Road testing iDevices with Digital Roadtrip (Julian Coultas)

Tim | May 4, 2012 | 0 Comments

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We asked good friend and handheld-device-genius, Julian Coultas, or “Digital Roadtrip” for his thoughts on how a school we have worked with, (and are fortunate enough to have been lent a couple of iPads) could take the first steps in a creative direction.

Julian is a wondrous teacher, presenter and guide to the world of iDevices, and was kind enough to make a quick list of apps for a school test driving an iPad. Here’s 10. “Actually” Julian says, “I squeezed a couple of extra cheeky ones in) from over 500,000+ on da apps store man”.

Ok… So you have borrowed a couple of iPads to test drive at your school. Where do you start?

This list straddles (ouch!) both Primary and secondary schools.

1. To explore the touch screen iPad experience Puppet Pals Directors Pass (£1.99) is a great way to start. Pupils can appear as cut outs in the animations and backgrounds /settings could taken from drawings, paintings and even “Street view” from the Maps app.

2. For some interactive problem solving Scribblenauts Remix (69p) is a fun place to start. I have to think quite hard about this!

3. Paper (basic version free) – an ironic name but a beautiful Zen-like experience. A uncluttered toolset for mark-making with digital pen, paintbrush and pencil. It looks just like real pencil marks. We bought the full version within minutes.

4. Explore some Amazing Physics ( Potential Energy/Kinetic Energy and Speed/Acceleration by creating your own roller coaster ride with Cstr Physics (69p)

5. Create a Film trailer about a subject or life in your school using iMovie (2.99) For a real world example with Polish and Romanian students in Turkey recently check this out:

6. Phoster (£1.49) – This app is great for creating Posters that combine images and text. We have used it for creating poster for eSafety and funky eBook covers. Whenever you need a text/Image message this app gets the job done very quickly.

7. Create you own eBook and share it. For Primary schools we tend to go for Book Creator for iPad (£2.99)and for more complex projects that include video we reach for Creative Book Builder (£2.49)everytime. For the official CBB video tutorial (made on an iPad by Digital Roadtrip) check this out…Creative Book Builder for CBB from digital roadtrip on Vimeo.

8. Create the most unique presentations (with automatically drawn animations) using Video Scribe (£2.49)

9. For Musicians Garageband complete with smart instruments has to be the once stop shop for tomorrows music makes and producers. The video below shows how you can jam & record all the parts to 1 iPad.

If you want to get clever you can copy and paste audio from other music apps into Garageband our current faves are DM1 and iKaossilator.

Garageband is also very good for recording all speaking and listening activities, creating podcasts and radio progs etc.

(Recording on multiple tracks is a great way of getting reluctant writers to start to create atmospheric journeys with words and sound effects).

10. Share content from the teacher’s computer to the iPads using the amazing free Groupzap.com collaboration tool. Drag and drop any content into the Groupzap board and invite the iPad via email and you are good to go!