Apps

Old habits

ccoffa Blogs

postsI am trialling the App Posts for the first time.  (I know it is probably not new, but it is to me).  I have a natural tendency to revert to my MacBook Pro or desktop when I compose posts but thought I would take this App for a spin.  First impressions are good.  I like the interface, the preview of posts and comments.  Placing the image (a screenshot) was straightforward and speedy.

I am encouraged to keep going and believe that students would find this a great way to post.

At the same time, I decided (due to an upgrade glitch) to alter the theme I have been using for many years.  On the recommendation of @suewaters of Edublogs I investigated some Mobile friendly themes.  More and more I see the necessity for this as we access our sites from mobile devices.  So I will see how this goes.  I prefer to set a theme and stick with it as it is the ‘branding’ of my professional space but change is good too !

School App – testing, testing 1,2,3,4

ccoffa Professional_learning ,

Inspired by a few Tweets and a presentation by Jarrod Robinson @pegeek at the recent ICTEV conference, I thought I would give App Creation a go. Using ibuildapp.com, it was relatively simple to get to this point. Our intention is to give our parents a window in to the school using the technology many carry in their pockets. The first one is Web App, the second an iPhone/Android. This is definitely just ‘sandbox’ time, lots of rough edges and not a lot of content, but shows what you can do with a great site and few hours of play.


Playing around with these things is fun, but I can’t help thinking about the practicalities. There is nothing worse than cyber-junk: sites that are not up to date. If schools are going to create apps – the logical consequence is that they have to be updated, kept alive – this responsibility will need to be managed. I like the idea, and obviously the tech side is not insurmountable but we need to plan how they will work before launching them into the wide blue yonder. We need to define our audience, our purpose and the determine how to administer it.

Communicating with our communities is an important function and this tool seems to have potential. I’ll keep playing.

Anyone else been down this path? What do you use your school app for? Used this App builder ? Used a better one?