Starting Out...

I WON!! I WON!! I WON!! I seriously have never won anything in my life!! So, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that I was a winner in the District 77 iPad drawing this fall! I just could not believe it! Upon receiving my new iPad, I of course had to go out and buy a cute cover and fun accessories!! The best of which I found was the Adonit Jot Pro Stylus Pen for iPad. It is probably the best stylus out there! It is, however, very pricy (around $30), but I have found it to be a better feel than a regular rubber-end stylus and it makes writing on the iPad much faster and smoother, more like writing with a real pen or pencil.

After the excitement wore off, and I had purchased all my iPad "goodies", I was faced with the task of incorporating my new iPad into my classroom. I found many Apps that I thought were cool and helpful, however the more that I thought about this integration, the more I wished that I had won a full classroom set.... as many of the Apps that I have found would be cool to do with an entire class of iPads. Today, for my first post I will tell you about the App that has really helped me in my classroom: Air Sketch. Air Sketch has both a free and a paid version of this App. I tried out the free version first and decided right away to pay for the App. The App cost around $8 and allows users to project PDF documents (such as exported PowerPoint or Keynote decks) to a computer on the same local network, then annotate them in real time. For me this was great, because I live in a classroom with a broken smart board, and cannot write on my smart board. This App allowed me to sit in the back of the classroom and write notes for the students. I can also pass the iPad around the room and have the students write answers on it. It has been a great asset to my classroom. Air Sketch is easy to use,all you have to do fire up Air Sketch on the iPad and open the specified URL from any HTML-5 compatible browser on the local network. Your photos and drawings show up natively in the browser. There's no proprietary client software to install, or services to subscribe to. Hope this gives you something to think about and play with for the time being! I will write again soon!!