Tag Archives: Application

Essential Applications for Education

The traditional education model is changing introducing new more active learning methodologies where student is the main participant. The classic classroom schema led by the teacher with the board as the only tool has survived during centuries and it is the normal schema in a big number of schools. Current wide technology offer and new learning methodologies offer a wide variety of tools to the teacher in order to improve this classic teaching schema.

In order to apply new technologies in classrooms it appears all people agree needed hardware. It is only a matter of available budget. In case of software it is not the same. There are thousands of education applications, every with advantages and inconveniences. This wide variety produce a non effective teachers training leaving application election to a pure personal one and training to teachers self training.

In this page we will show our recommended ones. All are free and offered in Software as a Service mode (SaaS). SaaS applications are easier to use and offer higher capabilities based on internet and collaborative tools.

Kahoot is a free platform for game based learning. Kahoot provide to teachers the way to create exams, surveys and debates easily with a television contest style. Pages style and music create a really attractive  atmosphere  for students. Teacher receives in his account results of applying the game to students. Game results are shown online to students in order to create a more exciting atmosphere.  Kahoot is really intuitive and easy to use and amazing for students.

Socrative is a free platform for game based learning. It is not as simple and effective as Kahoot but it is available in several languages. Socrative provide tools for exams, games and surveys creation. They are offered online to students in an easy, effective and funny way. Teacher receives results immediately realising about students understanding.

EDpuzzle is a fantastic tool for video based training. From a huge education videos library it is possible to select, modify, add our voice, etc. in order to create our own education video properly adapted to our requirements. Once created it is really easy to share it to students with a code or a link. Students could see this video from everywhere, any time and any device.

Winksite is a great tool designed to provide classroom material to students through mobile devices. Using Winksite the teacher could organise all material in the way it could be easily viewed in smartphone screens. Sharing a link to students they have access to all material everywhere and anytime solving immediately any doubt or question.

Classcraft is, maybe, the education application more close to a video game. Classcraft is a game based training application with a “World of Warcraft” style. Classcraft is really visual and attractive create a world with characters like magicians, wizards or warriors, which should cooperate and participate in missions to win points and gold in order to improve team score. Objective is to progress in a collaborative way, learning and developing knowledge at the same time.

Developed in the famous MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) it is the first programming language we should learn. Objective is teaching and education and it is used every time more in schools. Scratch has a visual and intuitive development environment and it eliminates syntax errors usual in other programming languages. Scratch is structured and object-oriented  and learned concepts are directly applicable for other, more professional, languages like Java. Development environment could be downloaded but the best way is using only web browser and creating a free account in scratch web page.

Developed in the famous MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as well and in the same way than Scratch, App Inventor allow us to create mobile applications for our Android device in a simple and intuitive way. For starting we have to access App Inventor web pages using a Google account. It is not necessary to install any application in our computer as development environment works in any web navigator supporting “Adobe Flash” (main ones support it). For installing our applications in our Android device we will need “MIT AI2 Companion” app installed in our device. This app read QR codes generated by development environment and install our application in our device. It is really easy and intuitive and the best way to start developing mobile applications.

Essential Applications for Enterprises

Most application are used both in private and enterprise environment but there are applications designed specifically for enterprise environment. These applications are used by groups of people working simultaneously and facilitating joint work. In this chapter we will introduce the main and essential ones which should be present in any enterprise.

ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning CRM – Customer Relationship Management CM – Content Management
Web Conferencing
Videoconference		 Web store
E-Commerce		 VPN

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Basics of Applications

Application is a generic term referring to a technology solution doing a task, solving a problem or doing a work. Application use to be a program, a set of programs, several programs connected by networks, etc. Application term does NOT include hardware, computers, networks, disks, etc. When we refer to application we are talking about software or programs and information used by these programs.

 Program  Operating System  SaaS  VoIP
 Freeware  Database  Marketplace  IMS
 Shareware  M2M
 Internet of the Things

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Main Page

Welcome to Technology Issues site. Our purpose in this web pages is to explain some concepts and words we find everywhere in a simple and clear way. This pages don’t intend to be the most complete and detailed but explaining and give examples allowing us to have a clear and basic idea about them. 

We hope they are useful. If you have any comment, question or suggestion don’t hesitate to contact us through our e-mail address info@technology-issues.com. You can also visit our Technology Issues blog.

mobile-networksMobile Networks are continuously improving speed even competing with fix networks and covering more areas. In the opposite, with the same capacity, are more expensive tan fix ones. Thanks to flat fees they have reach a huge development around the world.

 

Fixed Networks  are the ones connecting our home, our office or university. In few years we have evolved from modems through telephone line to ADSL and optic fiber connection in our home. It is true fix networks provide the highest capacity but they are not available everywhere. Mostly the high-capacity connections are only available in big cities.


Applications are the ones giving sense to all the rest. Internet or Networks have no sense without Internet Explorer, Skype or WhatsApp. Actually we use applications and applications use our devices and communication networks. We include four chapters with our recommendations for mobile devices and windows computers,  education environment and enterprise environment as well.

 

Internet is not a network but a lot of them connected. Internet is a set of networks allowing computers and equipment connection at a global level. Nowadays all networks (connected to internet or not) are using internet technology. Why internet has become the biggest and unique public network in the world? The reason could be most of network technologies created in the past were created to be small. Internet was born big and it was designed to be huge.

The huge development of communication networks, both fixed and mobile, have allowed development of new applications not executed in our computer but executed anywhere in internet. This kind of applications are involved in a new concept called “Cloud Computing” or processing in the cloud (internet). Most of the times it is not known where this application is executed but obviously there is a physical computer underneath.

Electricity NetworkElectricity Network is the base for our technology world. They distribute necessary energy for electronic equipments in our homes, data processing centers, industry and even remote places where mobile network antennas are installed. Additionally fiber optics are deployed together with electricity cables in towers and pipelines. These fiber optics are used by operators for mid and long distance connections. Currently electricity networks are in a kind of revolution with “SmartGrid” technology deployment.