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.
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.