I read this Blog today and felt good that many of the ideas here have already been shared this year during our Tall Tuesday group. Nevertheless, it’s always good to get another opinion on how to use just 1 iPad in a classroom environment. Enjoy!
http://content.easybib.com/2012/05/02/how-to-use-a-single-ipad-to-benefit-your-entire-class
The Atlantic recently put out an article on eReaders that I find particularly interesting for our group. Although it analyzes which cities have emerged as the most aggressive early adopters of eReaders, it also points out that eReading still takes a back seat to reading from physical sources, by far. Most interestingly, they also report that iPad sales far outweigh Kindle and Nook sales. Of course, I can’t know what percentage of time iPad owners spend reading on their iPads. What I do know, however, is that a lot of eReaders have come and gone over the past 10 years. If this trend continues, I wouldn’t be surprised if we reminisce about the days of a single-use device like eReaders – or wrist watches. When Kindle released its Kindle Fire this year, Amazon showed interest in releasing more than an eReader. I wouldn’t be surprised if they release a true tablet soon to stay in this market.
This is an interesting video made by Apple in the 1990’s. Some of the concepts and technologies sound remarkably familiar. It’s interesting to notice that we’re still trying to accomplish many of the same goals 15 years later. I’m not really sure we’ve arrived at the finish line with any and I wonder what is holding us back.
In my experience, so many apps I’ve tried are so close to what I want, but not quite useful enough. For example, I was thrilled to discover that EasyBib had a citation app. It was disappointing, however, to discover that it will only cite books and frustrating that I have yet to get the barcode recognition feature to work. Moreover, certain websites I use frequently have some slight variations that have prevented me from using my iPad with a class. For example, the citation tools in our Gale databases do not work the same on the iPad version of Safari as the MacBook version of Safari.
On the bright side, I think I might be able to make library circulation even faster simply buying a USB extension that I can plug my scanner into. One of my favorite things to do is check books out to students from within the stacks by simply typing in the book’s barcode. Checking in is far more cumbersome this way, so I always do that on our old desktop PC with the scanner attached. Any excuse to not use that PC seems worthwhile to me. It would also be interesting to do inventory with my iPad at the end of the year. My laptop isn’t heavy, but the iPad is much easier to carry in one hand while scanning books with the other. I think its time to go shopping.
Here’s the link: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ipad-teaching-learning-apps-ben-johnson
Today I learned that there are a lot of hidden features on the iPad that I haven’t discovered through experimentation alone. For example, I have never tried to hold down letters on the keyboard, so I had no idea that letters like á and ñ were possible. I’m also happy to discover how easy it is to add “quotations” without leaving the main keyboard screen.
