IPADS

The Ipad pilot program is a very exciting and beneficial experience.  There are many pros to having an Ipad accessible to the school internet allowing us, as students, to  get the most out of every class as possible.  Unlimited internet access is unlimited access to answers raised in class discussions, phrases teachers neglect to over(or lack of knowledge due to absence), and its an available tool for independent studies.  While others worry about their need for laptops or computers but discover there are not enough, we work diligently because of our always available ipads.  Some find it useful to organize their notes, but i personally like binders and folders.  There are few cons to go along with these pros however; limited app downloading creates a barrier for many websites, and because of the unlimited internet access, some students find ipads to be distracting. Yet these cons are simple fixes, and do not compare to the pros that the ipads bring.  I am hopeful that this is not the only year students receive ipads because they do prove to be a very useful tool for developing one's mind.

Ipads in the Classroom

The first few days after receiving my Ipad i will admit that they were less of a tool than a distraction. I wanted to try every app, play with the pictures, and figure out the music. Once the initial shock of having my very own Ipad had worn off, i began to realise what an incredible resource i now had access too. Every calculation, note, lecture, and process can be recorded. When a friend of mine missed school, the needed notes she missed were easily copied and emailed to her in less than a minute. I have instant access to online books and textbooks if I forget my own. I can visit any city in the world on Google Earth and see countless maps detailing histories of a variety of things with World Maps. My notebooks have long been disorganized and useless. My Ipad has the notes from all my classes neatly labled out and organised. Handouts can be photographed and stored as images. Equations can be recorded step by step and replayed to help as you attempt to solve them on your own. Not only has the Ipad helped me with organization and enthusiasm to take notes, but also I have realised how many trees we are saving without the constant need for paper. The information i have access to on the Ipad is as fresh as it gets. The texts and scientific knowledge are as accurate as possibile, unlike those in textbooks. Every time important news is known, i recieve a notification relaying these event, forming more wordly and up to date students. The ipads are helping us improve our technological savviness and overall education, as well as increasing the enjoyment in school.

Personally I feel that the iPads have done both good and bad. Having this device has definitely made me more organized. With the various note-taking apps, I have been able to take much neater notes, and becoming accustomed to typing took very little time. Also, for times when I or someone else have been unable to take notes for whatever reason, or for working on projects, it's much easier to collaborate and share notes and information. Even apps such as FaceTime and iMessage have come in handy because they allow for easy communication when one needs help with a project or homework assignment. In my English class, I have communicated with students to get missed notes, taken notes, and set up and downloaded pictures for various projects. In Chemistry, my notes are much neater and very thorough. Engagement in class has actually increased, especially in Chemistry because my notes are that much more thorough. Engagement in APUSH has also increased because most of the work is now done on the iPads. My own personal preference is my netbook to my iPad, for a few reasons. The iPads are limited; they are set up like a mobile tablet, not like a computer. Many websites need Flash Player, and some just don't translate well to a mobile device. Also, many apps crash a lot, and simple fixes don't always do the trick. For instance, on my iPad, I was unable to access this site for long enough to figure out how to post because Safari kept crashing. I've also had an experience with Sundry Notes where 4 pages of notes that I had taken had been somehow deleted. This was easily fixed by sharing notes with someone else, however, I would have preferred to not have had to been in that situation. Because this is a learning experience, and a piloting program, there are going to be positives and negatives, and over the course of this second semester, I have a feeling that we will be experiencing our fair share of both.

IPAD

The Ipad piloting program has proven to be a truly beneficial experience for me.  Having a personal electronic device not only gives me more accessibility to the internet and other school-orientated apps, but also has helped to organize my school life.  With such things as the reminders and calendar app, I can better prepare for the school day by simplifying my schedule with certain things such as tests and assignment due dates.   Along with this, the various note taking apps are very resourceful, for not only can I more neatly and clearly organize my classnotes, i can add videos, drawings, or pictures from the internet when nessecary.  And since all my notes are all consolidated onto one device, I am more likely to go over them than I was when I was taking such notes with normal pen and paper.  I am able to use the device for all of my classes and it was helped in various ways in all of them.  The Ipad also serves as a very different tool when creating projects and presentations, in which we have been doing in A.P. U.S. History frequently.  I can make presentations, collages, drawings, or videos with much more ease than using a normal computer, especially since we can colloborate with our groupmates and share the project over a connection.

There have been some technical problems, but quite honestly, that was expected.  Certain sites take longer to download and there is always some lag when scrolling around on the website.  It is rather easy to delete texts and notes without really noticing.  Other than that, it is just trying to figure out how the applications function as we go.

iPad in the Classroom

       Being able to use an iPad in class has been an extremely beneficial experience. Having it has improved my note taking, study habits, and my overall understanding of content from various classes. I have found that using my iPad for notes has been not only much more efficient, but I am far more likely to look over my notes again later. Also, if I happen to miss a portion or an entire lecture, a friend of mine can always share with me their notes so I can fill in the missing pieces. 

      The camera app is also of great use to us. In my Graphic Communications class we are required to take step-by-step photos of our projects for them to be used in our portfolio later. With my iPad I can take the photos, upload them to Dropbox, and access them wheneverI need to.

      We have also used our iPads for more creative projects, particularly in my AP United States  history class. On one assignment, we had to create a poster that was made up of a collage of pictures. With the iPad, this was very easy. However, there are still some problems with printing. There is currently only one printer in our school capable of printing with an iPad, and certain applications will not allow us to print at all. Also, Dropbox will only allow us to upload photos from its mobile version so that application is of no use in this situation. 

     

Using the iPad as been an interesting thing to try out. It has both helped and made a few things worse. I find that taking notes on the iPad conserves paper and is really helpful if u don't have really good handwriting. But if you are not used to the iPad keyboard typing notes can be slow. I also love the way it gives you instant access to the Internet, if i need a question answered and the teacher is busy I can just look it up and finish my assignment on time. I think the iPad has so far change my understanding in several of my classes. It is easy to access many usefull tools on the Internet like Whitecker's words for Latin to help with translations. However, there is a down side the iPad can only be so useful. Some sites that you need cannot be accessed beCause of the lack of a flash player. And Power point on google docs gives me a really hard time. The first thing is actually being able to make oit work. Then if you do get it to work in the middle of it you could all of a sudden you can have your slides mixed together. And so all though the iPad is useful, but it can not do all things.

Review Number One

Throughout the pilot program for the iPad in thr classroom, I have noticed a great number of pros, and a small number of minor, slightly inconveniencing flaws and problems in the use of the machines. As a whole, the iPads allow us quick, convenient access to the internet, when we are not sure of what a certain phrase means in a lecture. We do not have to fight against other classes to gain control of the library lab or the mobile lab for a day, because we already have the iPads with us. They are much lighter than notebooks, and the NOTEPAD app allows us to take our notes on them. Personally, and this is just my opinion, I prefer to take my notes with conventional pencil and paper, though if I wanted to, I could just as easily take to the iPad. However, I have seen some critical flaws with it. Foremost, they are a distraction during class, and should be restricted to specific times of use. I come in to class, and I already see five or six people using them. Also, the inability to print from them is a real problem, as once we finish a project, using one of the many programs available to us, we are required to import it to the Cloud, or email it to ourselves, and we all have to wait for a chance to use one of the two desktops to print. The lack of Adobe Flash is a nuisance, as well, because some videos, like those we are REQUIRED to watch for some assignments in class, cannot be run without it. This requires us to have to go to the lab, or borrow the laptops, just so we can watch these videos. Multiple windows are not able to be simultaneously active, so we can't load one page while we are reading something on another. It would be niceto be able to have more than one open at once, with two or more on the same screen, but this is a problem with the iPad itself, and cannot be fixed by us. We'll have to wait for Apple to fix that themselves. As a note, I would like to pount out that apps are prone to randomly shutting down, and not openong back up. Usually they are apps that we do not require, but not always. Also, I was rather annoyed when I had just finished a project on it, and as I was going to save it, it DELETED it. More than an hour of work, gone in a second. And, more recently, this blog. I had typed about half of it, and when I went to fix a spelling error, I accidentally hit the X up in the corner, and everything I had just done was gone. I don't like them, straight out. The apps are evil, the spellcheck is demonic, and the constant errors just drive me mad. As I recall, I was one of the few in the class who lobbied for the use of the netbooks...