On October 3, Instructional Technology hosted a brown bag for faculty using iPads and/or tablets in the classroom or for those thinking of doing so. The goal was to provide faculty with a venue for sharing tips, tricks, and pitfalls with each other. About 21 faculty and staff attended the brown bag and shared a number of ideas for ways to use the iPad as a teaching tool (it just so happened everyone was an iPad user).
Jeff Lantis shared an app for organizing video clips to use in class called VideoBox, which several faculty members thought would be an improvement over the current practices they had for showing video clips. Meagen Pollock introduced Art Studio for creating quick graphs and figures to display to the class. Matthew Broda talked a little about how the Education Department is having students use Educreations Interactive White Board to create content for a flipped classroom teaching experience as part of their teaching practicum.
We also discussed some challenges to using the iPad as a teaching device. The biggest challenge was the ability to display the iPad’s screen on the projector. Most faculty are using a program called Air Sketch to accomplish this since our wireless network does not allow Bonjour (required to use the iPad’s AirPlay feature). The biggest complaint about this is that you do not retain all the zooming and scrolling features of the iPad with this method. It seemed that no one was using an iPad dongle to connect to the projector. It was suggested that IT might provide some dongles in the academic buildings which faculty could borrow for a class. It was also mentioned that IT is working on a solution that would allow faculty to use the AirPlay mirroring feature of their iPads.
Useful Apps Mentioned at the Lunch
Free
- eclicker Audience https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/eclicker-audience/id520556451?mt=8 (free)
- Histroy: Maps of the World https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/app/history-maps-of-world/id303282377?mt=8 (free)
- Molecules https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/molecules/id284943090?mt=8 (free)
- DropBox https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/app/dropbox/id327630330?mt=8 (free)
- Evernote https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8 (free)
- ScreenChomp https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/screenchomp/id442415881?mt=8 (free)
- TED Videos https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/ted/id376183339?mt=8 (free)
- Educreations Interactive White Board https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/educreations-interactive-whiteboard/id478617061?mt=8 (free)
- Science 360 https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/science360-for-ipad/id439928181?mt=8 (free)
- TeacherKit https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/teacherkit/id389584618?mt=8 (free)
- 3D Brain https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/3d-brain/id331399332?mt=8 (free)
- VideoBox Free https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/free-video-downloader-player/id518302620?mt=8 (free)
- Paper https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8 (free)
- Art Studio https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/artstudio-for-ipad-draw-paint/id364017607?mt=8 (free)
Paid
- eclicker Presenter https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/eclicker-presenter/id519171580?mt=8 ($14.99)
- Air Sketch https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/air-sketch/id376617790?mt=8 ($9.99)
- The Elements: A Visual Exploration https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-a-visual-exploration/id364147847?mt=8 ($4.99)
- gFlashPro https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/us/app/gflashpro-flashcards-tests/id297332787?mt=8 ($3.99)
- Mobile Air Mouse https://it.wooster.eduunes.apple.com/app/id289616509 ($2.99)