Apps that Leverage Technology to Benefit Education Sector

education apps

The world we live in today is so much surrounded by technology that almost every aspect of our lives depends on it. Be it healthcare or the education sector, technology has made it made its presence felt in every segment. Take the instance of education sector. It won’t be wrong to say that technology has turned over the conventional approaches of education on its head. This helps anyone to seek knowledge from anywhere and anytime. This has also led to a massive proliferation of apps on the app store. Hence in 2014, 18.3% of the total apps downloaded from Apple iTunes were educational apps. Out of the thousands of apps we present our list of apps that have really made use of technology to create out-of-the-box solutions for the education sector –

Nearpod

In case you have to make a multimedia presentation for your students then this free app can be of great help. With this free app, you can download or make multimedia presentation in just couple of hours and even share it with your students in real time. On the other hand, your students will be able to go through the presentation, interact with other students sharing the presentation, and submit their responses. While they do it, you can easily keep an eye on their interactive session and analyze their performance.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panareadigital.Nearpod&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/nearpod/id523540409?mt=8

Mathcube

If your kid is just beginning his or her learning phase then this easy to use app can be an excellent option. In an entertaining and interesting way, Mathcube will let your kid to learn how to solve simple sums involving addition, subtraction, etc.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livezen.mathcube.google.free

iTunes Link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/id864191079?mt=8

Exitticket Student Response System

To help student get instant feedback about their performance, this Android and iPhone/iPad app can be really helpful for the teachers. ExitTicket allows teachers to let their student know about their strong and weak points, which in turn will allow them to work accordingly, without wasting any time. This will definitely empower both teachers and the students by cutting down the time wasted in providing feedback and working on them.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exittix.exitticket&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/exitticket/id618649934?mt=8

Explain Everything

This app will let you to narrate, animate, export, annotate, as well as export almost anything you like, and all these things can be done with the help of its whiteboard tool, which is highly interactive in nature. Teachers can use this app for educating their students in an interesting way. It allows you to add objects, existing photos, and even import PFD files from the local storage.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.morriscooke.explaineverything&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/explain-everything/id431493086?mt=8

Coursmos

With this free app, you can make micro-courses. All you have to do is upload a video that you already have or shoot a fresh video lesson by using your phone. Once the video is ready for uploading, simply provide a title and few lines to describe the micro-course. In this way, you can let all your students to have access to your micro-course by sharing with them. You can share through social networks or email.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coursmos.app&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/coursmos/id692934231?mt=8

Nowadays, there is no dearth of apps related to education. No matter if you have an Android powered smartphone/tablet, an iPhone or iPad, there are plenty of wonderful educational apps waiting for you. And, this is evident from the fact that over 10% of the total apps available in the Google Play Store are learning apps. So, go for them.

Get These 5 Skills to Adapt to the Next Technology Revolution – Internet of Things

Internet of Things

Internet of Things

After Internet and Big Data, the world is on the verge of another computing revolution. This new wave of technological crest is brought about by a unique confluence of shifts in user choices of accessing technology and innovations that expand these choices available to the user. The result is a massive shit in interactive technology as we know it today. This will mainly be centered round the concept known as ‘Internet of Things’ or IoT.

There will be a wide web of connectivity between humans, object, other animals and machines under this scheme of things. Man will communicate with his car, a housewife can communicate with her refrigerator or washing machine from a significant geographical distance, or more effectively, entire systems talking to other systems. With an estimated market value of $1.8 trillion globally yielded by Internet of Things in next five years (as per Gartner), it is necessary to develop apt skills that help you succeed as a developer, project manager or business manager.  It is sure to overshadow every new form of technology we have seen and heard of.

What does this mean for you?

As a developer, a career student or as technology professional, you need to see how you can make these disruptions work to your own advantage. For instance if you are a student, you need to assess your situation in light of the upcoming boom by IoT and decide how you can make yourself employable. The five skills are pertinent to successfully lead to fruition of innovative thinking and include the below pointers –

  1. Thinker who can connect the dots – A thinker who can associate the benefits or challenges of one system and connect it to another system by way of service or benefit can have a good potential to succeed in this inter-connected world. For instance a watch and healthcare are two distinct and unrelated domains. But when they come together like the smartwatch or wearable technology from Samsung, they can help monitor your heartbeat, or relay your location.
  2. Collaborator – This set of skills help you in bringing together people from diverse fields of expertise and strategies to help solve a complex problem – a vital trait for inter connectivity across traditionally unrelated systems.
  3. Communicator  – This allows people to bring the design and proposed solution construct to life, through diagrams, images, videos, graphs, theories or stories
  4. Knowledge resource – This skill helps you gain a deep level of knowledge that helps you sees things the way not many people can see.
  5. Persistence – This skillset help people to persevere till they reach their objective. Being a new field, there will be obstacles bound to be there at every step of the way. Only dogged determination can help set the tone for this impactful global technological shift through IoT.

So, while specialist research firm Gartner predicts as many as 25+ billion devices connected by Internet of Things, there is a need for specific skills to drive the interaction and integration of these device with us, the people.  Hope these pointers provide a clear roadmap of the skills that will be needed to succeed when the Internet of Things blooms to touch millions of lives in the near future.

Looking to Bring Down E-commerce Development Costs? Here’s How You Can Do It.

Businesses looking to set up an online shopping portal are often put off by the intimidation of escalating costs at the development stage. While e-commerce portal brings in remarkable results thanks to shifting customer preference and the deep penetration of mobile, the prospect of high development costs is a key reason why most e-commerce sites do not get past the ideating stage. By investing in the best WordPress hosting, e-commerce businesses can optimize performance, reduce unexpected expenses, and improve operational efficiency—all of which contribute to cutting overall development costs.

How to bring down E-commerce Development Cost

If you want to know which are the pain points as regards costs during e-commerce development and ways to circumvent them, then read on…

  1. Hosting – One of the critical elements of e-commerce portal is the space needed to store descriptions, databases, high res images, payment gateway integration, individual integrations and security programming. Many companies face disconnect between the products they have listed on the site versus how much space is required to store them. Most e-commerce stores start small, with a handful of product categories and few seller networks. This calls for smaller hosting space. However, hosting space should not remain constricted but rather be flexible as per the growth of the store. Such smart managing of hosting space will help save a ton on overall development costs.
  1. Strategic Planning before actual development – Both client and developers have been guilty of not putting in enough time and efforts at the planning stage simply to save some time. However the benefit of investing dedicated time into meticulous planning far outweighs the negatives.

As a good developer you would start off with a brief questionnaire to know more about the client and its target audience. Some of the key questions to be answered at the planning stage would include –

1.   Knowing about the customer (e.g.- whether B2B or B2C)?

2.   Knowing about the best way to attract them to the portal

3.   Pointers on heightened customer experience during online shopping

4.   Key add-ons/third party/individual integration to the site

5.   Handling scalability and growth in future

6.   Handling scope creeps or revisions to schedules and estimates

Answers to these will help to decide on an appropriate choice of platform and back-end before you commence with the actual coding. If this starting point seems overwhelming to you, it will be good to hire the e-services of a good consulting firm. The investment and time will definitely help in a streamlined e-commerce portal development process.

  1. Choose the right platform- Each shopping platform has its pros and cons. You need to be aware of what suits your project needs best and then decide on an appropriate platform in order to keep development costs low. For instance, Magneto is a good choice if you need thousands of products to be put up on the shopping portal. However it tends to be very heavy. On the other hand, Shopify provides a hosted platform that guarantees 99% up-time, complete data security and competent tech support.

While Shopify may take a bit more time to customize the storefront, OpenCart provides a lot of flexibility in modifying the look and feel of your digital store. Also when we consider the compatibility and pricing of plug-ins, the open source OpenCart platform offers plug-ins that is around 30-40% cheaper than official Woocommerce plugins. On the flip side however, people have had problems with OpenCart tech support.

Considering above factors will certainly help you keep both costs and time of development in check.

Top 5 Social Media Games On Facebook

Social media gaming is basically playing games online with your social media account with your friends and the community. This typically features multiplayer game play. Some of these games are highly addictive! At times, the sole reason people use their social media accounts may be to play these games. What made some these games so addictive? So today we take you back in time and bring to you the top 5 social media games till date.

Top 5 Social Media Game Applications on Facebook

top-5-social-media-games

#1 – FarmVille

If you have not heard about this game, we are sure you must be living under a rock! For those who are not aware about this, it was launched in 2009 as an Adobe Flash Application on Facebook. FarmVille is a farming simulation game application developed by Zynga. The gameplay involves different kinds of farm management. Some may include as plowing the land, planting, growing, and harvesting crops, harvesting trees and raising livestock and many more. Nearly 100 million of all the users on Facebook back then played FarmVille. What made it so addictive was the fact that the users could play and compete with their friends.

#2 – Texas HoldEm Poker

Also developed by Zynga, it was launched in 2007. There were millions of players playing this game daily. It had a simple gameplay. Users join a casino lobby and are able to play at either at any table or join friends for a personal game. The leader board shows players how they compare in their chip ranking to the other players. It also allows players to send or receive gifts. As itself Texas Holdem Poker is a world famous gambling card game, what obviously made it so attractive was the fact that people could gamble without any actual money involved.

#3 – Mafia Wars

Again, a game developed by Zynga, Mafia Wars was one of the most famous games on Facebook. It won the Webby Award People’s Voice Winner in Games category in 2009.  The gameplay was set in New York City. Players had an option to travel between New York or Manhattan, Las Vegas (post level 18) and Italy (post level 6). The game consisted of fighting with other players, doing jobs to earn the cash, items and experience within the game. The goal of the game was establishing and taking forward one’s criminal empire. Players could create mafias by recruiting other players. The addictive angle to this game was the out of the box idea to rather play a villain than a hero, like in every other game.

#4 – Zuma Blitz

This was a simple and a cute game, which attracted people of all ages to it. Developed by PopCap, as Zuma Blitz, it went live on Facebook on December 2010. It was an easy ball matching game. The game could be played in long or short doses without getting bored. The graphics were attractive and colorful. In the year 2004, the first originally released game ‘Zuma’ was awarded it the ‘Game of the Year’ by RealArcade. The addiction of the game lied in its simplicity. Since the objective was nothing much except matching the right balls before you lose.

#5 – Diamond Dash

Diamond Dash is a puzzle game developed by Wooga. It is kind of a game which is somewhere in between Tetris and Bejeweled. The objective of the game is to clear same colored diamonds as quickly as you can in the allotted time to get a high score. In the process you level up too. The game turned to be quite addictive because of its similar characteristics as Tetris, which has always been famous. And also the ability to crack a high score and show it off to your Facebook friends through yours posts.

Today, the use of Facebook for playing games has lessened drastically. But the craze still continues through our mobile devices such as iOS games and Android games, which keep us hooked on.

Strategic Advantage of the Outsourcing Partner – Part 2

In continuation of our Series ‘Choosing The Right Outsourced Product Development Partner – Part 1‘, here’s the Part 2 where we will try to understand what is the strategic advantage one should seek before choosing an outsourced-product-development partner.

tech-product-outsourcing

Part 2 – 

Today, if I am outsourcing a function of my business I am looking forward to reap much greater benefits than the cost advantages. I want “Strategic Advantage” out of my outsourcing partners. What do I mean by “Strategic Advantage”? As a modern business when I think about Outsourcing Partners, I am thinking about all of the following aspects and many more depending on my business context.

  • Will the partner bring the product, markets, and technology know-how related knowledge on table? Especially, knowledge related to the domains where I possess limited understanding.
  • Will I be strongly positioned against the competition after this partnership?
  • What is the labor cost arbitrage? How much can I save while keeping my quality and time line goals intact?
  • Does this partner understand user-experience and creating beautiful yet meaningful user interfaces?
  • Can I change or enhance my requirements mid-way when the partner is building my product with minimal impact?
  • Am I improving my supply chain through this partnership?
  • Will this partnership help me enter new markets?
  • Will I be able to pacify factors like geographic recessions, seasonality in product life cycle, etc.?
  • Will this partnership help me innovate and stay ahead in market?
  • Will this partner provide great tech support, maintenance and enhancements in our growth phase?

When you outsource a function of your business, especially a product, you are not deploying tasks. You are letting an outside organization enter into your overall vision of how you want to grow.  You have to trust them enough to be a part of your value delivery system.

Undoubtedly, in outsourcing a lot rides on the partner you choose to develop the outsourced product.

Choosing a Right Outsourcing Partner:

Clearly there are two major yardsticks to choose the right outsourcing partner: Fit and Trust. No partnership can be formed without the foundation of trust and you also need a partner who fits your outsourcing related business objectives and philosophies.

In the next part, we will get into a detailed analysis of Fit and Trust factors. Read Part 3 here.

 

Google Glass and Tomorrow’s World

Wearable computing is the next technology frontier. As more and more computing power gets packed in smaller and smaller devices, we are looking at a future where technology-augmented capabilities of humans will enable us to be far more productive and impactful. Check out views of Piyush Kumar, Product Management Consultant at GoodWorkLabs and a wannabe ‘Glasshole’.

Among the various wearable computing devices leading this revolution, Google Glass is undoubtedly one of the most discussed and closely observed one. While it remains to be seen how the world will react to the new levels of intrusion into people’s personal space that this device promises to bring, here are a few of my ideas about how Google Glass can and might become indispensable part of our lives in future.

Emergency Healthcare:

Google Glass is a wearable computing device, the key word here being wearable. This would mean that the device is in contact with our body at all times while active, and can potentially detect any sudden variation in our pulse rate, body temperature and other vital signs. Combining this with the device’s computational capabilities, we can imagine a scenario where the device can detect a sudden change in our metabolic activities, and send out alerts with the necessary details to our emergency contacts, preventing emergencies- especially for senior citizens and unattended individuals.

Personal Safety:

This idea came to me while travelling to work one day. As the bus approached my stop, a fellow passenger approached the bus conductor to collect his change which the conductor refused to give back saying he did not have any change to give him and asked to passenger to let it go as it was a small amount anyways. The passenger- presumably an IT professional (J) immediately took his smartphone out and threatened the Conductor that if he did not return the change, he would post his picture online. Immediately, the Conductor found change in his bag and gave it to the passenger!

In the light of this incident and the law and order situation in countries like India, where most of the cases of individual harassment are never proven for the lack of concrete evidence, a device like Google Glass can be hugely advantageous as it can be made to start immediately recording the incident as it takes place, as well as alert the necessary people and organizations with details about the individual, location and incident among others.

google-glass-goodworklabs

Inter-device Communication:

The Google Glass can be made to show the location of other active Google Glass devices in a given region along with live feed of a situation, enabling rescue teams to become more efficient in case of riots, building fires and other man-made disasters by helping in better allocation of rescue team resources, prioritizing operations and identifying shortest routes.

Online and Offline Shopping:

Shopping experience can take a whole new dimension with Google Glass, given the fact that the Google Glass can potentially contain all of a user’s identity information securely. This, combined with services like Google Wallet, can help users to simply walk into a store, scan the barcode on an item using the camera on the device and make payment through their Google Wallet and walk out of the store. Also, the location sensing services combined with Google Glass’s secure user identification can mean personalized deals and discounts in stores and restaurants nearby.

Socializing:

While one of the biggest gripes about Google Glass is the threat to people’s privacy it poses in social settings like sitting in a bar or walking down the street, the device brings some very interesting options for individuals trying to socialize- especially with other Google Glass users.

The Google Glass in a Google device which naturally means that it will have the capability to access the Google profile of the user- should they choose to make it available publicly. So, when a Google Glass user spots another user wearing a similar device, the devices can be used to access each other’s Google and other public profiles online and know about them even before they start a conversation. This feature can have the necessary privacy controls to give the owner of the profile complete control over who views their profile and what they see in it. The device can also allow users to connect with each other and share information the way it is done currently via other mobile devices like Smartphones, Tablets and Computers.

Essentially Making the Smartphones Redundant:

Along with the above mentioned ways, which is by no means a complete list, the Google Glass has the potential to make the smartphones and tablets redundant, or at least take over a large chunk of their utility. It can do so by easily replacing the Smartphone screens with the Google Glass screen and the touch-based input systems with Voice-based systems. Everything that a Smartphone or Tablet does today, can be potentially done through a device like the Google Glass, while keeping your hands free.

UX Advantages of Google Glass

The best experiences are the ones that are never had. What I mean by this statement is that the best experiences happen when we enjoy the experience and do not get caught in all the factors enabling that experience. If you are having a great moment and want to capture it, you should be able to capture it with minimum disruptions and should not have to spend effort in trying to find the right camera, get the settings and either lose the moment, or end up with a not-so-great picture.

This is one of the key advantages of a device like Google Glass. It works almost in the background with minimum interruptions, allowing you to have a far more immersive experience with your surroundings.

The Risk:

Though Robert Scoble got away with his famous “Glasshole” pic as shown below, an overstated love for the device might not be advisable for everyone!  🙂

scoble

Cross platform app development with Sencha

Sencha Touch is a HTML5 mobile application framework. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch is a framework that enables developers to build fast and efficient apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.

We see more and more companies using Sencha especially to develop quick prototypes and launching the apps on all platforms at once. One basic advantage is that Sencha cuts the development costs, because you need not invest on technology for iOS and Android separately. If time to market is of the essence, then Sencha may be a good option. But the performance cannot be compared with the native apps–Sencha apps do not have the coolness factor and responsiveness that a native app can give. However, it is still a great option depending on what your apps need to do.

Know more about Sencha framework here.

Ready to start building your next technology project?