iPad In Education
August 12th, 2010 at 1:02 PM EST | by inu846W
Parents of children suffering from autism are turning to the iPad to help their kids. Experts don’t know what causes autism, but parents of autistic children know too well how hard it is to reach through the disease and communicate with them. Help in making contact has come in an unexpected form: the Apple iPad.
Blogger Shannon Rosa handed an iPad won in a raffle to her 9-year old autistic son and was amazed to watch him interact with the device with little training. He immediately became one with the iPad and spent lots of time with educational programs — spelling, counting and other learning tools.
Rosa writes for BlogHer, and immediately wrote about the amazing progress her son has shown since the iPad hit his hands. This touched off an interest in communities of parents with autistic children, and experts are now using the iPad with many such kids.
The situation with Rosa’s child is not unusual, it turns out. Many kids are instantly taking to the iPad, spending lots of time using the tablet to focus on the task at hand. It is hard to get the attention of many autistic children, and parents are impressed with how well their kids can focus while using the iPad.
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July 30th, 2010 at 9:36 PM EST | by inu846W
The School of Medicine at Stanford University has adopted Apple’s iPad, providing the device to all incoming first year medical students and Master of Medicine students.
The school cited four reasons behind the new program, including student readiness, noting that iPad “creates opportunities for efficient, mobile, and innovative learning.”
Stanford also noted “the flexibility of iPad technology,” noting that “iPad allows students to view and annotate course content electronically, facilitating advance preparation as well as in-class note-taking in a highly portable, sharable and searchable format.”
Access to information and “information literacy” was also a consideration, with the school pointing out that “students will be able to easily access high-quality information at any place, at any time (for example, images from textbooks on digital course reserve, image databases, journal articles, Lane Library’s various search tools, etc.)”
A fourth rationale was Stanford’s intent to go green, “replacing printed syllabi with PDFs is in line with the Sustainable Stanford initiative, which aims to build sustainable practices into every aspect of campus life.”
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July 8th, 2010 at 12:39 PM EST | by inu846W
By Joseph Weber
One of my family members and also one of my best friends are suffering from Parkinson’s disease. It’s sad. The disease has robbed them of so many abilities that we all perform daily without even thinking about it.
My friend, who is one of the kindest and smartest people I know, is also a brilliant engineer, scientist and accomplished author. The last several years have caused a marked decline in his ability to easily perform the activities we all take for granted. Even eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast was nearly an impossible task for him … at least until a few weeks ago, when he had a deep brain stimulator (DBS) placed. The results are nothing less than miraculous!
Last week I saw him for the first time since the placement of his DBS, and I was utterly amazed! His tremors were gone! He still had some residual “stiffness” in his leg, and his fine motor skills were not perfect, but it was an astounding difference.
After we had a chance to chat, the very next thing he did was pull out his iPad! Yes, my friend is back. Previously, he was unable to even talk on the phone without the use of a headset because of his trembling hands. Of course this made the use of a computer with keyboard and mouse essentially impossible. Although he has lost some of his fine motor skills, even with the use of the DBS, and has lost his previous ability for high-speed typing, he certainly was able to rapidly move around his iPad without difficulty! Wow!
Read more: advanceweb.com
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July 1st, 2010 at 11:07 AM EST | by inu846W
Oklahoma State University is the latest school to start setting students up with iPads. Starting this fall, a pilot program will give iPads to 125 students, and the university will monitor, both, how the device affects their learning and what their textbook costs turn out to be. Additionally, the classes in the pilot program will look at using, both, apps and Web-based tools on the devices, as is appropriate for the classroom.
Read more: TUAW.com
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June 29th, 2010 at 4:03 PM EST | by inu846W
I can’t think of another iPad app that looks quite as striking as Emerald Observatory. This US $0.99 app is the kind of thing you’d be proud to display if it was a physical object; even when it’s running on the iPad, I’m tempted to leave it on as a conversation piece.
The single display gives you your local time, the position of the sun, the rise and set times of the sun and moon (and the 5 brightest planets), twilight start and end times, the current moon phase, a display of day and night on a world map, the current day and date (with a leap year indicator), and the ability to move forward or backward in time in order to see different planetary alignments and sun positions.
Read more: TUAW.com
App Store: $0.99
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June 11th, 2010 at 9:54 AM EST | by inu846W
Those are the first thoughts I had as I began to explore Mars Globe HD for the iPad. The app is a virtual, high-resolution globe of the red planet which you can explore by using your fingers to move and magnify the image.
Read more: TUAW.com
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