This week’s Milestone question in EPSY590ML SU11 asked us to look more at the design of app. I am choosing an application I have had on my mobile phone for quite some time and added to my tablet as soon as started configuring it with apps. The app is quite popular, it is: Astro file manager. It is a great tool to manage files on a mobile device as it acts like Finder on a Mac or Windows Explorer in Windows. For students who are constructing learning objects with their mobile devices, eventually the objects are stored somewhere and Astro allows you to: edit, move, copy, delete existing files and to create new files. Students can create folders to better organize and manage the content they create with their mobile devices.
But there are limitations to Astro and maybe the limitations I perceive with this app are due to my mindset of thinking that my mobile device is a computer operating system, which is it not. It is a mobile operating system. Or maybe I did not understand the User Interface well enough to figure out what this limitation. Tonight I am preparing for a trip to San Jose for the Sloan C conference – am flying from coast to coast tomorrow – I wanted to utilize my time on the airplane to do some research and writing for the other summer class I am taking. I have been using my tablet to accumulate my research that I want to spend time reviewing while I have quiet time on my flights. What I found is that my old reliable Astro app did not make it possible to share or send multiple files; I spent about 15 minutes trying to find a solution and gave up in favor of downloading a new app from the Android Market called, ES File Explorer which did exactly what I wanted it to do: allow me to email multiple files from my SD card. As much as I have liked Astro and found it to be useful, I may have found its replacement tonight with ES File Explorer. In what turned out to be a frustrating experience at first, provided me with a thought-provoking situation – the choices we have today for software and mobile apps are incredible. Sometimes all of these software choices can create a glut of useless or ineffective apps, but ten or fifteen years ago we did not have the flexibility on with our computer software of that time, which we have on our mobile devices today. If an app does not meet my needs, I just go to the Android Market, either on my computer or on my mobile device and download it over the air. I know there are applications like DropBox that are probably better suited for my current need, but this file manager application does not require me to register with it, which give my lack of time tonight was an advantage.
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