It's getting useful

Navigating September has been challenging. New classes, new students, creating new assignments, grading, preparing for lectures and shuffling my kids to their never ending 5-day-a-week-activities. I know, I have no one to blame but myself but I decided to adapt and see if the ipad could be my companion as I sat through soccer practice (4 days a week - no I am not kidding), ballet class or music lessons.

Armed with my 4 month old friend I sat in the waiting room of the ballet school. I turned it on and thanks to the free wifi, I got online without a problem. Using Safari, I went to Solostream.com. I was thinking of having my students use blog software as an introduction to formatting text for web design. Solostream has a bunch of videos they call wordpress 101 and I wanted to see if it was a worthwhile endeavor. After a few attempts (I didn't remember my password), I got in and clicked on the video. Error message. You need the new flash plugin to view this video.

Turns out flash isn't supported on the iPad. Here are Steve Jobs thoughts on Flash. (Summary for those who don't want to read it: Flash lacked full support for touch screens, it created security and performance issues, it ate into battery life and it created an extra layer between the developer and the operating system.

Disappointed. I googled it. Maybe there was a workaround.  I found the Photon Flash Player for ipad which is a flash video player for the ipad. But it isn't free and well, I just spent way too much money for ballet lessons so I was going to pass. But for those of you who aren't as cheap/broke as I am here is the link.  It's only $4.99 limited time sale (regular $9.99).

So watching videos on Solostream…fail.

But I was not going to give up. I went to another site. Lynda.com. Not only did I remember my password on the first try, I was able to watch the videos easily on the ipad without having to download anything. Then I was curious to see if it would work on another site I use for training—learnable.com. It worked just as easily. So I guess on the bigger tutorial sites that are not using flash videos, it works really well.

Who hoo! I popped in my earphones and happily listened to the instruction. I usually take notes when I watch these training videos but since I wasn't sitting at a table it wasn't the perfect scenario for note taking. But not dragging my laptop and getting work done during what I had considered lost time is as good as it gets. 

Wow

I am so thrilled, I finally have use of the Visual ERP remotely on my IPAD in my classroom, very awesome. I can individually go to students in the lab with my IPAD and show them right there. Very very effective in teaching this class. This is called pocket cloud and I did not get it from the INFOR Visual company but one of my students. I was waiting for Infor to get back to me but this works perfectly. Fantastic. This is a very big deal for my use of this IPAD far exceeding what I initially proposed. Incredible. About five of my students are using their IPADs inside and outside of the classroom. Hoping I can use for my MIS class now...will keep you advised..

IPAD updated to IOS 7 (updated)

I have to say with the latest update on my iPad I am a bit more at home.  It seems to be a lot more android like in its look.  I was a little confused when my friends began to post they were upgrading to iOS 7, and I didn't see any of the updates for mine.  I would have thought the update would have been presented in the app store but it wasn't.  After a bit of research and a phone all from Peter I learned that I had to tell the iPad to do the update.  I headed over to the settings, then to general, then to software update...and I was off.

For some reason I wasn't able to complete the update on the campus network, but then again i kept it with me as I walked around the building so maybe that was my problem.  When I got home, I connected downloaded and installed it in about 1 hr.  I like the new security features implemented in it. I noted that if someone does manage to steal it, according to the update, they will have a harder time reprogramming it without my password.

I am not sure what other features they have added but I will play around and see what else this new so can do.  

Has anyone used the iPad to display the contents of their iPad in a class configured with a projector?  I have used it to demo a few slides to a small group of students for my set220 class but I couldn't imagine using it for a full class, or for more then about 10 students


* if you havent updated...you may not want to.  if you own any 3rd party lightning cables they will not work any longer....Really apple!!!

IPAD Use with ERP gifted software in my class

Hi! Happy to say I found a way to use my IPAD in my ERP class through INFOR for the Visual Synergy ERP gifted software they provide to FSC in every semester for this sixth year. I can now hopefully use this ERP in the classroom on my ipad with a tool called road warrior that this industry leader uses with its customers, in their business and with their employees. This will allow me to access the right information as I go around the classroom answering students questions and showing them immediately the screen of the applicable modules. I have my id and password for the classroom application as well as my students have their id and passwords but right now we can not access yet on the ipad, they are working on it and hopefully soon I will be fully functional in my class with remote access to the hosted server using this ipad and my students using theirs. I cant wait and my students are so eager or at least some are to be able to use their IPAD to do class work and homework assignments while accessing the gifted ERP server anywhere on their IPAD. Getting some where...

I wanted to apologize for the late blog post. It's been a busy and difficult summer but now that the semester has begun I'm back and in full swing. 

When I first heard about the CTLT iPad initiative, I considered the use of the iPad in a statistics class as the most powerful use of the device. As I began preparing for my courses this summer, I started to play around with the iPad and found some differences in the user interface compared to my phone and computer which are both running on non-Mac operating systems. Getting comfortable using the iPad has proven a challenge. While the device itself is simple to use I always find the operating system differences between Android and Windows to be a bit off-putting. As an avowed fan of Android stepping into the world of iOS has been eye-opening. However, fitting the iPad's use into my standard class sessions has been a bit challenging. I'm slowly integrating the device into my classroom sessions. 

Thus far, I have found the iPad useful for in-class presentations of PowerPoint slides in class. I'm going to begin using some statistics applications (some of which are listed at this helpful link) I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with this device in this classroom especially in light of the challenges of teaching statistics. Hopefully everyone can benefit from my musings on the iPad over the next several months. 

Dr. Sy Islam  

Writing on PDF files

Welcome back, everyone! Over the summer, I was looking for an app that allows sketching on PDF, PPT or other office files. In my classes, I usually display the teaching materials through PowerPoint. Most of the time, I would roll up the screen and let the materials projected onto the whiteboard. With this setup, I can explain the materials better by writing comments directly on the board while having the teaching materials as a background. But it is not comfortable to teach with the bright light shining on me all the time. So I explored the possibility of delivering the materials through iPad with the sketching app. The app I found is called “Wireshare”.  It allows sketching on PDF files on iPad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow sketching on PowerPoint files. But guess what! I can always convert the ppt files to PDF format.   Another great feature about this app is that it can transfer my files directly from the computer to the iPad through wifi without using dropbox or some cloud storage services.

If you know any other sketching apps for Words, Excel, or any MS packages, please let me know too.

Solar Carport Ribbon Cutting

The Solar Carport Ribbon Cutting was a great event. I did not have access to a good camera at the time so I decided to bring my iPad. The picture quality was great it isn't my digital camera but it is almost at good. This is a picture of the car charging station. It was a great day and the lighting was perfect I did not need any flash or anything. I am not a photographer and wouldn't be able to make any comments regarding professional quality or lighting that an expert would make. This picture served the purpose though and allowed me to document the event and I can use the pictures when posting on social media or reporting during presentations.