So now we have had the iPads for one week. Some students are still downloading the apps. One student decided to put a code on the iPad but unfortunately forgot the code. So today I learned how to reset the iPad. Then I also learned that the student had downloaded all the apps at school on the iPad and hadn’t synced back to the home computer at all. Luckily iTunes keeps a record of your apps and will let you download them again without paying. However any work created, emails etc will be lost. ( and photos in the gallery)
Another issue has been the over redemption by mistake on an iTunes card and finding out that you can’t gift from a gift card.
I have been emailing the students each day but find they aren’t yet answering my emails properly. They either don’t answer the questions or they just don’t answer at all and just say, “Hi!” So this will be an area to see some improvement in as we use the iPads each day. Email is not used very much with this age group however I would like to see a big improvement in their comments in both length and quality of writing. To encourage this I have added a PS. At the end of an email letting them know there will be an emailer award of an iTunes gift voucher at the end of the term. I have set up a spreadsheet to copy all emails into and then I can see how the emails are developing at a glance.
Yesterday we used keynote and created some work form photos we had in our photo gallery. Some of these were screen shots and others from our intranet or the internet. We all attempted to access the school intranet at the one time but this failed for some reason and only a handful of students could have access to the site. Even my iPad couldn’t access the site when I have previously visited and even added the site to the home screen for easy access. This will be a job for our technician to investigate. We do have a selection of wireless network points to use so over crowding should not be a problem.
Today when I was resetting the locked iPad I was prompted to install a new software update which I accepted. However over wireless it was going to take 3 hrs to download a 458mb file. So I changed over to ethernet and reselected to download and it rattled along quickly and took about 8 mins to download. Once again ethernet has beaten wireless.
We also tried to use iBrainstorm yesterday but the iPads couldn’t see each other so I’ll be investigating this tomorrow to find a solution as iBrainstorm looks like it will be great for collaborating. Blogpress was another app we tried and had success with using and adding an account. It needs a gmail account so I created a gmail account for the class using the grade email account I have at the epsomps domain and then in google created the gmail attached account. Some of these web2.0 programs can be a bit tricky to set up and only allow certain types of email addresses and passwords. Next I hope to roster the students on to post on the blog using blogpress. Hopefully they will be able to add a screen shot and some reviews of apps both for entertainment and education.
