Week 7 Blog Post

This week, Professor Calderwood started off the class on Tuesday by showcasing Daqri, ColARmix, Aurasma, Drawing Pad, Adobe Ideas,Nearpod, Quizlet, Educreations, and Teamviewer. Most of these apps were foreign to me, but I am familiar with the last two mentioned. Daqri is an awesome 3D model showcase application. It lets you scan models from a printed sheet of paper, and gives users the ability to show them via camera on any mobile device. It was mentioned that users could create their own from scratch as well.

Teamviewer was briefly mentioned, but I have a great amount of experience with it. I am actually writing this blog post using it. Basically, it lets you connect to your computers remotely through any device capable of hosting the application. It gives you an array of options to mirror the experience of actually being on the accessed PC. It is an invaluable tool that performs a great service, for little to no cost.

As a project, we had to create a presentation in Educreations. My group did a tutorial on how to make french toast, lasting two minutes in length. The web based application was too glitchy for my use. I resorted to using the iPad version because I had spent around two hours recreating the same tutorial, trying to iron out the flaws. Overall, it has its uses in displaying visual information nicely, but the creation process was too length.

On Thursday, we had a conversation with Jaime Casap. He is the Global Education Evangelist working for Google. It was an interesting conversation because he has experience within the computer science sector. I had asked several questions, asking for his opinion on various areas of being a professional. One part of the conversation I enjoyed hearing was his reliance on technology to direct his day to day activities. I have felt that my reliance on technology to hold my information would hinder my ability to function within my career. He said that it isn't a bad thing to have things out of mind, because it gives you more opportunity to focus on the bigger issues. It gave me confidence that I am in fact alright when  typing every part of my day into my tablet, and referencing it.