Using Your Tablet in the Classroom: An App Summary

We just recently gave a talk about using tablets in the class­room for a Lunch and Learn ses­sion here at Prince­ton. The focus was to address how an instruc­tor can not only use their tablet device for their per­sonal life, but cross over and use the same device in the class­room to teach.

Tablets are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar with instruc­tors and they are opt­ing for them instead of car­ry­ing a lap­top around. Once instruc­tors get use to using the iPad or any tablet device for their daily per­sonal tasks, it only makes sense that instruc­tors would want to start ven­tur­ing into use the tablet device for lec­ture and course work. World­wide media tablet sales to end users are fore­cast to total 118.9 mil­lion units in 2012, a 98 per­cent increase from 2011 sales of 60 mil­lion units, accord­ing to Gart­ner, Inc. Tablet use in the class­room also goes in the vein of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) move­ment which we have been see­ing for years with stu­dents and instruc­tors bring­ing their own lap­tops to class.

Below we have a sum­mary of apps we tested (mostly iPad but a few can be found in the Google Play Store). We have also cat­e­go­rized them by topic. They are listed below:

Pre­sent­ing Slideshows in class:

Keynote:

• Can dis­play Keynote files
• Can not mark up the slideshow or edit it
• Can sync your pre­sen­ta­tions with iCloud
• Slideshow ani­ma­tions are retained and play

Google Drive:

• Can dis­play SlideShow from Google Docs
• can not edit the Slideshow or cre­ate a new one
• Can only show speaker notes, can not mark up the slides
• Slideshow ani­ma­tions are retained and play

Slideshark:

• Upload Pow­er­point files to web ser­vice called Slideshark
• Project slides to class
• Can import from cloud based stor­age ser­vices like Drop­box, Google Drive
• Can use your iPhone as a remote when pre­sent­ing slides
• Has a pointer fea­ture that if you hold down your fin­ger on the iPad it will gen­er­ate a fake pointer mark and fol­low your finger.
• Does pick up on ani­ma­tions you pro­gramed into your slideshow

Doceri:

• Allows for you to con­nect to your desk­top run­ning the Doceri desk­top app and to view and inter­act with your desk­top through the iPad.
• Peo­ple use this fea­ture to run slideshow off their desk­top com­puter or to pull media files and dis­play them on their iPad with­out hav­ing to buy other apps
• This app has a robust pre­sen­ta­tion fea­ture that allows for you to anno­tate your slideshow and to record audio and records ani­ma­tions when you anno­tate the slides

CloudOn:

• Cre­ate Word, Pow­er­point, and Excel docs on iPad (same lay­out as Office 2007+)
• Can not con­vert to PDF(it has become a hot sug­gested fea­ture for this app)
• Can email the file or email a link to the file.
• Files auto­mat­i­cally save into one of the cloud server spaces you can con­nected to with CloudOn (I saved in DropBox)
• Keeps ani­ma­tions that you cre­ated in PowerPoint
• Can mark up the slides using the Pow­er­Point pen­cil tool.

Explain Every­thing:

• Can anno­tate RTF, PDF, PPT, PNG, JPG, DOC (not wav or html files) Pages, Num­bers Keynote files
• Can import from Drop­box, Ever­note, Box.com, Web­DAV, Email, iPad photo roll and the iPad camera
• Can add slides and rearrange slides
• Can add shapes
• Can record audio and screen and export as an .mp4 file (file can get large depend­ing on length of recording)
• Can export to YouTube, Photo Roll, E-mail, Drop­box, Box.com, WebDav.

Free­hand markup of PDFs:

PDF Reader:

• High­light­ing of text in PDF
• Can Con­vert to PDF from other files
• Can add notes to PDFs
• Can add shapes and draw on file
• Can import files from web browser (this fea­ture is buggy, make sure you have a direct link to the file (PDF) or else it will cap­ture the web­site instead-better in GoodReader)
• Can email the file and open it in other apps (like Drop­Box) on iPad

GoodReader:

• High­light text of PDF
• Can add notes to PDFs
• Draw shapes and under­line and draw on file
• Can not con­vert other files into PDF (need another app)
• Can open many files types includ­ing audio files
• Can down­load PDFs and files from the web ( a lit­tle tricky)
• Can cre­ate text file for note taking
• Can email the file.

Papers:

• Can search 8 dif­fer­ent aca­d­e­mic search engines (includ­ing JSTOR and PubMed)
• Can import files from Drop­Box account
• Will only accept PDF files from Drop­Box. Will need to con­vert files in another app if you want to import from Drop­Box. When search­ing in the aca­d­e­mic peer reviewed jour­nals, the for­mat is already PDF
• Can cre­ate col­lec­tions so you can sort and orga­nize PDFs
• Can search by authors
• Can email the attached PDF to others
• Can high­light PDFs
• Can add notes to PDFs
• Can share with another use of Papers that on the same net­work as you (not tested)
• Can export the PDF to another app on iPad (like DropBox)

Store and Share Lec­ture Materials:

All the apps in this list work with Drop­box. PDF Reader, GoodReader, Slideshark, Explain Every­thing, and CloudOn link to Box.com. Google Drive does not link to Explain Every­thing and Papers. PDF Reader, GoodReader, Explain Every­thing, and PDF Expert work with a Web­Dav connection.

Play Flash Video and Ani­ma­tions on my iPad:

Puf­fin Web Browser:

• Plays flash ani­ma­tions and videos in the browser (that Safari can’t play)
• Safari can play YouTube videos but not videos on sites like Hulu (Puf­fin can)
• This browser doesn’t work for flash videos inside Black­board Course

Kaltura

• We are explor­ing using Kaltura to con­vert flash video (in your Black­board Courses) so it can play on the iPad.

*Google Drive, Puf­fin Web Browser, Coul­dOn, and SlideShark work on Android.