Backchannel Chat – Android

I have been busy building new mobile apps for Backchannel Chat, the first of which is for Android.

This is a complete re-write of the Backchannel Chat app. Previous versions used a HTML bridge to push events into the application from an embedded web view. This version communicates directly to the server without any embedded middleware.

The app was built using Xamarin Forms, I made use of this so that I could get both platforms for roughly the same effort. iOS and Android did require some platform specific renderers and services, but the Forms echo-system is growing at such a rate that finding pre-built controls and services is becoming easier.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

The app can be downloaded for free:

Find That ATM

My latest app is called Find That ATM which is a utility to help you find an ATM in Australia.

It has a database of all the major banks and will show the ATM’s that are in your immediate area. 

Tax Depreciation Helper

Recently I’ve been watching my accountant wife work out depreciation for various assets. The process is pretty old fashioned, she would need to look up the asset in a big printed book (or online PDF form) and then do some calculations to work out the prime value or the diminishing value of the asset. The tables are broken up into categories, so if you know the particular category name you can then navigate to the asset. But if you don’t know the category then you end up doing quite a bit of searching.

The ideal process would be to search for the asset on your phone and then even do the calculation once you’ve found the asset. So I took the ATO document and parsed out all the relevant information. It’s possible to work out the prime and diminishing values from the effective life of the asset. Then I moved all of this data into a nice little SQL Lite database and built some features over the top of it such as browsing history and favorites. The ATO also provide a simple calculator that builds up a depreciation report, so I’ve also added the ability to generate a report similar to this, which also supports exporting as a PDF.

The Australian Tax Depreciation Helper is now available in the app store. Hopefully it saves accountants some time in looking up the depreciation rates of assets.

Fold That Story

Late last year I put together an Edmodo app called Fold That Story. If your not familiar with the concept of a folding story, it works like this. Students write a story one paragraph at a time, the catch is that students can only read the last paragraph that has been written. So the context of the story can twist and turn. It’s a really engaging concept for students and promotes creative writing in a positive way.

The app follows the same principles as Backchannel Chat where the teacher of the group has complete control of the environment. Students also join with minimal personal information via a join code system.

All of the interaction is done in real-time, so when a student or teacher creates a new story it will appear on the screen instantly.

The UI has all of the participants on the left, clicking on each name will show the stories that were initiated by the selected user. Clicking on the group name will show all of the stories and depending on the selected tab will filter by open and finished.

Clicking on the view button will open the story and will allow you to read the last paragraph and if you didn’t write the last paragraph you will have the option to continue the story. The teacher can set the number of ‘folds’ (paragraphs) and characters per entry.

Teachers and students can stay up to date with what’s happening within the class group by watching the activity feed.

Teachers have a number of options to control any story content and to block students from participating should they need to take a break.

Fold That Story is free for up to 5 students and is $15 USD for as many students as you need, plus it unlocks some extra features. Fold that Story doesn’t have any advertising and uses the $15 to help provide great tools for classroom use.

iOS Grid Finder

I previously blogged about Grid Finder which is a web application that can be used from the Edmodo app store. Well I’ve now released Grid Finder which is a native iPad application. It has most of the same features as the web application, students have the ability to play a quiz of 10 questions, which can consist of three different question types. Students can also play practice mode where they select an item on the grid and the application will highlight the column and row headings to show how the position was obtained.

The app collects stats on how well the student is progressing and will use a 5×5 then a 7×7 and a 10×10 grid as the student gets more answers correct. Parents can view the stats at any time and explicitly set the question type should they think the student needs more work.

It’s an iPad app that requires iOS7.  Grab it from the iTunes store now.

Grid Finder

I’ve put together a new web application for the Edmodo app store called Grid Finder. It’s designed to introduce students to a grid co-ordinate system.

 

This app has three different question types:

• Match the image to a grid position.
• Match the numerical grid position to an image.
• Follow basic instructions to discover the location of an object.

The app will ask the student 10 questions for each game and will progressively work through grids of 5×5, 7×7 and 10×10.

Teachers have the option to set the game to any of the available grid sizes or game types.
Teachers can also keep track of student progress by viewing the number of games played and the average score of each student in the group.

The app is built with HTML and JavaScript and works on large screen devices (Desktop, tablets, not phones).

I’m really happy with how this turned out and plan on releasing the iOS version soon.

Time Teacher

The first new app that I’ve put together this year is a remake of my iOS Time Teacher app which has been made into a HTML and JavaScript version for the Edmodo app store. It has the same basic game play: a student is asked 10 questions about the time, a question can be one of three types:

• Do the digital and analog clocks match?
• Set the digital clock
• Set the analog clock

The game starts at one hour increments and progressively gets harder by asking questions in 1/2 hour, 15 minute, 10 minute, 5 minute and 1 minute increments. Of course a teacher can setup the game to ask specific game type questions or set the increment level.

Creating the game was fairly straight forward, I made use of the Dojo JavaScript library for the clock and moving the hands.

The app is currently being featured in the Edmodo store.

2013 In Review

 

It’s been a pretty big year this year, I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect over my achievements for the year:

Home Reader

This was the first app made for the year, it was a combination of a web application and a mobile application. The mobile app was written with PhoneGap (Cordova) and used the JQuery Mobile toolkit. The idea was that teachers could use it to manage a classroom library of leveled books. This was also the first app to be discontinued, the HTML UI was ugly and slow. Also some of the options weren’t flexible enough for teachers to be able to effectively use it. A future version is being planned and it will be a native application and be focused on things that teachers have asked for. Overall it was a good learning experience and helped me understand the limitations of HTML 5 application.

Backchannel Chat

Backchannel Chat started as a web application in early 2013. It’s a real time chat application that has been designed for educational use. New features have been added over the past year at a fairly solid pace. Some of the highlights include:

• Added to the Edmodo App Store
• Added to the Schoology App Store
• Integration into Google apps and listed in the App Marketplace
• Added to the Chalkable app store
• Added school options that allow school admin staff to view all chat rooms and contributions by all members of their school.
• Added a native iPad / iPhone application
• Raft of smaller features such as, banner images, auto responders, file uploads, better support for larger screens, Google logins, Student access sites and more.

I’m quite fond of this application, I think it really offers some valuable tools to teachers who are looking to use chat rooms or backchannels in their classroom. When combined with an LMS such as Edmodo or Schoology that take care of a student login, this application really shines.

Some other interesting stats:

• 39 blog posts written and published about Backchannel Chat.
• 493 Tweets with 428 followers.
• 12 email campaigns written and sent to users and subscribers.
• 1 Academic paper published which involved Backchannel Chat.

Sight Word Apps

Sight Word Apps are iPhone / iPad apps that help students learn and understand the common sight words that are taught in the early years of primary school. All of the apps are categorised into the colour groups, consistent with how they are used in the classroom.

The apps that have been built are:

• Sight Word Match – Students must match the spoken word to the word on the screen.
• Sight Word Speak – As Students select words, they are spoken to the student.
• Sight Word Spell – Students are given an audible sentence and they must spell the word.
• Sight Word Find – This is a word search application that makes use of the common sight word apps.
• Sight Word Recall – A memory game where students must remember and match words.
• Sight Word Jumble – A sight word is jumbled up and the student must spell it out to make the common sight word.

Each of these applications will keep progress scores and unlock levels as the student progresses. An enormous amount of effect was spent recording all of the voice overs and creating the word lists. The apps have been well received from teachers and have been a great learning experience.

At the beginning of the year I developed three of these applications as HTML / PhoneGap applications but they were rewritten as native applications. The before and after is really striking as the quality and enhanced user experience of the native apps is an order of magnitude better than that of the HTML apps. This experience has given me the opinion that native first is the only way forward. I did take some of the code for the original PhoneGap apps and made them playable on the web, so it wasn’t a total loss.

I also ported Recall, Match and Speak to be native Android applications, this process was really smooth, apart from a few layout issues across different device resolutions it was really easy. The interesting thing from this experiment is that the Apple App Store produces an order of magnitude (or more) more sales than Android. This might be an artifact of the fact that Apple is used more in education, but its enough to justify being iOS only for other apps.

Some other interesting stats:

• 14 number of blog posts
• 30 tweets, 50 followers.

Time Teacher

Time Teacher is an iPhone / iPad application that helps students learn to tell the time. It’s a high quality native application that has high quality artwork and game play. Students work towards unlocking a number of jigsaw puzzles. The game starts off simple and works up to more complex time equations.

Two versions of this app have been produced:

• Time Teacher Pro
• Time Teacher Lite

I’ve experimented with in app purchases with these apps so that students can unlock new puzzles, but dropped them when the new kids category came along. The lite v pro version is also a nice little experiment, one that I think has been successful.

I’ve also developed this into a web application that will be submitted into some of the educational stores in early 2014.

Teacher Word Games

Teacher Word Games is a combination of two applications:

• Find That Word – Which is a tool that creates word searches for teachers.
• Bingo Card Maker – Creates bingo cards that teachers can use in the classroom.

The above two applications can be found either via the teacher word games site or in the Edmodo app store.

Two companion iOS apps were also added:

• Teacher Word Games – An iOS7 app that lets teachers create word lists and download printable word searches or bingo cards directly on the device. It also offers in app purchases so that teachers can buy individual word searches or bingo cards without requiring a full teacher word game subscription. This app also has tools so that a teacher can run a bingo game directly from their phone with call sheets.
• Student Word Games – An iOS7 app that students can use to play word searches or games of bingo. A teacher can eliminate the need for paper completely with this app.

Student Stock Trader

Student Stock Trader is a simple stock market simulator that has been designed for classroom use.

It’s both a web application and an iOS application. it started as an Edmodo application but was extended to the mobile and open web.

As an educational app it can be run without collecting any personal information from students, this has proved to be very challenging. A Stock game will have an invite code that teachers give to students, then after students have joined the game they then need to use another code to rejoin the game at the same spot. This process needs to improve and will be reviewed in 2014.

Pay with Pin

Pin Payments is an Australian payment service much like Stripe in the US. I use this service for payment processing across all of my subscription sites, they are really great, I can’t recommend them enough. I found myself logging into their dashboard all of the time, so I pulled together an application that gave me all of the information and tools in one place.

I’ve priced this a little more than the standard 99c as I think it offers business owners a lot of value, I know the time spent building has paid off for me alone.

Fold That Story

Fold That Story is an online game that classes can play, the idea is that a student writes a paragraph of a story and then the next student comes along and writes another paragraph. The catch is that the student writing can only read the processing paragraph. So it ends up being a little like Chinese whispers. The story will take twists and turns. It’s very fun and engaging for teachers and students.

At the moment the application is exclusive to the Edmodo app store, 2014 will see significant investment in this application.

QR Code Maker

Teachers love QR codes, they help students navigate directly to complex URLs and can also be used to create fun classroom games. I put together a nice little application that runs in the Edmodo app store that lets teachers and students create and keep these codes.

It’s a simple web application that largely writes and reads data with some QR code generation.

Place My Past

Place My Past is a major web application that I’ve spent a lot of time working on this year. It combines mapping and family history.

It’s in private beta at the moment and will be open to the public very soon. There is actually a lot of technology that sits behind this application.

2014 will see lots of new features and growth of this application, I see 2013 as the year I invested time into it, 2014 will reap the rewards of that effort.

Failed work

It wouldn’t be right to bring up all of the successes, there was one failed attempt at an application. I wanted to build a real time educational game that a whole classroom could play. I had it all working (minus styling) on a desktop browser with a good internet connection. But I really struggled to get it to work across tablets and desktop as the tablets ran a little too slow, timing was critical in this game, so even a few seconds delay between the desktop and tablet was enough to be a problem. In the end I decided that my time was better spent on other applications than working out a way to synchronize all of the devices in real time. It was the right decision to make and I’m glad I deferred it.

Summary

2013 was a productive year and a lot was learnt. I expect 2014 will be another year of significant investment into existing and new apps. I’d like to have a few apps that focus on solving problems for people outside of the educational vertical a little more in 2014. Place My Past is a good start here. I haven’t touched on topics such as marketing and sales, but I have a lot of learning’s here that will be helpful for 2014.

I was really blown away when I found that an academic paper was written in the Teaching English with Technology Journal about Backchannel Chat.

It’s been a great 2013, really looking forward to making 2014 even better.

QR Code Maker

QR Codes are quite popular in the classroom, they can be used by teachers for a number of fun activities such as scavenger hunts. They also help to direct students to complex URL’s without the possibility of mistyping the URL.

The latest Edmodo app that I’ve put together is QR Code Maker which is:

QR Code Maker is a tool that can store and generate QR Codes.

Save time and frustration when handing out long URL’s to students, simply pass them a QR Code and have them scan it.

Play treasure hunts where you create QR Code questions and place them around your school, students then need to answer the question to find the next question.

Save time during computer class, have students directly navigate to a specific URL rather then relying on Google to find the site.

Teachers can save QR codes to:

• Downloadable Images
• Their Edmodo Library
• PDF Documents ready for printing.
• No limits on QR Codes

Teachers and students can create codes with embedded text and URL’s. They can be downloaded as a PDF document and printed up. Or if your using a browser plugin, you can read the data directly from it.

If your using Edmodo, then have a look for QR Code Maker in the App Store.

Teacher Word Games app

I’ve written about the Student Companion app to Teacher Word Games, this lets students play the Bingo and Word Searches based on the word lists that have been created by the teacher. Well now I’ve also introduced an app that lets teachers create and manage word lists directly from their iPad or iPhone.

Teacher Word Games gives teachers the following options:

• Create and edit word lists for Bingo and Word Searches (Find-a-Words).
• Teachers can setup the game options such as font, number of games per card or the word search difficulty options such as allowing backwards or diagonal words.
• Search across our pre-created lists with the ability to copy them so they can be used as a starting point for a teacher.
• Teachers can download the PDF directly in the app, where they can email it or save it to dropbox etc.
• Teachers can play the game using the app.
• Teachers can use the call sheet for the Bingo games, the idea is that students are running the Student Word Game app which has loaded the bingo cards. The teacher uses the call sheet to keep track of which words have been called.

Both Teacher Word Games and Student Word Games work together to provide tools for teachers to use in their classroom.

Go grab Teacher Word Games from the app store now.