On the Educational Origami Blog, there is a post discussing iPad, iPod, iPhone, and iEducation. In this post the writer discusses what he would place on his class set of iPads.
Once big difference here is that he has a class set of iPads. What I have, is a rotating set. That means each student does not have one iPad assigned just for him/her. I think this makes a big difference when purcahasing. You have to realize there will be 350 students using these 30 iPads. They cannot save their work, because the next user could easily erase it.
With that being said, here is the list he reported and what I have to say about it:
Pages, Keynotes, and Numbers -- these are the comparable pieces to Word, Excel, and Power Point. Because we have 3 other computer labs, I don't see these as a necessity (plus at $9.99 a pop per iPad, it can really add up!) When students need to do these tasks teachers just sign up to use the computer labs instead. I think the iPads are fairly hard to key on anyway and they encourage bad typing habits, so for these types of activities I think we will stick to computers!
iThoughts HD (mindmapping tool) -- while this may be awesome, I have never used it, again it is $9.99 per app. There are plenty of other ind mapping tools out there that can be used that are less expensive, and in some cases, free. The one we use with our iPads is Idea Sketch , and it is free.
Adobe Photoshop Express (image editor) -- This is a free app. I have not looked into a photo editing app, but with a reputation like Adobe has, I am sure it is the best of the best. We don't do a ton of photo editing, so I had not gotten this far in looking at apps, but I am putting it on my add list as we speak.
Good Reader (file management tool) -- THis app looks awesome, and would be great if each students had thier own iPad and could save and keep what they did. However this is not the case for us. That being said, I am going to look into this app, becuase I am sure you can email work to yourself, this may be a way around that problem.
Comic Strip CS -- This is a pretty cool app and would be nice to have, but not a necessity. It is only$0.99, so it would not be a huge monetary investment. The only thing I see about this is taht there are so many free comic strip makers online that you can use. However students definitely prefer to use the iPads, so it may be worth looking into.
Video Editor -- We do not have a video editor yet, again, we don't do a lot of video, but when we do we use Flip Cams. Since the iPads haev no USB port, it is easier to import the video onto a laptop. I am sure it would be great to edit video using the iPads though, just not feasible for us right now.
iTranslate -- This is one we do have and use frequently. It is an easy to use translator, that translates into or from whatever language you choose.
Google Earth -- FANTASTIC!!! We use this all the time for Geography class, as well as other classes. Great FREE app.
Audio Notes -- Again since everyone does not have their own iPad, we don't have a huge need for a note taking tool.
Projector -- not really sure what it does or how we would use it, plus it is$29.99 per app!
Skype -- This is a great tool. Would be even better if the iPad had a camera, if only we could have waited! (iPad 2 coming out in April is supposed to have 2 cameras!)
Extras:
Definitely agree with the need for headphones for each iPad. We have 30 and could not survive without them.
Would be nice to have USB adaptors for importing video, will look into this, wouldn't need 30, we only have 7 cameras.
SD card adaptor, we have one, but I haven't needed to use it yet, it is sometimes easier just to email.
While I don't have a need for a lot oft he tools mentioned, I am sure if we had classroom sets, or a 1 to 1 initiative I would feel differently about this. We would be using them everyday for every task; note taking, sharing files, typing, creating presentations, etc. Right now we are just using them as a tool to enhance what we are already doing. Every teacher probably gets the set about once every 2 weeks:(
I will follow up with a list of my own, what I feel are the most essential apps for our purposes.
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