- You Can't Afford to Lose Mobile Readers
– This is a great article about the importance of mobile devices… This has a real effect in Education realms as well!
EduTechie
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Annotating Documents iTouch/iPhone – U.S. Historical Documents Application
Anyone that has read my blog for any amount of time knows that I am a big fan of digital books… but I am also a big fan of annotation and marking up documents and text. I especially love things that combine the two into one! That is the case with a recently released application called “U.S. Historical Documents.” (iTunes link, Website). (Cost is .99 cents).
I have been a user of their Scriptures App for a while and am glad to see them branching out their AWESOME highlighting system to allow the ability to annotate other documents! Here is a description from their site:
“U.S. Historical Documents contains over 100 of the most influential documents in U.S. history and they will be stored directly on your iPhone/iTouch. Quickly and easily find any text from any document with the fastest and most powerful search engine available on the iPhone. Watch the documents scroll automatically for you in both portrait and landscape mode. Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline. You can even assign bookmarks to any paragraph in any document for future reference. Highlight important words or phrases using the best highlighting system available.”
INCLUDED DOCUMENTS:
- Magna Carta
- Christopher Columbus Letter
- Virginia Charters
- Mayflower Compact
- First Thanksgiving Proclamation
- Stamp Act
- Declaration of Arms
- Declaration of Independence
- Fugitive Slave Law
- US Constitution
- Star Spangled Banner
- CSA Constitution
- Gettysburg Address
- Emancipation Proclamation
- World War II Documents
- I Have A Dream
- All Inaugural Address of All Presidents
- State of the Union Addresses
- 9/11 Documents
- And many more…
MAIN APPLICATION FEATURES:
- Auto-scrolling (both timed and tilt) - Helps me read books faster!
- Adjustable fonts, size, colors, margins, spacing, and alignment (you can even adjust the font size by using a pinching gesture while reading!)
- Highlighting – 12 background colors, 12 foreground colors, bold, italic, and underline - Helps me really interact with the text!!
- Night (low light mode) – Black background with white text
- Application tips
- Bookmarks and bookmark folders
- Last location in each document is remembered
- When re-launched, you’re returned to the exact location you were last at while reading
- Search by words or phrases with instant search results
- Powerful advanced search options
- Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline
This really is a GREAT app… I highly recommend it and look forward to some more releases! As you think about eBooks and education you can really begin to see the potential for eBooks replacing traditional books.
I’ve said it before… and I’m sure I’ll say it again. When you can use technology to do something better than real life… that is when you really have succeeded!! This is a perfect example of that!
Interesting Items – December 13, 2008
- Wired Campus: 3 of the Funniest E-Mail Messages From Students to Professors — and What They Say About Technology – Chronicle.com
- 10 Things About Lively
- iSpring Converter | Converter PowerPoint to Flash Converter
- John M. Perez.Com: The 25 Best Alternatives To Your Enterprise Applications & Functions
– This has some fun emails in it from students, but what is really telling about this article is the comments.
A discussion starts up between PhD’s and Techie’s. They both seem to attack each other for their own inferiority. For the Techie’s it’s the lack of a higher ed degree (according to the PhD’s). For the PhD’s, it a lack of knowledge about computers (according to the Techie’s).
This actually makes me a little sad since I have always seen us as colleagues. Can’t we all just get along and do our best to move the goals and visions of the University and academia forward? 
– This is a list created by students about what Lively (Google’s Virtual world) taught them. Good list for any virtual learning.
– This is a nice new way to convert powerpoints to flash for presentations. There is a freeware version as well! Thanks Neil for finding this!
– As we move even further into hard economic times, these open source alternatives are becoming even more important! Great collection here I got from a colleague!