As an iPod user, the iPad buttons were not a big mystery to me because they mostly work the same way.  However, it is worth taking a moment to talk about them because until someone tells you what they do, it's hard to know.

The Sleep/Wake button is on the top of the iPad on the side.  If the iPad is off and you press it, it turns on.  If it's on and you press it, it turns off.  If you hold the Sleep/Wake button down, it shuts down your iPad.  It's probably not a bad thing to "reboot" every few days.

In the top right hand corner on the side of the iPad is the "Slide Switch".  I think that switch mutes your iPad, which can be helpful if you're working with it in a quiet setting.

Just under the switch is the Volume Up/Down switch, which controls the volume.  When I plug my iPod into a speaker jack, it will often ignore this setting and go to whichever setting it was on the last time it was plugged into a speaker.

On the top left is a "SIM Tray".  I assume that's where you stick in a SIM card if you need removable memory.  Unfortunately, I haven't played with that to see exactly how it works.

On the face of the iPad in the center at the bottom is the "home" button.  "Home" does something slightly different depending on what you're doing. 

If you are on the home screen, it will take you to the search screen.

If you are on the search screen, it will take you back to the home screen.

If you are looking at your apps on the iPad, and your press the Home button, it will take you back to your "Home" screen. 

If you are running an App and you press the Home button, you'll go back to the spot where you initiated the Application (possibly the Home screen).

If your iPad is off and you press the home button twice, the iPad will start playing music out of your music library.

If your iPad is on and you press the home button twice, it will display the most recent applications you've accessed.

If your iPad is on and you have something interesting on the screen, you can press the Home button and the On/Off button at the same time and it will take a picture of the screen and save it to Photos.

Hard Reboot.  If your iPad is locked up or won't come on, hold the On/Off button and the Home button down together for 30 seconds.  This should force your iPad to reboot.

What's your favorite button combination?

One of the big 'wins' with getting my iPod was being able to check my e-mail (as long as I have WI-FI).

So, I wanted to setup my iPad to check my e-mail as well.  Here's what I did:

- Settings 
-- Mail, Contacts, Calendars

- Add Account
-- Microsoft Exchange
--- Email: (My email address)
--- Domain: LCU
--- Username: (My MS exchange Username)
--- Password: (********)
--- Description: (Exchange)

I chose to sync my e-mail, reminders and calendar, but not my list of contacts.

I kept the default settings except for:

Under "Fetch new data", I set it to check my e-mail every 15 minutes.

I turned off "Load Remote Images".

I turned on "Always BCC myself".

I changed my default account to Exchange.

I should also able to add e-mail accounts for gMail and Yahoo -- but I think my problem at the moment is my network connection status.  Ultimately, I should be able to check several e-mail accounts in one place.

One of the things I really like about eMail on the iPad is that almost any time someone sends you something with a date and time in it, you can click on the links that form and use them to create appointments on you calendar.

If they put an address in the e-mail, you can click on it and pull it up in the map.

The best part for me is that if I need to quickly check my e-mail, i don't have to wait for a computer to boot up.

What's your favorite e-mail "tweak" on the iPad?

The iPad I received has 32 gigabytes of memory.  They tell me that's a lot.

My iPod I've used for the past couple of years has 8 gigabytes (gb) of memory, so I'm assuming that I can store four times as much on the iPad, but what does that mean really?

So after the initial experiment of iPad setup, the second experiment is, "Can I completely fill my my iPad on the first day?"

I did it, but I cheated because I already had a lot of material out on iTunes. I also left some room because I thought I might need it. 

Here's how my memory wound up looking:

• I downloaded all of my iPod apps that would run on the iPad. (3.6 GB)
• I downloaded all of my music files (5.7 gb, 831 tracks, about 52 hours of music.  No, I don't have a life...)
• I downloaded all of my iBooks (Less than one gb.  I actually use several eReaders so a lot of my eBooks wind up being included in my Applications Space.)
• I downloaded about ten of my digital movies (about 18 gb)
• I left about two gb free for e-mail when I get that working.

So, the moral of this story is, you can fit an awful lot on an iPad regardless of what memory size you get.  Someone could make an argument that since I don't teach music or film appreciation, I could probably devote a little less space to music and video and have tons of room for most any conceivable application.

So, what is the biggest slice of the "pie" in your iPad's memory?

Happy Halloween!

My employer "treated" me today with a new iPad.  So, I started this blog as a place to put together my thoughts about using this new tablet in an educational environment.

Despite my proclivities toward verbosity, I'm going to try to keep to these entries at the "micro-blogging" length.

A little bit about me, I teach Information Systems courses.  I have been a little resistant toward the iPad, simply because most of my courses are MicroSoft-Centric and I've not seen an immediate application that would improve the experience for the students.  However, you can't really know that without diving in so...

Since I've been using an iPod for the past couple of years, setting up my iPad was relatively simple.  Here are the steps I went through.

- Backup iPod
- Download new version of iTunes for my computer.
- Sync #1 (20 minutes)
  I chose to sync with my current iPod so I would have all my Apps, etc.
- Download new iPad Operating System (50 minutes)
- Restore iPad from backup (20 Minutes?)
- Then I answered some setup questions:
+ I agreed to enable Location Services.
However, if you're particularaly concerned about your location being inadvertantly revealed, you might want to hold off on this.
+ I Set up my wi-fi network at home.
+ I entered my Apple ID. 
   If you don't already have one of these, it will take a few minutes to set up. 
   If you read the terms and conditions, it will take even longer.
+ I declined to sign up for iCloud
   iCloud allows you to store documents in such a way that you can get to them wherever you are, as long as you have network access.  However, I don't currently have a large need for that and my iPad has a lot of space on it.
+ I declined to send Apple diagnostics from my iPad use. 
   I doubt that there would be anything that would be sent to Apple that could really cause problems for me -- but just because you're a little paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you...  :)

So, with my iPad mostly a clean slate, I went back to iTunes and set my iPad up as a new iPad.  I carefully went through and selected what to put on it and told it to Sync again.  It's taken another couple of tries -- but I think I should have everything on there after this sync.

So, the goal is to make periodic posts here as I discover things that may be of interest to people who use the iPad in an educational setting.