Wednesday, October 31, 2012

A fitting movie for Halloween, and because it was shot using an iPhone fitting for this blog, and winner of this years Disposable Film Festival - Please enjoy Les Ongles (The Nails).


Les Ongles (The Nails) from Disposable Film Festival on Vimeo.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Thank you all for another great iPad class!  You all have the necessary core skills to go out do the things you'd like to do with your iPads, and when you get stumped have some strategies for working things out.

I did want to call further attention to the observed impact of iPads in Auburns school system, and while I think there is still more needed research on how iPads can aid in learning, the initial results of assessment are very encouraging, you can read about here.

What I think is happening at least in early education, as we explored a bit in class, is that the iPad is not as Steve Jobs suggested a "magical device".  Rather it is a tool for delivering very focused information which becomes foundational knowledge in a customizable format young learners find enjoyable and is thus positively reinforced.  This is a best case scenario for helping young learners master the basics, it's not every day children elect on their own to do the repetition necessary to commit core information to memory.  The iPad helps to make the task of learning more palitable through gamification, it does not eliminate the work a learner must do.

 Whether the use of the iPad might allow for later development of critical thinking skills is yet to be determined, and something I hope at some point, you as adult learners might offer your thoughts on.  This is an area I am very interested in, and hope over time you keep in touch.

Thank you for a great class.
John

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Hopefully you're following the news, but if not there was more encouraging information coming from. auburn schools about the efficacy of iPads in education, you can read the Sun Journal article here.  I thought the article was a fitting and hopeful write up about one of the ways iPads can be used.  I hope to hear some more tonight and on going about what you're learning and doing with iPads down the road.

This is our last class tonight though by no means the end of your learning.  I hope that you have a project you'd be willing to share, if not then maybe you'll try one of Smule's free apps for the piano or, in this case rapping and maybe try your hand at making a rap song.
Click here for LAE iPad rap

See you in class.


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The class continues to progress and last weeks review of more advanced settings should allow you to have more control of your iPads.

Tonight we are going to look at some of the potential social implications ethical considerations of the rapid rise of mobile technology such as iPads.  For teachers and parents in particular we will be discussing the phenomenon of "iSolation" and ways we might constructively look at it.

As for the class homework assignment, I thought you might want to see something very creative which involves modern dance developed by 2wice Arts  most of their work requires a purchase, but just Fifth Wall is just .99 and might give you some ideas.

Or you might like this video?



Wednesday, October 10, 2012

I think I have my blog problems worked out, so you should now be able to see the links to the presentations from the past two classes and tonights.  Class 4Class 5Class 6

I three good questions about iPads emailed to me from the class I wanted to respond to. 

"Can I download and save files with the iPad like I can with my windows laptop? If so, where are the files saved? Also can I search the iPad for a file?"

You can not "download" anything to iPad's, iPhone's or iPod Touches quite like you can on computers.  You can download from inside certain apps, iTunes is an obvious one that allows you to download music, video, etc.  You can also tap and hold on some things from inside Safari, such as an image from the web and save it to Photos.  In both of these cases you will be able to find what you've downloaded from within the specific app.  However another way you can find things, say a song, on your iPad is to swipe from left to right on your devices screen until you see the "search iPad" feature at the top your screen.  It will look like this.


And just in case any of you are wondering how I get these KeyNote presentations onto the blog, they are done on my iPad but I then need to convert them to a PDF file, download to my computer then upload to Google Drive, copy the link from Google Drive and paste it into Blogger.  Until very recently it was possible to do everything on the iPad - then Apple changed the ability to create links to individual files in iCloud and I moved everything to Google Drive. Then Blogger changed it's formatting, changing how I write the blogs.  Now that I think I have this all figured out, it might be interesting for you to know, in case you want to create your own blog.