initial iPad ruminations

I'm loving the iPad so far, though there are lots of things I want to try for the classroom that I haven't done yet. It's very helpful to hear other people's thoughts about styluses, whiteboards, and annotation, as those are uses that I think will be very effective in the English classroom.

My biggest iPad success so far has been turning my fall course packet into an ePub document that I (or my students) can read in iBooks. So far I have only one student who is preferring the iBook to paper (and not many more who have iPads in the first place), but for that student, I think it has been a huge benefit given his learning style. I've been prepping texts from the iPad and using different color highlighters to indicate to myself passages that I want to read closely in class, that I think are generally significant, etc. I can also mark during class passages that students have questions about, find difficult, etc. Being able to scroll quickly through the list of my highlighted passages has been one of my favorite iBook features (both for personal use and for the the classroom).

I've also used ReaditLater some to project articles during class that I want to share with students. I wish there were an iPad browser that allowed me to save articles to ReaditLater (if you've found one, please let me know!), but I like the app's functionality once the articles are there.

I've done quite a bit of playing with different flashcard apps, and I'm happy to share what I've discovered in more detail with anyone who's interested.

Briefly, online sites like Quizlet and Flashcard Exchange already have lots of material and are easy to add your own flashcards to. Then even students without a touch device can access the material easily. I haven't yet actually used flaschards with my classes (it will mostly be vocabulary, poetry terms, and stuff like that with my classes), but I'll update you on the response when I do.

For those with an iPhone/iPad, my favorite flashcard apps are FlashcardsDeluxe (by OrangeorApple.com) and MentalCase. MentalCase has a full-featured but expensive ($20) desktop application, too (you can try it for free for 30 days).

If you want the lowdown on audio, images, or flashcards with more than two sides (imagine the possibilities . . .) let me know.

That's it for now!

Katie