Going Mobile

My confession, is that I am a Mac fan.  I have an iPhone, iPad and up till recently, I had a Macbook Pro, lightning!  Unfortunately I had to return my MBP as I left my school and my new employer supplies laptops, which are still good machines.   With the flurry of highly functional new devices coming on the market for educational purposes, for example Chrome Books and Surface Pros, it looks like Apple is going to have to lift the bar even higher. Below are my views on several mobile devices.

iPad
My favourite bit of technology at the moment.  Again, lots of advantages and disadvantages with its use in the classroom, some are listed here;

Advantages
- Amazing language and note taking apps, most are free
- As a communication device, it's hard to beat
- For Chinese, being able to write with a stylus is a bonus
- The "Speak" function gives close to native level talk for digital texts, needs some adjusting though
- Storage of files are useful
- Production of sound and other digital files is convenient.  Students work can be sent to the teacher for marking or editing
- Best collaboration tool, lots of apps for this
- Endless supply of useful and productive apps, the best ones I find are free.  If you find them early enough when they are free and if they are good, sooner or later they will cost you money.  So I recommend any that are recommended by Apps Gone Free or similar apps or by colleagues, you check out the review and if they have good reviews, download them and trial them, the only thing it will cost you is time.  I'll have a page devoted to recommended apps later.

Disadvantages
- frustratingly distractive, students can't seem to help themselves -  gaming, texting etc during class, and no doubt some teachers as well...
- wifi dropout at critical times
- running out of power in class, unreliable battery life. For iPad and iPhone, take a reserve battery pack if you know you will be away from a power point for some time.

Laptops
I love Apple stuff, iPhone, iPad, Macbook Pro and Mac desktop at home, they are all great products.   But apart from my biases, one must be capable with other technologies.  Growing up with PCs and laptops made transferring computer skills and computer literacy to Apple technologies quite easy.  I prefer Apple, but am just as comfortable using non-Apple products.

Advantages
- Much more powerful than the iPad or tablet and mobile phone, allows for more capabilities for more complex operations
- Bigger screen area, especially for those old, tired eyes!
- Keypad is much better than typing on the screen or an attached keypad, no finger marks either.  I've trialled several keypads and nothing really beats the Macbook Pro keypad, its smooth, feels good and sensitive.

Disadvantages
- If size matters, this may be one...
- Turning on can be slow, but with the Macbook Pro (Flash) booting up is as quick as an iPad or quicker.