How
do you go from using a computer at school to using your iPad at home, to being
allowed to bring your iPad to school?
Today
in class, the assignment was to write about their favorite place. They
had to use each step of the writing process and had to do it all in two
hours. Because we are doing this in preparation for the state writing
assessment, they had to do it all with paper and pencil. The funny part
is that the complaints were not about having to write on one topic for two
hours or follow the steps of the writing process. The complaints were
about how silly it is to WRITE a rough draft and then have to mark your paper
up and then write a final copy. "It is such a waste of
time!" They have gotten used to being able to type their papers on
their iPads and then make changes and then submit it. I couldn't agree
more...a huge waste of time! Come on, Georgia! Let's jump into this
century and allow the kids to submit their writing assessment electronically.
Teachers can still walk around the room and make sure no cheating is going on.
I
mention this to say that although we have found many ways to create different
things and different ways to build knowledge, the iPad can still be used to
simply type a paper. There are many essay writing apps that are free and
there are MS Word apps for ten to twenty dollars. The bottom line is that
for the amount of time that you NEED a computer, you can share the ones that
are available in the school or use the one you have at home. The iOS operating system makes it easy to share information between apps.
Below is one way to transition easily from using a computer and a flash drive to using cloud space and your iPad.
- Make sure you have a gmail address. When you have a gmail address, you also have a Google Drive with 5 Gb of space for saving.
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| Google Toolbar |
- Click on the Drive link. Next to the CREATE button is your UPLOAD button. Simply click on the upload button and choose the file you want to upload.
3. Once you have uploaded your files to your Google Drive, they will be available to you from
any computer or device. You will also have access to any files that you create on Google
Docs.
4. When you open one of your files from your Google Drive, you will see the following at the
top of the page.
You can see the blue Share button in the top right. When you click on this button you can
add email addresses to allow people to share your file.
5. Now that all of your files are safe and sound on your Google Drive, you can go to
www.google.com on any computer and click on the Drive button and open the file you have
been working on.
6. You can also download the Google Drive app to your iOS device and have easy access to
your files without going to the internet at all. You can also go into your Google Drive app and create docs and spreadsheets right from the app without ever going to the internet and logging into Google.
7. Finally, you can download Google Drive directly to the computer you most frequently use
and save anything on your computer directly to Google Drive and skip the upload step.
