Until recently, iPad-using Hebraists had no good options for typing Hebrew with vowels on the aforementioned iPads. Apple provides a Hebrew keyboard for the iPad, but it does not include the נְקֻדּוֹת. Recently, however, third-party developer Žiga Kranjec released Unicode Maps, an app with an unattractive name but a very attractive function. Unicode Maps allows you to look up and copy any Unicode glyph available on the iPad. Even better, you can create your own customized keyboard and type—but only on a notepad within Unicode Maps—using that keyboard.

 

“Student Showcase: How Tablets and Apps Transformed My College Internship” will be presented from 7 to 9 p.m. on Monday Nov. 7, in the Foster Auditorium (Room 102) Paterno Library. The event is being sponsored by the Penn State iPad User Group and the University Libraries. The presentation will also be streamed live and archived at http://tinyurl.com/psustudentshowcase

Christian M. M. Brady, dean of the Schreyer Honors College, will give the keynote address. Student presenters, including Mike Burkentine, majoring in civil engineering in the College of Engineering, and Lisa Lotito, majoring in history in the College of the Liberal Arts, will discuss how they used tablets and apps in internships this past summer and how knowing technology helped them to get a “leg up in the job market.” Ari Hiller, Penn State’s Apple student representative, will be there to demonstrate apps, and the evening will include a technology “petting zoo” after the presentations so attendees can see the apps more closely.

 

For my colleagues in biblical and rabbinic literature please bear with me in this post or simply skip towards the end. I found that this discussion led me to consider what is “content creation” in terms of biblical commentary, interpretation, homiletics and the like.

An altered image. Content created?

Last month my brother (The Professor Notes) wrote a post based upon a discussion/debate that we had. The debate began with the question of whether or not the iPad is simply (and predominantly) a device for content consumption (reading, videos, games, etc.) or, as I have contended, it is also a very powerful content creation device. Steve wrote,

I mentioned that, and my brother challenged me, arguing that he, and his colleagues, are using the iPad quite regularly for note taking and email.  I had to agree, but then…. we learned. See, for me the operational definition of “content creation” is something that is substantive.  I have a definition that looks at the degree, or dare I say it, quantity, of the “content” being created.  I never viewed writing emails, taking notes, or editing existing slideshows as real “content creation.”  And I certainly don’t view arranging photographs into a slideshow as a “content creation” event.  The creation of the content in that case was during the translation from the photographer’s eye to the sensor in the camera.

He goes on from there to discuss “Operational Definitions” and applied it to his field, that of business and business logistics. He concludes,

So then, we are now faced with the question, how do we define “Content creation”? Is it simply “creating a document of some sort and any size, so that something that did not exist, now does?” Or does it require a greater degree of creativity and involvement in the process?

While I am late to the discussion it intrigues me for a number of reasons, not least because I repeatedly reinforce (redundantly) to my students the importance of defining their terms. But let me first address my brother’s comments above, starting with “for me the operational definition of “content creation” is something that is substantive.” Defining “substantive” might be necessary here as well, since you can see all the items that my brother does not consider “content creation.” Most of those I would argue are indeed, or at least can be the creation of content. I would like to start first with his suggestion that in photography, “The creation of the content in that case was during the translation from the photographer’s eye to the sensor in the camera.” I would suggest that most photographers would argue that the taking of the photograph is merely the beginning of the content creation process. Occasionally yes, a photographer may have gotten it absolutely “right” in that first shot. But even then if they are to share that image they have to develop the film and enlarge/digitally manipulate and print the image or edit it into a digital show of some kind. Most often photographers do all sorts of work to edit and manipulate their image, whether in a darkroom or on the computer, before they feel they have the final product that they would like. Not coincidentally, there are several fairly powerful apps for image editing available for the iPad. The point is, “content creation,” assuming we mean something other than merely “creating a document of some sort and any size, so that something that did not exist, now does,” (which I believe my brother implied is  his view) is not simply the act of the photographer snapping the shot, but rather involved the manipulation of the data generated in that shot. To return the more mundane examples of emails and notes. Often these items can indeed be nothing more than “Yes, let’s go with that” or even a verbatim transcription of someone else’s words (although I am rarely so good as all that in taking notes). Very frequently for me, however, email exchanges are where new concepts, policies, and ideas are generated, disseminated, and exchanged. Just because the content (ideas in the form of words) is to be found in the utilitarian format of an email does not make it any less a creative product than if I had fired up Word or NisusWriter. Most often when I am taking notes I am not simply recording a transcription of what has been said, rather I am interpreting and commenting upon what I am hearing. And this leads me to biblical commentary. I remember when working on Targum Lamentations reading Westermann who argued for a lengthy oral period for Lamentations prior to recording and arguing that “the acrostic form was imposed on the text at a later stage of its development.” Whatever the truth about a lengthy oral period, once the source moved into acrostic form it became literature and very different kind of work. We do not possess that oral form yet we do have the four (five-ish) acrostic poems that make up our canonical Book of Lamentations. This act of imposition of the acrostic form upon the oral tradition was, I would suggest, very much a creative act. Yet Westermann, much like my brother it seems, would see it as a simply an imperfect kind of notation, not true content creation. Staying in the same arena, the targumim are also works that are derivative and yet I would argue they too are creative products in their own right. In fact, I have argued just this point in my book and articles. The targumist takes the biblical text and on the one hand merely ”translates” the biblical text into Aramaic, but on the other hand the targumist, even in the most parsimonious of targumim, adds something to the text by way of interpretation, even if only in word choice in the translation. Perhaps this is not as creative as beginning with a tabula rasa but it is creative. In some ways, targum is more challenging since the targumist was required to work with a base text that had to remain recognizable even when transforming the meaning of the biblical text. Of course I could pick more modern examples, such as musicians and artists whose works are made up of “sampling” the work of others and yet their own work is clearly something new and creative. To return to the mundane of the iPad. I know that many of my colleagues, students, and I regularly use our iPads for creating new content, whether that be the creation of emails (with new ideas in them), presentations, taking notes while reading articles in Sente, or creating from a blank document a completely new work. Many of us do it on a regular basis and I certainly view this sort of content being created as “substantive.” So yes, I still maintain that the iPad as an excellent content creation tool for certain situations. It is absolutely true that in terms of time spent on the iPad consumption of content is the dominant mode, but then again, that is true for my use of my desktop computer.

 

First you need to connect QO to DB. You do this from within QO:

Add a Dropbox, Evernote, GoogleDocs or other account

Once you have clicked the “+” symbol you will get this menu:

Select which account you would like to connect to QO

Notice that you can add accounts from several different services including Evernote and Google Docs. The next step is to fill in your credentials.

Now, when you want to edit a file that is saved in Dropbox (or one of the other services) simply select it from the account listed in the left hand column.

Select the file you would like from your Dropbox or other account here.

QO will periodically automatically save the file to your DB account. Now that your DB account is set up you can also save local files to DB by using the “Save as” menu, navigating to the DB folder where you would like to save it.

 

I have been fortunate enough to have had an iPad since they first came out. (As an aside, as much as folks label me an “Apple fanboy,” this is the first Apple product I have purchased in its first run. Usually I wait until the kinks are out.) It is rather amazing to consider just how far the it has come in just over a year. And that is not even considering the advances made in hardware. The first version of the iPad is still a powerful computer and is in fact more powerful today than a year ago. So I thought I would begin my participation in this project by reviewing some of my prior posts and thoughts about the iPad. You can find all my iPad tagged articles on my person blog by simply going here.

First Matters
When the iPad first came out there was a lot of discussion about just what the iPad was for, content consumption or creation? Thirteen months ago I wrote this article about how  I was, in fact, using the iPad to create content. Just this January I wrote a more philosophical piece about content creation and operational definitions. This article asking, “What is ‘Content Creation,’” includes a discussion of rabbinic literature as well.

When I wrote the first article one of the real drawbacks for my work in ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature was the lack of Hebrew support. iOS 4.2.1 finally brought Hebrew input in a solid fashion. There are still quirks, the main desktop app I use is Nisus Writer Pro (just updated to v. 2) which saves to RTF. As discussed on the Facebook group, there are no real RTF solutions for the iPad yet. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Tools
In October of 2010 the iPad was already at a point where I could use it on the road as my only machine. In fact, other than one trip in last summer to a conference, where I needed a specific app that only ran in Mac OS (but now it is available on the iPad), I have not taken a notebook with me when traveling, just the iPad and my iPhone. So, as I was saying, in October I created this post outlining what apps I use for research and productivity. There are also various accessories and other apps that I have recommendedin the past as well.

One of  the reasons I have been able to replace my notebook on the road has been the ability to wirelessly connect Apple’s BlueTooth keyboard to the iPad. It is not a perfect marriage, as I have noted, but it works surprisingly well. A very nice addition I recently made is the Incase Origami Workstation, as recommended by Andy Ihnatko on Mac Break Weekly. Caution: the little velcro tabs will come unglued the day you purchase it. One of our staff loaned me her nail glue (for gluing on fake nails) and it has worked a treat.

Finally, I have made much of Sente for the iPad. I have a fairly thorough review here. The desktop app is Mac only and it is not cheap. The collaborative features are also not as open as some other solutions that Chris Long has noted (link to be added…). That being said, it has been nothing short of revolutionary for my research and productivity. I am an administrator as well as an academic, but the former takes precedence over the latter and includes a LOT of travel. This year, thanks to the iPad and Sente, I have been able to read dozens of articles, annotate them, and collaborate with my research assistant. The result is that as I move into the summer when I will finally be able to actually do some writing and real research, I have a running start. For me, that makes all the difference in the world.

 

In this summer research project, we are exploring the use of the iPad, whether first or second generation, as  tool for academic research and other scholarly work by faculty.   To accomplish this, we are working in partnership with Education Technology Services, which has graciously loaned us the use of seven first generation iPads for this project.  Other faculty members are participating by using their own previously purchased iPads, and still others have been given permission to apply research funds toward the purchase of one, which is ordinarily not permitted.

via Digital Research in the Liberal Arts | A Digital Learning Lab for Faculty.

 

Some of the things that work so well are the special keys: brightness, volume, iPod player control (play/pause, forward, back), and the eject button reveals/hides the onscreen keyboard. Basic key commands work, like copy and paste and the tab key takes you between input fields. But there is definitely room for improvement. There are a number of things that I think should “just work” but are AWOL.¹

• CMD-Tab – This should switch between apps, just as in the MacOS.
• Arrow keys to select menu items – Once you starting typing into, say, the Google search field or an email address field you have to touch the screen to select the option you want. I should be able to use the arrow keys to select it.
• Mail – The basic Mail key commands should be supported: Reply, Reply All, Delete, etc.

I am sure I will think of some more, especially app specific commands (the Photos app could benefit from delete, for example). Do you have any to add?

 

1. BTW these are also reasons why a touch screen iMac, for example, wouldn’t work yet. Too often you would have to go up to the screen to perform an action.

My PSU colleague Chris Long has written about his “Evolving Digital Research Ecosystem” and has long encourage me to consider Zotero and Mendeley. However, see above. Mendeley in particular strikes me as overwrought. Both, however have the benefit of being free. Clearly what I needed to do was to prioritize my needs and consider the options. Like Chris I wanted to close the circle on my digital research process (see my earlier post regarding using the iPad for research) and I think I have found the solution, albeit not a free one.

Criteria for a solution:

• Available on both Mac and iPad
• Store both bibliographic information and associated files (images, PDFs, etc.)
• Allow annotation of PDFs
• Synchronize between Mac and iPad
• Integrate with Nisus Writer Pro, my word processor of choice

There are, to the best of my knowledge, only two solutions that meet the first criteria, Papers and Sente. Both have an iPad app (Papers has an iPhone app as well) and a desktop app. Papers is a bit cheaper on the iOS, $14.99 as opposed to $19.99, but Sente offers a free Sente Viewer (does not allow markup). Papers desktop app is $42 while Sente is hefty $89.95. Both offer student discounts but Sente allows you to use the license on up to 3 machines (e.g., my office and home machine and my grad assistant’s machine). So as I said, not free. Fortunately both offer the chance to demo the desktop software for free (something that will not be possible with the new Mac App Store, they will have to do “lite” versions, as in the iOS App Store).

I did not get very far in testing Papers because early on I was told that it only supports journals, not books and does not allow you to annotate PDFs. The first sounds dubious to me (how could they possible not include all forms of bibliographic data?) but the second was a deal breaker. As much as I like iAnnotate I want the benefit of a complete ecosystem. That left me with Sente and so far I can say that I am very pleased.

The best way to offer this review is simply to describe h0w events transpired. Eric (my GA) took the Bookends¹ database that a previous GA had prepared with about 170 entries and we had a folder (shared on Dropbox) of about 90 PDFs. Eric exported the Bookends file into an Endnote format and the imported it into Sente desktop app. Perfect! Everything came right in with no troubles. He then associated the PDFs with the relevant citation/entry. (You can have Sente store these all in a bundle or as a folder that it will automatically organize for you. I chose to have it import the PDFs and organize them for me and I will later delete the original folder of PDFs.)

At this point we were sharing one database file via Dropbox. This works but you need to be careful not to have it open in two places at one. Fortunately Sente has a solution for this: Sente 6 Synchronized Libraries!

Work on your library on any of your computers and always have up-to-date information everywhere. Or, share one library with any number of colleagues, and give each person the appropriate level of access to your data.

I won’t bore you with the details of the process, but suffice to say that I have the main DB on my office Mac (all are actually backed up via Dropbox) and open the synchronized library on my machine at home, as does Eric. I take notes on a PDF, either in Sente app on the desktop or on the iPad and all copies of the PDF update. One major caveat: you must markup the PDF only in a Sente app. You can open them in other apps but the changes will not be synchronized. As Eric adds new bibliography and PDFs all copies of the database update and the various “smart folders” like “recent changes” make it easy to see what my collaborator has been working on. You can also create status tags (and sort by them) so he can flag something as “follow up” and I will see it immediately.

Once you have set up the Sente iPad app you have access to all of your bibliographic material, attachments and all, automatically synced. (You use the iTunes interface to initially add the synced library file and from then on the updates occur over the air, no hardware syncing required.) Inside the iPad app you can highlight, quote, and annotate your PDFs. They obviously have to be OCRd before you add them to Sente to be able to use the quote feature, but even if they are not OCRd or simply are graphics you can use a box tool to lasso the relevant portion (which is then saved as an image in the note) and you can add your annotation as you see fit. You can then send the notes, bibliographic data, and quoted text to someone via an email. I have included a number of screenshots below from the iPad app. I should add that the app can be slow to respond when reading and annotating a PDF. Since iAnnotatePDF regularly warns its users about sluggishness due to large PDFs I am assuming it is a memory issue. It is certainly usable, but does merit some patience at times.

Both the desktop and iPad app make it very simple to add both references and PDFs from within the app using their integrated browser and database searches.

I have not yet tried to use Sente within a paper for citation and bibliography creation. All accounts on the user groups are that it works fine with NWP and is built right in to Mellel. It also integrates well (so I read) with Word.

Everyone has their own work habits and patterns so Sente may not be for you and some will always only insist on using free options. So far I have found it to not only be incredibly solid but a great tool for collaboration. While I am reading an article I can highlight a footnote and send it in an email to my GA asking him to follow up on the references. All from within Sente. (And because Eric is so good, the next day I had a half a dozen new entries in my library with their PDFs!) This is some pretty tight integration and has certainly helped me in my research. YMMV.

 

1. Apparently they too are working on an iOS app.

So far just a few niggles. When you go to easy install it took me a few tries for it to load the complete listing of my available modules. Unfortunately that included Atlas files which cannot be installed on the iOS device. Every text has the book and verse reference on every line. You can turn that off in the desktop app but I cannot find the option to do that in the iOS app. You can only open two texts at once, not really a complaint, even on the iPad you cannot really see more than that usefully, but I could not close the Bible text pane in order to open just the Hebrew and English Mishnah texts.

And all of those comments should be seen as minor. This is an incredibly welcome app to the iOS and further moves it to my only device on the road. I will post a more complete review next week, in the meantime, it is FREE so download it now!

 

If you are like several of my friends you may have just gotten an iPad or other iOS device for Christmas. One of the failings of Apple’s app store is that it can be very difficult to find good apps, there are just so many and it is not terribly well organized. So in a sort of “best of” post that is always the rage at the end of a year, I thought I would remind folks of some of my posts on using the iPad and the apps that I have found most useful and fun. In another post I will point out a few accessories that I have found most useful in my portable life.

In October I wrote about Using the iPad – Research, meetings, and fun. I still stand by all those apps, Dropbox, Evernote, and Office² HD. The only caveat is that while the office app is getting better, I would like to find something not quite so quirky for opening/editing/saving Word docs to/from my Dropbox account. So please let me know if you have better solutions (I am loathe to spend $17 for Documents to Go just to try it out, another failing of the App Store, even the Droid store 15 minute demo would help). For reading and annotating PDFs I still love iAnnotatePDF. It has a slightly busy interface but it now allows you to download and upload from and to your DropBox account. Links to all those apps and more can be found in the previous post.

In terms of Bible apps, OliveTree’s BibleReader is still excellent and improving. The big news at SBL was Accordance’s announcement of their iOS app. It was due before Christmas but still has not arrived. I am sure it is coming soon and what makes it so powerful is that you will be able to take all of your Accordance modules with you on your iOS device. Holy pig! That is massive.
UPDATE: How is that for timing? AccordanceBible for iOS devices has just been released! Search the app store for the free download.

Games! One of the categories I don’t believe I have ever blogged about is games because I had not played many. Well lately I have acquired a few that are well worth playing. Do note that often times the iPad version is several dollars more than the iPhone version yet the iPhone version of many (such as Plants v. Zombies and Angry Birds) scale up beautifully and work on both devices. A few I recommend in addition to the two just mentioned: Pictureka HD (great for the kids too), Cut the Rope, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Scrabble, and Need For Speed Shift.

I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression, however. The iPad has been a tremendous boon for my work. There are those who predicted that the iPad would only be for content consumption and not creation. While it is true that being able to “consume” all those academic articles (and annotate them) on my iPad has increased my productivity, it has been the greatest use to me as a portable note taking device. Between Office² HD and Evernote I have been able to not only record my thoughts of speakers and meetings, but also write articles, reports, and create presentations. True, if I have some heavy writing to do I prefer having a bluetooth keyboard and a larger screen for really significant work, still the iPad has replaced my 15″ MacBook Pro.