One of my favorite places to go to stroll, think, pray and take photos is Bok Tower Gardens in historic Lake Wales, Fla. Yesterday, the one-year anniversary of the passing of my mother, I made the 45-minute trek from my home to Lake Wales. Here you’ll see many of my floral photos from this spring.
If you’d asked me, I would have said I had taken a hundred or more photos yesterday. But as I was downloading them into Picasa this morning, I realized I took fewer than 50. I must have been strolling, thinking and praying more than taking photos. And that’s just what I needed yesterday.
At the end of last summer, I was first in line at my local Sprint store when the Samsung Epic 4G came out. I wrote a blog post about my favorite 15 Android apps right after that. Since I’ve had the phone for two semesters now, I thought it was time to revisit the post and update it. So here is my current list of favorite apps for professors.
Attendance: My university has an attendance policy, and I used to make an Excel spreadsheet and manually track attendance each week. Then I found Attendance by Android for Academics. Love it. I just make a quick Google spreadsheet with the students’ first and last names and sync the spreadsheet to Attendance. I take roll reading names off my Samsung Epic now. The app tallies the dates and number of absences and tardies. Super easy.
BlackBoard Learn: Though the BlackBoard app doesn’t allow me to do everything that my desktop program will do, I can read discussion items, create announcements, e-mail students, and more.
Google Listen: I’m an avid podcast listener. I add the RSS feed of my favorite podcasts to my Google Reader, then I can easily download and play the podcasts using Google Listen.
Evernote: Quite often I listen to podcasts while take my daily morning walk. When I hear (or come up with) an idea that I need to capture, I use Evernote’s Audio Note feature. (Typing/texting and walking don’t work well for me. But I definitely can talk and walk.)
StopWatch & Timer: When students do presentations, I time them using this little app. I can have the app count up (with the StopWatch) or count down (with the Timer).
TweetDeck: I confess. I am a tweetaholic. I use Twitter, for personal and professional reasons, many times a day. TweetDeck makes it easy to manage multiple accounts.
Advanced Task Killer: To be sure that unneeded apps are not running and taking up precious battery power, try Advanced Task Killer. It will show you — at a glance — all the apps that are running, even those behind the scenes, and you can choose which ones to “kill.” You don’t want your Epic battery to die during your day on campus.
Kindle: My husband and I share one Kindle. By having the Kindle app on my Samsung Epic, I can read books in our collection even when it’s his “turn” to have the Kindle. And it’s great to show my students how many free classic books are available in the Kindle store.
Barcode Scanner: This little app works with your Android camera. It will scan both barcodes and QR codes. It’s fun to show students what those little square codes are for, and equally fun to show them how to do price comparisons while shopping.
Shazam: When I can quickly refer to songs my students also listen to, it helps me relate to them better. I cheat a little using Shazam. To find out what “that song” is, use Shazam. It will listen to the song and determine title and artist.
So those are my current favorite Android apps for professors. Are there others you’d recommend?
(P.S. Though I love my Samsung Epic dearly, I am not a fan of its battery life. To help with this shortcoming, I’ve purchased two things: an extra battery to keep on hand and the Energizer XP4001 Universal Rechargeable Power Pack. I can’t tell you how many times the Energizer thingy has helped me. . . and my friends who needed a quick recharge, as it can charge two devices at once.)
Like all semesters, Spring 2011 had its ups and downs. Here are a few things I learned, in no particular order:
I was impressed with the writing and design skills of many of my students with their blog assignments. Some of them went far above and beyond my expectations, notably Cindy Cromeans, Amber Sakis, Sarah Allen, Kyle Ashcraft and Megan Getter. I must remember to share these outstanding examples with students in the fall.
I should not bother to hold any office hours for the first 3/4 of the semester, and pack them all into the last 1/4 — as this is when most of my students decide to stop by. (Okay, I probably won’t do that. But I am tempted.)
I may need to be more specific in my assignment directions. For example, even though we had multiple discussions in class about the assignments, some of them still had a hard time understanding that the “Topic of the Week” for their blogs was due during a specific week. (Any idea how I could be clearer in writing about this one?)
I was beyond delighted when students would share links via Twitter or bring up current events or PR news in class. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, I was thrilled.
I need to reinforce our department’s attendance policy several times, especially early in the semester, even though it’s plainly stated in the syllabus. Some students were “surprised” when their grades were lower than they had anticipated. Since so much of what we cover in my classes is based on class discussions, being physically (and mentally!) present is critical. It’s also good practice to show up to class just like they will have to show up to work once they graduate.
I will need to be clearer that when I put a hyperlink in a blog post, it’s for a reason. That reason is to provide amplification or examples about the points I was writing about. I fielded many questions about information that I’d linked to.
I need to remember that not all students in my PR classes are as passionate about public relations and social media as I am. (We have a combined PR/journalism major at my university, and many students are much more interested in the journalism side of the major than the PR side.)
I should continue to attend students’ outside activities often. It was great seeing them notice when I showed up (often unannounced) for campus and non-campus events, including one wedding proposal!
And here’s one final thing I learned that I definitely need some help with.
9. I may need to lower my expectations that students will be fully prepared for class by reading the assigned materials, listening to the assigned podcast or writing the assigned blog post. I need to come up with an alternate plan (other than dismissing the unprepared students or the entire class) when they are unprepared for the discussion I had expected to have.
