Azu Ike

I have been following the digital writing market for some time now and was intrigued when I learned about a new product from Tegware, called the Tegware Bagel , which marries an iPhone case with a small Boogie Board eWriter display, which was released at CES 2014. Having reviewed the original Boogie Board when it was released, I saw first-hand how liberating it was to use for jotting down notes and for doodling and have enjoyed using one ever since. In fact, I now keep a Boogie Board Jot 4.5  on my desk at work to write down reminders and telephone numbers instead of wasting paper. There is a certain beauty in the simplicity of technology when it is done right and in this regard, Tegware has found a sweet spot for using Kent Display's eWriter technology to marry it to an iPhone case. At first glance one might say why would you need to have another display when you have a digital device like an iPhone? That was my first reaction, but soon I realized that there are times when you j...

Last week was certainly an exciting week as all the new gadgets and gizmos were announced at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. One of the gadgets I had my eyes on all last year was the Boogie Board Sync 9.7 from Improv Electronics which had given us a taste for the product at last Year's CES. Well it finally arrived at my home last week and I have been putting it though its paces. If you have used any of the other Boogie Boards they are simple and easy to use eWriters for doodling or drawing, but one of the features that many of us asked for was a way to save our drawings and notes which is now possible with the Boogie Board Sync. Weighing in less than a pound and powered by a rechargeable battery which should last all week this device complete with stylus is an easy tool to capture notes and ideas without the need for pen and paper. The Boogie Board Sync utilizes a 9.7 inch diagonal LCD display to write on. While some of the early reviews have complained about the light contrast when wr...

With the release of Adobe Presenter 9 comes the Drag and Drop feature which gives developers a way to create interactive drag and drop questions to a quiz. The Drag and Drop feature is intuitive and allows you to create a number of different types of questions that can include both text and pictures. In the Halloween example, I created a simple Drag and Drop quiz called the Candy Challenge that allows the user to match a picture of the candy bar with the name of the candy. In the screencast below you will see just how easy it is to create a Drag and Drop question in Adobe Presenter 9. To actually try the Candy Challenge click on the link .

Let's face it, as wonderful as interactive whiteboards are in the classroom, with shrinking school budgets it is getting harder and harder to install these tools in each and every classroom. But with the range of students in classrooms with various learning styles having access to an interactive whiteboard to craft lessons can be advantageous to teachers trying to meet the needs of all students. With this in mind, I was really excited to try out the recently released solution from IPEVO ,  the  IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System.  The IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System is a cost effective way to turn any whiteboard or flat surface into and interactive whiteboard. The   IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System works with both Windows and Macintosh computers and the system is comprised of a small camera, stylus and supplied Annotator software. Teacher will need to  IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System also have access to a LCD projector for the cla...

I have been involved in Elearning for some time now and am really excited to be speaking at the Adobe Learning Summit 2013 in Las Vegas, NV on October 21, 2013. I will be sharing the work that I have been doing with Adobe Presenter 9 in the graduate courses that I teach and how it has changed my perspective on how to deliver course content on the web. My topic for the session is:  Understanding Learner Intervention & Collaboration in Post-secondary Education  Brian S. Friedlander, Ph.D. & John Dorbolo, Ph.D. With a shift to learning anytime and anywhere, it is important for instructors to be able to provide timely feedback to students and intervene to keep students on course and heading in the right direction. In this session, learn about the Adobe Presenter 9 workflow and how college instructors can provide timely feedback to students who are taking courses online, as well as strategies to engage students to collaborate in the eLearning process. Find out how students...

I guess patience is a real virtue especially when it comes to developing apps for Apple's IOS devices. In the case of the Co:Writer App for IOS from Don Johnston, Inc , the wait was certainly worth it.  Co:Writer for Mac and PC has become to large degree the standard in the assistive technology field for word prediction. I can remember when I first saw Co:Writer for the first time I was floored just how good the prediction algorithms were. It had the uncanny ability to feel like it was reading my Co:Writer for IOS comes complete with a large library of built-in Topic Dictionaries, what happens when the student is writing for example a current events paper on the Civil War in Syria? Not a problem, Co:Writer for IOS can go out to the web and create a Scraped Topic Dictionary on the fly. Wow that is some powerful feature! Co:Writer for iPad mind as I demonstrated it on the computer. But what could we come to expect from Co:Writer on an IOS device? With a long history of being the ...

Adobe Presenter 9 just might be one of Adobe's best kept secrets. As a long time Adobe Presenter user it is really exciting to see the evolution of this product and watch as the feature set grows. Adobe Presenter 9 has to be one of the best releases and one that will enable subject matter experts, teachers, and instructional designers to develop full blown courses with audio, video and multimedia. For those of you who may not be familiar with Adobe Presenter, it is a plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint on Windows, that adds a full set of new features to PowerPoint making it easy to create eLearning modules. For those of you who have been using PowerPoint for years, having access to Adobe Presenter 9 will afford you opportunity to quickly turn your presentations into full fledged eLearning assets that can be published to Adobe Connect , a Web server, or your Learning Management System. Adobe Presenter 9 Toolbar As a subject matter expert, Adobe Presenter 9 lets me package my eLearnin...