Archive for category News

We like mentions, especially honorable ones. So we were very excited to learn that we received on in the 2012 eSchool News Reader’s Choice Ed Tech Awards!

Thanks to all of our users. We really do love finding out that our apps are out there and helping make it easier for teachers to better serve their students. What a great way to start the new year!

Happy New Year, and stay tuned for some exciting new surprises from all of us here at Android for Academics.

We just finished watching the Google/Samsung Announcement. They announced the new Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0).

Simply put – Android 4.0 looks amazing! There are a ton of great new features. Here are some highlights that have us particularly excited.

Offline Gmail
You’ll be able to search Gmail by default offline for up to 30 days, and can set that to any length you want.

Notifications in the Lock Screen
Now when you get notifications you can pull down the bar from the lock screen

Virtual Buttons
The buttons have been hard coded into the OS…freeing up a lot of space for larger screens without increasing the size of the phone too much.

Data Usage Monitor/Cutoff
For those of you with limited data plans, you can monitor data usage and set the phone to cut off data when you hit a pre-defined limit

Screenshots
Finally! You can take screenshots without root (we see some enormous applications for education here)

Wicked Fast Camera
Camera shots are instantaneous! And you can do panorama shots.

Quick Response to Calls
Instead of ignoring calls in a meeting, you can swipe a few stock responses that fire a text message back to the person.

Beaming
With NFC technology, Android has come up with amazingly simple ways to share content with other Android users. If you’re using an app, touch phones and your friend is taken to the market. If you’re at a webpage, touch phones and your friend is taken there. Very cool possibilities here.

We see some very interesting applications to education that some of these might yield. Stay tuned, we may post something about that soon.

About a week ago, we posted about the rumors that Google was going to add an eBook section to the Android market. The rumors were true.

Google launched it, and it looks awesome. It seamlessly integrates with their Google eBook store, but now you can browse the books right from within the Android market.

As we said before, this has some enormous potential for education. There are so many great, free ebooks out there in Google’s eBook store. I just downloaded a copy of Plato’s Republic (for free) to test it out. The process is easy and awesome.

Check it out – http://market.android.com/books/

This is exciting. Google is going to introduce tabs for books, movies, and music into the Android market. We’re particularly excited about the addition of a books tab.

Android is already driving down the prices of mobile devices, and we think this is great news for education. The cheaper these devices become the easier it will be to get these devices in the hands of students for mobile learning.

Incorporating books directly in the the market has enormous potential for turning Android devices into powerful learning devices. We’re excited to see how this evolves.

We unveiled our  major overhaul of Grade Book for Professors at the Digital Day Conference yesterday. We’re happy to announce that it’s way more awesome than it was, and that there is a free version! The free version does everything the paid version does; it’s just ad supported.

Highlight of New Features

• Much, much simpler setup
• Assignment View and Grade Session Feature – now you can open an assignment and quickly grade all students for that assignment
• Email ALL students a comprehensive/auto-generated grade report with one click

We have a video of us giving a demonstration at Digital Day – it will show you all of the above features.

How to Get It

1. Android Web Store Page
2. Direct Market Link (click this if you’re browsing from your Android phone)
3. Search “Grade Book” in the Android Market (with a space between “Grade” and “Book”)
4. Scan this QR Code with your Android Phone

We’ll post some video of us demonstrating the new features soon!

Canisius College is having their 6th annual Digital Day Conference in Buffalo tomorrow from 12-4PM. The program looks great. This is an excellent opportunity for educators to share ed tech ideas with other educators.

It’s also a good opportunity for you to meet up with us. Our two founders will be there along with three other members of our team doing product demos and getting feedback from users. We’ve also been working hard (and by we I mean Jon)  on that overhaul of Gradebook we’ve been talking about. I’ve been playing around with the new version, and I can assure everyone that this is going to be awesome. If you want a sneak peek at how awesome this will be…stay tuned.

So, if you’re in the Western New York Area stop by and talk to us. We’d love to meet you and talk about all things Android and ed tech. We’ll be in the Grupp Fireside Lounge from 12-3PM.

Here’s the conference website.