Recently in my Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Core II course at the Graduate Center, the class showed off their many gadgets – including many microphones and video cameras – but also new-to-me tech such as Jack Power’s fly pen and my Jennifer Jacob’s arduino. My professors, Chris Stein and Joe Ugoretz, also demonstrated the capabilities of their iPads. I was instantly fascinated by an app that aggregates information from your social media networks into a daily newspaper. While an iPad is still on my wish list, I was determined to find a similar product for PC users. Luckily something came through my Goggle Reader that linked to Paper.li . Essentially, the program searches for twitter hastags or facebook mentions and organizes the results into the familiar aesthetic of an online newspaper. My first experiment, albeit unoriginal, was to create a newspaper for #edtech via my twitter account. Here it is:

I consider this to be very successful. The information is relevant, interesting, and easy to read. In fact, the first issue led me to this article on “The Future of Higher Ed” that is relevant to at least two projects I am currently working on in my courses.  However, even though it is free to use, it is ad supported, and the ads are less-than-desirable.  For a student like myself who is interested in a topic that is very current, this is an excellent research tool. It is similar to using Google Alerts or RSS feeds, but streamlined with a greater readability. I am wondering how this could be used in a my English and composition classrooms, or as a feature of an LMS/VLE…? If  you have some ideas or are already using a similar application please share your thoughts!