According to Hack College, which broke the story, the 7cubed team skipped class and challenged themselves to create seven apps in seven days. Quick Cite took about eight hours to write and is the first app to be released. More are expected to be released in the future.

The 7cubed team acknowledges that the app isn’t perfect and would like to find time to schedule future revisions. It seems the catch is that it is apparently difficult to schedule the time for them to all skip class. The ability to effectively transfer citations between styles was mentioned as one area to improve. Another challenge may be the issue of bar codes only coming into use in the 1970′s. This may hamper the app’s effectiveness with older books.

As a real-life exercise, the 7cubed team has come up with a remarkably effective app in a short amount of time. Hopefully this will encourage other students and faculty members to develop more useful apps in the near future.

The goal of this category is to provide school administrator’s with easier access to school-focused applications. This new offering is aimed at helping solve some of the unique issues faced by education institutions. These include lack of financial resources, security for a customer-base that is under 18, and the ability to access current technology. Google’s new education category is designed to offer cutting edge collaboration tools.

Here’s a quick video explaining the category:

With the creation of the Education category, Google has highlighted two significant benefits for schools.

1. Access to cutting-edge tools
2. Easy Integration

With more schools embracing Google-driven, cloud-based platforms, integration becomes a breeze. GrockIT, Aviary, LearnBoost, BrainPop, and others have lined up to provide innovative tools for teachers and students. For schools usng Gmail for student and faculty accounts, adding these applications makes real sense.

Shawn and I have been working with our IT department to provide a more robust Google apps implementation for our school. We will share more of our experiences along the way, please share yours.

1. Google Apps for Education– “Google Apps Education Edition is a free suite of hosted communication & collaboration applications designed for schools and universities.” The suite includes apps to help teachers communicate (Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk) and collaborate (Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Groups, and Google Video).

2. Evernote– Evernote is a great tool to save ideas, things you see during the school day, and important information. Teachers and administrators can use this app from their smartphones to create a note on a student or class, clip a web page to look at later, take a photo, grab a screen shot, or save an audio file. Evernote is a wonderful tool that can help busy teachers easily capture important information and quickly organize it. I access Evernote from my smartphone during the school day to organize my thoughts and record important school-related information. When I get a chance to sit down at my desk (and I have a little more time to think),  I access Evernote from my desktop to update and further organize the information I captured with my smartphone.

3. Basecamp– Basecamp is a terrific project management application. Users can easily share files, assign tasks, organize information, and manage deadlines. Basecamp is a wonderful tool for site administrators, department chairs, or site committees.

4. Dimdim– This app enables users to easily screen share. Users can deliver presentations online, share videos, or other types of interactive information. The best part of Dimdim is that it is 100% browser-based and, therefore, doesn’t require instillation or downloading of software. Dimdim is a great way for teachers and administrators to share information, host online meetings, and participate in professional development activities.

5. Mindmeister– Mindmeister is a mind-mapping tool that can help educators design, organize, and share complex ideas. Mindmeister is a great tool to map and design curriculum, organize department strategies, or outline a district policy. Another similar app I use on my smartphone is Thinking Space. Although it’s not quite as good as Mindmeister, I like being able to access the tool on my smartphone while I’m meeting with teachers, sharing ideas, or organizing my thoughts (on the run!).

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E-Learning: Where do we start? Where is it going?– Tech and Learning

Taking It Home With Self-Directed Learning– Bob Sprankle, Tech and Learning

November Hot List– mLearnopedia

The Powerful Combination of Mobile Devices and Learning Apps– The Mobile Learner

Top Fifty Mobile Learning Resources– Upside

5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2010– THE Journal