Tablet:tablet

Chemistry Tablet Project

The intention of this project is to create demonstrations of optimal use of tablet devices for carrying chemistry lectures and other materials, covering a wide variety of content types and to assess the viability of various device types for this purpose. A pilot project will be starting in January 2014 and will run until the end of that academic year in June 2014.

Tested Devices

This test page was used to test stability and performance.

There arre two operational modes for displaying molecules and their properties:

1. Jmol, based on Java. Available only for desktop computers, including Windows 8.1 tablets. Not available for e.g. ChromeOS devices.
2. JSmol, based on Javascript. The only option for tablets running IOS or Android.

For optimum performance, Java should be selected if possible. JSmol is significantly slower (~7-10 times on 2014 tablets), but this might not matter for most molecules. The only situation where JSmol may be unacceptably slow is rendering high resolution molecular surfaces, of which there are one or two examples in the notes. Our expectation is that as tablets improve in speed, this issue will slowly resolve.

iPad Mini, 2nd generation, IOS 7

1. Viewable area, 11.5 x 16 cm.
2. Test page does display successfully. Load time fast.--Rzepa 19:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
3. Print functionality works.--Rzepa 19:43, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
4. Menu selection works without expansion.--Rzepa 19:43, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
5. VPN available.--Rzepa 19:43, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Hudl, Android 4.2

1. Viewable area, 8 x 15 cm.
2. Test page does display successfully. Load time rather slow.--Rzepa 19:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
3. Navigation bar easy; although touch resolution not high, the putative region is expanded by the OS to make selection easy.--Rzepa 19:36, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
4. There is a VPN available for WiFi, but I could not get it to work, hence no access to restricted access journals--Rzepa 19:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
5. Chrome browser does have a tendency to crash, especially if some previous request is still being acted upon.--Rzepa 19:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
6. No native print functionality available, however printing to IC print service is possible.--Nd01 09:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Lecture Theatre Support

The chemistry Pippard theatre can currently support ~80 simultaneous but lightly loaded connections. However, the capacity is ~120, and fully loaded has not been tested. We will monitor this aspect.

Lecture theatre projection using a tablet

As of early 2014, this is not standard, although possible on iPads using something called Airplay. Watch this space.

Packaged Lecture Content

Packaged means downloadable content, which is then stored locally on the tablet and can be viewed if the tablet is off line. Multiple views do not incur any further download bandwidth.

eBook content

eBooks can be viewed in appropriate ebook readers. There are many apps available for tablets that can view such content

1. Pericyclic Reactions in Organic Chemistry for testing such readers (3 Mbyte download).

iTunesU content

1. The iTunesU app is optimised for tablet delivery of lecture video and associated content. It contains media types of video, Acrobat, animations and eBooks (epub), and allows the user to annotate with notes etc.
   1. Pericyclic reactions in organic chemistry

Streamed Lecture content

This means content that requires the tablet to be online whilst it is being viewed. The content is not stored locally on the tablet, and has to be streamed again to be viewed again.

Browser based content

The content here has media types which include animations (of pericyclic reactions), vector diagrams (of chemical structures) and 3D rotatable molecules with superimposed translucent surfaces (of orbitals). Each of these requires special files to carry the content, and software to display them.

1. Animations can be expressed as animated GIFS, which can be animated by a simple Web browser
2. Scaleable vector diagrams can be easily handled as SVG types, which in turn can be produced directly by ChemDoodle and indirectly by ChemDraw (via EPS).
3. 3D models are expressed as coordinate files (using a variety of standard formats, including CIF for crystallography) and the surfaces as JVXL files, both of which can be rendered by either Jmol (requires Java) or JSmol (requires Javascript).
4. Math Markup. This is ideally achieve using MathML markup, to be displayed natively using the browser. Yes to be established is which (mobile) browsers do natively support such markup.

An example of lecture material containing this content can be seen at DOI:10042/a3uxp or DOI:10042/a3uy9 . This should both display directly within the tablet web browser.

Typically, the Browser is read-only, ie no personal annotations can be added via the browser (although there are some browsers that do this, see below).

Suitable Browsers

The content is normally expressed as HTML(5), which follows an entirely open standard. The following browsers are suitable for displaying such browser-based content, including in-lined PDF files. Movie files are encoded as .m4v, which is supported by Chrome and Safari on all iPad and most(?) Android devices.

1. Chrome is available on all platforms.
2. Safari is available on all iPads.
3. Diigo Browser for iOS, which incorporates annotation and note taking and available for IOS and Android.

Proprietary-mode streamed content

The content is derived from a VLE or content management system, normally proprietary and not following open standards.

1. Mobile Learn Blackboard app for streamed lecture materials.
2. Panopto app for viewing streamed lecture video.

Annotation and Content-creation

An essential feature of tablet display is the technology for annotating the content with additional comments and materials. These annotations are initially stored on the tablet, but can also be uploaded to the cloud where then can ba accessed by other devices. The cloud storage may be proprietary and associated specifically with the annotation app. It is probably that annotations made with one app may not be accessible using a different app.

the Cloud

There is no single cloud. Rather, each app and application in all probability supports its own implementation. You establish your presence by signing in (and often having to create an account). The downside of all of this is that there are many such eco-systems, and mostly they do not communicate with each other. You might end up with having to manage many sign-in logins.

Wiki Editing

Here, the annotations are stored on the cloud, but that cloud is the departmental Wiki server, using your College sign-in. This is accessible using a wide variety of browsers and devices.

1. Wiki editor presents a tablet-optimized interface for editing the Wiki.

Chemical Diagrams

These allow chemical structure diagram annotations. Typically, one can only share these annotations by emailing them to yourself or others.

1. ChemDoodle (site license active)
2. ChemDraw (no site license). This also supports the Flick-to-share feature for sharing annotations with others, and an account with Perkin Elmer.

The essential issue here is whether such apps can be used to draw a chemical structure rapidly enough to be usable in the environment of a lecture.

Specific annotation apps

There are many annotation tools for tablets, some of which are designed to run with a stylus (in this latter category are found features such as palm-rejection, pressure sensitive stylus writing, OCR, etc). Annotations may also be uploaded to the Cloud for use on other devices.

1. iAnnotate (license being considered). This is specifically a PDF-annotation tool and (presumably) only works with such document types.
2. Evernote is another note-taking application with cloud storage.
3. Diigo is a Web-browser with built-in annotation (stored on the Cloud). There is also a highlighter for the iPad Safari browser.
4. Scanner Pro, which uses the camera on the tablet to scan and stores the result in the cloud.

Stylus based input and annotation

They are in two broad camps

1. Stylus free/passive stylus, including an add-on keyboard to facilitate typing.
2. Stylus enabled/active stylus. The style is battery operated, and communicates with the tablet by Bluetooth, and possibly with the Cloud via the tablet WiFi connection.

The trick here is to find a Stylus which is supported by the app you wish to use.

Keyboard based input and annotation

Most tablets have add-on keyboards, sometimes integrated into the cover itself. We need to establish if such add-ons are useful for annotation (and generally worth the additional cost) or whether the other modes of annotation suffice. We also see here a transition between (short) extemporaneous and personal annotation and note taking, and more extended content-creation which requires increasingly sophisticated tools.