Disruptive Technologies

Course site for Disruptive Technologies. Exploring identity, community, & design.

Month: February 2015 (page 1 of 7)

An interesting concept video from Microsoft of the future or collaboration and productivity. They’ve also put together a companion site. It is worth a look.

Printer Pro — Free this Week

Apple’s app of the week is something called, Printer Pro. It gives you the ability to print from your iPad to a printer that you own. Might be worth the free download.

Screen Shot 2015-02-27 at 1.27.34 PM

Getting the Reading

Week 5: Your Time to Shine!

Quick Hitters

This week the stage is yours … Teams Right Shark and Too Disruptive get to present their synthesis of the first four classes with an emphasis on Community. I am really excited to see how you pull together the notions of community that we’ve discussed in the first block of the class. I did my assigned readings, did you?

Before we dive into the presentations we will look at a few quick items and talk a little bit about what they might mean to us going forward. I know that you are all hard at work on your videos and I promise I will let you wrap up early so you can take some time work more on those. Next week we will be looking at those as we also kick off the “identity” phase of the class. But enough about next week, let’s get to work on discussing the first big artifact of the class!

Out of Class

Readings

Assignments

  • Continue working on your Team Videos and post them to the course site via a YouTube or Vimeo embeds with a short overview of what technology you focused on and why you chose to explore it by noon on 3/5/2015
  • Weekly Create using Phoster or another like app for the iPad that illustrates your initial thoughts on identity. Post your artifact and share a short thought in the post about why this speaks to our next theme. Due by 5 PM on Tuesday
  • Weekly Team Post … what were the biggest takeaways from the readings? Please cite at least two core ideas from both The Medium is the Massage and The Web is a Customer Service Medium and discuss them in the context of both community and identity. Do you feel differently about your team video now that you have read McLuhan’s work? Due by 5 PM on Tuesday

Paperless Expenses and Evernote Scannable – MacStories

I use Scannable every single day to make my life easier. I am a huge Evernote user, but I take a ton of handwritten notes — especially in meetings where I am given handouts. I used to take them back to my office and put them in a real scanner. Now I use my phone and Scannable.

My favorite feature of the app is that you don’t have to pay close attention to how you take pictures because Scannable will generally make them look better for you once they’ve become PDFs. Blurred text, unclear borders, slightly tilted perspective – in most cases, Scannable can adjust everything automatically, which makes for a solid user experience.

via Paperless Expenses and Evernote Scannable – MacStories.

Kate’s weekly iPad reflection

The iPad has continued to prove useful with my daily activities. I find in general its just faster and easier to use then my laptop because I don’t have to be hunched over a desk all the time. I compose my powerpoint presentations on it now and was very happy with its ease of use. I also have been making more use of Evernote for note taking and storing webpages that I would like to refer to later on.  I started using the google app as well and was very happy with its perfect translation of what I was saying. I continue to explore art apps that I think would be handy for that aspect of my work. I have been trying out Autodesk 123D Sculpt+ and have found it to be a wonderful and intuitive environment that is very easy to work with and has great results and for me would be a good way to explore 3D work however it occasionally quits so saving work is a must! The main problem I have been having with the iPad this week is its judgment on what should be autocorrected. A number of its assumptions have been pretty disruptive in the fact that when I am typing a long paper or email things get changed with out me noticing until after the fact or it stops me and I have to go back and change it. I like that it gives me suggestions I just wish it didn’t change things with out me accepting the changes.

Weekly iPad Reflection

As promised, I’ve made modifications…

1. I switched the iPad into do not disturb mode.
2. I’ve installed slack.
3. I’ve insisted that all communications relating to the productions that I am organizing go through slack.

Slack is the place where I can keep professional communications, files, notices, production documents, images, and a separate channel for nonsensical communications.

I’ve got a channel set up for every production and commitee/special interest group; they’ve all just sent in their posters for our newsletter. Because they all live on slack, I don’t have to scour Facebook, drive, Dropbox, or my email for any files. (The Google drive integration is fantastic)
Slack

Now that Staller’s Cabaret and Theater Three have been outfitted with deliciously functional wireless networking equipment, rehearsal is a pleasure to document; I don’t even have to leave the immediate area to be productive, online.

Ken’s iPad Reflection, Week 4

Since my last iPad reflection, I’ve been exploring more options for diagramming apps. I’ve found a cloud-based one that I like a lot called LucidChart. I’ve previously used draw.io, which is similar but the mobile browser experience is terrible. LucidChart has a native iOS app in addition to their browser version. Since it’s cloud-based you can easily go back and forth between devices and collaborate on diagrams. Also it can be integrated with Google Drive. The free version limits you to 60 items per diagram but this hasn’t been a problem for me yet.

Jay Loomis – iPad Reflection

I’ve been experimenting with an app called Lemur. I have used this app previously as a MIDI controller for Ableton Live, but now I’m examining new possibilities that will allow me to use my iPad to construct and control samples of  urban soundscapes so I can emphasize different noises that are present in a variety of cities around the world. Even though the Lemur app is very user friendly and gives me the ability to construct button and slider configurations using my iPad, I find that the button and slider configuration software on my laptop is easier to control. Maybe it’s a matter of practice. I like to be able to swipe between windows and desktops to compare information quickly, which is not an option with the iPad. I’m trying a new note taking app called Notability – it is very similar to Good Notes, which I use on a daily basis, but Notability offers voice recordings connected to notes. I think this feature could be useful, but I need to test it out.

Week 4 iPad Reflection – Chris W

The was a day this week we here I forgot to pack my laptop in my bag but remembered my iPad. With a little getting used to I was able to do all my tasks that day using only the iPad. Some of these tasks included taking notes for class, studying via ebook, sending and reading emails, and preparing a presentation. Earlier this semester I had mentioned a few qualms I had with the native keyboard and my “need” for an external keyboard. After 4 weeks of occupying the iPad I realize I may have been a bit to hasty to make a judgement. While there are some functions that would definitely improve the native iPad keyboard (arrow keys when working on cell based programs/apps), the native keyboard is functional enough for everyday use. Do not get me wrong. My iPad experience would definitely be better with an external keyboard. Cole shared a link to some third party keyboards for iOS 8. I’ll be checking out a few of them so expect a review in my next post.

iSpy an iPad Frustration

Hello Everyone!

Now that I am about a month into using the iPad, I feel that I need to come forward and admit a few things. I love the iPad in general. The UI is great and quick, and I can’t get over the multi-touch swipe function. However, I feel that I am beginning to plateau in the iPad’s functionality. Granted, this plateau is probably representative of the tiredness that I am feeling in the rest of my work. So maybe I should also call it a lacking of patience.

In the first couple weeks, I was still getting used to the iPad; now, I feel fairly comfortable in my abilities. I am beginning to notice a speed curve. I feel that I can type fairly fast considering I am using an on-screen keyboard; however, some things just refuse to work with iOS properly. This website, for instance, is nearly impossible to deal with. I usually give up and go to a computer for my blog posts. I have to swap back and forth between the “text” and “visual” options just to get these simple paragraphs entered. I know that Stony Brook is working on getting support from the WordPress and/or Edublogs app though.

I also was surprised a few days ago to realize that I had to download a separate app in order to play .wav files…that’s a fairly generic file format that I hope that I am just completely iOS incompetent and that Apple did not not support! More than just being a music major, I appreciate high quality audio, and iTunes isn’t really gonna get it for me.

For now, I am also experimenting around with different productivity apps, and in particular, apps for note-taking and writing. I have to read a lot for my field, and I love getting to highlight and whatnot in a book. So as a positive note, let’s see what the iPad can do since I keep finding things it cant!

 

Technically Yours,
R.

Weekly iPad Reflection Week 4 – Katherine

Using my laptop has become very rare over the past few weeks now that I have the iPad. I have no brought my laptop to class once semester, which I never expected to happen. This week I downloaded a few new apps like Google slides and Slack. I’ve only used Google slides so far when I met with my group Too Disruptive. It was nice to all be able to edit our slides using our iPads and see the edits being made in real-time. We were able to quickly divide up the work into teams and choose the order of topics we want to present on Thursday. I’ve yet to use Slack but Chris S. has been raving about it being a great app for communication among groups so I figured I’d give it a try. I’ve also been using Google Drive a lot more to store my Photoshop artwork since the files are too big to save to my netID drive. I love being able to work on stuff in class in Staller but then being able to open it up later on in the day when I’m at a different Sinc site or on my laptop from my dorm room. I’m still incredibly impressed with the battery life of this thing. I continue to charge it every night before I go to sleep but I’m confident that the battery could last at last 2 days of classes before needing to be charged. I love not having to carry a charger around, although it wouldn’t even add that much extra weight to my bag even if I did. I’ve gotten more and more used to not having a physical keyboard although I’m still interested in purchasing one just to make writing long documents slightly less tedious. I’ve been wondering if there’s a way to print directly from the iPads to a sinc site but I don’t think there’s a way to get the print from anywhere app on the iPad but I’ll keep looking.

Synthesis – Community – Team Right Shark

Link to presentation

Readings for Synthesis Presentation – Too Disruptive

Please complete the following readings before class on Thursday.

Related to Cluetrain Manifesto:

  • http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/03/cluetrain-manifesto-still-relevant-10-years-later086/

    While reading, think about what theses from the original Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) are still relevant today. Which theses are no longer relevant in 2015?

  • We will also be watching a scene from the 1986 film Jumpin Jack Flash during class. You do not need to watch the movie as a homework assignment, as we will just be showing a short clip during our presentation.

Wenger Readings:

http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/are-the-new-web-2-0-technologies-relevant/

http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/online-communities-of-practice/

iPad reflexion – Week 4 – Shady

On the positive side, I’m really enjoying just bringing the iPad to class.  All the content is there, it’s easy to use, it helps me collaborate with my team-mates, I can get up to do a presentation without having to carry anything else other than the iPad.

On the negative side, because i’m not too familiar with it, I feel it slows me down when I’m trying to move fast through Google Drive.  I find it cumbersome to name, sort, and share documents.

The most surprising thing so far is the fact that I have been doing really well without a keyboard.  I was set that I would need one when I first got the iPad, but so far, I have been working really well with the native iPad keyboard.

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