Category Archives: iPad

Bittersweet, Like an Apple Removed from My Heart

So guess what? This is it. It’s a bittersweet moment as I sit here typing out my final blog post. I had so many goals and aspirations to achieve this semester and reached some while never thinking twice about some others. Then there are the goals that I achieved without intending to. You may be wondering what some of those goals are, but I’ve decided to not tell you. If you’re reading this, then let me tell you that you have been blessed with a magnificent brain that can come up with ideas that I could never dream of—don’t let me hold you back.

 

There is one thing that I learned this semester that I really think you should keep in mind. It’s all about people.

All of this. School, technology, families, the postal service, all of our communities, everything. Don’t take people for granted, but in turn, don’t take yourself for granted either. You’ve fought half the battle by just taking the moment to read this. It proves that you not only want to, but can do it. If you’re having this read to you, guess what, you still can.

 

After school special aside, this has been a great semester. It’s one of the first courses where I felt like whatever I put in I got in return. I definitely appreciated that it was taught and attended by university administrators–not to have an outlet to vent, but it was encouraging to see that the people behind so many emails care about improving the school and are motivated to do it with students in mind.

As you should know by now if you’ve been keeping up with this blog and course, we had iPads all semester. Needless to say that all my plots to keep mine have been thwarted by that nifty ID number on the back. Oh well. I must say that I don’t know if this semester could have been possible without them. They established a baseline technology that we could implement in whichever ways we saw fit to be successful in school. I frequently caught myself panicking if I left my iPad at home (moreso than if I left my phone). It has been everything this semester–never leaving my side. It took some getting used to, but wasn’t unbearable, and since it was new, it forced me to begin thinking out of the box in general. In essence, it was disruptive. Knowing that I would be giving the iPad back, I can speak honestly and say that I failed and didn’t push it as far as I could. As a broke college kid, I refused to spend money on it. If I had brought my own, or purchased it in the beginning, I think my selection of apps and utilities would have been much more in depth (would have had an external keyboard too). Do I think iPads should be implemented in education? Definitely. Will something new need to be added eventually? Definitely. Is that okay and natural? Definitely.

 

I bid you adieu, and may the dreams of a back button forever rest with you, my dear Future People.

Technically Yours,

Richard.

Closing Remarks Chris W.

This class has been a great experience. Coming into this class I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Honestly, I enrolled in the class because I heard we’d get to use an iPad for a semester. While the iPad was nice, I’d say the best thing about this class were the excellent discussion we had in class and how fluid the syllabus was. This class has really opened my eyes to the subtle complexities of community development and really helped me define who I am as a person. The guest we had in class pushed me to do what I want in life (which is to work in the gaming industry). The last section, Design, helped me take a new approach to the creative process that I will definitely use later on in life.

This class has shown me a few apps that I really enjoyed using. In no particular order SwiftKey, Adaptxt, Evernote, and POP.

Adaptxt: If you want swept functionality on your iOS device I would definitely recommend this app. The user interface is clean and is very responsive.
SwiftKey: This is another third party keyboard that has the swipe functionality. From my experience sometimes the keyboard wouldn’t appear and you’d have to tap on the lobe icon more than once. Otherwise it is a great app to use.

Evernote: This app is a powerhouse! From presentations to website layouts Evernote can do it all!

POP: In the design section of the course both teams used this to make the layout of our apps which were our a part of our Final Synthesis.

Lastly, the iPad was really useful this entire semester. Slowly substituted paper with the iPad and it became an integral part of my day to day. This device is useful beyond belief and after this semester is over I will seriously consider buying one for myself.

Cheers to a great semester!

iPad reflection – Final

I cannot express how glad I am I took this class. The last 13 weeks have tough me a great deal of technology, being able to interact with students have helped me understand their needs better, being back to school have renewed my understanding of how complicated student lives can be, but most importantly, having used an iPad as my only technical device for the class has shown me the potential of such little device.

After these 13 weeks, I find that iPads are a Jack of all trades and Masters of “most”. An iPad does a tremendous amount of things, GarageBand, iMovie, KeyNote, POP, and the endless array of productive applications are just some of the examples of the power of this tablet. It does a lot, and I mean a lot of things really really well.

When I compare it to my work device of choice, a Chromebook, there is only one reason why I would pick the Chromebook. The Chromebook only does one thing, but it does it exceptionally well. It provides a full feature web browser, and for work, in a Google environment, it is great news. However, putting work aside, and in a student environment, an iPad would, without a doubt, be my device of choice.

Weekly iPad Reflection – Chris Stratis

Here’s where the iPad and I have ended up:

The iPad has become necessary to my workflow. Its portability and functionality allow it to be the Swiss Army knife of productivity. It’s a browser, text editor, presentation maker, audio and video playback device, camera, microphone, and communicator.

Problems:

Although I have few apps installed on the iPad, it has become sluggish and unresponsive when I have one chrome tab open for the purposes of writing these blog posts. I will type on the keyboard; the keys don’t change color, to indicate that they have been touched, until a second later. It’s made typing blog posts more than annoying, but all other text input has been less frequently sluggish– I can manage with few instances, but nothing as laden with issues as using the blog and the iPad.

I actively dislike not being able to download files and look for them in a specific location on the device, with a file browser– as easily as you can with an android device. I needed to download a pdf from Google drive and upload it to a web application, and I couldn’t. I was only permitted to  upload photos, so I took a screenshot and uploaded that. I was left feeling less than satisfied.

Regarding operations on large bodies of text: I find it difficult to move the cursor to the correct location in the text. Text selection also becomes an issue. When copying text from Gmail to Evernote, it is difficult to avoid pasting unwanted content, like the gmail layout and the column of emails/folders. I accidentally destroyed a huge assignment by attempting to paste a large selection of an email into the Evernote. The pasted selection sat directly over the typed text; it took me hours to try and salvage what was no longer visible.

Aside from web content / text operations that don’t play well with the iPad, all other issues are too infrequent and minute to be worth mentioning here.

Swiss Army Knife:

Specific tasks that I use my iPad for include: reading and writing emails, reading plays, writing papers, writing blog posts, conducting research, filming rehearsals, taking rehearsal notes, taking rehearsal photos, editing documents, designing presentations, timing rehearsals to activities, waking up (using the alarm), playing music, playing music remotely with Spotify, controlling midi capable devices (this is possible and is on my list of things to do as soon as I can find the time), communicating with my organization using slack, sharing files, managing and auditing communications over slack, using social media applications, viewing light plots and other mechanical drawings, the list goes on…

 

iPad – Shady – Week 12

In the theme of design, this week I had to be a companion at the hospital.  While I was there, I saw nurses scooting around computers on wheels.  The entire setup must cost thousands; big frames, bumpers, wiring, batteries, monitor cradle, etc.  The nurse goes from room to room asking patients a series of questions before surgery, and she clicks the appropriate boxes.

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Being in the field of IT, this interests me, and now, having been exposed to an iPad, I couldn’t help but thinking, how much easier would it be for this nurse to carry an iPad mini on her pocket.  The same software could be setup as an iOS app.  A fraction of the cost, and a simpler tool to carry.

 

 

Weekly iPad Reflection Chris W

After almost a full semester of occupying the iPad, I don’t know how I am going to live without this thing.  All my assignments and a majority of my internet browsing are done using the iPad.

Stony brook University uses a website called Blackboard to distribute assignments, post grades and weekly reminders, and have the students interact with one another. I navigate blackboard exclusively form my iPad. The layout is nicer. The design is nicer. Everything is nicer on the app end of Blackboard.

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Screen Shot 2015-04-21 at 1.11.48 PM

Web version of Blackboard

imageApp version of Blackboard

The main difference between the two is the active panel the app version has. It is easy to navigate the different tabs as well as see exactly where you are.

Oh Back Button, I Hearken Ye

It’s been a while since I posted an update on what apps I currently have on my iPad. I’ve definitely increased the number of them that I use. Only the highlighted ones are used without fail every day, but I will definitely say that I still use most of them on a weekly if not every other day basis. I have now used the iPad for about three months, and have finally gotten used to not having a keyboard. Granted, I could never imagine writing a paper without a dedicated one. Other than that, I have noticed that I am much more productive throughout the day–I always have access to materials and tools for each of my classes.

I still want a back button. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. There are so many apps that you cannot simply go back one step; you must completely start over.

Apps As of 4_20_15

Technically Yours,

R.

P.S. I assure you that the game “8bit Doves” says exactly that. Image compression is a bit dirty..

 

Weekly iPad Reflection Chris W.

 

One app that would interesting to see in higher education is an app that shows students how much of their tuition is being wasted if they skip a class or something similar to that. This app’s purpose is to show students the dangers and costs of procrastination. If the students want it could give tips on better ways to allocate their time. The content would be clever and humorous. I’d like to call it CrnchTime.

 

(Late post because I need CrnchTime too)