Thing 23 evaluating 23 mobile things

I am now at thing 23! It has been a long journey to completion.  I found that I learned a lot about a device that I didn't want to learn before embarking on this journey, as I had only very briefly tried one out previously, and didn't like it at all. I now love it! I can't wait to use some of the apps I downloaded in my day to day work flow, and I hope I will remember all the good ones that I wanted to share with faculty when they return in fall semester.  Some of my favorites are RedLaser, Dragon Dictation, Educreate, Youtube, Magisto, to name a few. I think this program is very well worth my time, and I would definitely take another one if offered.  I like the spacing they do them in now, and wouldn't want to do one any sooner.  I sincerely hope that I can make good use of what I learned, so that the iPad can become as much a fixture in my work as my pc is now.  Keep up the good work, CMLE and the other consortiums who worked on this program.

Thing 22 discovering Apps

I searched the web for best iPad apps and checked out pcmag.com's list.  I've always liked this magazine since we got it in our library, until it went online only, but now we are getting Macworld  in print, instead, so thought it would be a great place to discover apps. I noticed that it had a lot of the ones that we used in this program, too! I downloaded a couple from this site and tried them out. I also went to the Appsgonefree app and downloaded it.  Today I downloaded the app Smartscan. I used it right away to show my supervisor a book that was requested by interlibrary loan, since she's off campus and connected by her phone rather than desktop email, so I might get an answer sooner.   She said it came in great, and it was easy to use, too.  I also liked Shazam, found on a website list search. I will definitely use this whenever I can to check music for performer or writer. I also discovered a flight check app, a movie and video app, and a yoga app.  With 1/2 a million apps out there, and many more added daily, there's a good chance I could fill up this iPad very quickly!

Thing 21 Free for all

I looked at some additional apps in the app store, but couldn't come up with anything new that caught my eye to try, so will blog about my favorite thing of all on here, youtube. I found a channel for yoga that I really like, Sadie Nardini. She  has so many good, small in length, yoga videos that I tried out this spring after my community ed class ended.  It was a way for me to use the iPad for exercise, and also to continue yoga at my own pace and at my own time schedule. I would get up early in the morning, do a stretching sequence with another video yogi star named Matthew. Or i would come home from work exhausted, set up the ipad and do a 20 minute yoga session before making supper. I also found some yoga music I could play while cooling down.  The possibilities are endless!

Thing 20 Games

When I first tried the iPad,  I played  Scrabble free on it, and found the in app purchases to be too annoying, as they popped up within the game, instead of just along the top or bottom.  I tried word abacus instead, and it was only slightly distracting, with the ads up along the top only. I think gaming on mobile devices can be too addicting, and one reason why you see so many people just staring at their phone or device all the time, even when at gatherings together supposedly visiting.  I've been rather turned off by games when I get requests all the time on Facebook to play Candy Crush Saga or Farmville, etc., so I chose to only play 1 game for me, and Playkids for my grandkids.  It is a free app with many different train cars you can pick from to try out different learning things, like colors, letters, numbers, etc.

Thing 19 Hobbies

What a neat set of apps to try out! I downloaded Mygarden and will add my plants to it, ask for advice, learn more about gardening styles, set up tasks, etc. I also tried Spotify, so  that I can find some music I can play from my devices instead of cd's. I will share my playlist with my Library Blog too.  I looked up library music, and found a great album, Brain Music, for music to study by.  Here is a link to it. Playlist

Thing 18 Education

I used several of these education apps.  They look wonderful! Especially going to love Duolingo, for help with my German. With all the new educational apps to explore, I will really need to devote some time to the iPad!  I can see using these professionally, when looking for information to help students or for having instructors use the app as additional resource for their courses, like the Fooducate app for their students to use to learn about nutrition.  Or the quizlet, or showofhands, endless possibilities! Especially now when everyone seems to have smartphones on them anyway.

Thing 17 Community

I found the MPR app to be a very nice addition, the St. Cloud State University app was cool,  took a tour of it, and learned a lot about the place where my cohorts work who help me with my ITV connections.   I also explored the MnDOT 511 site, which will be nice for winter travel, and also personally when deciding on a route and avoiding construction.  I also thought it very useful as a globe.  Just a swipe of the finger and I was viewing a map of Europe!  I checked out MnSCU for an app, and the only one is for the MnSCU IT conference which was held in April.  It looks very useful for the participants, cutting back on printing is always a good thing, too!  I searched for University of Minnesota, and found the UMD German Grammar guide.  I decided to download it, as I've been trying to learn German in my car on my commutes to work. I think this is a good tool, as learning the grammar in audio only was a little tough, so now to see it as well is great.  I'm sure there are a ton of other apps to explore in this Thing, but for now I'm moving on.

Thing 16 Audio

I chose to download SoundCloud. I followed some music, and added audio. Check it out here.  I could see this being useful both at work and personally. I could record meetings for taking minutes, add sound to a presentation, etc. Once these apps are on the iPad, it makes it a lot easier to use it when various requests come up for technology related things.

Thing 15 Infographics

Infographics seem to be everywhere these days. I wondered where people were getting these to post on Facebook! I downloaded the app info.graphic

I went out and found this fun graphic regarding college students' use of their mobile devices, and was pleasantly surprised to see that 70% use them to read books. Which I guess makes sense since they are in school, and possibly use them for e-textbooks.

I then downloaded i Visual Info Touch Lite, and made my own. It doesn't have much in the free version, but would be kind of fun for the paid app, to make these if you were going to market things.

Thing 14 Video

I chose to use Viddy for this thing.  I liked how easy it was to create and add some fun to a video I had already taken with the iPad. Kittens  It will be useful for library displays, book reviews, virtual tours, etc.  I then decided to try Magisto, since you can use both photos and videos.  I used some of the photos and videos I'd been making and had on the iPad and had them create one.  Here it is.

Thing 13 Presentations

I downloaded Educreations since I feel it will be useful and easy to use to show others how to get started using their iPad for lessons and tutorials.  I made a presentation on how to add EBSCO mobile to their device.Check this out!  I think once we are in the process of our webpage redesign, we will want to highlight the college library page, and making these lessons and posting them or emailing them to students will be a nice addition to our services.

Thing 12 Books, Books, Books

I downloaded the app Audiobooks and put some classic titles in it.  I will use this to find ebooks I can use for both professional development and personal use and listen to them while I work on busywork at my job, and scrubbing floors or other mundane chores at home.  There are so many uses for the iPad, they seem to be unlimited, and no wonder people love them!  I would love to have a users group meeting someday, just to talk about and share apps, ways they use them, etc. I also downloaded iStoryBooks, to show my grandkids that books can be fun to read on screens too, not just movies or youtube video, or games.  They aren't old enough to be into games yet, but they love to watch video on them.  I think they will love it.

Thing 11 Library and Reference

We have the EBSCO mobile link under our list of Databases we receive through the ELM appropriation, and I had put it on my iPod touch some time back, so now put it on the iPad as an app.  It is very easy to get onto the device, with just a few touches and an email address, so it should be easy for the students to use.  I will blog about it on the library blog to promote it.  I added the ELM portal too, to my list of apps on the iPad, to more easily access it.    I will definitely be using these to research and show students how to use them in their research and to use their local library app as well.

Thing 10 Sharing Photos

I used Instagram and PicCollage to make this library display picture for our online friends. It is pretty intuitive to use, and I think it would be good for both professional and personal uses. I can see using the collage for 1 pic rule for sales ads on facebook group pages.

Collage of library displays

And I finished #10  and received another badge!

Thing 9 Taking & Editing Photos

This is my favorite part of the mobile device, taking photos.I downloaded Photo Editor by Aviary and made a poster for a library display

Love and Logic Display

I then downloaded the app Color Splurge, made it gray and colored in a few titles.  

This is a fun app too, I think eiither would be fun to use for making library posters, bookmarks, etc.

I will use these photo apps as well as photo booth, another app that I have that is really fun for making funky views of people, things, etc.

Thing 8 Social Media Management Tools

I started to download and use the app Friendcaster, but decided against it.  I will look into one of the others as I don't like when everything asks to be able to see all your friend lists and profile information.  I did use google +, and like that it is used by some of my co-workers, so we can collaborate this way.  I find that google tools I'm using like Chrome browser, gmail for my mail service on the iPad are easy to use and that helps me out! I have 3 google accounts, and find that it is getting hard to manage them this way, but do want to keep work and personal accounts separate. I downloaded Hootsuite to manage social media accounts Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. I will watch it for awhile to see how I like using this tool. I would rather have had a library page in Facebook, but will try to follow some more library sites so it will be more geared toward work stuff.

Thing 7 Content Saving and Sharing

I used Pinterest for this thing, and had started it using the computer earlier, but now have it for the iPad as well.  I can see it being a great tool to keeping things organized and "saved for later" and all in one place, and on multiple devices, which is a great thing.  I also tried out the Bitly app, which I've seen in other 23 things I've done, but hadn't tried.  I put a link from youtube in it, and at first it took a really long time, perhaps because it was a video. I will experiment with this for when we are updating our Library Blog to include links to our tutorials on the library webpage.

Thing 6 Creating and Editing Docs

For this Thing, I chose to add Quick office.  I had to tie it to my Google account, but then it brought in my documents that I've had shared with me when I've taken summer technology courses through my consortium.  I created a new document and the creation and editing seem pretty straight forward.  I like how I could use the dragon dictation app, say what I wanted to type into a document, copy and paste it right in.  It worked really slick!  I could use this for both personal and professional things.  Quick little email tutorial type informational pieces, adding to my blog, etc.  I also will try using it to do my journaling.  I have been keeping one, and it is a struggle for me to keep up with it on pen and paper.  Although I like that I can write down some things while riding in the car, and can give my eyes a break from "screen time"

Thing 5 Notetaking

Thing 5 is about notetaking apps.  I started out by using the note on the  iPad, and found it useful.  So with the things program, I tried Bamboo Paper, and found it  to be easy and something I could definitely use when not wanting to type, or for drawings and sketches.  I also tried Dragon dictation, and it worked beautifully for what I dictated.  This will be very useful for remembering something if you don't want to type it or for talking out your notes for lecture capture and closed caption, etc.

 I received a badge for completing 5 things!

23 mobile things mobile thing #4

Keeping up
I downloaded the zite app and added some interests to it. I started to read some of them, and found that it brought in so many articles that I'm not sure I would be able to keep up.  I don't know that I like that it tracks what I'm reading and will add new things based on that, but that is the way of the internet I guess.  I feel like it would be a great way to keep up with library sites or  other technology news of interest.  As with all the new apps to try, it takes time to read them and devoting a few minutes each day would be a good thing.  I then deleted zite and added Flipboard.  I like this one better.  I think I will use it to keep up with current technology and library information in the news.

Mobile thing #3

Utilities- I had success with this thing right away as I had a student come up with a problem viewing something on her iPad because it doesn't use flashplayer, and the problem was fixed by installing the free version of Puffin. I also added the wi-fi locator, which I thought would be helpful when out and about with the iPad. I also decided to add Red Laser since we have a camera on the iPad, and some of our partners have added a qr code to their brochures or advertising. I tried them out and they work so slick! I made a list of new books, and I will add this new way of checking out what's new to our library blog for students to try.  A few days later, we decided to start a new list, to find replacements for some outdated library materials.  My librarian could then have an electronic list of the things she's looking to replace, so she can easily reference it. I took the barcoded ones that are new enough to  have one, took a picture of it with the RedLaser program, and it immediately put it in my list.  I had to manually type in the barcode number of our older cataloged items, but at least I could add them that way, then when done easily email the list to myself or others.  It also showed what the book is worth out on ebay, which was handy.

23 mobile things thing 2

This thing was fun to start but hard to finish, as it seemed every time I tried to finish up, there would be more to try, or that I forgot already! these mobile devices have a lot of features. I am using an iPad, so I used the tips and tricks for os 7.0 and also the ipilot videos. I have a couple questions on some things it said, like orientation lock should be on my shortcuts or tray that comes up when you swipe from the bottom, but it isn't there on mine. Also, I liked learning how to take screenshots, so that I could look on my photos when I wanted to see how to do something, without having to go back into Safari, which I find rather hard to keep track of my favorites and bookmarks after I've bee surfing on the net in between learning sessions. I guess the most important thing. I took away from this thing was to keep using the device a lot, to keep fresh on what I learned and how to do things.

23mobile things thing 1

Today I registered my blog from 23 things on a stick for the new program, 23 mobile things. I hadn't posted anything since more things ended. I look forward to learning more about the I-pad and how to use it for library use and helping patrons. On to thing 2!