IPAD

=== As a mobile Science teacher, I have had a hard time employing my laptop in my various classrooms that I visited with my LCD projector/Document camera. There are a wide range of educational resources on the web in the form of content and applications to enhance teaching. The time required to connect the laptop to the projector and get it running only to reverse at the end of the class was time intensive when only having 45 minutes of instruction. That was until I upgraded my 5th generation Ipod for my 2nd generation Ipad. ===

Benefits to a Mobile teacher:

 * ===Instant on and off===
 * ===Use with small groups (alone) or large groups (connected to an LCD projector).===
 * ===Document activities and experiments with Ipad camera (photos or movies).===
 * ===Download academically appropriate video clips onto Ipad from YouTube (at home) for schools that employ YouTube site blocks.===
 * ===Carry presentations (PowerPoint slides) from home computer to display through your Ipad.===
 * ===Carry online manuals as PDFs or eBooks.===
 * ===Employ apps that can benefit your instruction.===
 * ===Use as a mobile electronic white board. You travel to a student in his/or her seat while the class views what is going on through an LCD projector (with AppleTV and a wireless router to connect to).===

===Create individual notebooks on an ibook style bookcase. Has various writing implements from colored regular pens, calligraphy pens, and highlighters. Good drawings features. Can import photos from files or Ipad camera. Various paper styles to use. Has wrist protection but not designed for left handed writers. Cannot annotate PDF files or create PDF files. Can email pages.=== ||  || ===Notetaker HD has many more features except for the various writing implements. Can create and annotate PDF files. Various input modes such as ink, typed text, shapes, images, and selection. Shape allows for interactive clip art to be imported to pages. Interactive clip art examples include graph and grid tools that you can later ink in graph. Shape clipart topics include basic shapes, arrows & pointers, flowcharting, text boxes, borders, time-stamps, architectural, and music. Wrist protection is available and designed for left handed users.=== ||  || ===Good mind-mapping app. The links do not have arrows but each block (popplet) can be modified for color, text, photo (file or from Ipad camera), can draw within, and resize. I act as facilitator and have students mind map solutions to a problem as a group. I use Popplet to clean up our mind-maps and export them as jpeg images for my student's Science Journals and my content websites on Wikispaces.=== ||  || ===The closest Ipad app to match Photoshop Elements. Newest incarnation of the interface is very easy to use and understand. Features included layers, opacity, brush sizes, varied selection tools, etc. I use this app with my students in connection to my web sites. I teach students how to draw as part of Science in documenting our activities. We create sketches using simple shapes that are traced over to produce our finished drawings on art paper. The students are free to color their drawings. I go a step further and use the Ipad camera to photograph the drawing into ArtStudio where I can easily manipulate it further. These modified drawings end up in my content websites on Wikispaces.=== ||  ||
 * ===[[image:noteshelf.JPG]]=== || ===Noteshelf===
 * ===[[image:notetakerhd.JPG]]=== || ===Notetaker HD===
 * ===[[image:popplet.JPG]]=== || ===Popplet===
 * ===[[image:artstudio.JPG]]=== || ===ArtStudio===
 * ===[[image:Timer on Fire.JPG]]=== || ===Timer on Fire===

for an activity. Readout is large enough to be viewed by a class and has a ringer to announce when time is up.
||  || ===A 2-D and 3-D graphing calculator. I use it to model line graphs as part of my math lessons involving Simple Machines. Elementary students have a lot of experience with pie and bar charts. Students do not have experience in line graphs that can be simulated with a mathematical model.=== ||  || ===For topics involving motion and design, a windtunnel app is very valuable to see how an object moves/cuts through air. I had been looking for an app on Itunes but was unsuccessful. I started to look for a PC version through Google and was redirected to Itunes. I love this app due to the fact it saves me from building a windtunnel.=== ||  || ===I use this app with my 4th grade for the study of genetic traits and inheritence. We focus very simple on how traits are carried from parents to offspring. Since time is limited and I cannot grow pea plants like Mendel, I can scan the physical facial traits of students to merge them together. The program allows me to introduce the concepts of purebred and hybrid genetics and dominant/recessive traits.=== ||  ||
 * ===[[image:quick graph.JPG]]=== || ===Quick Graph===
 * ===[[image:Windtunnel Pro.JPG]]=== || ===Windtunnel Pro===
 * ===[[image:facefusion.JPG]]=== || ===Face Fusion===

===One weakness to the Ipad is the thickness of a stylus needed to register as input on a screen. If you are trying to do exacting drawing it is very difficult to close 0 shapes or select tiny sections without zooming in. Adonit Jot Pro uses a clear round pointer that you can see through (to know exactly where the input point is while writing) that is big enough to register on the Ipad. There are some difficulties with it. Replacement round pointers are expensive.===

===I found an easier method from an artist in Japan that uses clear capacitance material with a pen. You take/ make a pen and add clear capacitance material. I use hard drive static protective bags strips for the tip and sides of my pen. The pen pointer pushes the capacitance material against the screen and your hand delivers the charge down through the capacitance material to register on the Ipad. You can see where you are writing through the capacitance material for a fraction of the cost and can make replacement parts very inexpensively.===

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===I use aluminum for my pen body with a drilled hole at the end but a pen without ink works also. The stylus tip can be paper, plastic, wood, etc. Anything that can push the capacitance material against the Ipad without scratching the screen. The capacitance material is taped to aluminum to keep it from moving but not completely so the charge from your hand can reach the material. I made a cap from paper and electrical tape to protect the tip when traveling. It is very effective and I have made others for fellow Ipad-ist. I am still working on sprucing up the design for aesthetic reasons.===

===The second weakness to the Ipad is the touch capacitance of the screen. Without wrist protection, you cannot lay any part of your hand on screen without it registering as your input. A $.99 cotton glove with the thumb, pointer and index fingers removed works well to stop this. The remaining two covered fingers can be on screen and not register similar to the photo below. It is "clunky" but it works.===