User ianf - iPad4Edu

Answer by ianf for iPad and Apple TV

2010-09-06T13:55:46Z

Yes, you will in the coming November 2010 iOS 4.2 upgrade using the recently previewed "AirPlay" function (chosen iPad —> Apple TV unit). Not sure how this will work in multiple iPad/ single Apple TV setup, but Apple Inc., must've thought of that.

Answer by ianf for iPad and etextbooks and annotations

2010-09-05T17:24:14Z

This in no way a criticism of AW's ("Asocial worker's") response above, but mere knowledge of his/her workflow needing to deploy 7 separate annotation and archival apps or services makes me extremely depressed. This should not be needed for such simple (end-result) functionality as making and remembering margin notes of one's cumulative reading. Yet precisely this (or another similarly convoluted action flow) is currently required on the iPad –and elsewhere for that matter– to be able to do just that. When will Apple realize that whoever first establishes a system-wide native-and-global annotation method, that company will rule the e-textbook market?

[AW's] tools used:

Dropbox

Zotero

Adobe Acrobat Pro (NOT Preview)

iAnnotate for the iPad

Pogo Sketch Stylus

Habilis

Evernote

[also Spotlight indexing/ search engine on OSX]

A system-wide native global annotation method = select any textual element (character | word | string of characters | multiple words | a sentence | a paragraph | multiple paragraphs | a text block | etc) OR a rectangular area on the screen; press down on or hover over a predefined spot in the menubar; and the underlying OS will immediately store a pointer to its global or local origin AND a copy of the selection in its own database alongside a timestamp and transparently detected type of selected matter (url | text | bitmap | html atom | part of a movie | desktop picture | etc). No typing needed nor required. Store it both on iDevice and in the cloud. Then permit the user to edit/add tags and other symbols in the onboard searchable catalogue that will abet in recalling the snippets later on.

The absence of such almost makes me wish Android gets there first and thus establishes its own method hegemony where tablets are concerned. Then it will be too late for Apple to cook up its own.....

Answer by ianf for What educational content is available for use on iPad?

2010-08-23T23:04:13Z

For once neither question nor answer, but a mini preview of coming distractions of sorts.

The long hoped-for Inkling app for iPad has been released into the open corral of the AppStore. A free app for viewing dynamic documents (created using a companion app of which not much is yet known) complete with shareable annotation function: "ability to discuss passages of a book with other students or professors. By selecting a piece of text you can leave a note for others to read and develop a conversation around the text."

This sounds good on, er, paper (and screen, too), but I wonder why isn't this a global function of the iOS itself, rather than that of a single app? If this goes on, soon we will have umpteen incompatible annotations schema, one for each native app, with no means of exchange of notes between them (sorry for repeating myself, I've been going on about this for quite some time.)

Company promo also hopes to "solve [student textbooks] problem by reducing the cost of the digital textbooks as compared to their paper counterparts and by allowing students to buy books one chapter at a time." Fine by me, but, once they're through with them, will the students be able to resell their books/ recoup their investment? Something tells me NOT – in effect they'll be buying lifetime non-transferable reading licences, rather than textbooks as such.

More promises promises: tuaw.com/2010/08/23/textbooks-for-ipad-progress-with-inkling. Neither TUAW nor NYT Bits mention a most important advantage of electronic media: they weight nothing in comparison with physical paper instances, ergo a whole semester's worth can be schlepped around easily. Less weight translates to less effort means less energy required to carry them around equals lower food intake leads to lesser risk of obesity etc (far-ranging that but not without merit.)

Answer by ianf for What software was used to create this site?

2010-08-21T10:02:14Z

It's an instance of the Stack Exchange community blog-Q&A wiki http://stackexchange.com/ - as you'd discover had you cared to look under the hood of any ipad4edu page.

Answer by ianf for Realtime Administrator access to the device

2010-06-20T12:49:54Z

This seems to be the Answered Prayers of the original question (not tried): the Server Admin Remote and Workgroup Manager Remote for iPad application presented @WWDC 2010: tuaw.com/2010/06/18/wwdc-2010-server-admin-remote-and-workgroup-manager-remote-for

Answer by ianf for can the ipad output a PDF over VGA out

2010-06-03T14:40:10Z

Matt Legend Gemmell has now explained the shortcomings of the iPad VGA Output in full. SUMMARY: it does not mirror the iPad screen without an intermediary layer. The key question is then, should someone write and submit a one-trick-pony "Mirror My Screen" app, would AppStore allow it?

Answer by ianf for How best to store a lab of 15 iPads?

2010-05-27T16:42:46Z

I've seen lockable vault-steel cupboards on wheels made especially for overnight storage of 10-30? company laptops - presumably in some locked storage area and chained to sturdy wall bracket. E.g. google.com/images?q=secure+laptop+storage

Your nearest larger office supply depôt, or -mail order catalog should have such aplenty. You'd have to equip it with individual charging connectors though... it being so new, I don't think any such iPad-specific office accessories have yet been developed.

Answer by ianf for Can you download PDFs from the net' THEN annotate?

2010-05-09T12:25:24Z

The iPad is still a product in flux, so the functions that you (and I; and practically everybody else) require may yet appear, but for now, sadly, there is no easy/ practical way of annotating read matter on it. Since highlighting, quoting and annotating text are so central to education use [textbooks], I'm not sure what's holding it up (copyright fears most likely - whether abetting export of quotes with annotations may be subject to legal action, etc).

This is even sadder than the depressing state of affairs on the Mac, where keeping track of one's reading requires umpteen different clients, file formats AND mastering of their controls. As yet iPad does not even have that; let's hope iPad powers that be wake up and add a native, global, integrated annotation layer with transparent local and cloud-synced storage BEFORE things degenerate as far as in this Brian Terpstra's article.

Answer by ianf for iPad and etextbooks and annotations

2010-05-09T12:36:34Z

Actually, it's not so much a question of software (as in "annotation-capable applications on iPhone/iPad"), as of presence of a native, global, integrated quote/ margin-note and contextual annotations layer on the iPad. Which so far is nowhere to be seen. View this answer [which, btw. ought to be folded into present thread or vice-versa]

Answer by ianf for Will there be a possibility to create pdfs (out of eg Pages-Docs) directly on the iPad

2010-02-17T21:00:09Z

Most definitely, yes. Current Pages '09 has that capability (under "Export..." and alongside to MSWord format), and I Steve Jobs has told Walter Mossberg on camera, that that function will be there.

Electronic notes of digital content?

2010-02-13T16:49:49Z

(If) When the iPad debuts in classrooms, how IMPORTANT it be that it sport native ability to freely highlight, quote and persistently annotate onscreen material? (native=system-wide; as opposed to within-specific-application-only). Would absence of all that, and the resulting need for the student to maintain analog notes, preclude iPad's adoption for educational purposes?

Answer by ianf for Is it possible to configure the iPad for sharing between multiple users?

2010-02-09T12:07:28Z

Interesting question(s). It all depends on how big a rôle in primary and secondary education Apple sees for the iPad. My impression is they are more concerned with university presence, OiPS, one-ipad-per-student scenario. This doesn't preclude other uses, only such may not have been implemented optimally from the start. Most probably, however, any group administration will be done through a dedicated desktop- or web-tool, not from any "master iPad" device itself.

• "switch user" so that there is separation/privacy for each students work.

Probably not, with the exception that some privacy-critical common functions, like Mail, may have switchable profiles (plus "log me out after stipulated period of inactivity" options).

• I guess you could backup/restore for each student...

Done right, with virgin restore-image available right on the device, this needn't take long, and could be done in bulk by the teacher.

• Or use a VNC app and use the iPad as a dumb terminal...

A classroom full of $500 dumb terminals? Methinks not.

Answer by ianf for How to create and/or publish educational content for iPad?

2010-02-06T10:46:22Z

I can not conceive of an excuse Apple could have NOT to equip the richtext Pages application on the iPad with "Save as ePub..." option. NONE. Presumably they're hoarding announcing that function for just prior to iPad's appearance in April.

Answer by ianf for Apps in folders

2010-02-05T15:52:21Z

The iPad will have some mechanism for grouping apps into user-arbitrary categories, labels or "hold-alls," though perhaps not "visible folders." Given potential vast numbers of apps/ e-books et al capable of being held on the device, anything less than that is unthinkable, and Apple has learned its lesson of max. 10 home screens on the iPhone/ Touch.

Answer by ianf for Viewing PDFs in iPad

2010-02-05T15:17:58Z

This is speculation on my part, but the logic of utmost simplification that the iPad is a harbinger of dictates that PDFs be shown directly within MobileSafari's window, not in a separate app. Alternatively, a parallel/ separate PDF Reader may be the bone thrown by Apple to Adobe to placate it somehow for the continuing absence of Flash.

Comment by ianf

2010-09-09T06:28:56Z

Apparently not. It's due to competition among producers, a key element of capitalism.

Comment by ianf

2010-08-31T17:06:03Z

Thank you for stating the obvious and do see the [pre-release] date of my comment. I note that while desktop Pages '09 has indeed been refined to write out ePub (in effect convert a richtext document to an ePub READABLE by iBooks rather than CREATE a source hypertext that will become kosher ePub readable anywhere), missing are any signs of iPad Pages able to save ePub straight on the device. Instead, one has to export/ sync the doc from desktop to iPad first. Also, current ePub standard does not permit embedding video which Pages apparently does. So, a stop-gap solution at best.

Comment by ianf

2010-08-26T17:02:30Z

Wishful thinking, nothing wrong with that, but let's be clear about one thing: Apple will slow down production and pace of deliveries to keep stocks low ahead of introduction of any new model. The experience with (oft-updated) MacBooks shows they are not averse to "starving" sales outlets of soo-to-be-obsoleted merchandise for a while. So a discounted Gen-1 iPad is not a given when Gen-2 appears.

Comment by ianf

2010-08-26T09:45:35Z

I don't speak for Apple, but, to answer you question with a dash of cynicism and in the words of one syllable department, "YES." For-profit body Apple Inc. brought out the iPad primarily as an intelligent/ multipurpose BUT STILL chiefly a sales terminal to its highly profitable iTunes/ AppStore/ iBookstore /Etc. divisions. The product was not intended as a means to save or fix anything, least of all any public schools' systems.

Comment by ianf

2010-06-28T14:42:38Z

With "virtual frog specimens" on offer, dissection of Tiny Humans™ can not be far behind. In fact, I'd much prefer that in a classroom esp. if the app allowed students to replace default faces with custom uploaded ones ;-)) [Back to work now].

Comment by ianf

2010-06-09T16:10:21Z

David Pogue comments absence of user management in iOS 4: pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/… [Personally, while still thinking of iPads as personal-use gizmos, I now agree that having an OS that recognizes whether device is being operated by its main/ or administrative/ user –OR– by a "guest," could be of advantage. For deployment in classrooms, it would allow teachers to limit access to certain features, or apps outside current domain. So a native at-most two account setup (if enabled), wouldn't sound too bad: one password-protected; the other OPEN.]

Comment by ianf

2010-06-06T21:33:40Z

It appears Apple already did allow it, the "iDemoWeb;" see ipad4edu.com/questions/3/… [speaking of which, this site really needs some kind of pre-publication semantic detector/ mechanism to prevent duplicate Q&As topics being raised separately from one another. At present there are fairly few posts, but what will happen if/when ipad4edu gains popularity?]

Comment by ianf

2010-06-03T22:22:56Z

Sounds like a job for Matt Legend Gemmell [ instinctivecode.com mattgemmell.com - see his "iPad Multi-Touch" demo @ mattgemmell.com/2010/05/09/ipad-multi-touch ] --OR-- given potential usefulness of such a touch-display shell in a classroom, why don't you contact this site's host, Fraser Speirs? [ connectedflow.com speirs.org ]

Comment by ianf

2010-06-03T14:30:22Z

In all the pictures I've seen the folders on the iPhone were restricted to 9 app-icons each (in a 3x3 grid; a very strange number). As the iPad screen is 5x bigger than the phone's, it ought to permit the folders to hold more items than that, even with bigger icons.

Comment by ianf

2010-06-03T14:18:26Z

Fraser, this is so surreal, "wet iPads drying," you should post a photo of it ;-))

Comment by ianf

2010-06-03T14:14:35Z

Surely you meant iAnnotate PDF, not "iAnnote" itunes.apple.com/us/app/iannotate-pdf/… I see that it allows highlighting; drawing/graphics commenting on the PDFs; and emailing back commented docs - but does it allow one to add textual margin notes, etc. to read-only PDFs as well? Also, can it EXPORT the annotation layer in some intelligent, offline-usable fashion? [BTW, I've nothing against commercial apps, but it strikes me as somewhat immoral that this kind of baseline functionality wasn't deemed important enough to become native part of the iPhone OS.]

Comment by ianf

2010-05-27T16:59:59Z

Being a device of one-iPad-per-student type, the most optimal way of securing it against theft and similar seems to be through making the student buy it and assume full responsibility for its well-being. Or am I too naïve in assuming this would be enough?

Comment by ianf

2010-05-27T16:54:54Z

Basically, you are talking of encasing the iPad in a 3D-movable steel frame that can be securely chained AND locked to a bed's frame. There's no such thing that I know of. For ideas on how to recover a laptop that has gone "walkabout" in a hospital setting, rent this instructional video imdb.com/title/tt0090985

Comment by ianf

2010-05-14T08:40:02Z

So tell me, what good is searching/ browsing/ downloading and reading online articles, that, should they be of interest, can neither be quoted nor commented other than by laborious "analog" methods involving printers, xeroxing, scissors and cellotape? Or is it just me who sees something missing here.

Comment by ianf

2010-05-11T10:43:54Z

Can you imagine an education scenario based around jailbroken iPads, or -anything for that matter [outside of North Korea, that is.]