25+ apps to make your everyday life easier

 

For random life stuff…

Dark Sky
A weather app with startling accuracy, its interface tells you things like: “Light rain starting in 22 minutes.” It also shows you beautiful weather maps that let you play local-news weather expert. “It’s like a wizard,” says our CTO, Gavin Hall. “If this app were available in the 1600s, it would have been burned at the stake for witchcraft.”

*Sunrise
Like your Google Calendar with key improvements, several staffers swear by this app. It offers shortcuts for adding events, and also bakes things like weather reports and Facebook birthday reminders into the mix of your daily calendar.  “It’s awesome,” says IT Manager Francil Richards.

*KeyMe
Communications manager Samantha Kelly was excited to download this app, as she recently got locked out of her apartment. She says, “You scan your keys by taking a photo of them and then you have ‘digital copies.’” With the copy, you can get a key made for you at a KeyMe kiosk (they currently have five in New York) or through the mail. Fingerprint scan is required.

*Think Dirty
This app tells you exactly what’s in the personal care product you’re about to buy. You scan the barcode, and it shares information about potentially harmful ingredients (and gives alternatives, if you want them). It’s useful for fact-checking label claims like “all-natural” and “organic.” Kyle Shearer of our Events Workgroup says, “It helps me make informed choices on products that I am bringing home.”

Yoga Studio
Yoga Studio reminds us of the “Surprise Me” feature on the TED app. You pick the kind of yoga class you want (strength, flexibility, relaxation), your level (beginner, intermediate or advanced) and the amount of time you have (20 minutes, 40 minutes or longer) and it creates a class for you. “Whenever I am traveling or too busy to exercise, I sneak in a lesson,” says Product Development Manager Jai Punjabi.

*Pocket
One of those apps on this list that you may already know about, it lets you save blog posts and articles to read when you’re offline. TEDx Digital Strategist Alex Rudloff says, “I’m able to keep track of all the articles that get sent my way. In this post-Google Reader world, it’s my primary way of keeping up on things.” Community Support Manager Mireille Pilloud adds, “They send out a weekly email I like that shows the most-Pocketed articles and suggests articles for me based on what I generally read.” Another feature that gets big ups from our staff—the fact that you can set the font size because it strips out the content’s original formatting.

*VSCO Cam
It doesn’t have a name that rolls of the tongue, but this app is great for helping turn ho-hum snapshots into arty photographs. Janet Lee of our Distribution team says, “A year ago, I was scanning my Instagram feed and noticed a lot of ‘moodier’ photos. The beauty of this app is that it doesn’t matter how bad your framing is, you can just wash it out. It’s maximum likes on instagram, with low effort.”

*Camera360
This app has more than 200 photo filters and 10 modes. But the real benefit, says Executive Producer of TED Media June Cohen, is that images are for your eyes only. “I like Camera360 for creating Instagram-like photos I don’t want to share publicly,” she says.

 

For staying organized…

*Wunderlist
An app that lets you create shareable lists of favorites—be they restaurants, sites in a city, or movies. But it’s better known for its shareable to-do lists. “It organizes my life,” says Anjali Mohan of our Client Services Workgroup. “I use it at work and at home. My husband gets reminders from the app when he needs to clean.” Production Manager Kristel Ottis also swears by this app. “There’s simply no other way I could keep track of all the nitty-gritty details that go into each production,” she says.

MeMail
This app does one thing really well—you can send yourself an email in two taps, for quick reminders or ideas you don’t want to forget. “It’s helped me get rid of all the fiddly bits of paper in my pocket,” says Product Development Associate Bedirhan Cinar.

*Trello
A slightly more visual rendering of your to-dos, this app allows you to create boards for different projects and separate sharable lists within them. Each task goes on a separate card. “I’ve tried tons of task apps, and Trello is by far my favorite,” says Social Media Editor Nadia Goodman. “I love how easy it is to customize, color code, and rearrange things. It’s also really easy to make collaborative boards and store information — like files, notes or images — within a task. My one complaint is that I wish it would ping me when a due date is coming up!”

*nvALT
A spin-off of Notational Velocity, this app is popular with techy types because it includes MultiMarkdown functionality. Front-End Developer Joe Bartlett explains, “I’m naturally scatterbrained and love nvALT for storing and indexing the sorts of details I used to jot down haphazardly and forget: conference notes, obscure math and command line tricks, what cartridge the printer takes,” he says. “It adds extra customization options.”

*Todoist
Like both Wunderlist and Trello, this to-do list helper has both an app and a web client that communicate. “I found this in my never-ending search for the perfect task management app,” says Product Development Associate Will True. “This isn’t necessarily it, but it provides simple task organization—by project, category, priority, due date. It’s not fancy, which is honestly why I like it. It also has great APIs so I can hook other things or build my own little tools on the data it provides.”

*Check
This app keeps track of all your bills and when they are due, and also monitors your bank and credit card accounts. Most importantly, it tells you when there’s a mismatch between the two — i.e. when you’re about to get charged an overdraft fee — so you can fix the problem. “It’s way better than Mint,” says IT Manager Francil Richards. “It means I’m never late on payments.”

*Evernote
Evernote is an organizational tool that you can use as a storing place for short notes, or as a place to collect all your thoughts—links, photos, notes, checklists—for larger projects. “Evernote is awesome because it’s versatile,” says Junior Designer Lilian Chen. “You can use it for storing receipts and outlining travel plans and meeting notes.”

 

For getting around…

CityMaps2Go Pro
This app downloads offline, zoomable, searchable maps of major cities, so that even if you are roaming around Tokyo and can’t read any of the signs, you can still find your way around. “It’s good for people like me who travel internationally, but don’t like to get data plans,” says Thu-Huong Ha, of our editorial team.

*Word Lens
Another great app for travelers, Word Lens visually translates printed text into your language in real time. When you snap a photo of a sign or document, it shows the image to you in English. “It’s crazy,” says Kyle Shearer of our Events Workgroup. “The translations are not always 100%, but it’s good enough to get by on.” Hello, food menus.

*Moves
Moves tracks every step you take, which sounds creepy, but is actually useful. “It quantifies how many miles you’ve walked, cycled and run,” says Patrick D’Arcy, of the TED Fellows team. “It’s not about the calories burned for me, but the ability visualize where I’ve gone on a map. A friend actually introduced me to the app when he came back from Mexico City and he was able to show me the exact routes he took.”

*Waze
An app to help you get stuck in traffic as infrequently as possible. Drivers share real-time traffic delays—accidents, traffic jams, and the like—so that you can avoid them. The head of our Media Team, June Cohen, once mentioned this app a staff meeting, and lots of us are using it now.

*Roadify
This app gives you real-time data on transit info in 50 cities in the US and Canada. “I know when the next bus or train is coming and, if it’s not there, the reason for the delay,” says Anna Verghese, Deputy Director of the TED Prize. “Psychologically, I like knowing when I reach the subway station that the train is four minutes away, so that I don’t have to hurl myself down the subway stairs.”

Exit Strategy
This app is for New Yorkers only. (Sorry.) It helps you plan your subway route, down to where to stand on the platform, and which exit to use to get to your destination in the quickest amount of time. “It speaks to my need for efficiency,” says producer Roxanne Lash.

Embark
Other staffers also recommend Embark, which is a route-planning app akin to Hop Stop that integrates information about delays. It’s available in 10 cities and has a big bonus: it works underground, without connection.

*Couch to 5k
“This app trains you to run a 5k. It gives you audio alerts when to start running/walking,” says Accountant Erline Maruhom. “The idea is that you should be able to run a 5k in nine weeks. We’ll see … I’m hopeful.”

 

For computer and email ease…

*Boomerang
This is app for Gmail that is majorly handy. It lets you set a notification to pop up if you haven’t gotten a reply on an email within a specified amount of time. It also lets you boomerang messages back to the top of your inbox, closer to when you actually need to pay attention. But the feature our staff members love: you can schedule emails to send later. “I tend to write emails in bulk at night or on the weekend—but don’t want to bug anyone then,” says writer Kate Torgovnick May. “It’s nice to be able to schedule an email for a more appropriate time and hit send.”

*Mailbox
This app helps you archive and trash email—or put off emails you don’t have to respond to immediately until a later date—with a left or right swipe. It also shows whole conversations with a cool interface that looks a lot like a chat. “On the train into work, I can quickly sift through all the emails and start my day with a clearer head,” says Post Production Manager Gwen Schroeder.

*Authy
This app disconnects 2-step authentication from text messaging, and does it in a way that’s a little more secure, should your phone fall into the wrong hands. “This is especially handy for when I’m in areas with no reception or am international and don’t have a texting plan,” says Product Development Associate Bedirhan Cinar. “Google offers an identical app, but I like Authy better because you can password protect it so if someone has your phone, they can’t easily access your 2 step codes.”

*Quicksilver
“It lets you search, find and open applications and files on your Mac quickly using shortcut keys,” says TEDx Branding Coordinator Boian Filev. “It has really sped up finding and opening files that might be buried deep in folders.”

*Flux
This app rocks for anyone who has eyes that are sensitive to the bright light of a computer screen. It makes your computer or iOS device display adjust to the time of the day, and get warmer and dimmer at night. “It keeps me from getting a headache in the evening,” says writer Kate Torgovnick May. “I also appreciate it at TED Conferences, when we can sometimes end up being in a dark theater all day. It’s nice to get some demarcation of what time it is outside.”

Could the Apple Watch be headed to your classroom?

“My Country” Assignment—21st Century Fluency Project

via Look Who’s Chalking

The Year Five students spent eight weeks focusing on their ‘My Country’ assignment. This assignment was designed to encourage students to explore their own knowledge and answer a question that could not be answered by simply looking it up on Google. They needed to create an online resource as their final product.

Students worked through the Six Ds of Solution Fluency. These are; Define, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver and Debrief. This is a model I was introduced to earlier in the year at a development day with Lee Crockett. The below link explores the Six D’s in more detail.

This essential 21st Century Fluency is actually the foundation upon which the other Fluencies are built. Recently, two longitudinal studies found that teaching a structured problem-solving process to a student will instantly increase their IQ by 10% and that this increase is sustained throughout their lives. Let’s make sure our students benefit from this. Everyone identifies problem solving as essential, but without a process like Solution Fluency, it’s just an ideal that never gets implemented.

—Lee Crockett

http://fluency21.com/blog/2013/01/08/solution-fluency-video/

I introduced the assignment with this statement:

Everyone loves to travel, especially when they get to travel overseas. They can explore different types of foods, visit famous landmarks and immerse themselves in the culture of the country. 

http://mycountryassignment.weebly.com

I created a website (using weebly.com) that students could refer to throughout the assignment stages. This meant that they did not need a paper copy of their rubrics. It was fantastic to have this website for them but if I were to complete the assignment again, I would add more to the website. I will go into more detail regarding this later on.

The students needed to answer these questions:

• Where does my family come from?
• Why is this country a fantastic place?

We started with the Define Stage. In this stage, students need to state or define what is being asked of them and fully understand this. Students videoed themselves and uploaded these onto www.kidblog.org. They were then able to comment on each other’s videos regarding what they had defined as the problem. Students also had a teacher – student conference with me. In this conference we discussed what mark they were aiming for. I had set up the tasks so that there was multiple levels of success, rather than multiple levels of failure. Students told me whether they were aiming for a 1 (not completed), a 2 (minimal completed), a 3 (expected stage) or a 4 (extended).

Next, students worked through the Discover Stage. In this stage students research how the problem occurred, they gain context to the problem and they shift their thinking towards analysis. Students began to research their country, specifically focusing on the geographical and cultural information. They also needed to interview a family member about this country.

Majority of the students were able to complete their interview in person but some completed an international Skype call and filmed the conversation using Screenr.com. One student did this and then set up a new Screenr to film the conversation whilst pausing to translate it into english. It was fantastic and really blew me away!

We then moved on to my favourite stage, the Dream Stage (creative/crafty side of me!). Students needed to look into the future and see the problem solved. They had to think of ‘what is’ and imagine the possibilities of ‘what could be’. The Dream Stage is one which cultivates creativity, innovation and imagination, and these skills are extremely important for people to have in today’s world.

Students put together a poster to outline what they imagined their finished product to be. They used key words, sentences and pictures to show this. They then presented these in small groups, explaining what they had found out so far and what they still needed to do.

Then came the Design Stage. This is when students work backwards from the future, from their Dream. They identify the critical milestones that happened and decide how to implement the solution. This is the Action Plan, the Design of the Dream.

In this stage students needed to create a 10-day holiday to their country. They needed to include flight details and costs, other travel costs (cars, taxis, etc), accommodation, sight seeing and attractions, food expenses and spending money. The created a budget for their holiday as well as an itinerary. Students used Pages to complete this and majority of them set up a form of table within their document.

Students also used an online timeline to create a schedule for themselves. On this they included the dates (across the week), what they planned to complete each day and how they were going to do this. Students printed this and ticked off what they had completed each day. This was a great way for students to reflect on their learning over the week.

Students then came to the Deliver Stage. There are two sections in the Delivery Stage:

Produce and Implement.

In this stage students put their plan into action and complete the process of solving the problem which they originally defined.

Students were given the option of using EdCanvas or Weebly for their online resource. These were selected as they were both relatively new to students and therefore created an ‘even playing field’. Unfortunately, students had difficulty creating their websites at school (due to proxy settings) and therefore had to use EdCanvas.

EdCanvas was great to use as students could upload videos, photos and text. As a teacher I was able to set up a class group and give them the code. Also, students did not need to have an email account to access it. When students had completed their EdCanvas, they printed them off so that I had a hard copy to mark.

The final part of the Deliver Stage (Implement) was to persuade their audience (Year Four students, Year Six students and parents) to go on their holiday. They needed to create a range of resources to assist them with this. They also had to focus on the language they were using and how this could persuade someone to agree with them.

We set the classroom up as a travel agency with students positioned around the outside of the room. This was great as visitors moved around the room in a circular motion. Majority of the parents came to the travel agency as we had it over two days and from 2.30 – 4pm. This was perfect as student pick-up is at 3pm, so most parents where already here.

The final section was the Debrief Stage. This is the most important part of the Six Ds as student look over the process they have taken and reflect on it. They ask themselves about how this product or process could be made better this time or next time.

Students completed a written self reflection task based on their assignment. Once completing this I had another student – teacher conference with each student to explore how they had gone with each stage and if they had reached their original goal which they created in the Define Stage. It was very interesting to hear student insights on the different stages and majority of them said they would aim higher next time.

There are so many great students achievements that come out of setting an assignment like this. Not only are the subjects being integrated together (English, S&E and Mathematics), but they also have the opportunity to be responsible for their own learning. The rubric they are assessed on has multiple levels of success and students can therefore set a reachable goal. Students were taught about SMART Goals (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely). They referred back to this throughout the assignment to make sure they were pushing themselves to do their best work and, also, not setting unachievable goals.

I found that majority of my students challenged themselves and achieved what they had set out to do. I was extremely proud of all the work they completed and the constant reflection they did throughout this task.

The Year Five classroom was open to visitors on Wednesday 3rd July and Thursday 4th July.  Many parents, friends and students from other year levels came to observe the travel agency.

I am very much looking forward to running the next 21st Century Fluency task in our classroom. Stay tuned for more.

Gabrielle Trinca. @GabrielleTrinca

22 Ways To Use Twitter For Learning Based On Bloom’s Taxonomy

Last year we created a “twitter spectrum,” an image that clarified different ways that twitter could be used in the classroom in (hopefully) authentic ways.

TeachBytes has followed that up with an excellent graphic of their own that uses a pure Bloom’s Taxonomyapproach. The specific ideas range from “remix trending tweets with video and music” to creating concept maps showing the relationship between tweets.

We must admit to going back and forth over the exact fit of a social media platform like twitter in a formal (or informal) learning environment. Clearly it’s a great way to skim and monitor information streams, but just like we wouldn’t use sing Shakespearean sonnets to toddlers at birthday parties, using twitter as an in-depth critical thinking tool requires a bit of squinting, even as an Avante-garde 21st century learning tool.

Unless you’re using it as a cultural survey of sorts. Or study media design. Or following experts. Then it works swimmingly.

As with all things, sweet spot matters. To help you find it, this graphic should help.

Social Media Meets Bloom’s Taxonomy: 22 More Ideas To Use Twitter For Learning

Bryan Setser’s: Ten Tips for Teacherpreneurs

Film Group Backs Antipiracy Curriculum

This could turn out to be an essential part of curriculums developed in the future that focus on digital citizenship skills and awareness. This article featured in Stuff talks about the Center for Copyright Information’s push to have schools teach kids about anti-piracy and the importance of respecting copyrights.”

via Stuff.co.nz

When it comes to learning about the evils of internet piracy, Hollywood studios and the major music labels want kids to start young.

A nonprofit group called the Center for Copyright Information has commissioned a school curriculum to teach primary-age children about the value of copyrights.

The curriculum, still in draft stage, includes lesson plans, videos and activities for teachers and parents to help educate students about the “importance of being creative and protecting creativity,” with topics such as “Respect the Person: Give Credit,” “It’s Great to Create,” and “Copyright Matters”.

The nonprofit is backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and others, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Some critics say the curriculum, called “Be a Creator,” would promote a biased agenda. Others contend it would use up valuable classroom time when public schools already are struggling to teach the basics.

“While it’s certainly a worthy topic of discussion with students, I’m sure some teachers would have a concern that adding anything of any real length to an already packed school day would take away from the basic curriculum that they’re trying to get through now,” Frank Wells, spokesman for the California Teachers Association, told the newspaper.

The MPAA blames the illegal distribution of movies and TV shows for causing billions of dollars annually in lost revenue. The trade group has tried various tactics over the years to fight the problem, from filing lawsuits against college students who illegally downloaded movies to backing ill-fated federal laws that would shut down rogue websites.

The program is being prepared by the California School Library Association and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition, known as iKeepSafe, a nonprofit focused on helping children thrive in the digital environment. The group partners with educators, law enforcement agencies and major corporations, including Google.

The MPAA declined to comment and referred calls to the Center for Copyright Information, which is also working with iKeepSafe on the curriculum.

Jill Lesser, the centre’s executive director, said the curriculum has not been approved.

“It’s unfortunate this got out because we were nowhere near done,” she told the newspaper.

Lesser told a House subcommittee in September that she hoped the curriculum would be tested as a pilot program in California in the current academic year, and eventually be adopted at schools nationwide, the Times reported.

5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students

via Edutopia

The Problematic Connotation Of Video Games

via TeachThought

Perhaps more than any other media form, video games suffer from connotation.

While sourced directly from a stunning convergence of art and technology, the public perception of video games drips with the juvenile, evoking images of–depending on your age–Pac-Man, Mario, or the Grand Theft Auto series. Their time in the public spotlight is usually brief, and tangled with inevitably tilted discussions on children, violence, impression, and even Constitutional rights.

This misses what makes gaming such an engaging rhetorical form–and the explosive evolution of video games as an interactive narrative medium.

Rainbow 6 is an upcoming game from developer Ubisoft Montreal that not only allows interaction (a player manipulating a digital avatar to in pursuit of some goal), but also seeks to tell a story in a way that books, poems, or music cannot.

The lead-in from the full text (seen here at Game Informer, by Matt Bertz and Jeff Cork):

“Americans are angry. And why shouldn’t they be? With an exponentially expanding national debt, crippling foreclosures, corporate bailouts, degrading infrastructure, dwindling job market, and widening income gap between the haves and the have-nots, it’s getting harder to believe politicians when they speak of American exceptionalism as if it were a fundamental truth.

“In response to gradual erosion of our beloved nation, resentful citizens of all kinds of political backgrounds are rising up in the form of new political movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. But unlike the 1960s, when protests and activism resulted in the discontinuation of the military draft, the Civil Rights Act, and the sexual revolution, the contemporary bickering government parties have proven largely ineffective at slowing or reversing the downward trajectory.

“The media isn’t helping matters. Rather than promote discussions about viable solutions moving forward, ad-driven 24-hour media outlets and radio programs are content to stoke the fires and sensationalize political differences. America’s volatile political climate serves as the jumping-off point for Rainbow 6 Patriots.”

Not your typical shoot-the-aliens—or even nameless “terrorist” context.

“In previous games, allowing a civilian to die was game over. Now you’re not exempt from tough situational decisions. Do you kill one civilian now and potential spare hundreds of lives, or is the lone human life too critical to lose even if it means thousands others may meet their untimely deaths down the road? In Patriots, you make the call.”

The story finishes with a play-through of an early draft of the game, in video game language called a “build”:

“Our live game demo (of the game) doesn’t start with Team Rainbow sated in the back of the chopper outside a facility surrounded by police. Instead, our first glimpse comes from the perspective of a well-to-do real estate investor sitting in his idyllic American home. Judging by the polished wooden floors, larhe HDTV, and the iPad-like tablet sitting to his right, this guy is living the good life.”

Continuing, the main character is presented a cupcake for his birthday.

“Happy Birthday. Go on, blow it out,” she says. Like a scene out of Heavy Rain (another immersive, heavily narrative video game), the player is given the option to blow out the candle or stroke his wife’s cheek.

“These types of ‘bad or worse’ situations define the story campaign in Rainbow 6 Patriots. Given the sensitive subject matter of Americans turning on each other, we asked the team if they were prepared to face a media controversy propagated by news networks that move so quickly and ignorantly to condemn video games as youth-corrupting trash. We can see the sensational headline now: ‘Liberal Game Publisher Paints Tea Party as Terrorists.”

“Why can’t a game be smarter? Why can’t a game embrace issues? We’re not coming down with any kind of ruling or judgment about any of this. We’re letting people talk amongst themselves. We’re making a game that we want to provoke discussion and deeper thought. We certainly welcome the opportunity to talk intelligently and thoughtfully about the mature subject matter. As the game industry evolves, we’re going to face these issues more and more often.”

As technology progresses, media forms will likely evolve but the rhetoric behind them will not. Video games are simply a media that are both interactive and digital. By some odd consequence of consumerism, sound, and color they were “given” to children first, and invariably (and unfortunately) any evaluation of games as a media form turns to the needs of children.

The more important–and more fruitful–discussions will continue to focus on a media form that is increasingly interactive, inter-textual, and full of self-directed scaling up and down Bloom’s taxonomy in digital acts of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Facebook Steps Up Efforts to Curb Bullying

MIT Develops inFORM, Blows Your Mind by Rendering Digital Stuff in 3D Physically

via Digital Trends