Sunday, September 11, 2011

What to do with the iPad in the classroom?

In the classroom I want a presentation whiteboard system that does the following: 1) Projects webpages. 2) Projects pre-prepared material. 3) Projects spontaneous input on an interactive whiteboard with electronic ink, text and graphics – all with colors of course! 4) Annotates all of the above with electronic ink. 5) Archiving of all of the above in one file per class with only a simple save. No e-mailing, no saving as PDF, no uploading later. I want to be able to simple save and quit and have all that appeared on the board archived in one place in one file for the students and me to consult later. I can do all of this now with my laptop, the Smartboard, and Smartnotebook. It would be great if this could be done with iPad, unteathered. The iPad is much smaller and more convenient to carry around. If I have to connect it to a cable, I might as well use the more powerful laptop. I have looked at solutions that allow the iPad to control the laptop, but I have not yet found one that works conveniently. I have also looked at whiteboard and annotating software, but none of them meet the requirements of #5. For me, I think the role of the iPad in my classroom is going to be for input from the students. I would like to explore solutions that connect an iPad or other iOS device to the whiteboard, so that multiple students can interact with the material that is projected to the board. This helps move the focus of the input from the front of the classroom to a more collaborative approach incorporating visual contributions from the students. It premits students to not only participate orally but also visually without the interruptions of having to leave their seats.

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