With the recent unveiling of the ipad 2 and releases of a few android tablets I thought this would be a good topic. This topic is also for me because my husband just got me the new motorola xoom. He said it should be great for my classes and also should have a good use in my classroom when I start teaching again. So I thought I could use my research in proving him right or wrong for my blog.
First, so far it has proven quite well for my classes. The internet speed is pretty fast. I am able to do research on the internet and type up comments in discussion boards. I am even trying it out to type up this blog. I am amazingly typing with two hands on a touch screen. I never thought that I could do that. My only problem for this class is I cannot download programs that I need to create my videos. I guess there is no getting away from the pc for that. I really love the portability. I was able to do some stuff in blackboard yesterday while my car was in the shop.
Now for uses in my own classroom. Most of the things I have seen on the internet are if everyone has a tablet. We could send and receive data from eachother and interact with it. All of their books could be digitized and there would be no more huge backpacks in the middle of the isle to trip over.
One negative thing,probably because I have not really tried to figure it out, is correcting my typing errors. I have to line up my finger perfectly where I want the cursor to add or delete letters. Another thing is saving things. I know there is an SD card slot but there is no office program to work with. Although this class has taught me several ways that I can get around that using web 2.0 tools.
In conclusion I am having fun using this tablet and look forward to using it to its full potential.
What a nice guy. Yea.. I don't think there is ever getting totally away from the PC. There are a bunch of apps out there. I would be curious to know how it goes for you throughout this program. I would like to get either the Motorola or the ipad. Which one... I don't know yet. I'm not a big "i" anything..
ReplyDeleteLucky you! Have fun with the new toy. Our technology director has just ordered some sample tablets to be tested out in our district...the Kineo, Samsung Galaxy, and the Xoom. I can't wait to try them out!
ReplyDeleteI want one too! I was thinking you might go to spellcheck.com and copy paste your info in it and it will correct the errors...just a thought. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteWell, that's so nice of your hubby!! What a great thing to get! I was reading about this and read that it might be more powerful than the iPad. I want to see one in person but not sure where to go here in the UK. I have an Android phone and got my 1st grader an iPod for her birthday. While I think my phone serves me well, the iPod is sure a lot of fun and when she's at school, my 21-mo and I play with it. The iPod has helped quite a bit in reinforcing lessons. I don't think it's a teaching tool at this time but a great way to reinforce what we just learned. Using the iPod I knew that the 21-mo have mastered her A-Z and a-g while doing better with colors and shapes. We'll have to do another quiz to see how she's doing there :)
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