Follow @ed_apps Ok, so you passed on AppleCare, and now you need some other form of ‘insurance’. Here is a quick review and comparison of different case price ranges and what my recommended options are. I’ve personally used dozens of cases of all sorts of price ranges, and so here is my experience. If you have some more suggestions, please include them in the comments below! None-Folio Style <$10 Range For less than $10, I haven’t seen anything better than a $2 case from the dollar store (soft silicone sleeves...

Follow @ed_apps Every teacher seems to fully acknowledge how quickly and comfortably the average student adopts new technology. The truth is, students learn how to have fun on an iPad pretty quickly, but they don’t always learn how to trouble shoot, be safe, and learn effectively right off the bat. Having a team of students that are well trained in iPad support can help build leadership amongst your students, and will help alleviate the stress on both students and teachers as they learn to adopt this new technology. Lesson 1:...

Follow @ed_apps I don’t want to make blanket statements regarding purchases. I fully recognize that every educator, school and institution has to decide what makes sense for them; ultimately, it is you that must live with the purchasing decision. At the same time, I would like to point out some things to consider. Applecare, from what I understand, extends the standard warranty of your iPad from 12 months to 24 months. Additionally, if you crack the screen of your iPad, you can have that iPad replaced for an additional $49...

Follow @ed_apps When students start taking photos and video on a variety of iPads, iPods and iPhones for a collaborative project, it can be a little hairy trying to pull all of that media into one place. Last year while struggling to share photos through a variety of apps that just never seemed to work well enough, I discovered that I could use the camera connector kit to connect one iPad to another to share photos and even large video files. It works like a charm every time! This is...

Follow @ed_apps An elementary school in our district recently got 30 iPads and asked for some advice implementing them with students and teachers. In addition to suggesting some starter apps, I recommended that we have conversations with kids around the appropriate use of these devices. While almost every child has used an iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone, the exciting learning opportunities these mobile, Internet-connected, media creation devices create also open the door to new challenges. Cyberbullying or inappropriate web publishing happens more through the camera than regular computer use does; the...

Follow @ed_apps If you’ve ever made a video in iMovie, a song in Garageband, a book in Book Creator, (or made anything really) on an iPad, than you know the pain of getting that product off of the iPad. That’s why I’ve made this video (below) to teach you how to pull files off of the iPad, and how to put it back on to the iPad, in less than 5 minutes. I’ve started to teach students how to do this, so that as a teacher I’m not stuck for...

Follow @ed_apps   A big issue with school mobile devices is that they are often shared, and don’t have full profile accounts like a computer does. This means that any user has access to any app or information from any other user. I put together a poster (prints best in 11×17 Tabloid size paper) that talks about some of the basic things students should consider when using shared mobile devices to keep themselves safe and to respect others they are working with. Check out this Digital Citizenship & iPads   Follow...

Follow @ed_apps Using the iPad Camera Connector kit, you can plug in a USB stick to import videos and pictures without having to connect your iPad to iTunes. If you need more storage than you have on your iPad, you could simply keep some videos on a stick, and download them to and delete them from your photo library at will. This also means that if you need to import video and pictures onto the iPad from a computer, you can do so. Here is how it works. Plug your...

Follow @ed_apps Ok, so we want to be using the iPad as a creative device. Students are making music, videos, photos, presentations, and all sorts of media projects to show what they know. But eventually you will get frustrated with the sound quality when you have a room full of kids trying to record, and every ipad in the room picking up every kid. Or maybe some students are playing with garageband, and you want to plug in some microphones to increase the quality. In comes the iPad Headset Microphone...

Follow @ed_apps I love the iPad. Head-Over-Heels. Completely. Utterly. In-Love. It does so many things so incredibly well; how could I not be in love? So, why don’t you marry it?, you ask. I’ll tell you why: the lack of support for multiple users. Unless you’re teaching in a situation where every student has their own iPad, and no one has to share, it can be a nightmare to worry about student content. Apps can be re-downloaded, but what about that Pages doc that little Shirley has been working on?...