So I bought myself an iPad Air, now tell me what to do with it!

[PentecostalMom]

I always see all of these great apps that are iDevice only.  Cyber Monday is nearly here and I know there should be some good deal on things that I would like to have with the iPad.  So, help me out!  I am adding in SOTW in January, and I already have the pdf's of SOTW 1 and SOTW 2.  Will these work on the iPad?  Is it easy to print from the iPad?  Do I need a stylus?  I am new to the whole Apple thing, so please give me any advice that you think I need.  You can see my dc's ages in my signature.  I do not plan to let them use it unless they are in the room with me and for educational purposes only.  I intend to use it mostly from a teaching standpoint.  I do have a Nook tablet that they get to use for limited amounts of time for fun stuff. 

 

ETA: I don't only want advice on apps, really just using it as a teacher tool, period.  I do plan to read SOTW from it, but I have them on my laptop.  Can I email them to myself?  I've had this thing for two days and I haven't had much time to simply play around with it.  Any direction is appreciated!

[Hunter]

I have an iPad mini, which is almost the same thing.

 

It's going to take awhile before you can take full advantage of your new device. Don't try and do it all at once. It'll take all the joy out of using your new toy.

 

I like dropbox for transferring documents from one device to another. You install dropbox on all your computers and devices, drop in a document, and then you can access that document from all your devices.

 

I have no experience with printing. I just don't print anymore. I have a broken printer that I can plug into my equally broken laptop in an emergency, but the only thing I have printed in months is my bank records when I needed to re-certify for my housing voucher.

 

I don't have a stylus. If something is really small, I pinch the area larger, so my finger will work better.

 

I love love love my iPad mini. I bought it days before my finances tanked and I didn't return it. I have one last payment this month, and then it's paid for.

 

Are there nice keyboards for the air? I have a white mini and white keyboard with keys that look like chicklet gum. It's so cute. I really love my keyboard. I like the white border for ebook reading. Black is nicer for movies. I do so much more eBook reading than movie watching, so I chose white.

 

Again, don't try and do it all right away. I understand the pressure of Cyber-Monday, but there are lots of January sales too. Look out for the Mr Q science pdfs in January. They work nice on my mini.

[simplemom]

When doing artist study, I save artist print images from the internet to my photo album. Each artist we study is put into its own album. For learning songs, since I can't sing on key, we pull up YouTube videos from the YouTube app. I try to find videos where the songs have the lyrics on the screen. I have a list of favorites in my YouTube account of songs we want to learn through the year. The other day my ds wanted to know how sinkholes happen, and I have no idea. My ipad is in with our stack of school binders. I just picked the ipad up, and showed him a YouTube a video about it. So convenient. We'll also listen to a composer's music on the ipad. For my youngest, I downloaded all the progressive phonics books into my iBooks app. This has saved a ton of printing. My son reads from the Treadwell readers from iBooks as well. We watch Netflix and Salsa Spanish episodes from the ipad at times. I downloaded free lesson plans to go with the Salsa Spanish videos into iBooks, and teach from those lessons. I had downloaded the free online MEP math lesson plans to the ipad, but discovered for math I like having the lesson plans in a printed binder. You can put the Kindle app onto the ipad, then any Kindle ebooks you buy or download for free go directly unto your ipad. When we are out and about on school field trips or doing projects, I take pictures of our "school on the go." I copy booklists from various curriculum companies into the Evernote app, then choose an ecclectic mix of books from those recommendations. That is helpful to pull up when I'm at a used bookstore. Haven't used this much yet, but plan to listen to audiobooks from it. I basically consider my ipad a portable school room. We do have plenty of books, paperwork, projects, hands on, writing, and other things to do; these things are the bulk of the school day vs. being on the ipad.

 

I don't know much about printing from the ipad, only that it can be done with the right app and a compatible printer. We print from our laptop at home.