Nook Color - an eReader turned into a tablet computer

Depending on a school's established vision for educational technology, learning goals, and priorities, the Nook Color at $249 could be a fantastic companion learning computer for some/all students. As reported in a recent article at Mashable, the Nook Color now supports Flash, software app installation, and more. At less than a pound, the Nook color weighs less than the iPad 2.

So in addition to functioning as an eReader, Nook Color tablets are able to browse the web, check email, and install apps--all of this at a fraction of the cost of iPad.

~submitted by Matt

Evernote for iPad

I am an avid bookmarker and have long been using "Delicious" on my laptop.  I heard about "Evernote" and that it also has an app for IPad so I downloaded it (it is free) onto my laptop and IPad.  So far, I have mainly been using it on my laptop but then it automatically synchs with the IPad version.  Besides bookmarking websites, "Evernote" also has a clipping service for "clipping out" articles from online periodicals.  As far as I can see, "Evernote" on the IPad does not have this clipping service so I have downloaded "Instapaper" for that purpose.  I am still getting the hang of "Instapaper" and haven't successfully "clipped" on the IPad.  Like many of my fellow user group members, I am finding that the IPad is absolutely not a substitute for the laptop.  I think the challenge is to figure out those applications that are best suited for the tablet format.  For some, it is the drawing or the music apps.  In general, the plurality of the apps that I have been using on the IPad come under the heading "Productivity" so I think I will continue to explore how the portability of the IPad will overcome what it lacks in terms of function.

Margaret Lane

iPad as a travel device

I recently took an international trip with my iPad in order to evaluate it as my sole travel device. On the day of departure, however, I had a lot of anxiety about only taking my iPad and decided to bring my laptop along. I am so glad I brought my laptop because I realized that the iPad has a lot of shortcomings as a "work" and travel device. First off, typing on the iPad is a nightmare. I didn't want to lug the wireless keyboard as well, so I ended up using the device to type. This was a real pain, as my wrists really hurt from typing.

Another shortcoming is that the iPad doesn't have a built in world clock like the iPhone. I downloaded and app called "Night Stand HD" however this didn't have the features I wanted and needed an internet connection to detect location.

I did find some good uses for the iPad as a travel device. As a mobile eReader, I found the portability of the iPad supreme. I could take it everywhere and have good reading material. The battery life is great, and I found I didn't need to recharge it much. I used the "Sundry Notes" app to jot travel notes and addresses on the fly. And for keeping up to date on news and current events, it was very easy to stay in touch with the iPad.

A very useful app when in French speaking countries was "iTranslate". This little app can translate words and phrases in about 50 languages. When we were in very remote areas of Reunion Island, I found this app useful in communicating simple phrases like "There's a poisonous spider in our room!" and "Where is the bus stop?"

I still feel quite tethered to my laptop and am not sure if I could part with it for the iPad. But I do feel the iPad does have a niche in the world of portable devices. I guess I am still personally trying to find that place for my iPad.

by: Anu

another reason to hold off on iPads

Given how quickly things are changing in the world of readers, again I assert that iPads are a luxury.  Listen to this story:

by Ryanne

iPad great for little ones

Although I have come to the conclusion that iPads are still, for the most part, a luxury item not worth recommending for our students, I do think that the iPad is an amazing tool for toddlers and preschoolers.  There are a number of apps out there that allow young children to have tactile experiences with letters and numbers, to listen to stories in an interactive and entertaining manner, and to build skills like pattern recognition.  I can easily see iPads becoming a staple in early education classrooms.

If we decide to create a class set for our girls, we need to think about using the iPads differently than we have been as individuals.  Instead, the iPads would become tailored to the objectives of the teachers.  I think there is great potential long term, but for now, using iPads over laptops would feel like a cumbersome step backwards.

by Ryanne

An Overview of My Own iPad Experience

I wrote this up for Matt a few weeks ago when he presented to academic council, but thought these points would be worth sharing with everyone (and getting push back if people disagree).

My thoughts on having an iPad this year...

1.  It's fun to play with.  Not surprisingly, the interface is sleek, clean, and easy to use. That said, I wouldn't want these facts to obscure the real question: will this help students learn more than spending $600 per student on something else? If not, will a class set help students learn more than spending $600x16 on something else?


2. This year I found having students using different platforms and different software suites to be somewhat challenging. If the ipad becomes yet another option for students, I worry that this will create an even greater challenge (for example, not a single dynamic geometry software program will run on the iPad yet, the advantage of the iPad being instant on is diminished if half the class still has laptops, etc).


3. I know there has been talk about getting class sets.  I think the ipad is a very personal devise.  One of my primary professional uses is as a tool to read blogs (I use MobileRSS), read personalized magazines (Zite, Flipboard, Pulse), and organize and store relevant documents, websites, and videos (ReaditLater, Evernote, InstaPaper, GoodReader, DropBox, & SugarSync).  Many of these apps are either useless or lose much of their appeal if I were sharing an Ipad with others.

4. In some ways, the iPad is a fantastic organizational tool. On the other hand, keeping organized between mediums is a challenge.  Are we just adding yet another medium (iPad, laptop, home desktop, notebook, binder, etc)?


4. I'm not very good at freehand drawing.  Even short little margin notes are difficult for me to read.  I might get better at this, but I personally would find a fine-tuned stylus to be helpful.  Along these lines, this probably is not an appropriate tool to take notes in math classes for almost every kid (not that a personal computer is any better).


5. From a tech standpoint, I worry (although this is totally unsubstantiated) that troubleshooting iPads if things go wrong will be more difficult than troubleshooting pc's/macs.  You just don't have the same administrative access.


6. As an additional expense for kids, I am curious how many 5th graders already have a laptop and how many already have an iPad. My guess is many have laptops (meaning no required additional expense) and few have iPads. Something to consider.

7. Yikes.  All these sound so negative...on a plus side: the ipad takes much less time to boot, has a much longer battery life, and takes up much less room on a desk. Furthermore, there is a strong and growing library of apps that are evolving at a much faster rate than traditional software. They're also super cool (which I actually see as a pro and con.  On the one hand, I have no problem taking advantage of mediums that get kids excited.  On the other hand, if I need a dog and pony show maybe I need to be rethinking the content).

Avery

My iPad is my book?

I said something about reading on the iPad in my post on traveling, but I have been thinking a good deal about how I read, and how I use the iPad as a reading tool. I have found myself thinking of my iPad as a book, that is, as the particular book I am reading. I have books on iBooks and on Kindle for iPad, and I like the kindle app better, it seems to turn pages, highlight, and insert notes more easily for me.

Things I love: having so many books with me at the same time, not adding more weight to my bag when I get a new book, and being able to highlight and take notes, and jump back to those notes quickly.

Things I don't love: not being able to just lend a book to someone else when I am done.

What surprised me, however, was how much I still use a kindle book like a paper book when I am doing research and writing. I want to have the book open in front of me, so I found myself writing on a different tool, my laptop or a pad of paper, as I reflected on the book I read on my iPad. I suspect with time I might change that, and flip back and forth between the book and a note taking app, but right now that does not come naturally, I want the book open in front of me.

I do think the form factor of the iPad really makes a difference for electronic books. I have kindle for Mac on my laptop and I  almost never use it.



- Heather Pang
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Alpha Rd,Cambridge,United Kingdom

Review: Comic Strip

Loving Comic Life, I was looking for an iPad version. What I found works very well, and I continue to wonder why the web based ones are not this good. It should be easy. It took me just a few minutes to figure out the app and make this comic.




I can imagine plenty of good uses for this tool, since we already use Comic life, but most of those projects require one comic making computer for every pair of students, so an iPad is one option, but not the only option.

Comic Strip price: $0.99



- Heather Pang
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Great Pulteney St,Bath,United Kingdom

Can an iPad replace a laptop?

This is one of the many iPad-related questions I've heard around these parts and in online communities over the past several months. Without question, the iPad is a compelling device that is changing the paradigm of computing. I've enjoyed using the iPad as a platform to design, create and experiment. However, when I hear a question like, "How can I use an iPad and [insert app here] in my classroom?" or, "Can an iPad replace a laptop?" I wonder if we are destined to repeat many of the same 'cart before the horse' technology implementations that schools have been so famous for over the past two decades.

Think of the failures of Smart Board installations as a case in point. Often times IWBs were simply dumped in schools with very little thought given to learning goals/outcomes and priorities. In many cases, they go largely unused, serving as really expensive pull down screens and computer input devices. Are we destined to repeat the same mistakes with iPads? Or will we do the hard work of asking the prerequisite questions necessary to creating a fantastic learning environment for youth?

For me, the established learning goals and priorities of the school community should always drive the acquisition of technology tools. Before asking questions about iPads or any other technologies, it would be my hope that the school community takes time to develop and articulate the learning goals that they would like to achieve. After this process, the goals would then be prioritized into a plan for implementation.

Here are just a few examples of learning goals that I have for youth:

-foster cultural competencies and understandings.
-develop opportunities for youth to publish for varied audiences.
-create multimedia narratives as individuals and in teams. Publish these narratives for varied audiences.
-crunch, analyze and interpret complex piles of data..
-find, sort, filter and interrogate information from multiple locations and sources.
-integrate reflective learning across the curriculum as a way to develop meta-cognition.

Only after the hard work of setting goals, objectives and priorities is done should we move to the next step: selecting technologies that assist in supporting this vision for learning.

Anything else is cart before the horse.

Using the Ipad at ASCD

I recently attended the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a 9000+ person annual conference, this year held at Moscone Center.  I wanted to "travel light" so I brought along my Ipad one day instead of my laptop.  Good news: The conference had free internet access - didn't even have to use a password.  More good news: lots of people had Ipads and there were sessions on their use.  I went to one given by the tech people from Acalanes (East Bay) High School.  It is a large public, but well resourced, school.  They are not really a one-to-one and instead of laptop carts, they have Ipad carts.  Now, the bad news that got me thinking that we are not really ready to replace laptops with Ipads.  I went to a session on using Google Earth in the classroom.  While there is a Google Earth app, the one I have on my Ipad does not do all the really meaningful things the version on my laptop does.  But the story has somewhat of a happy ending.  During this session with the Acalanes folks, there was a "back session" going on and I lamented this problem with the Ipad Google Earth app.  Some anonymous fellow conference goer suggested that those features of Google Earth I wanted use "flash", which is prohibited on Ipads.

submitted by Margaret

iPhone (and iPad!) Explorer

I want to recommend an application I’ve found exceptionally useful for my iPad: iPhone Explorer. This software allows you to browse files on your iPad as you might on a USB flash drive; with this application, the iPad operates in “disk mode”. For me it provides a basic solution to a lot of the concerns that have been raised about managing files on the iPad, especially when it comes to photos.

Here comes the best part: it’s free. You can get it (and more information) here: http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ I have seen other applications which appear work similarly and cost $15 or more. There’s no need to pay a cent.

This is not an application you download onto your iPad, but rather onto your laptop or desktop computer. Then you connect your iPad with its USB cord to the computer and launch the application—now you have access to files on your iPad as if it were a USB drive.

A few words about using the application:

When you launch the program you’ll see all the files on your iPad in a familiar format (see graphic—you can see me accessing my photos--those are actually the photos from the 14th import I did on my iPad, thus the title of the folder 114IMPRT. This semi-coded language takes a little getting used to, but I find it fairly intelligible).

The interface allows you drag and drop (or copy and paste) files from your iPad on to your desktop, and vice versa. You can also delete files from the iPad within the application. The user interface is very straightforward, and it gives you what almost feels like ‘behind-the-curtain’ access to your device. This has been a central criticism of the iPad: there’s no USB drive, you can’t load files on to it in any simple way, its folders are inaccessible, etc. I find iPad Explorer solves these issues, and there’s no need to “jailbreak” your device.

As I mentioned, I found it especially useful for dealing with photos. I’ve tried a couple of applications for editing photos on my iPad, and they’ve been disappointing. This is a drag because it’s such a pleasure to share photos on the iPad—my photos from Costa Rica and Guatemala literally glow on the iPad’s indisputably rich visual display. Now I can download my photos onto the iPad while I’m traveling, edit photos using software on my laptop when I get home, and then load the edited pics back to my iPad for sharing.

If you try the software or have some other approaches to these same questions, please share!

-Jole

All Hail the iPad 2

Did you take much notice of the launch of the new version of the iPad yesterday in SF?
It's got some pretty nifty new features, including (count 'em) TWO cameras, one pointed at the user for video conferencing, and one pointed out into the world for taking snapshots.
It's thinner, lighter, and has a new processor. (Dual Core A5 chip, said to be "faster".)
But the thing I'm most jealous of is the Smart Cover. Wow, do I want one of those. And the bad news is: it doesn't work with our "old" model iPads. :(
It's magnetic; open it and it wakes up your iPad. It folds ingeniously into a stand. And as if that weren't enough: it comes in a rainbow of colors. I, on the other hand, am only one color: green.
Check out the 30 second promotional video. Brilliance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9BB0s5oxw4

Traveling with the iPad

I have been traveling with my iPad since mid-January, and there are plenty of things to love about it. But I have not been able to leave my laptop at home.

The best thing is reading, taking as many books as I like (or as I have in the Kindle and iBooks apps), and being able to read, highlight, and take short notes without getting anything out of my bag except the iPad is fantastic. On the train back from London to Cambridge I moved around between three books I am reading and thinking about, took some notes, and never had to reach into my bag after I sat down. Without the iPad I would have only had one book with me.

I have also talked to people while traveling, they are interested in the device, and they want to start a conversation. I suppose as more and more people have them this effect will stop, but right now it is a good way to meet people.

In SFO, waiting for my delayed flight to London, I met a young girl (maybe 6?) from India. She was flying home with her grandparents, although the first thing she told me was that she would miss her school in Sunnyvale, and she hoped to come back soon. She wanted to know what I was doing with the iPad. She was not impressed by reading books on it, or even with the games (I only have solitaire and Angry Birds). But then she found Brushes, the painting program, and she was off and running. She painted, and erased, for about 20 minutes. She loved it, and the only thing I had to show her was how to change the color.

So, why don't I leave my laptop at home? Two things, writing and photos. I do have the keyboard, and if I want to write anything longer than a paragraph I certainly use it (I am using it for this blog post). But I find myself wishing for my more powerful organizing and writing tool on my laptop, particularly Scrivner. I think, in time, I would find ways around this, if I need to.

The issue of photos, however, might be more difficult to deal with in the long term. I take a lot of photos on my travels. I put some of them up on my travels blog (http://ask pang.type pad.com/heather). But managing the photos is already a big job, and I don't really want to put them on the iPad, and then import them into iPhoto, and then organize them when I get home. I think the apps for this will get better, but right now it seems like plenty of extra steps in what is already a bit of a process.

I also find, although I think good use of MobleMe would fix this, that I have information, contacts, bookmarks, writing, on my laptop that I don't have yet on my iPad. I will have to be more intentional in my information organization and storage before I am able to leave my laptop at home for long.



- Heather Pang
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cambridge

AirSketch worked like a charm

I like the app, AirSketch, quite a lot. This afternoon, with the checkout iPads, I had the Chinese III students work in pairs to create sentences with the newly learned vocabulary. It worked very well, for this time none of us got dropped from the network in the entire long period. I was able to pick and choose which students' work to project, and we critiqued the sentences as a class.

I would love for us to purchase the full version of AirSketch, for among other features, the full version includes an erase function, which the free version does not have. But with a whopping $7.99 price tag, I am hoping it would go on sale soon...

If you are also interested in using AirSketch with your students in this fashion, this is what you'd need to do -

1. Make sure all the iPads are on the same network. (Since all the students are on "Casti - student," I got the password from Nelson and got on the Student network as well.)
   
2. Have students go to a website, e.g., castilleja.org, to make sure that they are connected to the network. Students are likely to need to go through the Cisco authentication process.
   
3. Get the server address and port number from within AirSketch.
4. Type each server address/port number into a separate browser on your laptop, PRIOR to students start using AirSketch (so you have it all set up.)
5. Connect your laptop to the projector. Now you and your students are all set to go!
   

Have fun!

By Alice Lung 

ArtStudio for Painting and Drawing

As many of you know, I've become quite a fan of painting and drawing on the iPad. I've mostly been experimenting with Brushes, but I stumbled upon this short video by art educator, Kevin Honeycutt, on ArtStudio. At $2.99, ArtStudio is a tad bit cheaper than Brushes ($7,99), but neither will break the bank. In my opinion, Brushes has a distinct advantage over ArtStudio in that it records the entire drawing process in the form of a video.

What is your favorite painting and drawing application for iPad? What are your thoughts on this medium for making art?