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Category: iPad

Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 3: Making it Happen

Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 3: Making it Happen

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Teachers in the 1990’s were for the most part provided textbooks, teacher’s guides, lab manuals and workbooks.  Many schools had libraries with audiovisual departments.  How many of us remember filmstrips and laserdiscs?  Teachers did not create class web pages nor need to search for or create the materials need for their classrooms.  Now we expect teachers do all of these things in addition to their usual duties and responsibilities. In the early 1990’s we did not have the technologies that…

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Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 2: We Have the Technology

Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 2: We Have the Technology

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Many schools are looking for alternative digital books such a free open source texts like those found on CK-12.org, which are not interactive, or encouraging teachers to create their own interactive texts. The tools available to create interactive texts for the iPad are available; for a Mac there are iWork Pages and the free iBooks Author.  The basic skills need for assembly of an interactive digital text are already mastered by most teachers; create text in a word processor, insert…

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Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 1: The Lay of the Land

Making School Created Digital Texts, Part 1: The Lay of the Land

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Many schools and districts are discussing the possibilities of adopting 1:1 devices such as the iPad. They are conducting trials to work out the technical issues and have teachers begin to think about how to integrate them in the classroom.  One of the reasons schools give for this move is to be rid of traditional textbooks and move to digital books.  However many digital textbooks are just non-interactive PDFs of their print cousins and cost about the same. Apple recently…

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iBooks, iPads and iTunes U

iBooks, iPads and iTunes U

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Apple recently announced changes to a few apps and a new program that will likely play a big role in education, particularly if your institution is using iPads.  iBooks was upgraded to allow the program to support epub 3, books that are rich in media and interactivity.  Apple also entered into an agreement with textbook publishers to create true media rich texts. The books are currently priced at about $15 much cheaper then a paper textbook but not reusable or resalable. Apple introduced the program iBooksAuthor that allows…

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You Have a New iPad What Next?

You Have a New iPad What Next?

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The iPad was a very popular gift this year.  One of the more frequent questions I get now is “I just got an iPad, what apps should I get?” I want to say there are thousands of free apps so search, install, try and delete. Just go play and have fun.  I think people have trouble understanding that apps on the iPad are different then an application on a computer.  There are not as many applications for computers there were…

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