Webinar: Engaging Through Mobile Apps

I am trying my best to get my head around all the new media that exists today and today and today. Most of the time, I feel like I am sinking in techno quicksand, with only strands of confusing html code to save me.  And I work in media.  There is always more with media. So when I sat down yesterday to attend the webinar, Adobe Digital Publishing for Education, I was ready to feel behind the times.  You want me to make an app? Within ten minutes, I learned that it was possible to create an app and upload it to the Apple App Store for distribution, all without knowing a speck of coding.

How can we make use of this?  The University of Notre Dame was on hand to share how they created their Game Day app and had 11,500 new users within 17 days of launching.  Granted, the Notre Dame athletics department probably has some fairly deep pockets when it comes to design and marketing, but they did not hire any new media savvy employees to develop their app.  Instead, new and existing marketing materials were moved from InDesign directly into Digital Publishing App Builder, and Game Day emerged. For those not familiar with InDesign, imagine being able to turn any of your pdfs into interactive and dynamic media pieces, accessible from a tablet.

Some things to consider:

• Approximately 25% of students are using tablets and we can imagine the number that are using mobile devices.
• Within those 17 days of launching their app, Game Day had been opened 74,000 times and had over a million content views.  It’s like knowing how many people are buying your textbook, and how many times they are actually opening it and reading different pages.
• The Apple App Store store tracks analytics for you.

Media is engaging and it is so much easier to pull out your phone on the c-train, than a pile of notes or a textbook.  When I opened my email this morning, I saw that the department was getting new ipads for our use.  What a perfect time to work together and discover how we can use these devices to develop dynamic content and engage our learners and each other. While it is impossible to keep up with every new media and technology piece out there, we can use our existing knowledge in creative ways, share with each other, and add on as we go.

I want to find out more about the Adobe Education Webinar Series and upcoming events.

Jenny Tzanakos