Required Apps for Webb classes

Originally posted 8/4/11.

For our second year, Taipei Adventist Preparatory Academy is going "full-iPad"—thin, electronic tablets instead of heavy paper books. Being that now students will have computing power at their fingertips, they won't simply be expected to use their iPads as textbooks—they'll also be expected to use them for enhancing their learning other ways, as well. There is a set list of apps that are required school-wide, but there's also a special list of (mostly) free apps that will be expected to be used in Mr. Webb's classes:

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GoodReader The "bread-and-butter" app of TAPA, this will be the program that you use the most. You'll use GoodReader to access your textbooks (scanned in as PDFs), but it's more than just a viewing app. You can write notes, highlight text, draw shapes, search text (and notes, and highlights, and anything shape you put in), and, strangely enough, even watch videos that won't play natively on the built-in Movies app.

QuickOffice Pro HD Basically, this is Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but designed specifically for the iPad. The PowerPoint feature is especially pretty cool, as it allows you to create and display your presentation easily, through the use of the iPad-to-VGA (Projector) adapter AirServer, onto the Mac Minis in every classroom. This has Dropbox and Google Docs integration, too, so sign in to get the most out of it.

Evernote Where do you start? Note-taking abilities? Check; does it better than Notepad, and includes rich text and the ability to add in pictures. Recording audio? Hit the little  icon and easily record your teacher's talk. Remembering what the whiteboard said? Take a photo of the board and put it in, and, later, you can search the picture for text. Add in tagging (the best feature you're not using), and, most importantly, everything backed up to the internet, and you've got a killer app you should be using every period.

Blogsy (Soon...) Most students know about my ginormous crush on Blogsy. I only love it because 1) it's everything I've ever wanted for a mobile blogging app, and 2) it's awesome developer personally has listened to me about a few new features. With all the blogging you're going to be doing in my classes, you'd be silly to not purchase this as soon as possible. ***UPDATE*** Now required! And I'll even buy it for you!

Dropbox I've written the long version before, but, in short, Dropbox is a virtual, internet-based flash drive that updates documents instantly anywhere you have it installed. Install it onto your home computer and your iPad, and log into each account; then, write an essay on your home computer, and it'll show up on your iPad. Edit on the iPad, and it's fixed at home. Best of all, it'll protect you from losing everything if your break your iPad. Required for success.

Scan There's a hundred QR readers on iTunes, and you technically can get any one you want, but Scan is my personal favorite. It's as simple of a program as you can get: just point the camera at any QR code and boom—Information instantly. At the very least, pick up this free app.

Easy QR "BUT MISTAH WEBBAH, WHY WE NEEDAH TWO QR APPSAH?" First off, speak better English. Secondly, occasionally, one of the QR readers won't work as well as the other, so it's smart to have 2. But, most importantly, Easy QR allows you to easily make your own QR codes to distribute any number of ways. Smart to have.

Minu Timer For the most part, the only app that we'll use for Communications class will be the YouTube app, which you will use for uploading your practice speeches. However, if there's another I'd really love to have every student to have, it would be this timer app. Very simple and elegant, Minu Timer is my preferred choice, and what I'll most likely use in timing your speeches during class.

iBooks Soon, in my classes, I'll be releasing a textbook that will contain nearly all of the reading material we'll be using in all my classes throughout the year. Until iTunes approves it, we'll be on standby, but it's not a stupid idea to download this to be ready for when I amaze you.

Stanza While GoodReader is an awesome PDF reader, it lacks a pretty important function: reading other types of files, such as ePub (for eBooks) and CBZs/CBRs (for digital comic books). Whatever GoodReader cannot read, Stanza can and will. Its PDF reader isn't amazing, but the other features it can do will more than make up for it. iBooks will also work, but Stanza is infinitely better.

Shakespeare (Free) An absolute necessity for anyone planning on taking first semester of British Literature, we will read at least 3 plays off this app. The free version is all that's necessary, although the paid app does have a built-in glossary for those tough-to-understand Shakespearean words.

Free Books It's pretty amazing to me that this app designer has been able to get over 23,000 books into his app, all legally, and all for free, but it's true. For my classes, often times, if we're able to get the book for free, I'll just ask you to download them from this app rather than purchase you the book yourself. It'll save you time and money.

Struggling with death: Everyman and the Grieving process

Sometimes, we read literature in class that's entertaining, or funny, or famous, but sometimes, we read literature that has a meaning outside the words itself. In studying Everyman, we look into the importance of death, and, specifically, the process people go through when experiencing it.

For class, we'll be looking over the following Powerpoint presentation and watching two one videos: one about a little girl suffering through the death of a pet, and an episode of Scrubs, an American TV show.





The assignment will be to fill out this  Stages of Grief  graphic organizer, similar to how you did for the Who's Who on the Canterbury Roadtrip assignment. When you've completed the graphic organizer, you will upload it to Scribd and embed it onto your blog. Good luck!

Road Trippin' on the way to Canterbury

I don't know if you thought last week was nuts, but I sure did! I haven't even done any blogging for over a week! To punish myself (and my students) for that, we'll be embarking on a new project.

So far, in studying the Middle Ages, we've talked about the background of the times, ballads, and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (specifically Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). Now, we'll move to arguably the single-most famous piece of the time period: Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales is basically the Medieval period's Inception: It's a fictional story that has under-layers of other fictional stories. The basic plot is of a few dozen strangers, from different backgrounds, jobs, and levels of society, traveling to Canterbury on a religious pilgrimage. As they are on the way, they tell stories to make the time go past. Each story in The Canterbury Tales, then, is titled after the person who is telling the story.

Before this even starts, though, Chaucer sets the mood in a prologue, where we find out what kinds of people are on their way to Canterbury. Often times, he'll tell us about the person's reputation or beliefs; other times, he'll describe their visible, superficial details, leaving us, as readers, clues to who they really are. Even though Chaucer might not spell out "HE IS GOOD" or "SHE IS BAD", we can usually figure out a lot about the person from the few details he provides.

The assignment, then, is to fill out this graphic organizer about all the characters on the road trip. Usually, I give this assignment out to students to do individually; however, this year, I'll allow students to team up in pairs (only!) to complete the assignment. The twist, though, is that the entire assignment must be completed digitally. The instructions are as follows:

1. Download the worksheet. Click on this link (or on the QR code to the right) to get the Who's Who on the Canterbury Roadtrip Worksheet. Make sure you open it in GoodReader.
2. Team up on filling out both pages. Partner A should have GoodReader open to pages 115-136 of the British Literature textbook. Partner B should have GoodReader open to the worksheet. As Partner A looks for answers, Partner B should be filling in answers. To do this:
• Hold down on the Job Description square for The Knight. A popup will appear. On that popup, you'll want to click on the little icon (below in blue) that says  abc| .
  
  
  
  
  
• GoodReader will ask you if you want to save any changes you make either a) to the file or b) to a new file. Either is fine, but I'd suggest you do this first option.
  
  
  
  
  
• Now, the program will let you start to enter in text. I suggest you type in the answer right now. You can edit it later—add stuff, delete stuff, reword stuff—but just start putting in the information. When you're done, you can click  Save  on the top right.*
  
  
  
  
  
• Now comes the fun part—editing. When you click on the text you just typed, there will be all kinds of options for how to change the way the entered text looks. You can play around with it any way you want, but I want NO BORDER, NO FILL, and NO CALLOUT. Change the color to whatever you want, but make sure I can read it. Finally, change the font size to, at the largest, size 10pt. (When I put it into my own iPad, I still clicked  -1pt  twice because size  10pt  was way to big.)
  
  
  
  
  
• Finally, click on  Move  to adjust the text box size. Fit it inside my little graph squares.
  
  
  
  
  
You'll do this process for each square. Once, you've formatted the type style, by the way, it will usually default back to that (so you don't have to set it again and again every time).
3. Flatten. Once you have completed the worksheet 100%, you need to make sure that those changes you have made will stay permanent. On the bottom right, when you click on the second icon from the right (  ), a popup will give you the option to Flatten Copy. Do that.
   
   
   
4. Upload to Scribd. Sound familiar? Just as we did a long time ago, we'll upload these documents to Scribd. For a step-by-step process reminder, you can go back to that old blog post. There are two basic ways to do this: The all-iPad way and the iPad + Computer way.
   
   
   • all-iPad way: From this view, click on Open In... and get that document into QuickOffice. (They might ask you to flatten again. It's fine—you can.)
     
     
     
     
     
     Then, from here, drag the document to Scribd on the bottom of the page (as we did before) and upload it.
   • iPad + Computer way: Just E-Mail File to yourself and upload it (on a computer) to Scribd.
     
     
5. Embed it into your blog. Again, as we did before. 

And that's all! (I feel like I always give a million instructions and say "That's it!" like it was really easy. Sorry.) This project will be due by next class, so get started!

*By the way, you should do this process, as well, for putting your name on the top of the paper!