iPad Apps for Teachers: Cloud Storage

As I said in my last post, I was asked to recommend some iPad apps for teachers. Here is part two of six: Cloud storage.

Cloud Storage

clouds, a photo by Extra Medium on Flickr.

Dropbox: 
Dropbox is supported by many other iPad apps, so it is almost an essential way to move files between devices. Click on the share button on an app and Dropbox will probably be offered as one of the options.

Google Drive:
This app is a bit clunky but is useful if people already make use of Google Drive.

WebDAV:
Allows you to connect to and synchronise with network drives. It worked well in my previous workplace and was the preferred way of storing documents because you could sync with network copies of documents thereby minimising the risk of ending up with multiple, slightly different, versions of the same thing. I could also use WebDAV to mount drives on my home computer, so this was an easy way to transfer stuff between my home computer and my iPad.

iRDP:
If your school doesn’t have WebDAV support (see above) this Remote Desktop client for the iPad  may provide a (slightly awkward) way to access school network drives.



What other storage and transfer tools would you recommend? And, what is the best way to share documents with pupils, parents or fellow teachers?

iPad Apps for Teachers: Note Taking

I was asked recently to recommend some iPad apps fpr teachers. It was suggested I aim for five or six apps but I git a bit carried away and suggested umpteen instead. I thought it was worth reproducing in this blog to see if anyone disagreed with my choices or if they had any to add that I missed.

Teacher's Desk, a photo by mortsan on Flickr.

The list was divided into six sections, so I'll do this over six blog posts. The first category was note taking.

Note Taking

Keynote:
Both for teachers presenting but also as a great tool for pupils to communicate their knowledge and understanding using text, graphics video etc.

Notes Plus:
I would go for this rather than Pages. You can word process on the iPad with Pages but I think that is not the iPad's main strength. The iPad is an ideal tool for note taking though and Notes Plus is a package that I’ve used and find impressive. There is an in-app upgrade to add handwriting recognition but I’ve never done this so don’t know if it is any good!

uPad:
An alternative to Notes Plus. I have never used this app but I saw a friend use it to take notes at a conference and it looked impressive. Pulling in screen shots and webpages to annotate as well as adding handwritten notes to pdf documents.

PDF Expert:
Annotate on multi-page pdfs. Good synchronisation with a variety of cloud storage services means you don’t end up with one version on your iPad a a different version on your desktop.

PDF Printer:
Converts other documents to pdfs. Good companion program for PDF Expert and other similar note taking apps.

Evernote:
Syncs across multiple devices including desktops. Variety of note types supported. Limited Optical Character Recognition supported (e.g. photograph a business card and Evernote can extract the contact details so you can copy them into your contacts list).

So, what do you think? Is there anything obvious I've missed? Is there anything I've listed that doesn't deserve to be there?

Learning without Frontiers - Iris Lapinski - Apps for Good

Iris Lapinski - Apps for Good

Why is it that 70% of countries fail to improve their education systems?

Is it because in the real world, problems are complex and context specific? School systems, however, teach children how to recognise standard problems and we provide them with a "Swiss Army knife" set of tools to solve the standard problems. This is important and useful, but does it meet "real world" demands? To prepare children we could teach them to define the problem, research the issue, {missed number three - DM}, design solutions, then build and test.

Examples of the Apps for Good approach were then presented by the students who developed the apps. One was OysterCheck. Next (presented by a fantastically enthusiastic 13 year old) presented BuzzerBuddies which reminds you why you want to wake up when an alarm is set but it also sends a push notice to a friend to tell them you have hit the snooze button so they know you will be late and they can nark you as well as the alarm!

The Apps For Good people are connected to an expert community who help evaluate and develop students apps.

They are using previous students from the course as tutors on subsequent courses. Iris was asked how young she thought this approach can go and answered, "I don't know." but is keen to try younger than 13.