With the rise in mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones we wanted to see if a teacher could manage with just an iPad as their only device for the duration of one of our professional development conferences. Would it provide the full range of functionality the teacher needed for consuming and creating content, or would the teacher have to reach for his or her laptop when it came to the heavy work.
We put a tweet out for a willing teacher that did not own an iPad, but would be willing to try putting aside their laptop and using an iPad for the full three days at Ulearn11. Tracy Tindle (@CrimsonNZ) stepped up to the mark, and here is how she found it.
– Glen Davies, CORE Education's IT Manager
Arriving at ULearn, I was excited to get my hands on the iPad! I had some experience with Apple products, being an iPhone owner, and, of course, having played with iPads at electronic stores. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the device other than that I hoped I could learn as much as I could, and gain some insight into how I could use this for teaching my digital class next year. I had brought my laptop with me in case the iPad didn’t do what I needed it to do. It turned out the only thing I ever used my laptop for over the whole 3 days was to sync to my iTunes account.
The iPad was better than I expected. I found the keyboard so easy to use, and loved the time saving predictive text function. Typing was so much easier on the iPad as I didn’t end up hitting other keys by mistake, which sometimes happens on a normal keyboard. The screen size was great, and there was no trouble using both hands to type.
I was able to connect easily to the internet, even to the dreadful third party Wi-Fi my hostel offered. I could also swap in and out of different Wi-Fi networks simply and quickly. There was no trouble connecting to my school webmail accounts or to any websites I needed for breakouts. I could also access my Google Docs account easily, but I did have trouble enabling the editing options, which seemed to be only available to desktop/laptop users, but that could simply have been my inexperience.
I was lucky enough to go to the fantastic iPad App Harvest breakout with Paula Jamieson, and got some fantastic app suggestions from there. One of the best suggestions I had was to get the Appshopper app, which allows you to search for free and discounted apps. Really handy to have, and I got a lot of great free apps from there in just one day.
Other apps I found which I have really liked were:
- Tour Wrist – a great app for exploring places and sights around the world,
- Prezi Viewer – to view Prezi presentations (my class uses Prezi a lot)- the only downside to this app is that you could not edit a Prezi.
- Elementals – was a great chemistry elements app I found free through App Shopper which is easy to use and interactive.
- WordPress -I also use the WordPress app a lot to update our class blog, and loved the layout and improvements in the iPad version. We will be continuing to use this next year and it will be great for students to use to update their own blogs.
- Storyform, Strip Design, Voicethread, Rocket Math, Word Bubble and Storie are also some favourites.
Using the iPad was such a highlight for me, and having that time to experiment and play around with it was great. I have come away from the whole experience with some fantastic ideas for my 1:1 iPad class next year, as well some great apps to use for different ability levels right across the curriculum. We have even decided to just use the built in keyboard the iPad has rather than buy separate ones for each of the kids.
A huge thanks to Glen and the team at CORE Education for letting me have the opportunity. I was very sad to have to give it back and can’t wait to get my own one in the next few weeks!
Tracy Tindle (@CrimsonNZ) is a year 7/8 teacher at Wellsford School. She is an ICT enthusiast, a recent Apple convert, and an e-book fan.
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Great insight into the potential and functionality of an iPad – thanks also for the app suggestions as well which I'm going to check out now…
Thanks for the heads up with some of those apps … I agree with your observations re the ipad – editing within google docs is still a bit of a pain with the ipad, but I'm sure it won't be long before these kinds of issues are resolved … :)
Thanks for the review. I too took my iPad to ULearn. The first time I had relied on an iPad and had no laptop as back up. It was great. I could do everything I wanted to on it quickly, easily and effortlessly. I didn't miss the laptop and it was so much lighter and easier to carry around. :)
Thanks for the great feedback everyone. Im always looking for other like minded people to bounce ideas off so i'm glad some of mine have been useful. Ive even convinced the principal at my school that we dont need extra keyboards for the kids since the keyboard function is so easy to use. Looking forward to setting up my 1:1 ipad class for next year. Anyone out there who has one? Tips/ Troubleshooting? Apps suggestions?
If you haven't seen it already Tracy have a look at the iPad/iPod group on the vln – http://www.vln.school.nz/pg/groups/26613/school-ipadipod-user-group/ – about 230 members having discussions around the us of iOS devices in education.