1. Pinterest. Yes, I’m as tired of the hype around Pinterest as anyone (and I might have contributed to that hype a bit), but I do think it has some interesting possibilities for media studies classes in which visual components are important. I’m teaching Media, Politics, and Public Opinion this fall, and I’m thinking of having students create Pinterest boards of political videos, images and materials they find online or in the physical world.

This activity was inspired by this post about a theater design instructor’s experience using Pinterest at Keene State College. She said:

I could actually push them immediately to the next level to understand why these images are exciting and which ones are for another project for another day…I took pictures of their design models and you can clearly see the connection between what they chose to do in the model with the research they did. Connections happened so I was super excited! The results are night and day between this class that used Pinterest for visual research because of the comments and feedback before they started to use the images. So I think for me Pinterest is the way to go for visual research.

I like the ease of use, the commenting and sharing features, and the public nature of the work students would collect on a board. For class topics focused on visual materials, Pinterest seems like a terrific option.

(…as long as we don’t get distracted by boards like the one below.)

One of the more, um, intriguing Pinterest boards on a political topic, called “Obama…wtf.”

2. Open-access textbooks. I like assigning online articles, but sometimes I wish students could get a basic explanation of important concepts in a simple textbook style, without the issues presented by Wikipedia entries, or the challenges and cost of clearing textbook material for library course reserves.

I’m really excited about the possibility of assigning a chapter or two from open-access textbooks like those available through this University of Minnesota online catalog — which even includes peer reviews of the textbooks’ content.

The open-access social psychology textbook.

For example, in the Media, Politics, and Public Opinion class, I might assign the chapter on attitudes, behavior, and persuasion from a freely available social psychology textbook so that students have a solid, basic explanation of these key concepts.

I also like that this approach demonstrates for students both a) the interdisciplinary nature of our inquiry into this topic and b) the free resources available to them online as learners.

3. It looks like I’ll be teaching a class on media, war, and terrorism soon, building on my master’s thesis research on embedded reporters in Iraq and my recent project on Al Qaeda’s digital magazine. I find that students don’t usually have the historical background to jump right into complex topics like that. I think we’ll spend some time constructing an online timeline together to help them both to contextualize key world events and to grasp changes in government regulation of wartime journalism and other key issues. My colleague Michael Huntsberger inspired this project through his use of timelines in his History of Mass Media class.

A timeline of terrorist attacks via Daniel X. O’Neil on Flickr.

There are a lot of different timeline tools out there, and the choice depends partly on whether you can embed the finished product on a site you control or need for it to be hosted elsewhere. I’m considering Timeline by VéritéCo, which plays nicely with Google Spreadsheets (perfect for student collaboration), and which can be embedded on my self-hosted WordPress sites. There are also Timetoast and Tiki-Toki to consider.

***

More generally, I am also thinking about ways I can offer students more options for assignments that use online tools, in addition to traditional writing components. I want them to gain media literacy by understanding how the online content with which they interact every day is created…and I want them to gain experience in selecting appropriate communication tools for various types of information and audiences. Asking students to choose topics that interest them and to select the most relevant methods for communication about those topics seems an absolutely appropriate task for me to assign. There are so many exciting possibilities.

What are your hopes and plans for using technology in teaching during 2012-13?

I was on a panel with two other terrific magazine researchers and professors, Erin Coyle of Louisiana State (who also organized the panel – thanks, Erin!) and Yanick Rice Lamb of Howard University. I enjoyed hearing about Erin’s research on trends in magazine course syllabi and about Yanick’s study on uses of digital technology by major women’s magazines.

Here are my slides from my presentation. I think they’re self-explanatory, but if you have questions, let me know in the Comments!

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!

Users of sensor-equipped mobile devices could serve as passive authors of projects that gather, analyze and present data from these sensors. Esposito calls this “sensor publishing” to distinguish it from crowdsourcing because it doesn’t require participants’ active involvement.

Digital magazines and other media applications could collect sensor data — such as location, temperature, ambient light or other readings — and find ways to incorporate the data into stories, or to make them stories in themselves.

Check out the rest of the story at MediaShift.

Also, an observation: that’s my ”Health” apps folder from my iPhone in one of the screenshots with the story. It seemed oddly personal to use that, somehow. They’re just apps, after all. But evidently I’m not the only one who feels like the phone is such a personal object, given some of the discussion I’ve seen of how smartphones are perceived as quite intimate objects by many of their users. I guess that does include me after all.

An lovely picture by RTMoynihan on Flickr, taken at Euston Station in London, where I'm headed next week as part of my trip to the Mapping the Magazine conference in Cardiff.

It’s great when your research interests line up with your personal interests. I was always curious about the Maker Faire, an event sponsored by Make magazine in San Mateo, California, and other cities around the U.S. The Faire seemed like a great place for someone with both crafty and geeky tendencies to hang out. I had been reading Make occasionally and enjoyed the magazine, too.

As a journalism researcher, I was also aware of other trends in the magazine industry — specifically, the increasing popularity of real-world magazine events that reinforce the magazines’ brands and unite the “imagined community” of magazine readers by bringing them together at events. I was curious about this trend as both a business strategy and a growing cultural phenomenon. So, this geeky crafter headed to the May 2009 San Mateo Maker Faire ready not just to learn some new skills, but also with a participant observation research mindset fully in place.

What I found at the Maker Faire was so compelling that I ended up conducting an entire research project around the event and the magazine’s content. I was fascinated to see the nationalistic and political references throughout the Faire, such as flags on posters and quotes from then-newly inaugurated President Barack Obama on posters and stickers. The Faire and magazine’s promise of self-actualization and community building through “making” was also evident in various ways. It was a heady mix that, well, made you want to make.

Making in itself isn’t problematic. It’s fun. However, a closer look at the Faire and the magazine’s content showed that there was another, subtler promise being made about making. There was a deeply rooted sense of “technological utopianism,” or the concept that humans can, through the savvy development and application of technology, create an ideal world.

Moreover, I felt something different developing when I looked closely at the Faire and the magazine: the representation of a possibility for “technological rehabilitation” — the idea that, having fully exploited our ecological world to the point of serious damage, we might find ways to rehabilitate it through the use of technology. Make and the Maker Faire suggest we can develop those rehabilitating technologies ourselves, on our own terms, for our own enjoyment and satisfaction, but also for the salvation of our entire (American) nation.

While this is a tempting narrative for those seeking hope in challenging times, I was forced ultimately to question whether a narrative of “technological rehabilitation” was a positive one for readers of Make and participants in the Maker Faire, and for our world at large. While individual makers’ innovations toward the goal of ecological rehabilitation would be positive steps, they are not necessarily as effective as Make would seem to suggest, given that the efforts of individuals to, say, build rain barrels or reuse plastic bags in interesting ways unfortunately pale in comparison to the constant injury done to the environment by larger political and economic forces.

This is not to say that “makers” shouldn’t continue to try to find new and more environmentally sound ways to do things, but that the story that Make tells about making is not necessarily the best story for us to hear about the role of technology in the world. Instead, we have to look at other ways in which technology has damaged the world and ways we may need to innovate non-technologically, to live with less or different technology, as our ecological systems have likely been damaged past the point of no return. Stories and events that help readers think in that direction might ultimately be more productive for ensuring the survival of humanity long-term.

Like Robert Jensen, one of my mentors whose writing helped inspire this study, I am curious about ways journalism can provide alternative narratives for our future — not just revise old ones for an increasingly desperate time. Stories and events that can unite people around those narratives could be powerful.

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.

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.

A screenshot of Narrative's iPhone app.

I forgot to post here earlier this week that I have a new story up at MediaShift about Narrative Magazine, a digital literary magazine that is using a variety of formats to provide its content. Wherever the audience may be, Narrative is there.

I think the biggest lesson of Narrative for other magazines is that diversification is key. Though it’s a lot of work and requires some investment of scarce resources, especially for a nonprofit, Narrative has worked to develop a website, print-on-demand options, mobile apps, merchandise and more. They have made their content and their brand recognizable and available to readers who are early and later adopters. I think magazines that adopt such a strategy – now – are best prepared to deal with the changing audience they will face in the coming years.

Here’s Zinio’s press release on the new Zinio MAP system.

It would be great to see magazines have more opportunities to go global using digital formats, not only making their content more widely available, but also reducing the environmental impact of international readership. I hope to see other companies also enter this market to provide us more choices in our