been spending some time exploring the Penultimate app. As a visual artist, I have always loved using a common pencil and my beloved Moleskin sketchbooks to draw out my ideas, so the idea of "drawing" on a touch screen seems rather odd for me.  When I first started working with this app, I simply used my finger to draw and write notes with, but recently I found that with a Bamboo stylus I have more control of my drawing and the process feels a bit more like you are using a "real" pencil.

What I like about Penultimate is that I can take a photograph of a project that I am working on, import it to Penultimate and then write comments or do drawings on the image. Once finished, I can print them  out, e-mail them or add the page to the Penultimate notebook for future use.

With Penultimate you have three line width options, numerous colors to draw with and an eraser to "rub" out your changes or mistakes. You can also cut out areas of your work that you want to discard. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to do this on an imported image. To remove an area from an image I found that you will need to make the changes to your image in photoshop prior to adding the image to the app. If you want to skip photoshop and be more spontaneous with your drawings and note taking,  just draw over the part of the image you want to remove.

Recently, I used this app to help design my one-person exhibition which is at the Vertigo Art Space in Denver. On photographs of the empty gallery space, I made notes and drew arrows to indicate where I wanted my art work to be hung in the gallery space. The document was then e-mailed to the gallery director. This process proved to be a great way to assist the director with the installation my artwork.

While this app may not replace a pencil and notebook entirely, I am finding that it has some great potential as a research tool in my studio and in the classroom. I will keep you posted on my progress with Penultimate.

Ted Vogel, Associate Professor of Art, Studio Head in Ceramic

Using an iPad for Conference Note Taking

I just returned from a conference in San Diego, where I took notes exclusively on my iPad using the Penultimate app and the Bamboo stylus from Wacom.

I bought this stylus after reading many reviews and felt it was worth the investment, especially since I planned to take notes by hand at conferences and meetings, rather than using the built-in keyboard. I purchased the Penultimate app for $.99 because of the good reviews and built-in integration with Evernote and Dropbox, for easy synching and access from other devices.

This app isn't perfect. I rest my wrist on the screen while taking notes, which can interfere with note taking because of the multitasking gestures. (These features can be turned off in Settings.) The app does allow you to select the wrist position that best reflects your writing position style, and that helped to prevent errant marks on the page from my wrist.

As you can see above, my handwriting is not very neat, but I can read what's on the page. It's also much easier to read than if I had used my finger to take notes. I used a single "notebook" to take notes over the three days at the conference and then uploaded the notebook to Evernote. The two work seamlessly together, which is no surprise since Evernote recently purchased Penultimate.

Before the conference, I wanted to find a note taking app that would convert handwriting to text. I only found one - Notes Plus - but it is $7.99 and I wasn't ready to spend that much money.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the Penultimate app, as well as the Bamboo stylus. I would definitely use this method again to take notes at a conference.

Using Evernote to organize article writing

Having begun developing research and writing habits in the pre-digital age, I find myself often facing piles of paper that include research interviews and fieldwork notes, hard copies of scholarly articles, dozens of yellow legal pads containing handwritten notes on articles and writing ideas and printouts of outlines and manuscript drafts.  I was thus keen on trying the iPad as an organizing device to see a writing project through from start to finish.   What I learn from this summer’s experience will be replicated in my spring EAS thesis course for students to model.  My plan that semester is to write an article alongside the students, building upon what I learn this summer about using the ipad as an organizational tool.   

I started by trying to find an app that would pretty much do everything.  I spent several long days reviewing multiple apps – thinking that there was going to be some magic app that did everything I needed and getting frustrated when something sounded good and then couldn’t handle all my various demands.  Never found one.  Got excited by something called Devonthink that promises to do everything, but turns out it only does everything on a desk top, the ipad version is limited and in the words of their IT help, totally insufficient for what I wanted it to do which is store all of the data I need for writing a paper, allow me to keep notes with readings, annotate outlines, tally things I need to do, file the readings.

So finally, after spending far too much time reviewing other users’ comments on scads of different apps, I decided to begin with a program called Evernote, try that for a while, and see what comes next, rather than trying to solve all my organizational problems at once.  As you can see from Lydia’s recent post, it’s a pretty decent app for the beginning stages of article writing.

The article I’m test-driving on the ipad concerns “Tank Man.” Tank man is the nickname of the young man who stood in front and stopped the progression of Chinese tanks as the PLA attempted to remove protestors from Tiananmen Square in June, 1989. I’m looking specifically at how Tank Man is used in the US to serve certain American political ends.  So, first thing I needed was to find and store all the visual images about Tank Man.  Evernote has “notebooks” within which you create “pages.”  One of my notebooks is solely devoted to Tank Man images – I found that you can either send an email to your Evernote email address, tag it with the appropriate notebook name, and your note/link magically appears in the notebook.  Or you can be on a web page and send it directly to Evernote – the first page, not just the URL.  Another of my notebooks is readings.  All the notes in this notebook are pdfs and then algonside the pdf I keep my notes, all on the same page.  Cool.  I have different notebooks for things like theories of collective memory, discussions of iconic images, discussions of Tank Man in the press.  I also have a separate notebook that has random ideas about the paper, things to explore, dead ends, and my abstract.  Now to get writing.

P.s. I’m writing this blog on my laptop.  I still haven’t mastered typing onto the keyboard with complete skill, although it’s getting better.  Haven’t yet bought a stylus so that I can do it by hand either.  Next month.

Using Evernote to coordinate research with a research assistant

 I have a wonderful research assistant this summer, Tricia Juettemeyer.  She is very Apple savvy and suggested that we use Evernote for a portion of a project I am working on related to copyright law and the Open Education Resources (OER) movement.  A lot is happening in the OER space in recent months and most of the information about it is available on websites.  (That makes sense because the OER movement is focused on making educational resources freely available over the Internet!)

I have been using Evernote just as a good way to take a variety of notes and be able to organize them on the fly.  I have the basic (free) version of Evernote and so does Tricia.

As Tricia collected links that fit the research criteria, she “grabbed” the URL and often the first page of the site and added it a note.  Of course she can write her own observations or even call out items for me so I won’t miss them!  She also then “tags” the note with tags that are relevant to the project sub-topics.  All of her Evernote notes for this project she keeps in a particular “notebook” in Evernote.  She has “shared” her notebook with me.  By sharing it, I have access to all of the notes in that notebook.  I can read the notes she made, along with any of the content from any particular page she has copied into the note.  If the source is something I want to continue reading I can then touch the “source URL” and the webpage opens automatically.

We had a little bit of difficulty figuring out how to share the notebook initially.  And, since we both have only the free version of Evernote, we are not able to access functionalities that would be nice.  For example, I am not able add notes to her notebook, nor can I modify any of her notes.  We think both of these actions are possible if you upgrade to the “premium version” of Evernote.    But, at $4.99/month (each!), that price was too steep for us!

Even without the upgrade to “premium” – the experience using Evernote on this project, so far, has been a positive one.  It also came in really handy when my laptop crashed while I was in Munich, Germany earlier this month – the night before I was giving a talk on OER!  Thank goodness I had brought my iPad along!

Thanks for a great Tech Conference

I've used so much of what I learned and gathered a couple weeks ago at the LC Faculty Tech Conference.  All the Google apps sessions were helpful for me.  So many great iPad tools were shared and I'm now trying more apps.  It would have been GREAT to have this resourceful gathering in the early days, but I'm just grateful to feel a little more "on board" with it now. 

Cloud on is the answer to writing docs on the ipad - finding this resource alone was worth attending - SO MUCH improved from Quickoffice HD Pro - wish I wouldn't have wasted that money!

iThoughtsHD is cool for big picture mapping and I'm trying it out to design new coursework with it... but nothing competes for me to the big roll of chart paper so I can see everything at once.  The iPAD is so small in comparison.  It is all about transitioning my brain, I'm sure.  Other mapping programs looked good also, but this one got a good review so I'll let you know...

Simple things I'm using -
Presentation Clock - great timer for presentations and time limits for group work, etc.  Nice and big to project on a screen. 
Big sounds - fun for whenever and whatever (freak out the dog or the sleeping partner?!)

That's all for now - will once a season fulfill the posting requirement?!
And thanks once again for the awesome technology conference.  I hope more faclty take advantage next time.