Loving My Ipad2

photo © 2011 inUse Consulting | more info (via: Wylio)
Yes I am just loving the iPad2.  It is a personal item, so thus far I have refrained from taking it to school.  Well I did take it once.  I have a student in my class, an eleven year old who is in the earlier stages of learning to read.  I encouraged her by saying when she had a number of ticks  for chunking through words, using the sounds and not making big, fat guesses, I would reward her with a story on my iPad.  She worked hard and I gave her my iPad and she followed the story of Cinderella.  Of course I sat along side her guarding my precious piece of hardware!  The Cinderella app was not a fantastic app but we enjoyed the story and I already have another app waiting there for her when we make another page of ticks for meeting her goal.  She is buying into it. I love it, because of course as a teacher I have a hidden motive. It passes more text past her eyes!

I love the way I can sit in my armchair, open the cover and there it is.  No slow waiting for it to boot up.  I barely got the cover off tonight when it started playing the video I had closed on the night before.  Now there is a problem.  I find my bedtime is getting later as I explore blogs, twitter etc on the iPad.

There are a wonderful array of apps to be explored.  Some excellent ones for children.  So far I have ignored games.  Evidently Angry Birds is the in game!  Where do people find the time?

As I read student blogs, it is easy to leave comments.  I have tried writing a post on Edublogs with it.  Didn't work but a plea for help to Sue Waters solved the problem.  Write in the HTML tab and works perfectly.  However probably the laptop is a lot easier for writing posts.

Watching videos on the iPad2 is a dream.  What am I watching?  Well, actually videos on phones!!!!!  Yes I have decided now I want to buy a phone that will work for me in the classroom.  After participating in a webinar on Tech Talk Tuesday, presented this week by Richard Lambert, I tracked down his blog.  There he talks about the use of phones in classrooms.  I'm sold!!  I can't justify an iphone. Yes, I'd love one.  However I splurged on the iPad2, so that's enough.

photo © 2010 George Kelly | more info (via: Wylio)
So android phones are my area of research at present.  I have decided it willl be either a Motorola flip out, or a Motorola Milestone.  I want something with a keyboard, (note-taking), a reasonable camera and video, a good internet processor.  These two fit the criteria.

And while I was attending the webinar, the topic was digital storytelling.  Now I am all fired up to go with that. I have ordered his book.  Now.... what gadgets will I need for digital storytelling!!

An Ipad2 Initiation.

Recently I received my Ipad2 that I ordered a few weeks back.  I am not sure if I really needed it, but I did want one!  I already have a Kindle and Kobo ereader and the Kindle3 is a great ereader and I would go no further than it.  So I didn't need the ipad as an ereader.

However in the last year I have started to get The Reading Teacher magazine online and downloading articles as PDFs. I like the idea more, not so many magazines piled up on the bookcase!  I have bought the PDF Pro Reader Editon app and this is perfect for reading these articles, the screen is not too bright and I can highlight etc.  Possibly a little expensive as an app, but now that I have become skilled at using it I don't regret it.  To show how green I am with an ipad I spent about 12 hours wondering how I could enlarge the print.  The penny then dropped and I remembered how to make it larger.  The downside of this, is now I am touching and swiping and expecting my Kindle ereader to act in the same way!  Of course it doesn't!!

A free app that I have downloaded is Flipboard.  That makes blog reading and other favourite places like flipping through a magazine.  Fun.  I have had a go at logging onto Twitter with the ipad.  I found myself a little at sea there, finding myself doing things I just don't want.  My favourite quote has accidentally changed and I have been in danger of retweeting tweets I didn't want to do.

To see what an upmarket magazine looks like on the ipad2 I tried the most recent Austalian Women's Weekly.  Interesting but don't think I will repeat.  It took awhile to download, and while the photos were sharp, there wasn't that much reading really in it for me.

I have noticed the finger marks quickly build up and the dust, even though I do have a cover. However all in all I know that I am going to build up my use of this interesting piece of technology.

As a teacher I will be wanting to know what apps are really good for education.  I hope to be able to use it in class with a link to my projector.  If you read this post and have used the ipad2 in education, please let me know what has worked well (or not!) for you.