From time to time as I scan the Twitter feeds I see the adjective ‘cool‘ pop up in reference to this application or that tool. Now, because I am actually a Grumpy Old Man, I must admit that I feel annoyed when I see the term cool to describe every new tool or app that appears on the horizon. They cannot all be cool.
Yet, I do believe that some applications are deserving of the adjective cool. I will list three.
1. HyperCard. Apple’s authoring tool that spawned an entire generation of educators willing to give technology a go in the classroom. HyperCard changed my life. HyperCard and similar tools led to the origin and growth of research and development laboratories such as EmLab at the University of Wollongong. Sadly, HyperCard is with us no longer. Link: Apple’s New Hypercard 2.4.
2. KidPix. Excellent software for kids that integrates multimedia elements and a variety of publishing possibilities. It is fun for everyone. Available here.
3. Comic Life. The team at plasq created Comic Life not long back. An incredibly easy application to use with a diverse range of uses and a plethora of publishing possibilities. This is a fun application as well. I am yet to try out Comic Magiq Life. Mac | Win
Now, I think blogging, wikis and podcasts are also excellent developments.
It is now over to you. Would you like to suggest an application that is worthy of mention?
July 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Glogster (http://www.glogster.com) deserves the “cool” epithet and falls in same category as Comiqs. It alows you to create animated posters, using Glogster elements with uploaded picture, sound & video fragments of your own. With CutePDF or similar, you can also print your poster to pdf. Here’s one I did for a conference: http://catspyjamasnz.glogster.com/eLearning-Prioritisation-Tool-169/
It’s easy to use, versatile and students would enjoy this collage type presentation. It does have some minor issues, font types are limited, font is difficult to balance across an element. Despite this, I think I will use it instead of ppt for my next presentation.