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.
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