Skip to main content

Ipad report

I'm really happy with my ipad. I use it nearly every day. Most of all I appreciate its "instant on" and its portability around the house. If we get wi fi-ed up in the staff room at school, I shall use it there too.

Apart from checking email and web browsing I have made good use of a number of apps. I like the Metoffice app for instant access to weather reports, including current radar and satellite views. The Living Earth app gives instant weather and cloud cover from cities around the world. The Ebay app is easy to browse. I've occasionally used the bfm.tv app, but our slow broadband connection makes live TV unpredictable. I've made good use of the imdb cinema app and daily use of the Guardian app. The latter is designed for the i-phone and bears little resemblance to the newspaper format, but it is comprehensive and easy enough to navigate. I'm awaiting an ipad specific version of the Guardian, for which I would happily pay. The Daily Telegraph app is designed specifically for the ipad, but is slower to load and less exhaustive than the Guardian offering. It's actually a "best of" the Daily Telegraph. I'm not really a Torygraph reader, but I don't mind seeing a different view of the news.

Star Walk is a brilliant app which allows you to browse the night sky. You hold the ipad up towards the sky and its in-built GPS shows you the stars and constellations in that direction. Good fun.

I've also begun using the calendar and contacts applications and enjoy browsing ther app store on a fairly regular basis.

I'm not a huge games person, but I have had fun with Osmos, Angry Birds and RealGolf  2011.

In the summer I did use the ibooks app for some reading, but this has not become a habit. Online books could do with being cheaper.

Other uses for me have included the Youtube app and the excellent Google Earth app.

All in all, I'm delighted with the ipad. The battery lasts about 10 hours and takes a few hours to charge overnight. The keyboard is a doddle to use too. I have not used it as a work tool and cannot envisage doing so, though I am sure plenty of people on the move would do so with Apple's software. Nor have I used its itunes capability, mainly because my album library would take up too much space on this 16 gig version. No camera either, so Skypers would be frustrated. It is occasionally frustrating that the machine does not allow you to view Flash videos, but some sites are already offering alternatives for ipad users.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans, ...

The 2026 GCSE subject content is published!

Two DfE documents were published today. The first was the response to the consultation about the proposed new GCSE (originally due in October 2021) and the second is the subject content document which, ultimately, is of most interest to MFL teachers in England. Here is the link  to the document.  We are talking about an exam to be done from 2026 (current Y7s). There is always a tendency for sceptical teachers to think that consultations are a bit of a sham and that the DfE will just go ahead and do what they want when it comes to exam reform. In this case, the responses to the original proposals were mixed, and most certainly hostile as far as exam boards and professional associations representing the MFL community, universities, head teachers and awarding bodies are concerned. What has emerged does reveal some significant changes which take account of a number of criticisms levelled at the proposals. As I read it, the most important changes relate to vocabulary and the issue ...