iNews 1 - Sheila Andon

Welcome to the first issue of iNews, the newsletter dedicated to sharing all the latest iPad information in Madinat Zayed and Ruwais Colleges.

The iPad Committee aims to bring to you as much as possible of all the news and developments as we receive them from the various teams and task forces we each serve on.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of the HCT iPad implementation project and the exciting collaboration between the HCT, ZU and UAEU.

Above all, we would like to provide a means of sharing ideas for teaching and for disseminating your views of the apps you find.

Read More

Just got your iPad?

SCOtutor for iPad is an excellent and easy to follow video tutorial, available to download free from the App Store. It will take you through the basics of tapping, swiping, and pinching, onto configuring and personalizing your iPad, and also explains the more advanced features.

The whole tutorial lasts two hours but you can pause it and resume whenever you want to continue.

Read More

iNews from the HCT and the College

The iPad committee, Ghassan (chair), Noel, Peter, Caesar and Sheila have been working with teams across the HCT system focusing on the three main strands of the iPad implementation project: infrastructure, content and pedagogy. These three areas are being co-ordinated by a group of senior managers from HCT, ZU and UAEU, with Dr Jace Hargis, Director of ADW, heading up the iPadagogy team. Last week Apple trainers ran a series of workshops at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, for representatives from Foundations in the three institutions, with Sheila attending for Madinat Zayed and Ruwais Colleges. Apple training for all Foundations faculty is in the pipeline, as is a one day conference which will give all early iPad adopters the chance to share their experience of teaching and learning with this amazing device. What this space for dates and details.

There are iFoundations teams led by Central Academic Services working on both Maths and English. It is planned that there will a specially chosen number of apps for each discipline which every Foundations teacher and student will have downloaded. We’ll let you know as soon as these have been determined.

Meanwhile check out iPads for Education, a joint website for the UAEU, ZU and HCT. Here you will find reviews of many apps, information, blogs on iPadagogy and links to how-to videos. Eventually there will be a bank of lesson plans to exemplify iPad integration.

Read More

Views and Reviews by John Yule - Explain Everything

This is an amazing App that will enable you and your students to insert videos and images, then annotate or record voice-overs. Perfect for creative presentations, mini-lectures, how-to clips, video journals. Just the tool for flipping your classroom.

Click here for more information and the App

Read More

Views and Reviews by John Yule - PDF Notes

I have looked at a number of apps that allow the user to read/annotate pdf files. The one that does what I want to do best is pdf-notes. This allows the user to view attachments from emails as well as from dropbox etc. It also allows one to send the annotated file back by email or to dropbox etc.

There is quite a range of options regarding annotation, so it seems to do a pretty good job (at least for what I want). Best of all, it is free.

BTW, I was looking for something that might do the same as the way I use MS OneNote (i.e. students send me their work, I mark it and send their scripts back with comments). I notice there is an app for OneNote called Outline. At the moment it is read only, so of little use to me, but there are plans to develop it so it can be used in the same way as OneNote. Unfortunately, it will not be free when this update takes place, but it might be a useful app nevertheless.

Read More

Highly recommended and free!

Nearpod is an excellent app for the classroom that enables the teacher to share content, whether text or multi-media, with the students. The teacher can see who is ‘on the same page’ and who has turned back to Angry Birds! Students can take class tests in the form of multiple-choice or by submission on text-based answers. The results come to the teacher’s iPad and can be simultaneously projected to the smart board using Apple TV. Nearpod also has a library of free lessons.

Read More

Knowledge is wealth

There is a wealth of knowledge available free for your iPad. Try out National Geographic, the Khan Academy and iTunesU. You can also download many classics of literature from iBooks.

Read More

Something for the weekend - TuneIn Radio

TuneIn Radio gives you the chance to listen to over 50,000 radio stations from around the world.

Download the app to your iPad for free.

Read More