Thoughts on the iPad2 in Teaching

By Shelly Blake-Plock

Picked up my own iPad2 about three weeks ago and, as an experiment, I have set my laptop aside and have used nothing but the Apple in the classroom ever since.

And I have found that there is nothing that I do in my normal activities as a teacher that I have done with a laptop or a tablet PC that I can not do with the iPad2.

Blogging? No problem... BlogPress. Gmail and Google Apps? No problem... G-whizz. Editing pics? Photoshop Express and Filterstorm and 100Cameras. Grading? No problem... PowerTeacher has an app. Documents and presentations? No prob... Pages and Keynote. Handwriting? Penultimate. Note taking and note storage? Auditorium, Evernote, and Dropbox. Dictation? Dragon. Sharing student desktops? Lanschool. Video taking-making-and-editing? iMovie is ridiculously good on the iPad. Music? Let's just say that Korg and Moog have made synth apps that I would be willing to take on stage.

In short, in my experience, all of the criticisms I have heard about the iPad not being 'classroom ready' are bogus. The Flash 'problem'? I have not noticed it so much. The two sites I have had problems with are wikispaces and weebly, but this just means that if they do not make themselves accessible for iPad, I will find an alternative -- i am not married to either of them. Other problems? For all I heard about how difficult typing would be, I have found it rather intuitive. Multitasking? Takes getting used to, but pretty simple and effective once you get the hang of it. Problems as a 'creation' tool? Absurd. Sure, if I am going to do high end design or audio, I am going to use pro gear... but how often do you actually find yourself needing pro gear in your regular duties?

Publishing yearbook? Newspaper? Yeah, you should be on a quad core running Adobe. iPad is not a substitute for that type of machine. But it is questionable to hear some quarters chopping off their nose to spite their face by complaining that a $700 machine you can hold in the palm of your hand can't run InDesign.

One of the things I never realized before was just how much even a tablet PC limits your mobility. With the iPad, I can roam the halls, lay on the couch, run out to the teacher parking lot... All while prepping digital lessons or watching student videos. The mobility factor is huge and will alter the way we think of 'space' in schools. My students joked that my being able to roam around while connected to PowerTeacher made it considerably more difficult for them to get away with sneaking a Skype session than it was while I was tied to the big laptop on my podium. They also like how easy it is to share the iPad. And it is not just a 'cool' thing... It is really a matter of being able to work --digitally and physically-- quick and share it on the fly.

Last thing. There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the 'closed' nature of iBooks and iTunes. I say, if you think it's too closed, use a different app. I get the majority of my e-books via the Kindle app. If I don't like the way a particular newspaper's app works, I just go direct to the web. Like most things, the iPad is mostly limited only by the imagination of the user. In terms of teaching and learning, I just have not hit a major snag yet. That is not to say there isn't one... I just have not run into it.

Is this device the be-all-and-end-all? To be honest, I really do not care. It works for me so far. Next step is to see how it works for the students. And on that front, our school is starting an iPad pilot program to complement the tablet PC program. Ultimately, I see all of these devices as relative within a BYOD environment.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Show of Hands: Does the New iPad Meet Your Needs as a Teacher?

by Shelly Blake-Plock

Tweet posted earlier today:

Is this the iPad we've been waiting for? RT @erikmal: Apple's iPad product page has been refreshed: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ #edtech

Well, is it? Comment away...

Some Facts & Myths Regarding Classroom iPads

by Michael Grzelak

I first wanted to say hello to everyone who follows this blog and thank Shelly for the opportunity to contribute to this awesome blog.  A few months I was sitting around a conference table discussing a school grant opportunity.  The grant itself dealt with technology and at the end of the meeting, my principal stated she was going to purchase a new laptop lab for the school.  The others in the room were excited, but my mind was thinking about other types of technology.  The night before, I was in a class that Shelly taught called The Paperless Classroom.  We had just talked about iPads and wrote a fake letter about the type of technology we wished existed in our school.  I had wished that every classroom had a set of iPads, but this is simply not feasible for a city high school in Baltimore.  However, I wanted to voice my opinions about this new purchase.  

I spoke up and suggested that we look into iPads; this gathered some strange looks from others in the room who did not necessary understand the power of these devices, but I continued and made a sales pitch for the iPad.  Some of the things I mentioned included how they were more cost effective, how they can be used for product creation, and the engaging apps (many of which are free).  My principal, who loves technology, was more than willing to purchase two school IPad labs instead of the one laptop lab (the total amount spent was the same).  To my surprise, one of the new iPad labs was for me to teach a World History course.  I did not believe these words at first and to be honest, I had limited experience with an iPad.  To my excitement, one was purchased quickly for me to play around with and in our third trimester I will be teaching a nearly paperless class with iPads.

Before my teaching iPad arrived, I wanted to conduct extra research about the device and I placed a survey link on Twitter to #edchat and #edtech asking individuals to state if they would rather have a laptop class set or an iPad class set.  The results were surprising; I was not shocked that most teachers would prefer laptops, but I was taken aback by the misunderstanding of the power of iPads.  This brings me to the point of this blog entry, to start to debunk some of the myths currently existing about iPad features and capabilities.

1)                 

       1) Fact or Myth – you cannot create documents on iPads, you can only engage with apps.

MYTH:  this was the most surprising data gathered from my poll of educators; the iPad is a fully functional creation device.  There are many apps, some are free and some cost a little bit of money, that enable you to create documents, presentations, spreadsheets, flyers, graphs, etc.  

If you want professional quality documents, two of the most popular apps for creation are Pages (for word processing documents) and Numbers (for spreadsheets).  These apps each cost about $10, but the cost is due to the professional quality it gives such documents.  If you do not want to purchase these, no problem; there are MANY other apps (many are free) that will allow you or your students to create products on the iPad.

2)      2) Fact or Myth – iPads will not allow students to save their work.

MYTH – On a laptop you can save a lot of different documents, pictures, videos, etc. on the hard drive.   However, the selling point of the iPad is the cloud effect.  We live in a digital world that no longer requires use to be bound to hard drives, flash drives, external drives, etc.  We can use the cloud (the vast digital space of the internet) to save files directly.  Students are not limited by this feature; in fact it is for their benefit as the cloud can be accessed from any device that connects to the internet.  We have to start moving away from thinking that we can only save our information on one machine; we can save on the cloud and access our “stuff” anywhere in the world.   

Some iPad users have said that Google Docs does not work with the iPad, but in my experience I have had no problems creating word documents or spreadsheets in Google Docs.  The best thing about Google Docs is obviously the fact that it saves to its own cloud network.  Not a fan of Google Docs, once again this is not a problem.  Use Dropbox (there is an app for this to make it easier) which is an online cloud tool that you can sync to backup your files or simply drop your files manually into the digital box.

3)      3) Fact or Myth – the iPad is too difficult to type on; our students need to know how to type on a normal key board.

Myth – Yes, the iPad does take some time to become familiar with the shorter keyboard layout, but it is not impossible.  Do you remember typing your first text message on a cell phone; did you instantly type that message perfectly, without any errors or difficultly finding the appropriate keys?  I know I had trouble.  Once you explore with the iPad, you will get the hang of the keyboard.  Your students will adapt too.  In fact one response on the poll was that iPads provide a typing disservice to students, but this is a flawed way of thinking. 

Think right now about how many different kinds of typing devices we have – there are thousands of different ways to input and interact with a device.  I agree that our students need to understand how to use the conventional computer keyboard, but we live in a world where a new device is thought of and created.  Some of these devices have different types of keyboards, thus we need to expose our students to different typing devices. 

4)     4) Fact or Myth – iPads cannot function with Flash.

Fact (FOR NOW) – It is only a matter of time (months, if that) before this is turned into a myth.  Many sites on the internet do have flash components and currently these do not display on the iPad, but there have been recent attempts (nearly successful) by a few companies (one is called Skyfire) to create an app for the iPad and iPhone to allow flash content to show.  Skyfire released this almost two months ago, but it was so popular that it nearly crashed their servers with an overload of demand for the app and they had to remove it.  They have placed a different version in the app store, but it is still being developed.   There are rumors that Adobe will be creating an app (they have always wanted too, but something was in disagreement with Adobe and Apple); it is only a matter of time before the iPad will be able to run Flash!

Hopefully this provided a little more insight to the iPad.  These fact/myth comments came directly from the poll I created and I think teachers need to understand the iPad functions and capabilities a little more before they write it off.  In future posts, I will focus on some awesome apps and ways to use the iPad in a classroom setting. Thanks for reading.

Open Blog: What Device is it that Students and Teachers are Looking For?

So, the Google Tablet is imminent.

And so it's time to open up the bloglines to some reader opinion and comments.

For you iPad-wielding folks, based on your experience so far, what's needed to make these types of devices more applicable for students and teachers? Or is the 'right' device something entirely different?

Can/Would education benefit from a ubiquitous device? And let's just talk devices for a moment.

What do we teachers 'need' in terms of a device? What do our students need? What exactly is it that we 'need' to get to -- and use -- all our stuff out there on the Web?

Lot's of questions. Let's hear what you've got to say.

Remembrance of Things Past: What is the new iPad ad suggesting about Apple's intended audience for the new device?

What is the new iPad ad suggesting about Apple's intended audience for the new device?



First of all, despite the edgy-guitar pop hooks that give the soundtrack to this ad that iPod flavor, the visuals are completely... well... milquetoast. We're in a house decorated by Pottery Barn with a couple of indeterminable age who favor bluejeans and skiing.

The couple are 'readers'... you know, they read 'books' and 'newspapers'; no Boing Boing or Daily Dish in this house, kids. Chatroulette is right out.

Second, they love the travel. They read the 'Escape' section of the Times and have friends who send them pics of trips to Switzerland. We might assume that these folks have made it through the Great Recession alright and are looking for an opportunity to drop some buckage on a hotel with a hot tub and a view.

When it comes to scheduling events, it looks like they have plenty of free time on Wednesdays; perhaps they'll sneak in a few hours to read the Ted Kennedy bio. On second thought, maybe Wednesdays are best spent looking at pictures of the kids and the dog. (Note, ironically, that the interior in this commercial is obviously not the interior of any domicile containing multiple children and a dog.)

Next shot: look! They write emails that look exactly like 'real' letters!

And then, just when I thought I had the market for this device pegged as upper middle class Boomers: they go and throw in that snowboarding article. How edgy! Why, we must actually be looking into the secret life of a Gen Xer with typical 1960's fetishes -- Kennedy, The Doors -- and definitely not folks who'd prefer receiving a letter on 'paper'.

Or are we?

One of the things that's most striking about this ad is the way it blurs together stereotypical Boomer and Gen X interests and tendencies into a composite whole. Notably absent from the video are any of the ways people will actually most often use this device (3rd party apps, 3rd party apps, 3rd party apps) [and I should add 'making stuff', though as of now, there appears to be no simple way ala the typical Macbook avenues to 'make stuff']; instead we're presented with Apple-lite for folks interested in the technology thing, but who have real lives planning ski trips and giving harbor to nostalgia dressed up as hipness.

I'm struck by the images of media that I caught the first time I watched the ad: Star Trek, Steven King, Jim Morrison. There is nothing remotely 21st century about this. The device might be as "magical" as all get-out; but the ad campaign -- and we can assume the intended market's world view -- is entirely based in nostalgia -- and I'd argue -- a certain big-company-fed cynicism towards new media and what's actually happening NOW on the Web.

Concerning the iPad

Concerning the iPad, Mr. G writes:

If you have $500 to burn, feel free, but realize that you are a beta tester. That hasn't been talked about enough in the 24 hours since the announcement. This is Apple's MO. I know. I have a $400 first-gen iPhone in my pocket. It only took Apple two more generations of the iPhone to come out with what should have been the first product. I'm typing this on a 1,1 MacBook. Within months of buying this MacBook they threw the dual core processor's in that should have been there in the first place.

When iPad 2.0 comes out with it's video camera and multitasking, I'll have my tongue wagging to grab one. Until then I will be staying far, far away. I've learned my lesson with Apple's first-generation products.

As a long-time Apple user, (though one who's also got a soft-spot for Linux), I totally concur. Buying a first generation Apple product is always a dicey investment.

But once their products set into the stride of second and third generations? Well... that's just a whole other kettle of fish. Which is why I think the big subtext to the Apple story from yesterday is next-gen iTunes going cloud-based and the coming 2010 iPhone.

My greatest interest in the iPad itself is what it means in terms of leading to a race to replace paper media with legitimately easy-to-read digital alternatives. That and the rather concerning notion of a single corporation (via iBooks) owning both the media and the device to read and buy the media. In a sense, the iPad experiment, like the iPod, is focused on the realignment of channels of distribution. If iPad wins, it will alter not just the few mom-and-pop bookstores left (they might actually become specialty shops for non-digitally-available media), but could shake up (or shake down) the Amazons, Borders, and B&Ns of the world.

As I said in yesterday's post (as well as in the comments), I see the potential of the iPad (or some similar device) as instigating a movement towards communal computing. That is, a device sitting on the coffee table at the dentist's office or a device I find lying on my pillow when I check into my hotel room. I don't own the device, but rather can use it to access the web and all my stuff.

From the looks of it, the iPad's absolute best use is reading text on the Web. That's been the bane of so many folks who insist on paper, so by combining touchscreens with a larger portable device, Apple can only up the ante for other companies to produce better alternatives to paper books. On this front, a part of me wonders if the first iPhones were just a test to see if folks would go for that sort of interface. Because familiarity with the iPhone has totally set up a swath of the culture now to be perfectly attuned to use the iPad.

Furthermore, I understand the frustrations folks are expressing: no Flash, no phone (barring Skype... maybe?), no multi-tasking, no camera, no audio/video production suite. But again, this is just the beginning. I'm not saying that Apple will (or deserves to) rule the media landscape, but I see this as one of several steps -- throughout culture and across media and consumer outlets -- in taking the act of reading to a paperless place.

As for all of those folks on the tech blogs, (and especially in the comments, jeez... I'm so glad we have 'mature' readers commenting on this blog -- kudos to you), there's been a lot of complaint that this thing is just gonna sell on sex appeal. Well, guess what?

Design matters.

It matters to adults and kids alike. And I think where Apple is getting this right -- no matter what you think of the price (which I personally actually think is pretty reasonable despite the fact that I can't currently afford one... ehem!) and no matter what limitations the device provides for content creation in opposition to content consumption (though we are ultimately the producers of the Internet and we really don't have to rely on Apple's apps and way of doing things with their device just because they want us to) and despite all of the various problems and threats this device holds, it has one advantage over every device I've ever seen meant to provide for reading on the web: it makes you want to use it.

And if we can figure out a way to get these things into the hands of kids who don't like books (boring) and who don't like reading online (headache) we might be able to make the reading experience attractive. I understand that that may seem totally counter-intuitive to any of us who grew up curled around books. But I've got three kids of my own: two of them love books. The other? Not so much. But put him on a computer and he'll read anything. To us, counter-intuitive; to him, not so much.

You should have seen his eyes light up when he caught a glimpse of the web promo of this thing.

Now, what's it all mean?

First of all, the iPad is not -- nor do I think is it meant to be -- a do-everything device. At least in it's initial form, it's a really rad e-reader. And I mean that sincerely. I've read on the Kindle. The Kindle sucks. I feel like I'm stepping back in time when I read on the Kindle. And not in a good way. More like in a creepy way like when you see a movie you thought was funny as a kid and now, seeing it again by chance, you don't find any humor in it.

Second, I love the idea of everything going on the cloud. But I think right now is the time to demand an inclusive method of distribution so that small publishers, independent authors, and alt media outlets aren't excluded. I'll be impressed when I see Apple open up its system to authors regardless of saleability. And yes, I realize that's total idealism.

Third, any business with a waiting room should do us all a favor and buy a couple of these things. Cancel your magazine subscriptions and let us access our own stuff while sitting around waiting for the root canal.

Fourth, obviously Apple wants to make this thing as ubiquitous as possible. That's the reason for the $499 entry tag. That's also why this thing doesn't have the camera or the multi-tasking or the...

It's about creating a market. And I think it's an interesting experiment. That market is not schools (at least not yet), it's folks who can drop a few Franklins, like great design, and like to read. I know quite a few people like that.

Fifth, this thing ain't (as I've read so much over the last 24 hours) a big iPod Touch. This thing is an experiment in whether Apple can get people either to change the way they read or make the reading experience more pleasurable. And of course capitalize on that in big dollars.

Sixth, I think this whole thing represents something a lot bigger than Apple. I have no stake in the company, but as a teacher and a human-being I do have a stake in the future of the written/printed/digitized word. I recognize that the iPad can't do half the things I use a 'real' computer for (recording and mixing heavy-duty audio, playing video-heavy MMOGs), but I also recognize that that's not the purpose of the device. I'm interested in the outcome, despite whatever the product is; after all, the Google tablet is on the horizon (which may or may not be better for production) and who knows what personal projection and advances in augmented reality hold down the line.

So, I agree with Mr. G that this is basically a consumer device. Will the iPad and the iMac someday merge into a teacher-approved wonder device? Not today.

But will the iPad up the ante in e-readers and force any potential competitors to create devices that don't feel like they were built (and meant to work) in 1990? We'll see.

Hype or no hype, what we're considering here is whether we are going to let technology alter the way we relate to text. Hopefully in round two it'll be in a more interactive way. Can't wait.

First Thoughts About the iPad

Immediate Reaction to the Announcement of the iPad:

1. Apple is taking on the mobile phone industry and Amazon at the same time. Wow.

2. The plug-in keyboard/charger is the future-now of mobile computing. Hands down.

3. They actually priced this right; and with no contract required.

4. I'm thinking about cancelling my cell phones and my home DSL, Craigslisting my various computer crap, and buying two of these on the 3G plan.

*add 3:41PM: But @deangroom just reminded me that you can't play WoW on this thing... guess I'll keep my home LAN for the time being and just ditch the phones ; )

***

More nuanced immediate reaction:

I think there's something that's largely going unsaid here.

In making iTunes cloud-based, this device really doesn't have to be 'owned' by anyone. What I mean is: this is just a device for connecting to your content (and record collection, and games, and magazines, and bookshelf) on the cloud. Which means that we could see these popping up in every hotel room and on the coffee tables of every office; we could see these things lying around for public use in the faculty room, in student centers, and in libraries.

I think what I'm suggesting is that this could sort of mash up what we think about when we think about personal computing.

Instead, could we be looking at the dawn of communal computing? Where the device is ubiquitous and shared -- sort of the Zip Car of computing. The real essence of what's going on is that the 'stuff' is out there on the cloud; all we really need is an easy to use device to access and play with our stuff.

We own our stuff; who cares who owns the device?

That said, I'm sort of envisioning one or two at home with one hooked up to an LCD projection to watch movies and whatnot. But I'm also imagining communal Pads lining bookshelves at school and a Pad or two sitting where the magazines used to be at the Jiffy Lube.

One place where I definitely see a future if this thing takes off (and it will) is in accessories. You're gonna need some way to carry that thing. Enter skinny bike messenger iPad bag.

I'll take two.