Cognitive dissonance. Photo by me.

I’m not sure I’m completely ready for this, but I’m going to try it anyway.

I’ve been slowly making a significant transition in my life: I let each of my print magazine subscriptions expire, one by one. Only two have a couple of issues remaining, as best I can tell from those obfuscatory subscription reminders and mailing labels. Print editions have nearly stopped arriving in my mailbox, and a few more trees have kept on breathing.

I’m making the switch to digital magazines. All of them. Starting now.

I subscribe(d) to quite a few magazines: at least 14 within the last year. I have found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the flow of paper magazines, finding that they pile up in a basket in my study at home far too quickly. I also increasingly dislike tossing most of them into the recycle bin immediately after finishing them.

Part of my dissatisfaction with print has to do with the lack of enduring, lasting content in most magazines today, or at least in those I’ve patronized. There’s just no reason for me to keep paper copies. Even my fiber arts magazines (about knitting and weaving, for example, including patterns and references) rarely feature articles that I wouldn’t be just as happy to have in digital form — or would indeed prefer in that searchable format.

Part of it is my changed reading habits, which have more and more focused around the iPad and Kindle, with which I can comfortably delve into numerous blogs, Twitter, e-books, and a constantly refreshed Instapaper collection of long-form journalism. The capacity to instantly share and bookmark material is also something I now crave when I’m reading print. (Not every digital magazine will offer those features, but some do.)

I have been frustrated by the difficulty of switching print to digital subscriptions — so much so that I even wrote an article about it for PBS MediaShift. I understand now why the process has been difficult for publishers and their customer service providers. However, it seemed easier to wait for my print subscriptions to end and then re-evaluate my commitment to each one and the best digital format for obtaining it.

Some of the magazines are available as replica editions, some as standalone apps, some through Apple’s Newsstand for the iPad. I’m more inclined to get magazines on the iPad than on my black-and-white Kindle Touch because I love magazines’ color and photography.

However, given my budget, some of my format decisions (and, actually, whether I renew at all in some cases) will be determined by price. For example, Runner’s World is available as a replica from Zinio for $25/year; a one-year subscription through the magazine’s own app is $14.99, and apparently offers added features. It’s $1/month for Kindle, as it is in print. I think I’ll go for the iPad edition.

I think I’ll be OK with this transition. But perhaps I’ll miss stuffing a magazine into my purse on the way out the door to an appointment, or will find reading on the iPad less enjoyable in the long run. I’ll report back and let you know how it goes!

Because of a couple of my past posts, people often find my blog when they’re looking for information on teaching with the iPad. So I thought I might give an update on the technology tools I’m using in my teaching and personal productivity this semester on various platforms. I’ve mentioned some of these before, but it’s interesting to track which ones have infiltrated my workflow permanently and which have failed to prove their utility (for my purposes, at least).

Yahoo! Pipes configuration...not as hard as it looks.

In the Classroom

• Attendance iPad app. I used its photo-management feature to take photos of all my students on the first day of classes this semester. A great tool for learning names more quickly (always a huge struggle for me) and for tracking attendance accurately. Though its interface is plain – taking roll isn’t sexy – it’s a valuable app.
• Alas, I don’t really do classroom presentations on the iPad. I thought I’d end up using Keynote from the iPad in the classroom, in lieu of toting my laptop to class. Nope. I ran into initial compatibility problems with an old version of Keynote on my laptop, and then realized that my photo- and video-heavy slideshows are difficult to create on the iPad anyway. So I’m still just using my MacBook Pro in class for Keynote.
• However, beyond Keynote: The iPad now projects whatever you show on the screen through the VGA adapter. Hooray! I’ve now been able to demonstrate digital magazines and books to students using the iPad in class.
• Evernote. I create class notes or guest lecture outlines on my laptop in Evernote, then access them on the iPad when needed. Incredibly handy and paper-saving.
• Caffeine (Mac only). A simple plugin that prevents your screen from dimming or turning off during presentations and video viewing. So useful.
• I learned how to use Yahoo! Pipes this semester to aggregate my students’ blog posts and pull them into our class website (a WordPress.org installation on my own domain) as one feed. It was much easier to do than I thought it would be.
• AP Stylebook. I subscribed to the digital/app version so I never have to take the book to class, and I never leave it in the office over the weekend when I need it for grading at home. That happened far too often, and it’s been worth it (yes, worth $24!) to not have to worry about this problem.

Some of the comments stored in my "Commonly Used" list in GradeMark.

Grading and Feedback

• I use two apps for simple grading calculations because I am lazy. The iPad app is called GroovyGrader, and it’s free (with ads). The iPhone app is called EasyGrader and costs 99 cents. (Both work on either device. I like GroovyGrader on the iPad because I don’t have to scroll to see the full list of possible grades.) When you just want to know the grade out of 100 points when a student misses 5 questions on a 40-question exam, and you don’t want to do the math every time or create an Excel spreadsheet…this is your app.
• I used the GradeMark feature of Turnitin in Blackboard for the first time this semester. I have concerns about Turnitin as a company due to its use of its student paper database for a new service that students can purchase prior to turning in their work that alerts them to possible plagiarism. I found GradeMark so easy to use, though (darn it), that I’ve decided to continue to use it this year and then explore other options. The GradeMark system allows the instructor to see Turnitin’s originality report information and also attach comments (both unique to that student or pre-prepared from a customizable database) for a student’s paper. The standard comments come with explanations of writing concepts (e.g., students can immediately be reminded of what a comma splice is when they view that comment). The comments are saved online for the student to access. The grade attached to the paper is automatically posted in Blackboard’s gradebook. The instructor can even see whether a student has viewed the feedback provided. You can download the papers in one zipped file so you always have a backup and a record of what students received from you. In all, I have to admit it’s a pretty cool system.
• What did not work for me: a couple of years ago, I tried using a Wacom Bamboo tablet (a nice little device that I still use when I weary of a mouse or trackpad) to mark up student papers in Adobe Acrobat. This was a hugely time-consuming process that required me to first create PDFs of student papers, attempt to scribble neatly on them with the tablet, and then email the copy with feedback back to students. Ugh. Never again.

Communicating with Students and Colleagues

• I am a Twitter aficionado and use TweetDeck on my MacBook and the official Twitter apps for iPad and iPhone. TweetDeck lets me easily track all the tweets from my current students on their class lists and all the activity around their class hashtags.
• I have used Jing a number of times this semester and in previous years to create screencast tutorials for various online activities students need to complete (such as creating a blog on WordPress.com). These tutorials save me untold hours of demonstrating in person and writing directions in emails. I also have used Jing for providing feedback to students on online work that is difficult to comment upon otherwise. I can narrate what I see in their work (e.g., a blog post), point at and highlight things with the mouse cursor, type into their documents, and then send them a secure link to the online video, which is quickly uploaded to Screencast.com through the Jing software. One caution: my students watched the screencasts so many times this semester that I had to upgrade my Screencast.com account to a pro account ($9.99/month) to ensure that the necessary bandwidth was available. That was a bummer, and I’ll be re-evaluating my use of Jing+Screencast.com for tutorials. For individual feedback, though, I think this is a great combination. Students responded positively to it as well.

Unsubscribe.com button for Mail plugin. Note my brief, sweet Inbox Zero.

Productivity

• I learned about Unsubscribe.com this fall, and have been using it to aggressively reduce the amount of automated email I receive. I use Apple Mail and have installed the Unsubscribe plugin. When I receive automated mail I no longer want, I just select the message and click the Unsubscribe button in my toolbar. The service then automagically unsubscribes me. It’s pretty awesome. There are plugins available for other email apps as well. (Incidentally, I think I’m also saving money by not getting so many shopping-related emails!)
• Although many to-do lists are available out there, I’ve stuck with Toodledo. It’s simple, has a clean web interface, works with my iPhone and iPad, and is reliable.
• Google Calendar is wonderful and allows me to have not only my personal calendar, but also calendars for my individual classes that can be embedded on my class websites (like this). It’s helpful for me to see all my upcoming events and deadlines – and theirs – in one place.
• Dropbox and SugarSync are cloud storage services that I appreciate very much. Dropbox works with many iPad/iPhone apps, making it a central point for storing file I might need to access elsewhere. SugarSync is similar, but is configured to automatically back up key folders on my laptop ($59/year, but the peace of mind is worth it). I can also access anything in those key folders anywhere I have Internet access, which has been helpful on a couple of occasions.
• TextExpander. My students may suspect this by now, but every time they get an email from me that ends with “Please let me know if you have more questions,” I’ve actually only typed “ppl” – and TextExpander has done the rest. I have used this tool for numerous grading and writing purposes over the time I’ve had it installed. (All those Texas Monthlys in my dissertation, with their annoying italics? I typed only “TM” every time.) The software reports that it has saved me over 30 hours of typing during our wonderful time together.
• FocusBooster is a great Pomodoro Technique app that – when the going (read: grading) gets tough – allows me to work for 20 minutes, then knit take a 5-minute break (or whatever intervals I need). When you just can’t bring yourself to work, sometimes settling into just 20 minutes of work (at first) seems much more doable.

Reading and Writing

• I use Reeder for reading RSS feeds on the iPad (after trying many other RSS readers for the iPad). I use Google Reader pretty much solely as a subscription manager at this point, and just sync my account with Reeder for more comfortable reading away from the computer on the iPad or iPhone.
• I use Readability to reformat websites for easier reading, and I use Instapaper (on the iPad and soon on a new Kindle) to save long stories to read later. Interesting stuff gets saved to my Pinboard account for later reference. (Pinboard also automatically saves any tweet I send that includes a link, so I never have to wonder, “What was that article I tweeted the other day?”) Pinboard is worth every penny of the $9-something lifetime membership fee I spent on it. Readability, Instapaper, and Pinboard all work via bookmarklets in my browser. Instapaper and Reeder both work with Twitter and Pinboard, too.
• I enjoy using Outliner on the iPad to develop writing projects. Though it does much the same things as Inspiration, which I have used on the MacBook for a long time, I find it fun and thought-provoking to literally move my ideas around on the screen.

Multimedia

• I have taken up photography as a hobby and have been enjoying using Snapseed and TiltShift Generator to edit photos and upload them to my Flickr account. I also have a lot of fun using FlickStackr to look through photos in Explore on Flickr, which is inspiring and educational for a new photographer! Guardian Eyewitness is also a great iPad app that highlights an amazing work of photojournalism every day. I have more apps I could include in this category, but they’re not strictly teaching-related tools, so…

If you like these kinds of tools and want to keep learning more, I highly recommend that you regularly read the ProfHacker blog and follow it on Twitter as well. Many of these ideas came from ProfHacker initially. I also learned of others from the fabulous folks I follow on Twitter. The community of technology-minded academics there has been an amazing resource for me.

Do you have other technology tools that have made your teaching life easier or more enjoyable? Please share in the comments!

I have a new story up today at PBS MediaShift about Once Magazine, an iPad magazine that focuses on visual storytelling, especially photography. It’s great to see experiments like this one that help photographers find new ways to use their work and earn a living from their art.

Read more at MediaShift!

Even a small magazine can make a powerful impression with a well-designed mobile presence. In some ways, digital platforms can level the playing field for small publishers wanting to attract readers’ attention with innovative content and presentations.

But getting onto mobile platforms with apps and optimized websites can be a significant challenge for small publishers. While major magazine companies like Condé Nast and Time have resources for research and development and can dedicate employees to digital innovation, small magazines are often run on a shoestring by limited personnel. That’s why some small publishers have turned to external app development companies, hoping that outsourcing their apps will lead to better results at a lower cost…read more.

I’ll be back soon with regularly scheduled posts. In the meantime, happy summer!

Photo by Mike Licht on Flickr.

I have a new story up at PBS MediaShift on kids’ magazines making the move to the iPad — or, in some cases, growing up solely for the iPad.

My favorite aspect of this piece is what I learned about how apps might enable kids to read socially — discussing stories with one another in a safe environment, contributing their own thoughts and ideas to the publication, developing their critical reading skills in entirely new ways:

“Children’s magazines are wonderful for creating a sense of community,” Letvin said. She anticipates a time when “digital magazines are able to do some of these things, including some social connections, particularly if it involves international contexts with other schools.”

Timbuktu includes a section called “Ask Auntie Rita” that uses letters from children. Favilli says they hope to open the section to readers’ letters in the next issue, which could be written by Timbuktu’s worldwide audience and submitted within the magazine app.

March 22 cover, via AisleOne.net

I explored my subscription options:

• Through the Businessweek website: 50 issues plus 4 “bonus issues” for $40, including a free subscription to digital iPad editions ($ .74/issue)
• Through Zinio, the digital magazine newsstand company: $46 for 51 issues, digital replica-style ($ .90/issue…wait, 22% more for digital only? Nope.)
• Through the new Bloomberg Businessweek+ app for iPad (iTunes link): $2.99/month, charged automatically each month through the Apple in-app purchase function. (free for print subscribers, or about $ .75/issue for non-subscribers)

I really wanted only a digital edition because this weekly magazine will hit my recycle bin so often, and because business isn’t a huge personal interest for me. The price is reasonable. (Businessweek will get $2.09/month after Apple’s 30% cut.)

While it might not let me experience the magazine’s intriguing print design, the iPad app is a good deal comparatively – and received rave reviews on iTunes – and so I tried it out.

I have to say: I’m impressed. The first issue did take a few minutes to download, but far fewer than the 11 minutes required by the free May iPad edition of Wired (iTunes link) that I downloaded this morning. A few interesting moments in the app are below:

Provide my personal data to Businessweek? Hmm...

Downloading my first issue (bottom right), with previous issues available for individual purchase

Watching an introductory video linked to the cover images, with editors explaining the chicken on the cover

Finding topics connected to the names mentioned in the story and realtime data through the Related button

Integrated social media connections...yes!

So far, I’m pretty impressed with the app. It provides enriched content, beyond just a digital replica, that is smartly designed for greater usability, not mere novelty. It’s reasonably priced, easy to access, and has clean design. It will automatically alert me to new issues.

It lets me stay in my social reading mode that I have come to enjoy so much, rather than putting me in the “walled garden” so common among digital magazines to date.

And, finally, there’s just the right amount of interactivity – enough that it’s interesting and suits the iPad, but not so much that I’m distracted from reading, which is still – obviously – a major draw of magazines.

My only tiny issue? I wish there were pagination for stories, not just scrolling; personally, I’m a more effective reader in Instapaper’s pagination mode, and I’d prefer it here too. But I can live without it for now.

Worth $ .75/week? Time will tell – but this is an auspicious start.

Two more reviews are here and here for some additional perspectives. Add your thoughts in the comments.

If magazine publishers can identify stories that provide rich, deep reading experiences, and then add engaging multimedia to develop that experience even further, they may be able to leverage their brands and editorial authority to market individual stories successfully. Other possibilities might include packaging stories on one topic together in one download, or combining stories from different magazines in a collaborative product. Individual stories or packages of stories can be sold through apps, websites, and vendors like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Go check it out, and please comment while you’re there!

So I saw this interesting little graphic over at the Association of Magazine Media (formerly the MPA) E-Reading blog, and it brought only one thing to mind:

Hmmm…

[A more substantial post next week, I promise!]

The bin of leftover magazines...its days are numbered in the digital age.

I’m contemplating the best angle for a new research project about the world of digital magazine publishing. I’m including here not just the magazines that have released iPad and other mobile apps, but also web-based publishing like that offered by Zinio, Yudu, Texterity, NoLayout, and others.

I’m interested in to what degree these digital magazine publishing opportunities are democratizing magazine publishing. Though I find print-on-demand a fascinating trend as well for magazines whose content and design implies the value of a lasting hard copy, the high cost of purchasing many of these publications means that they will likely be restricted for some time to a more affluent audience. But the opportunity for small publishers to whip up a magazine in PDF format, then post it online, seems to open up a whole realm of possibilities.

No longer are independent publishers relegated to blogs or mere websites; the ability to publish a polished, slick, easily accessible digital magazine is now within reach. Any magazine can be available on the web or even on the iPad using a newsstand app like Zinio, or through HTML5 using a service like NoLayout (though the latter concentrates on fashion and art topics).

So who is taking advantage of this opportunity to present a polished look at their subject matter? I’d like to know the breakdown by size and topic of the independent publishers who are crafting new projects online. I’d also like to know, more specifically, whether and how many activist or politically oriented digital-only magazines there are. An initial exploration of just Zinio’s listings suggests, interestingly, that there are many more ethnic or international magazines that might fit the “activist” label than English-language publications of this variety. As someone interested in how magazines affect or enable various social and political movements and identities, I also want to know whether and how digital magazines are playing a similar role to print magazines’ role in past movements. (I did a study on the role of National Review in mobilizing the conservative movement, though mine is just one of numerous studies in this area.)

I’ve previously explored the role of social media in adding to political/activist print magazines’ engagement of readers in this MediaShift story. The research study I’m anticipating now would likely examine the role of smaller, exclusively online activist publishers in directing, enabling, or mobilizing the causes they’re associated with through this new medium, as well as the reasoning behind their decisions to use digital magazines for this purpose.

If you have thoughts or suggestions along these lines, or suggestions of specific digital magazines I should explore, please leave a comment. I am excited about the opportunity to have some dialogue around this topic before I set out a concrete plan for the project.

The Atomic Web Browser app - an iPad alternative to Safari.

I’m excited to start my first full semester with an iPad at hand, ready for use in the classroom. I’ve found some ways to work around the frustrations I encountered in my first attempt to teach with the iPad, so here are some of my new strategies and plans for using the iPad during teaching.

Projecting the Web

I’ve downloaded Atomic Web Browser for 99 cents, which will project web content through the VGA connector. This is a major advantage over Safari for iPad. I also much prefer the tabbed browsing offered by this browser to the page system in Safari, as it’s more convenient both for casual reading and for pre-loading a selection of web pages prior to the start of class and easily switching among them. It also supports multi-touch, which is nice when you’ve become accustomed to that capability elsewhere.

Blackboard on the iPad

Starting up the Blackboard Mobile Learn iPad app.

(Setting aside the variety of problems with Blackboard itself for a moment…) The new Blackboard Mobile Learn app is much improved from its previous versions, which for me were essentially useless. You can do a lot of what you can on the web through the app at this point, so administering your class activities on the move during class time (or from your couch at home) is now much more feasible.

Teaching Writing

The iCardSort app in action.

I’m not teaching a writing course this spring, but I can see how some apps I’ve started using for myself are going to be very helpful in working with students on their projects. For example, iCardSort, a free iPad app, can be used to show students how to brainstorm and organize their ideas for a new project. Outliner (currently $4.99) can be the next step in the process, generating a clear outline for the project that can be easily manipulated. (I use Inspiration for outlining on my laptop, though I may move to something with a better UI sometime soon.)

Using the Outliner app for one of my own research projects.

For the more visually oriented, a mindmapping app like iThoughts HD ($9.99) might be a better option, though I haven’t tried it myself. iThoughts HD will apparently also project through the VGA connector, so an all-class brainstorm session for writing projects or other topics is an exciting possibility. Unlike a whiteboard activity, the iThoughts HD session can be saved as PDF and shared with the class in a more permanent form. (Hmm – I may have to buy this one after all.)

When I do teach writing again, I’m also really looking forward to being able to walk around the computer lab with the iPad and immediately locate and show students examples of things we’re working on. For example, I could go find examples of anecdotal leads in online news stories for a student who’s unsure about how they’re used – without having to borrow the student’s computer or project the example on the classroom screen through the instructor’s station, which would distract everyone from their work.

Demonstrating Multimedia

Another great aspect of having an iPad in the classroom for someone teaching journalism and communication is simply the ability to show students some of the innovative new ways media professionals are preparing content for the iPad. If I hadn’t been able to use an iPad through my university, I’d feel very much left out of this rapidly developing area of the industry. However, I’m happy to be able to demonstrate these new products in class and discuss them knowledgeably with students as someone who keeps up with the field and uses these new products daily. The iPad has been a great asset in this way for me as an instructor.