Here comes Spring Semester 2012

Indeed.  Here it comes, and I didn't do Gravity's Rainbow as I had hoped.  Tomorrow, I should finish Delilo's Mao II though.  The majority of my sittin' still quiet time these days is, of course, occupied by lesson planning.

I'm teaching eight classes this semester, not counting the early morning discussion class (for the so-called 'Practical English' program).  So, the impractical classes I'm teaching are:

1) Basic English Writing Practice.
2) Intensive Reading in English
3) English for Science and Technology
4) The Short Story in English (x2)
5) Public Speaking (x3)

It's three courses a piece Monday and Tuesday and two on Friday.  So I get two weekends!  Neat!

As the picture shows, my prep happens at my desk at home, often using my laptop and iPad together.

Every dumb academia blog or tech blog has done a list like this so now it's my turn: my top5 academic, research, or teaching apps, in no particular order.

1. Penultimate,  I like this one because I'm really OCD about notebooks.  I have separate notebooks to use as:
A. Journal
B. Teaching Journal
C. Fiction Writing
D. Fiction Exercises
E. Free Writing
F. Research Notes
G. Memos
I like that I can keep thinks ridiculously sub-divided but still access each notebook from the same interface.  I tote my iPad around with this app instead of toting four or five notebooks at a time.  I just use my stylus to write: while I'm reading, to jot notes at my writing group, lesson planning on the fly, and so on.

2. Idea Sketch.  This is a great tool for outlines, mind maps, and word webs.  The best feature is the ability to toggle between the word web view (seen pictured here) and a conventional bullet outline (compiled automatically by the 'idea sketching' you do in the word web mode.

3. Pages.  This is a great word processor app.  For writing stuff, computer style, it has a slight advantage over DocstoGO
4. PDFpen.  For a tech outsider like me, there are a surprising amount of apps.  This goes double for apps that let you do various things to pdfs.  I've tried four or five--I won't name them all.  I'll say only that the learning curve for all of them is quite steep.  All are buggy and, as far as I've been able to use them, deliver somewhere between 'slightly' and 'much' less than they promise.  PDFpen is the most userfriendly and has disappeared my notes less often than any other program.  So this is a qualified endorsement.  A qualified endorsement from someone who has never understand the lockedness of the PDF format in the first place.
5. GradeBook Pro.  I was looking for an app that would let me take attendance for my classes by tapping on my iPad.  What can I say?--I want my students to see my...........I don't know how to finish that sentence with an adjectival noun (awesomeness, hipness, coolness) that won't give away the product placement I mean to obscure (iPad).  Anyway, this app does amazing things.  Amazing things.  Let me put it like this.  Before I bought this app, I spent somewhere around 5 hours preparing an excel grade book.  It took me about an hour to set up this app to be ready to record grades and take attendance for my eight classes.  With the exception of importing stuff (rosters, grades) which has to be done just so, this app is shockingly close to effortless perfection.