Q: I'd like to know about how to integrate automation in my virtual classroom. Do you know any tools that help you to create connections between your apps and automate repetitive tasks?

A: Check out the collaborative education tool Teamie - a cloud-based collaborative learning platform. "Use any of Zapier's 500+ connected apps to bring robust information right into your Teamie classrooms, such as articles from a RSS feed, videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and from social sources like tweets and Tumblr posts. You can even use native Zapier apps like Schedule to create specific posts each week in Teamie, or our Weather app to let your classroom know if it's going to rain on any given day." (Retrieved from Alison Groves' post) There are many tools that connect apps and services. Zapier is just one of them. Watch this video about Zapier in action. The article in a PC magazine provides a comparison with similar tools. I guess it is time to try Zaptier for my blog!

Q: I just learned about this very cool animation tool, QuartzCode, that can make your online content more engaging...but it is MAC only and I am a PC user. Is it something similar to Quartz Composer in Windows?

A: QuartzCode is awesome! vvvv is the closest to it on the PC. There are many other animation/visualization/simulation/Web Rapid Prototyping tools that you can borrow from the music and advertisement industries such as Magic, Spout, resolume,  etc. The Udemy course is available to teach you how to create mobile and web interactive prototypes and designs with interaction and animation with Quartz Composer. Sounds like a good investment and fun. Check this forum for more.

Q: Does anybody use IPAD to record screen? If so, what app do you use? I can’t seem to find anything that can do screen recording directly from IPad.., for our Chemistry classes, we do need iPad to pencil the screen (for Mac users), also like to record the screen. – currently, we have to mirror to macbook then record screen from there.

A: ScreenChomp from Techsmith is free and allows you to record simple whiteboard type videos. It sounds like you just need to record a video on what is being written on an iPad and this is exactly that. It uploads the videos automatically to their server so it doesn’t allow you to download a copy but it does provide a URL to the video that can be shared with anyone. You can also upload Photos and images(jpegs of slides from PPT).
Credit: ASU CLASS Collaboration group