sometimes I wish during a conference presentation that I could draw over my images. During the last SOCALLT conference, for example, I showed blueprints of the new language center. It would have been nice to draw on these images and interact with them.

Air Sketch

Just a few weeks ago a fantastic new iPad app was released: Air Sketch.

It provides a blank surface on which you can write. Other computers on the same network can display that iPad image in an HTML5  -compatible browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, …). I can also put an image on top of that blank canvas and doodle over that. Fantastic. No installation on the computer is required, just a browser. You can, and may want to, password protect it. Otherwise everyone on your network could see your air sketches.

It tried it out on my home network and at my institution, and it worked like a charm. Actually, it worked on my laptop, a classroom computer, and even my iPhone! If you don’t have a network available (think conference hotel…), you can establish an ad-hoc network with your laptop.

Missing Functionality

It’s of course not completely a smartboard. You can’t type anything, only draw and highlight. You can’t interact with it on the screen, only on the iPad. (Which is actually great, as I can walk around the room with it, write and annotate anywhere while teaching or presenting. I can even give it to a student.) It only accepts images so far, so you have to take screenshots or export your ppt into individual jpgs. (That may be a good thing. At least it will keep you from using too many slides in your ppts…). But it’s a fairly new app, and the first updates added some nice functionality. So it’s somewhat limited, but it’s fairly inexpensive (if you have an iPad…), mobile, and simple to use.

See for yourself, here’s a little video I just made to show how it works:

Teaching a film class and a first semester German course, I can see many uses already. First thing that I will do is buy an iPhone/iPad stylus, like this one. Then writing will be faster and more natural than using my fingers. For the film class I think using stills and being able to annotate then, draw, doodle, mark, and write will be great. I can even make screenshots right on the iPad and upload the images onto moodle. Well, I’ll give it some more thought. It will certainly be cool during upcoming workshops and presentations.

Test Version

Before you pay for the full version, I recommend testing your networks with the free, very basic version. Please share your ideas and comments with me. Do you think this might be useful for your classes or presentations?

Air Sketch

Note

As I write for my own blog, http://www.languagetechnologybootcamp.org/, and collaboratively for http://www.languagelabunleashed.org, I will publish some posts on both blogs. I you subscribe to both, I apologize for any duplicates!

• Find ways to make scheduling meetings with students, faculty, and staff easier.

I’ve been using timebridge for about two years now, and have been very happy. It is fantastic, and it saved me countless hours, and possibly my sanity. But one problem is that I have to be the one to initiate the meeting and suggest times. But what if a student wants to met with me? So far I’ve told them to send me an e-mail. Of course then I have to at least check my calendar and send an answer back, if all goes well. If not, a back-and-forth of e-mails ensues.

In comes tungle. After feeding the system my calendar dates and preferences, anyone who wishes to meet with me can “grab” some time slots and the system alerts me. In theory this should work great, and I’ve tested it with friends, so hopefully this will save me some more minutes during the hectic weeks of the upcoming semester. First test: scheduling sessions with my advisees. I’ll keep you posted.

And if you wish to see how this works, here’s a preview on my faculty page.

http://www.rhodes.edu/academics/6214_16103.asp

http://www.rhodes.edu/academics/16284.asp

I’ve been using VoiceThread throughout the semester. I use this tool for a number of reason with my beginning German class: It’s easy, free, and allows the students to express themselves despite their level of language competence. I introduced the tool by making new vocabulary items from the book available to them. Students told me they find this very useful, as the book does not provide them with any audio resources for the vocabulary displays and items. Here’s an example":

The next step was to comment on a picture of a dorm room. They each had to leave a voice comment for homework. This was pretty easy for them to do and didn’t take much time, but this way they would get a little bit more familiar with the tool and sign up for an account.

The third step was for students to create their own narration. The task was to create a multimedia collage about themselves (in the past this was a poster, but I like that the students narrate their story rather write). Here’s an example of a finished VoiceThread, created after about 4 weeks of beginner’s instruction:

What’s next? It’s great that now that the students are familiar with the tool, it can be very easily used during the coming semester and in the intermediate and advanced stages.

Click on the player button to listen to today’s post about Audio Pal. (It’s a short post…). More to come soon, I’ve been busy in the past weeks and have some great new tools I want to share.

http://www.audiopal.com

A question we hear as language educators all the time: “How do you pronounce that?” But what if we’re not around? One good web 2.0 solution is Forvo, a collection of several hundred thousand words and pronunciations in many languages. It’s social software at its finest: native speakers add the content, and even the origin is recorded on a Google map mash-up. I found it quite useful to look up some French words that I needed to pronounce, but had no idea how to. 

http://forvo.com/

As an important part in the first days of learning a new language, comprehension generally comes before speech production. It also helps students to listen to what was said in class again. So here is an easy way to do this. I put up the vocabulary displays and read them carefully, and circle the items as I speak them.

It takes a few minutes each day, but it allows students to get some more practice if they wish to have it. Also, I can just embed the same items next year again…

I’ll be talking about other uses in the coming weeks. This is certainly only one of the few ways to use tools like VoiceThread.

Posterous is a neat little tool that lets you start an instantaneous blog. You can e-mail anything to a pre-defined e-mail address: text, pictures, audio files in mp3 format, and other files such as pdf, and they are automatically added to your blog. You don’t have to sign up, but if you wish to get a customized URL (the web address), you can set your password and you’re good to go.

So if you want your students to blog, but want to keep it simple and/or don’t have any tech support, this is a great tool. Or you set up the site and students simply e-mail in their text, voice recording, photos, etc.  Simple, elegant, and effective, that’s how I like my lang tech tools.

More to come very soon from now on. Have a great weekend.

Link to Posterous