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iPads in Schools – 120 in a Scottish school

In this interview Fraser tells me of the trials and tribulations of giving an iPad to very student in the school and allowing some of them to take them home. There are something like seven airport extreme base stations in the school, They are needed because the school is in an old building with thick walls. Whatever the technical difficulties are it is brilliant to see iPads in schools and educational iPad apps.

Fraser is a Mac developer and it seemed a no brainer when it came to deciding to have technology in the school that would be more accessible than the room full of Macs that were there already. Fraser talks about choosing applications for the teachers and students to use, one of the apps that he recommends because it was so successful in the school, is the app called brushes.

I would give Brushes a go myself but I just bought ArtStudio which covers my needs in that area

Fraser Spiers in charge of iPads in Schools, specifically in Cedar School.

It was a very interesting interview with Fraser Spiers and I should arrange a follow up interview to see how things are going further down the line. It certainly is great to see technology being used in this way whether it be in Scotland or California.

I am using the WordPress application to write this and while I have it in landscape mode and I am annoyed that I can’t see words at the right side of the screen. Hopefully they will fix it in a update of the app soon.

Fraser was telling me that they have spot checks to make sure that appropriate material doesn’t find it’s way on to the students’ iPads in school. Even so using iPads for educational purposes is not just about iPad textbooks.Looking forward to seeing more iPads in Schools.

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Matt Hillyer is one of the hosts of the App Obsessed Podcast along with Lola Wong (The Pocket Librarian Podcast) and the casual podcaster Tom Piraino Macintom. The guys buy some apps and talk about them on the show. Matt was telling me that they choose a topic and look at the apps that fit that topic. For example it could be photography or it could be about databases. The last episode they were looking at Remote Access/Control Applications such as LogMeIn Ignition, iTap RDP Client, Snatch, AC-7 Pro, keynote Remote and Apple Remote.

Matt is rather keen on the NetFlix application. which is something which allows you to watch TV shows and movies streamed to your iPad. It is only any good for the people that reside in the US. Hulu is in the same realm of applications too.

Seeing as Matt is in the US he was able to get his hands on the iPad before many Apple fans around the world. He was able to pre order the iPad and get it on the first day it was available. have a listen to the podcast and listen to what he has to say about the iPad after being a user for all this time.

He was telling me about how his young son is able to negotiate iOS devices with ease. It is not going to be long before Matt will be running to his lads to help with technical computer problems.

Tell me what it has been like in your family with young kids with having an iPad in the house. Are they interested, do they look after it? Do you have to wrestle it from them so that you can use it?

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A Brummie iPad – iPad first impressions

The iPad has been given a name – Brummie – it was my wife that suggested that and I thought why not – She had only just been commenting on my Birmingham accent so that is where that name came from.

Twitter clients for the iPad

I was choosing apps that were for the iPad specifically and trying a few out. Looking to see which Twitter client I would want to use – I have put Twitterific on there and TwitbirdPro, Twitter which used to be Tweetie
Not sure which one I prefer on the iPad yet – need to do some more playing.

Flipboard

I have put on Flipboard which has a novel approach to displaying info from FaceBook, Twitter and other places. Still finding out what I can put into it. Makes it look like a magazine or flashy newspaper – they refer to it as a magazine it on the flipboard.com site – not sure on how often the magazine pages are updated – suppose it depends on how often new FaceBook or twitter posts come in on the accounts that you hook up Flipboard to.
but it looks really nice, a great to way to read the information. I will have to go back to the Flipboard site to read up on what it can do and how to set it up.

TextExpander on the iPad

I wondered why Textexpander wasn’t working in Simple Note at first but then I discovered that I had to sync over the snippets from the iMac or the Mac Book first. That was OK except that they would not go over from the iMac as I had just upgraded the Textexpander software on there to the latest version. I got the dialogue box on the iMac asking for permission to sync – I clicked it then nothing came across. So I went to the MacBook and declined the update to TE and did the same thing but this time it worked – I was able to get all my snippets into the iPad.- Handy that the it is kept in sync on the Macs by using dropbox. It would be great if the iPad used dropbox in a similar way. What Smile recommend is that you bring in the snippets via wifi and then have a separate group for snippets that you create on the iPad. for sending back to the desktop version of TextExpander. There you go – My iPad first impressions.