Nocking the Arrow

In days gone by, the paperboy and the postman would bring reading material and information to your doorstep. After sifting through the meaningless junk, you could spend time reading the articles that were of personal interest. Today, information comes flooding to your web connected device, and with the help of RSS feeds, and RSS readers, this information comes "pre-curated" to your personal reading preferences and interests. With tens of millions of blogs available, who has time to filter through all of the irrelevant stuff? Time is saved because the sifting and searching has been done. Time is also saved because feeds are aggregated into a single location, called a reader.  Time is saved because updates and new information are sent automatically to subscribers. This short video explains Real Simple Syndication. Nearly all of my reading is now being done on my iPad. Here are three of my favorite apps for curating and reading RSS feeds on the iPad. Feedl...

"Wa'sup Lisa?", asked Tyler. "Not much. What's up with you?" "I just got a $15 iTunes gift card from my grandma for getting good grades on my report card last semester." Lisa said, "That's cool. Are you gonna buy some games, or something?" Tyler said, "Maybe. But we are getting iPads at school next year, and I should probably get a few apps that will help me with my school work. You were in a one-to-on class last year. Which apps did you buy?" Lisa explained, "Well, our teachers encouraged us to use free stuff that could be used on any device, not just the iPad. But, by the end of the year, there were a few paid apps that really helped us get more organized and creative with our iPads. Your $15 iTunes card should cover just about everything you need." "Really? Which ones should I be looking at?", askedTyler. Lisa said, "Early on, we all bought Notability . It used to be $.99 cents, bu...

Having just downloaded the new YouTube app onto my iPad, I began to wonder, where should I put the icon?  My title question actually has significance to me as an educator, as I would like to pass along an answer to students and colleagues who may be grappling with this same pressing question.   ( By the way, the YouTube app for iOS - outstanding!  ***** ) Like many iPad users, I have created folders to help organize the dozens, OK hundreds , of apps that I have acquired during the past several months.  Some of my folders are labeled as follows;   Education, Entertainment, Productivity, Social, Personal, and of course, Google . " Where is the best place for my YouTube app icon?" Education - Is YouTube a frequently used app in teaching and learning?  Well, if it's not, then your students are missing out on billions of potential learning opportunities?   Facebook aside, I see more students on YouTube that any other app - hands ...