…to iPAD or not to iPAD…

May 13 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD (weekly)

Teachers Stop Teaching Facts – Business Insider

Tags: teachers, facts, education, policiesandstandards, peopleandmachines, ITGS, iPAD
11 Unique Uses For The iPad That You’ve Probably Never Thought Of Before

Tags: iPAD, apps

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

By drtech • ipad • 0

May 6 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

By drtech • ipad • 0

Apr 15 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

By drtech • ipad • 0

Apr 4 2012

The Khan Academy lost in the app off, HTML5 Takeover and Much More…

On one of ACS Egham’s recent Teacher VS Student ‘app off’ – when unfortunately said teacher – myself – only drew 2-2 it was interesting to see that very few students had seen or heard of the Khan Academy. At that point a number of weeks ago all I was able to show was a Shortcut to the website and so the 1 minute ‘app off’ demonstration did not show off the site to any great extent. However just recently there has been much furor in the educational community regarding the release of the Khan Academy native application. On downloading it does makes the whole user experience of viewing, searching and watching a specific video that much more alluring and when I re-publicised the app through gmail to all Grade 11 students there was a greater sense of interest and feedback. However it does make me wonder at how well students are able to navigate, choose and then use efficiently such fabulous resources. Something worth reviewing further as our iPAD trial continues.

On a different note I have been interested in the recent rise and rise of HTML5 and how this may in the long term negate the need for native apps on smartphones and also enable greater flexibility and creativity from those creating resources as they do not have to specifically go through a filtered and expensive ‘app store.’ As you can see below I searched and tried to find some interesting HTML 5 sites and was surprised to find that there are not actually that many quality applications out there. I found the following: -

Kleki – a fun and very responsive art application which does not show the same feature rich nature as some of the native apps but does show the possibilities…
Financial Times – every bit as a good and slick as the guardian native app!
Coolendar – still trying to sync this with my calendar so unsure yet as to how effective this is…
Chalk – simple and fun
Desmos, Graphic Calculator – probably the most promising for our students and a web app that could be utilised by Maths students and teachers from day one (will be passing it onto the Maths teachers on our trial to see what they think)

So from my brief research it seems that HTML5 could be very promising if as yet with few examples of web apps that can really be useful to our students. See gallery below – click on an image for a close-up.

: Khan Academy App – Maths Video 1

: Khan Academy App – Searching for a Video

: Checklist in HTML5

: Chalk in HTML5

: Financial Times in HTML5

: Khan Academy App – Showing Subtitles

: Kleki in HTML5

By drtech • ipad • 0

Apr 1 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD (weekly)

My Ten Most Used Apps to Become Fluent on the iPad

Tags: ipad, apps, edtech, Educational, technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

iPad in Education Resources Worth Exploring (teacherleaders.typepad.com)
Tips to Improve Typing on an iPad (gdstechtips.wordpress.com)
Take Notes and Draw on your iPad using the program Paper (beast4romtheeast.wordpress.com)

By drtech • ipad • 0

Mar 9 2012

Grade 11 – Presents their First Analysis Video of the iPAD Trial Program

Three Grade 11 students involved in the ACS Egham iPAD trial program – voluntarily produced their first video outlining what is happening so far with the iPAD trial and its initial advantages.

YouTube Play Now | Play in Popup | Direct Link

By drtech • ipad • 0

Mar 7 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD 03/07/2012

Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Mirror an iPad2 on your Mac Laptop with Reflection App

Tags: iPAD, app, mirror

What I’ve Learned from Teaching with iPads – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Great and thoughtful article…

Tags: iPAD, teaching, ipads, higher education
- - By dr tech

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

By drtech • ipad • 0

Mar 3 2012

Mason’s awesome blogs 03/03/2012

Square Is Headed To New York City Taxi Cabs; Will Be An iPhone And iPad Experience

Ipad in a cab

tags: iPad

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

By cornelius • administration • 0

Feb 28 2012

Daily Blog Post iPAD 02/28/2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of ITGSonline group favorite links are here.

By drtech • ipad • 0

Feb 26 2012

Initial Questionnaire Results Are In – Grade 11′s Speak About Their Thoughts to iPAD Program

As part of the careful and considered phasing in of the iPAD programme with Grade 11 – DP1 IB Diploma Students. Each student was asked to fill in an initial questionnaire after they had been involved in the training workshops, signed the Code of Conduct and setup certain applications on their home computer ready for Cloud use. Below are some on the insights to the questionnaire which hint at some interesting points that we will hope to come back to as we monitor the development of the programme over the coming months.

Initial questions involved looking at how in general students would think that the iPAD would impact on their learning. Probably due to the obvious keenness of students to be involved in the programme 81% of students suggested that the iPAD will not be a distraction to their learning. The emphasis during training and introduction to the programme was very much about the responsibility being placed upon the students to follow the code of conduct and use the tool responsibly so over coming weeks went a elicit teacher feedback it will be interesting to see their viewpoints. The potential of the iPAD after the workshops was shown in many comments from students – following similar lines to the following:- ” I already utilize flashcards for memorization in German, Science, History, and sometimes English, but it takes ages to make all of the flash cards. Having them in my iPad will make my studying 60% easier. It would also be pretty grade to carry the iPad while I’m doing a presentation. Having the notes on the iPad somehow seems better then holding ten pieces of paper with notes scribbled down. Also it will be very handy in art because when I need to draw something I can just Google image it and draw it from the iPad instead of wasting paper printing so many things.”

It was good to see that the workshop sessions were deemed useful – as it was very important to make sure that students connected the tool with their learning and increased productivity.

Even though use of shortcuts is a very simple tool – is was important to see if students had understood the principle as it will be important in overall use when coming to such skills as: - checking CAS in ManageBAC, citing sources in Noodletools, accessing Forum that they utilise this facility.

A number of applications were demonstrated to them including Notability, A+Flashcards Pro and initial feedback from the questionnaire shows that many students have not only downloaded but understood how they can be utilised in a productive way. Of interesting note is the slightly more mixed feedback to the note-taking apps and specifically Notability which does indicate the major culture change for students to move to this sort of tool. Although it might also suggest that pen and paper is still the most useful?

An essential part of the introduction to the iPADs was the understanding of their new school Google accounts and how this can be used in a number of ways. This included the sharing of a Grade 11 Google Calendar which would have all of the students deadlines and major events for their academic year alongside their own personal calendar. 97% saw this as an immediate benefit and eventually if this is embedded within the use by faculty could really revolutionise the use of the calendar.

There was encouraging comments from students in this section as well including :- “It is much easier to access documents and it’s a lot more efficient in that I don’t have to lug my laptop around everywhere or remember where my USB stick is. It’s also easier to make edits without having to update files on multiple devices.”

The Google Docs use and response I believe is not to be fully taken as correct as many students when asked in face-to-face meetings had had little experience or understanding for cloud based documents – so I believe the question was probably answered if for example they had used GMAIL before. After this questionnaire recently I have demonstrated the use of Google documents in conjunction with the development of the Extended Essay and it will only be through feedback from Extended Essay supervisors that I can gain a more realistic view into students understanding and usage of GDOCs.

Final points of note were related to the use of Dropbox – which I feel is essential for students to understand the workflow from desktop to iPAD through use of cloud based storage and although response was 78% suggesting use I believe this is a significant enough proportion that this understanding and skill set will spread through the Grade 11′s.

Many students have already identified areas to target use including:-

“Biology – have a digital copy of my diagrams (using notability) so that it will never be lost! Also, if anyone misses a class, I can email notes to them and/or upload them to Dropbox.”

“Within French I will now be able to connect to relevant websites that she suggests to access during class, look at French news regularly with the Apps I downloaded in order to stay up to date with current events, and use the French/English and Verb dictionaries downloaded on my iPad to have reference material for in and out of class.”

The potential is definitely there – so do call back to the weblog regularly over the coming months to see if that potential is realised. All the results and feedback can be viewed from the following link – Grade 11 iPAD Introduction Questionnaire responses.

By drtech • ipad • 0

Feb 23 2012

Skysteel 02/23/2012

WinZip Comes to the iPad

tags: IPAD
Study Shows iPads in Kindergarten Class Improve Literacy

tags: IPAD

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

By skysteel • ipad • 0

Feb 20 2012

Twiggy’s blogpost 02/20/2012

Apple factories to be inspected

tags: ITGS IPAD
Got the iPhone and the iPad? Now prepare for the i-injury

tags: ITGS IPAD

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

By twiggy • ipad • 0

Feb 18 2012

Cloudon, Extended Essay in GDOCs and the “iPAD is a tool not a TOY” QR Code Madness

Well half term is almost over and the students have had the iPADs in their hands over this time to get accustomed to them and simply have a play around. Most have now done the basics in terms of downloading Dropbox, connecting to a school Gmail account etc so the next few weeks it will be interesting to see if all of the training sessions and preparation has paid off. TechChef4U’s weblog struck an interesting note – with the title to one of their posts – “It is a tool, NOT a toy!” and it will be interesting to see how this simple motto resounds with our students over the coming weeks. To get them intrigued we will spray a few QR codes around the school to highlight to students the importance of the Code of Conduct they signed a number of weeks ago …The post does include an interesting video from an American High School Academy about the introduction of iPADs and although it does seem a little slick and biased it is definitely worth a view. I found it very interesting the quote – “When asked what they would miss most about their iPad if it was picked up next week, one student replied “I would miss the responsibility – I feel like the school trusts me.” – as at ACS Egham this is very much the ‘make or break’ element regarding our iPAD trial and whether it is a success – as it simply depends on the students and how they use the tool in a responsible and professional manner.

There are many more individual videos to watch on TechChef4U with teachers discussing specific apps and how they are using the iPAD within their teaching and learning. Definitely worth a look!

Finally this week the app – CLOUDON has arrived in UK stores after much anticipation as this promises to be the first app that allows editing of Microsoft documents on the fly through the cloud. And after an initial play I can say it is very much better than I thought it would be with excellent integration into Dropbox and with many functions that Word, Excel would normally have through a paired down Ribbon interface

I do wonder though if using and introducing such an app is a backwards step when we should be looking to integrate true Cloud apps that actually store and manipulate the files in the cloud with applications like GDOC’s. However it will please some of the purists and teachers and students that find the whole idea of Google Apps quite confusing. However it also means that Google needs to improve its mobile interface much much quicker if it is to keep ahead of the game.