iPad therefore iPonder…

I have been using the iPhone and iOS since the first few months of release, so transitioning and working within the iPad environment was straightforward. It did not take long after playing with a first generation iPad to realize that these devices would eventually become integral to education and, ultimately, how we teach and develop course materials. Moving forward, it is already changing how I prepare materials for courses. That being said, I’ve designed new teaching modules that are intended to be used mainly in the iPad format. They are being designed as interactive .pdfs, so are readable by every tablet format out. (I am still in beta with those, but may show something soon.)

When I first saw the iPad, one of the first things I thought of was a pre-1960s classroom with rows and rows of students sitting around with chalk and slate, copying and memorizing what was on the board… except now they would be using iPads, or some sort of tablet device. Considering entire nations are now contemplating buying iPads for their students (I think Turkey has recently been investigating this) and that v 2.0 of the One Laptop per Child program is essentially now the One Tablet per Child program, it seems an inevitable trend. A recent figure I heard was that the (One Laptop per Child) laptop design had well over 90-100 moving parts, where as the new tablet design has zero. If breaking one of 90 parts could make the device useless, well, the gains in reliable support alone should be obvious. The tablet/pad format has become a somewhat elegant solution to removing the complexity of moving parts, files, folders, etc, and has become the essential tool we’ve needed for sometime… namely a clean unfettered window to the internet, and access to all various forms of content contained within.

Ultimately, while they can deliver on many other “app” based services for specific applications, the biggest general benefit I see in the pad/tablet format is its capacity to, very portably: 1) provide a window to the online world, and 2) allow many documents to be carried easily, with the capacity to comment.

Portability: The iPad is a bit heavy, certainly heavier than a printed article, but it’s really not much heavier than most of the books I’ve read. I have heard the screen will become plastic in the iPad 3. This should make a very large difference in the weight. Getting the weight factor down to something like a Kindle will be key. Battery life adds a lot to the experience of portability. If you are always hauling around a power cord… it becomes a degree less portable. The iPad travelled with me this summer to three other countries and four other states, and it held up just fine.

Reading:I really like using the iPad to read colorful documents, like charts, maps, graphics, etc. Something about the quality of the screen and being able to hold the visual/data in my hand is a good feeling… and it brings me closer to “feeling” the data. The sparse interface enhances this, entirely. I love to read pdfs on the iPad. I find I can read on this for a rather long time. I find its easier on my eyes than trying to read printed paper under dim lighting.

Taking notes: So, I purchased a Wacom Bamboo stylus on word of a few really good reviews. (http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/BambooStylus/BambooStylus.aspx) I only (recently) used a stylus on a Tablet PC, which was useful enough. However, using the Bamboo stylus is a whole different thing. I find it the perfect companion to the iPad, and use it regularly. Using the stylus with a sketchpad program has come to replace my Moleskine notebook, at least for now. It is also fantastic for marking up pdfs… one thing that I was really missing before I had the stylus.

Reading the web: More and more of the big sites are putting out tablet/iPad friendly css, allowing readers to more easily and cleanly read through their content.

Top Five Favorite Apps: (besides web browser)

GoodReader. Indispensable for reading pdfs. Links to websites in pdfs will allow you to keep browsing in the program, and does not take you out to safari or something, which I like. Easy to use with stylus for taking notes. Quite cool.

Penultimate. Perfect companion app to the stylus. Take notes, email to yourself as a jpg, pdf, tiff. Keep separate notebooks, etc. Very nice, and with graph paper lines, you feel right at home.

Gmail. Accessing gmail via browser for iPhone and iPad are simply great. Google has come a long way in providing a very clean and fast interface for your mail. The design seems to be staying consistant across Google+  I go to gmail via the web browser and make a link to gmail that appears as its own app icon. This allows me to go directly to the gmail window in safari.

Netflix. You can’t always be reading. I quite like watching this way, but unlike reading where you need to take notes, you want to not have to hold the iPad for the entire movie.

The Weather Channel. They make a really neat application for checking the weather.

Web app support: For maintenance of course blogs under the Moveable Type framework have not been possible. The main problem resides in editing the form window for the main blog content. I tried three separate web browsers, including Opera Mini, Atomic Web, and Safari (of course). None of them allowed me to edit the content fields of blogs.psu.edu. As a means for keeping up with courses remotely, this poses a significant limitation for how I tend to student homework. I am not sure why this is the case, as I can see the editing window, I just cannot click on it and start typing anything.

Lack of Flash support can be frustrating. I agree, flash, and a lot of html 5.0 code these days seems pretty buggy, but still, it brings up some limitations. For example, I use the VoiceThread technology for creating presentations to be completed outside of class, and it is quite a core piece of class work in Ethics in the Design of Technology (STS 233). As VoiceThreads are also dependent on a Flash, I cannot use the iPad for this. One thing I have my students do is “show and tells” on various designed objects. The camera on the iPad 2 would prove a useful tool in directly capturing video to the VoiceThread, as you can do with a typical web-camera. But, since VoiceThread doesn’t work on iPad (at least for now), this feature cannot be exploited. Students try to upload videos captured via iPhone or Android phone, but have some problems.

Wifi: When travelling, many places have wifi. But in China, most of the hotels still use an ethernet cable to connect. Since I had my laptop with me, I was able to create a local connection via my MacBook Pro’s wifi, so I still had connectivity to the iPad. Still, I wouldn’t be able to travel with the iPad alone, yet. Wireless is becoming more ubiquitous, but it still can be a hassle finding a good connection.

Projection: The iPad should not need to be attached by a cord to project in the classroom. This is completely pointless. Using a clever arrangement, like an AppleTV box and AirPlay, I should be able to project whatever I have onscreen on the iPad… or at least Keynote files, websites, and pdfs. Not sure this is possible, but it should be if you can do it with video. Problem is AppleTV only has HDMI outputs and even the latest projections in rooms are all still VGA. Still, until I can walk around unhindered by cords, I don’t see any advantage of the iPad over a laptop.