Teach42

Working on an iPad presentation and in my research, came across an interesting interview with Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review ( childrenstech.com).  I’m enamored with the iPad right now, and even though I don’t have one, I think the current iPod Touch is an amazing device.  Aiden isn’t even 4 yet and I keep considering getting him his own iTouch.  The main reason is that I see it becoming an integral part of the formation of his digital identity.  And Buckleitner’s comments in the interview hit right on the ideas that are playing around in my mind. More…

If you have any interest in exploring the potential for iPads in schools, you need to be following the journey of Fraser Speirs.   He’s the author of a few OSX and iOS apps, but also teaches computing at the Cedar School of Excellence.  Like many others, he’s in the midst of implementing an iPad initiative.  Unlike many others, he’s documenting the heck out of it.

His most recent post on the topic keys in on battery life.  I had to read the post through twice, because it explains in practice what I’ve been ranting about in theory for the past few months; that the killer feature for the iPad in schools may actually be its battery life.

I know, that sounds strange doesn’t it? But tell me if this sounds familiar to you…

When I was a tech coordinator, I had one laptop cart under my jurisdiction.  However, that cart was a major time suck to say the least.  It navigated like a Sherman tank in the halls, and often required furniture to be re-arranged so it could rest safely along the wall in a classroom, and still reach an outlet.  In the best of scenarios, a teacher would have to carve out at least ten minutes to get the cart set up, the laptops distributed and the computers booted up.  At least five minutes before the end of class were required to get everything put away.  That’s 15 minutes of learning time that nobody will be getting back.  And that’s the best case scenario.    A the worst case, some of the computers would have been put away without being plugged in, or the plus might have fallen out.  Students would spend 5 minutes watching a computer boot, only to have it shut down due to no battery life.  Or some might not power up at all.  And then the teacher needs to figure out what to do when 17 of 20 students have laptops and two are without.

We bowed and payed homage to the gods of battery life in so many ways.  We sacrificed periods after the cart went out so that the laptops would have time to recharge.  We bought charger after charger, so we could have one set on the cart, another in bags for checkout and others as spares if the students needed to power them up during a class period.  It’s just an inherent weakness with the platform.

And now comes a device that gets 10 hours of non-stop use.  That’s non-stop video playing, which is hardly a ‘real’ example.  In real world practice, I found that I could use it for that much time and still have about 50% batter life yet.

But is that really a significant enough reason to say that it’s a worthy contender in schools?

Look at it this way…  There’s no boot time at all, and programs open instantly, so there’s no class time lost there.  It takes up virtually no space and is incredibly lightweight.  And best of all, students could be using it EVERY period of the day and still not need to do a midday charge.  Is that compelling?  You bet it is.

As Fraser says, “Simply put: if your device doesn’t last for 10 real-world hours of use, your device is no longer competitive in education. I can’t imagine ever going back to using 4-hour devices like laptops on a regular basis.”

What do you think?  Are you willing to sacrifice Flash for battery life?

Related articles by Zemanta

• iPad: It’s All About The Battery Life (cultofmac.com)
• As iPads enter education, do college students really need the latest and greatest tech toys? (teleread.com)

Remember when it was first released, how people said that the iPad is a device that can only be used to consume information?

More and more, we’re finding it being embraced by artists, and in particular… musicians.   From DJ’s to students, to professional members of symphony orchestras, the iPad is being used in some pretty ingenious ways.  Is it the novelty of it?  Or are we on the cusp of yet another new branch of the media revolution?  I’m leaning towards the latter.  After all, one of my favorite ways to pass the time on flights nowadays is to create new mixes with Looptastic, something I was never all that interested in on any other medium so far. You can see Rana Sobhany using it in one of the videos below.

In particular, this first one almost gave me chills. No, it’s not the same as playing instruments. But as these apps develop, are the differences that significant? Let me know what you think.  Fad or phenomenon?

One of the first things I thought to use my iPad for was presenting and live demos.  After all, it’s such a sleek, elegant device, why on Earth would I want to lug my laptop around at all?  So I started researching ways to present from it.

First choice seemed to be obvious:  Use Keynote. There are a few problems though.  I’m not going to get into it, as it has been well documented in other places, but suffice to say there were enough issues that I decided it wasn’t the right solution to me.  Amongst other things, I didn’t want to have to convert 5 years worth of presentations over.

So I looked into ways to do Powerpoint directly from the iPad.  There’s been several articles on this as well, and so far I haven’t been thrilled with any of them.  Converting them all to images seemed a hassle, and wouldn’t support any of the ‘mouse click’ animations I use when navigating through slides (having things appear and disappear within a single slide with each mouse click, most often to highlight things).  Converting the presentation to video wasn’t even an option as my timing varies greatly based on the audience.  Most of the PPT viewers I tried only did an adequate job of displaying them. Often there were formatting errors, and none of them would support animations or videos.

Which leads me to the method that finally worked well enough that I decided to give it a whirl…  in front of a live audience… in an overflowing room…  full of administrators and tech coordinators… at ISTE.

Here were my requirements:  I needed a way to…

1) Display my Powerpoint accurately, with breaks for each of the animations I’d included.

2) Display videos quickly and easily.

3) Create text to put on screen as needed.

4) Have the option of navigating the web in real time for live demos.

5) Because not everybody is going to Jailbreak, I wanted to be able to do it without bending any of Apple‘s rules.

And here’s how I did made it happen.

The animations piece was one of the hardest to overcome.  Every PPT converter and/or viewer butchered animations, most often just by flattening them.  A major breakthrough occurred when I discovered a little plugin called PPspliT.  Install that and it will display a two button toolbar that has saved me hours of work.  One is an actual button, the other is a modifying trigger.  The button goes through your slides, looks for animations and everytime it finds one it creates a new slide from the new state.  The trigger allows you to ONLY split slides when the animation is triggered by a mouse click.  That’s the version I used.  So I selected the trigger, clicked on the button and voila!  Every time I would click the mouse, I now had a new slide.

NOTE: Don’t bother saving this version!  There’s no need!  Just do this conversion when you want to save and load up a new version.

The next part of the process was getting the resulting file onto the iPad.  While I may have been able to keep it in PPT format, I found that a PDF worked even better.  It was more compact, loaded more cleanly and always looked EXACTLY the way it did on my PC.  So I saved the file as a PDF.  On the PC, I used a a free PDF converter called PrimoPDF.  Like many others, it just sets up a virtual printer.  You click print, select PrimoPDF and it saves your document as a PDF file.  Really easy to do.

Now I have the PDF of my presentation with all animations broken out, ready to be transferred.  I could use iTunes and load it up into iBooks or something similar, but iBooks won’t project via the VGA connector.  The best app I could find for loading and projecting PDF’s was GoodReader.  I’m still stunned that this fantastic app is so cheap.  I could transfer my PDF via WiFi, via Google Docs, via Drop Box, via iDisk… or just use their helper app you can do a drag and drop via USB.  Incredibly fast.

While I’m talking about GoodReader, I also wanted a way to show movies.  Well it just so happens that GoodReader will handle .mov, .m4v and .mp4 videos as well!  I save most of my videos as .m4v anyway, so that wasn’t a problem.  But if I didn’t, I could easily use Zamzar,  Quicktime Pro or Format Factory to handle that part.  Using that same USB helper, I dragged over two videos that I wanted to share.

Now I have my PDF and videos in GoodReader.  Plug in my VGA connector, load up the PDF and I’m good to go!  Then all of a sudden I realized that I had forgotten to list the URL where people could get my resources.  Thankfully, GoodReader allows you to create AND project text files on the fly.  Just created a new file, bumped up the font and threw it up on screen.  Two clicks and I’m back into my presentation and ready to go.

It loads quick, it changes pages quick, and you even have two choices for how to do so.  You can swipe from slide to slide much like you would images in the photo album, or just tap the screen to do a direct switch to the next page/slide.  That’s the method that works best when you’re building a few bullets on a single slide.  Looks just like it would clicking through PPT.  Plus, you can pinch in and zoom on anything in there that you like.  Perfect for calling out a small URL.

When it came time to show videos, I just hit ‘back’ and loading up the video within GoodReader.  There’s a moment when nothing is projecting, but other than that there’s no problem.  Works great, loads instantly.  And when you go back to your presentation, you’ll be right back on the page you left from!

The only thing I couldn’t do within GoodReader was surf the web live.  For that, I had to use a different app called Expedition.  It was 4.99 when I bought it, but only .99 as of right now.  It’s basically Safari, but VGA out capable and has a built in ‘laser pointer’ to call things out on the screen.  Simple and works great.  I bounced back and forth between that and GoodReader a few times.

That’s about it!  GoodReader was my home base, with Expedition serving as a supporting cast member.  PPspliT allowed me to get my PPT’s into a format that was PDF compliant with minimal effort and then GoodReader took care of the rest.  All in all, it sounds complicated, but in actual practice it’s really simple at this point.  I have all my videos saved within GoodReader, and whenever I’m going to present, I just have to save and transfer a new copy of the PDF over.  Someday I hope to do all my PPT editing and creating on the iPad, but that day just isn’t there yet.

Before wrapping this up, I should add one more note.  There’s one other way to do presentations on the iPad that completely saved my hide a few weeks ago.  I was presenting in an auditorium, up on the stage.  Unfortunately, the projector and accompanying VGA cable was all the way in the back of the room.  They wanted me to load up powerpoint and then just use a clicker to navigate through it.  I wanted to do a live demonstration of a Discovery Education site.  So what did I do?  I plugged my computer into the projector, put my iPad on the podium… and used LogMeIn Ignition to remotely control my entire laptop.  It worked FLAWLESSLY.  Unlike ‘mouse’ applications, LogMeIn displays everything that’s happening on your monitor on the iPad screen.  You move the mouse around and navigate just like you would on the computer.  It’s one of the greatest apps I’ve ever used, and while it is expensive (30 dollars), I believe it to be worth every penny.  Yes, there are free ways to do similar things.  However, none of them are nearly as smooth, reliable, or simple to set up.  I have it set up so I can remotely control my work PC, my work Mac, or my home desktop at any time via my iPad.  It’s been a lifesaver many times over, and was a great way to do a live demonstration in this rather unusual setup.  Certainly got me out of a sticky situation and the audience had no idea that they were an audience of guinea pigs.  So while I wouldn’t say it’s the best setup for presentations in general, it is a great option to have available if needed.  Oh, and it’s also a great way to be able to use all the programs that haven’t been created for the iPad yet!

That’s it!  I hope this has been helpful to you.  And if you have any experiences of your own presenting with the iPad, please share a comment below!  It’s a new frontier and I know we’re all still working the kinks out of it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Presenting With the IPad (pcworld.com)
• iPad Keynote issues (friedcellcollective.net)
• Frustrated by no universal video out for iPad? IPEVO P2V can help (tuaw.com)
• Real-life iPad: Presenting with an iPad, Keynote, and VGA connector (tuaw.com)
• GoodReader for iPad adds VGA output, performance boost (macworld.com)

It’s been several months since I first geeked out and was the third person in line at the Apple Store the day the iPad was released.  Yes, I have embraced my inner (and outer) Nerd-dom.  At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it.  It didn’t take me long to change my mind on that.  Then I wasn’t sure if I could recommend it to others.  Once again, it quickly became something I could endorse wholeheartedly.  But the big question still remains, what is its place in education?  Is it the next big killer device?  Another in a long string of fads?  The perfect 1:1 device or a waste of budget?

I often include in my presentations John Candy’s line from Canadian Bacon, “There’s a time to think and a time to act.  And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.”  That certainly seems to encapsulate many institutions attitude when moving to iPad adoption.  In the few months since it has been released, there’s been just a FEW schools who are willing to commit to taking the plunge.

• Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania was one of the first to fire up the bandwagon, committing to giving each of it’s 2100 full time students an iPad.
• George Fox University in Oregon announced that it would give its students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad.
• Monte Vista Christian School already gave 60 of its AP students iPads with eBooks preloaded on to it.
• Gibbon Fairfax Winthrop High School was the first high school to provide an iPad to each of their 320 students.
• Northwest Kansas Technical College is going to provide an iPad to every student that registers for the Fall 2010 term and use it take advantage of the content they’re already publishing via iTunes U.
• The University of Maryland is providing iPads to 75 incoming Honors students this fall, continuing a program that has provided iPhones/iTouches to 280 incoming freshman over the past two years.
• Sacramento Country Day School in California is giving iPads to every sixth grader at no extra cost to their parents.
• Oklahoma State University will be piloting an iPad initiative with 125 students in five different courses during the fall term.

And that’s just within the first few months, the early adopters, the trailblazers.  The big question is… are they moving in the right direction or making a colossal mistake?

Based on my experiences so far, I’d say they’re making a good choice…  but might be doing it prematurely.  As a hardware platform, I can honestly say that the iPad is the greatest device I have ever used.  The battery life alone is a major reason for saying this.  I took my iPad on a nine hour flight and used it nearly the entire time.  Real world usage, not a battery test.  I watched a few movies, played some games, did some reading and typed out a few things.  After nine hours of usage, my battery still had 51% remaining.  That’s stunning.  Unbelievable.  Amazing.  And undeniably useful in an educational setting.

Anybody that has been through a laptop initiative knows that battery life can be the kryptonite of the program.  The idea of Anytime Anywhere is wonderful, but in reality once the computers have been used a few months it becomes more like LimitedTime, AnywhereThere’sAPowerStrip.  The very thought of being able to have students go the entire day without charging is crazy.  Just think about it.  They arrive to school with their iPads.  Use them in every class the entire day.  And then take them home to charge them.  No carts, no power strips spread out throughout the classroom, and it’s small enough that they can just slide them in their desks when they aren’t being used.

It sounds simple, but it’s one of those basic needs that can derail a program.  Beyond that, because the OS is so simplified, there’s no 10 minute waiting period while students power up and log in.  There’s no time to kill while students load up programs.  Because it’s so easy to jump on and off of it, it doesn’t need to be relegated to a specific time during the class.  It can easily slip in and out of a lesson without dominating it.  Plus, while keyboards are certainly handy, there’s no need for peripherals.  Onscreen keyboard, no mouse, built in microphone, absent power cable…  It’s just the student and device.  Simplicity is a very good thing.

Now that speaks to the hardware, the platform itself.  Then there’s the software.  And that’s where the “not yet” part comes in.  There’s A LOT to be excited about.  Video editing, drawing programs, music applications for real time performance and recording.  There’s office applications (both iWork and Microsoft compatible) as well as more than ample photo editing applications.  There’s e-readers, simulations, virtual frog dissections and interactive periodic tables.  There’s math applications galore, from flashcards to practice problems to interactive games.  You can view satellite images via Google Earth, or download maps going back to the Crusades.  There’s a ton of great stuff out there.  But the reality is, we’re just barely scratching the surface and the really good stuff is yet to come.

People forget, when the iPhone was released in the summer of 2007, there was no App Store, only web based apps.  It wasn’t until a full year later that people could download actual Apps onto their iPhones.  Developers had a full 4 months to create Apps for the iPhone before the App store was released, and during that time they were able to test their wares on the iPhone itself.  They knew the product, they could try it out, see what worked, what didn’t and explore the best ways to leverage the platform.

The iPad was a completely different situation.  Developers were forced to run the software on simulations leading up to the release of the iPad.  They couldn’t hold it, they didn’t know what capabilities it really had, or what the user experience would FEEL like along the way.  Consequently, nearly every launch app was really more of a beta release in some respects.  Now that we’re a few months into the iPad era, we’re just starting to see Apps being released that leverage the full potential of the iPad and the big players are finally identifying where they’re going to be making their pushes.

The point being, as good as the software is on the iPad right now, by the end of the year I have no doubt that the Apps will be reinventing the way we think of computing experiences.  The best is yet to come.

So with that in mind, would I recommend a 1:1 iPad initiative for schools right now?    Sure, so long as you have modest expectations.  Right now, there WILL be things that will frustrate you or that you are unable to do.  And if you need something that will be 100% effective on the first day of school, this is not the device for you.  If you’re looking long term and have the luxury of letting the App world catch up, a mid-year initiative would likely be the best time to launch.  Or if you can really think long term, I might consider waiting one more year for all those little details to be resolved by developers.

Regardless, I can say with complete confidence that the iPad is going to change the way we think of computing in schools.  As Chris Lehman often stresses, technology should be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary and invisible.  I think the iPad affords us the best opportunity of making idea a reality.

Related articles by Zemanta

• And so it begins… Seton Hill University to give all students an iPad (tuaw.com)
• Oklahoma State University to start up iPad initiative (tuaw.com)
• iPads in the 6th Grade: Novelty or Next Big Idea? (abcnews.go.com)
• The iPad in Education: Colleges Give iPads to All Incoming Students (readwriteweb.com)
• Pa. university offers free iPads to its students (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• iPad replaces textbooks at this California school (parentcentral.ca)