As Apple moves us more and more to the “i” (as in individual), the reality is that many schools cannot afford to implement 1 to 1 programs, so iPads are shared in classrooms.
While Apple’s APIs do not give app developers the ability to change the identities in individual apps between shared users on an iPad, if the “app” is actually a mobile-designed web site, the OurPad password manager app, can help switch between users. Rather than using typed logins (hard for Pre-K and lower grade level students), identities are created and authenticated using “lock patterns”.
Very interesting. Could Apple or Google Android learn something from this app?
14 hours ago
Fantastic curation and discussion of the week’s news in education. Audrey Watters is one of the smartest people out there monitoring the effects of private entrepreneurs’ moving into the education space and Steve Hargadon is the founder of Classroom 2.0 and has a great point of view.
Both of them are people you should follow, and this weekly podcast is a great place to start.
14 hours ago
From the excellent KQED education beat, a nice summary of the prospects for (some free) high quality educational content. Cited in the article are several well-known and some new resources:
HippoCampus
Khan Academy
Curriki
Learning Registry
Learning Resource Metadata Initiative
AcademicPub
3 days ago
A tweet from @glynmoody on the “big news” in education from Sacramento today. From the LA Times article:
One of the measures would create a California Open Education Resources Council to determine the 50 most widely taken lower division courses and review proposed textbooks and source material
My questions are: Why are these textbooks for college students only? Why only 50 textbooks? What about K-12?
This smacks of compromise (or collusion) with publishers to limit the availability of low-cost materials. Interesting to see if this bill goes anywhere or gets smacked down by publishing special interests.
4 days ago
MentorMob is a super-simple way to bookmark web sites and videos and package them for easy discovery and playback. Very useful for flipped learning or for professional development. I intend to try it out as a means of introducing teachers to new technologies.
This post was found on the Getting Smart blog, which more edtech people are suggesting as a source of good information and debate.
4 days ago
This post, tweeted by @adambellow, links to a sample BYOT policy and FAQ from Forsyth, Georgia. This is an excellent starting point for our district.
4 days ago
Seems like everyone is besieged with app recommendations as more and more schools adopt iPads. One more article with rubrics and recommendations from a couple of school district specialists.
5 days ago
One of Langwitches’ most popular posts has been updated with new suggestions for how some of the best iPad apps fit into Bloom’s taxonomy.
5 days ago
Two tweets from @wfryer explain his workflow for using YouTube videos:
- Download videos from YouTube.com and other sites using Firefox’s UnPlug extension.
- Convert Flash .flv video files to Apple-compatible .mp4 using the free TubeTV Mac application.
More rubrics, this time done up in infographic style, to help teachers evaluate iPad apps. From the highly insightful Langwitches Blog.
5 days ago
