Academic Licenses Blog

More Web 2.0 -- Acrobat Pro 9.0 Extended

I just saw a demo of the beta version of Acrobat Pro 9.0 Extended. And, as with any beta, it choked a few times . . . but hey! That's what beta is, you know? I'm confident it will be perfect when it starts shipping later this month. Anyway, the thing is, it was really awesome. Here are just a few tidbits:

• Collaborate Live with Screen Share function -- the dialog works like any chat but you both see the doc on the screen and can manipulate it!
• Form Fill on steroids. It is crazy easy to create a form with fill in the blanks with Acrobat 9.0 and you don't have to go to a 2 hour training session to do it! Prepare to be frightened . . . when people fill out the forms and send them back to you there is a function that captures and compiles the data for you! Scary, huh?
• Turn anything into a .pdf. Now you can have movies, sound, interactive buttons, even 3D models (with the Extended version) in your doc! Works with everything! Flash, Dreamweaver, Captivate, etc.

The demo was at 8 am this morning and i had a little bit of a headache but it was obvious that 9.0 is going to change how we work. Oh yeah, I am SO going to get it.

Web 2.0 in the Classroom

I am trying to review a new book for teachers called Weaving the Web 2.0 Tools into the Classroom by Patsy Lanclos. I say "trying" as the information is so incredible that i keep stopping to check everything out! I made it to page 17 before i really started freaking out.

So, i get to page 17 which begins the Google Productivity Tools chapter. I already have a Google Account of course. (Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for web business folks.) but i had never really looked at all the other apps.  I log into Google and go check it out. I have to look around a little to find the document apps but once there they have links to youtube videos that explain everything REALLY fast. The documents, spreadsheet, presentation tools are crazy cool with all their collaborative features that scream for use in the classroom. Basically the thing is that the document stays stationary -- just one document with saved changes attached. The collaborators go to IT. Not the other way around where you have lots of documents with new revisions being emailed as attachments -- with readers/teachers/collaborators trying to figure out which is the current version. Wow. yeah. And collaborators are named and color coded so you can see who said/added what.

Honestly it was kinda scary and made my head hurt a little. It reminded me of the first time we got online (at home, spare bedroom, 1994 i think?) we could see it was really cool but weren't really sure what to do with it, you know? That is where i am right now. The possibilities keep popping in my head but they are mostly a little cloudy. I do realize that without a doubt this is huge. And i'm just seeing the tip of the iceberg.