Green Information Technology Solutions: Font Type Can Make a Difference

I serve on a strategic planning for using information technology.  The use of greener solutions has come up several times. The January issue of Campus Technology has an article, Green Flash, on the topic.  According to the author, Jennifer Grayson, printer ink costs almost $8,000/gallon.  Wow!!  That said, it certainly is believable.  To use less ink, Victor Gosnell, the chief technology office at Gosnell recommended using a "green friendly" font - Century Gothic. Read more about printing costs and the font in the April 2009 article from Printer.com, Printing Costs: Does Font Choice Make a Difference? 
The printer ink cost information from the article is summarized in a table shown below.

 

eBooks and Helpful Apps

I read a great blog, How to Create Your Own Textbook — With or Without Apple. The best part was the information on apps that were new to me. The blog author identified three steps for creating an eBook:
1) Aggregation where you gather all of the information.  She mentioned Delicious and Diigo.  As I noted in an earlier blog, Diigo includes some fantastic tools for annotating websites that I need to use.
2) Curation where you identify what you want to accomplish and the pertinent resources.
3) Creation where you create a repository for the learning resources.

The author also provided guidelines for targeting readers.  The questions are pertinent to designing any learning content:

1. How are learners going to use the information in the learning content?
2. How will they demonstrate what they have learned?  How will the instructor know?
3. What assessments are pertinent?

The apps that were new to me are:

• Paper.li to create and publish your own newspaper
• Twitted Times, another personal newspaper app
• Scoop.it to create and publish magazines

Mobile Technologies and the Innovative Medical Home

Dr. W. suggested that I watch the webinar, Innovation in the Medical Home: How Mobile and Social Technologies Can Accelerate Health Behavior Changes, so I did!  The webinar supplements the information on telehealthcare in the Informatics and Nursing textbook. You can watch the video below.  It covers the topics of patient empowerment using mobile apps to manage diseases like congestive heart failure and diabetes.  It prompted me to explore many of the wonderful apps in the iTunes app store for diabetes! Amazing! Several of the apps should be perfect with clients who have metabolic syndrome.

Innovation in the Medical Home: How Mobile and Social Technologies Can Accelerate Health Behavior Changes from Loren Vandegrift on Vimeo.

Yellow Submarine iBook

This has been an interesting morning.  I downloaded The Yellow Submarine iBook. Great free book!!! The file size was too big for the iPhone but it worked on the iPad!!  It is a great example of an iBook for children (and their parents and grandparents).  Each colorful page has interactive components:

• if you touch an object it makes a sound
• little mini movies

The very end of the book includes all of the songs from the Yellow Submarine by the Beatles.  Enjoy!

Kingsoft Office - Another Free Office Suite Software for the PC

Kingsoft Office 2012 is free office suite software for the PC.  It features word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software.  What is a bit surprising is that it also includes clipart and templates.  The download file size for the free version is only 82 MB. It features a standard menu (as opposed to a ribbon menu) with features that are very similar to Microsoft Office (see screenshot below).  A nice feature is that users can save the files as Microsoft Office file extensions by default. 

There is a mobile version of the software for the Android.

Users can upgrade to the standard or professional versions for either $49.95 or $69.95.

iAnnotate PDF vs PDF-Notes & PDFpen

MacWorld had an article on a new app PDFpen which allows users to annotate PDF files.  pdf-notes and PDFpen are very similar to iAnnotate and identical in cost ($9.99).  iAnnotate PDF iPad App Review provides an excellent review of the iAnnotate app. What is very interesting is a free (ad supported) version of pdf-notes. Of course, I am always looking for free productivity tools for students who encumber great expenses while attending college, as well as others.  A brief comparison of the apps is noted below:

• All include an comprehensive User Guide with screenshots and explanations.  Since the User Guide is a PDF file, users can try out the features while reading the guide.
• All allow the users to link to their Dropbox to retrieve PDFs.  iAnnotate allows users to also connect to WebDAV, or a webpage.  I have only used Dropbox.

What makes pdf-notes distinctive is the the Settings function includes links to the pdf-notes blog, introduction in YouTube. You can also customize the bookshelf theme and change the icon color.  One other feature of pdf-notes is that it allows for mirroring of the iPad2.  Since it is a free app and the ads are not terribly annoying, it is certainly a worthwhile use.

CloudOn and iPad Insights

Had an email from a friend asking if there was a Microsoft Office app for the iPad.  I shared the information about CloudOn and SkyDrive.  What I discovered is that if the user is not really familiar with the iPad, those apps don't make much sense to those who are used a desktop or laptop PC - not good.

That goes back to my blog re iBooks Author - start simple. I really suggest that new users of iPads get familiar with the hardware.  Go to Lynda.com or YouTube to see if there are any free videos available to help shorten the learning curve. 

Most of my colleagues in the School of Nursing are seasoned users of Dropbox.  We have shared folders with committee members, friends, and family. Dropbox or any type of similar app is a must today. The start simple suggestion means that new iPad users be familiar with Dropbox before adding new apps like CloudOn. That said, remember that CloudOn is a "cloud" storage space meaning that it is not appropriate for files that have confidential information relating to private information, patients or students.

To make the journey simple - start with getting comfortable with the iPad and then slowly add cloud storage apps like Dropbox. Cloud storage apps mitigate the issue of not having a USB connection on the iPad.