An Apple for my Teacher

[cecco]

My wife just accepted a position as a Spanish teacher. She has always wanted to teach and is excited to embark in a new career.

I wanted to congratulate her with a gift and a tablet came to mind. Specifically the iPad 2. I was looking for some feedback on those that own one and perhaps have experience in using it as an education tool. Are there apps out there that would make it worth it?

My wife would definitely use it on her time off as well, she likes to read in bed and check facebook often. We use gmail, talk and especially google calendar. They work quite well with our droids, I'm not sure how well apple products integrate with google however.

What are your thoughts on a tablet as a gift for this new teacher? Good or bad?

 

[pm]

There's some decent educational apps.

My children play:
Stack the States - answer questions about US states to be able to "win" them and then use them in a physics-based tower-building game to reach a certain line.
Stack the Countries - same deal, but harder. I have learned that there are countries that didn't even exist when I was a kid.
AlgebraTouch - this is a handy one for teaching children about basic and advanced algebra techniques. You move variables and numbers around with your finger and you can see the equation change and there's a text explanation of why.
Tanzen - good problem-solving shapes game

There's also a French program (Hallo, Hallo... I think it's called) that my wife uses to learn French, and several reading programs that let kids touch a word to pronounce it for them. In our family, we often use access to educational programs on the iPad as an incentive to get the children to do chores "if you clear the table, you can play "Stack the States" for 30 minutes". In particular it's handy for giving them something constructive to do in the car.

For educational uses in a classroom... I have no idea... there's a lot of kids (usually) in a classroom and only one iPad. But there's something to touch screen devices that kids love. I have no idea about availability of Spanish learning apps, or how they would work in a classroom, but my wife enjoys learning French on ours.

 

[vshah]

the only con I can see is that apple doesn't have a google talk client.

consider the galaxy tab 10.1 as well. it is just as "sexy" as the iPad, and it will have built in google talk.

The iPad may have better apps for education though. you can browse ipad apps on itunes and android apps on market.android.com to see if there are any killer apps that will drive you one way or another.

my gut recommendation would be go to with an android tablet since you have android phones. if you had iphones, i'd recommend the iPad.

 

[Mopetar]

If you're interested in potential educational uses, I'd suggest pointing her to Fraser Speirs's blog, which talks about his experience with using the iPad in a classroom setting. It's probably not all applicable, as their school has switched to using iPads for everything and providing each student with one so a lot of posts focus on overcoming the technical hurdles. However, there are a few posts where he discusses how the teachers also use them.

 

[cecco]

Google talk may not be such a big deal breaker, since a lot of the time when she's on facebook she'll use their chat. I'll definitely take a look at the galaxy tab, however she did also hint at wanting an iphone since our contract with verizon is up for renewal, lol.

One of the biggest turn offs for me when i had my ipod was the constant tethering to itunes to update the device. I understand iOS 5 will resolve this so this might be a moot point.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[pm]

Nice link, Mopetar. I'm not a teacher and I thought that link was cool. Thanks.

One of the biggest turn offs for me when i had my ipod was the constant tethering to itunes to update the device. I understand iOS 5 will resolve this so this might be a moot point.

Maybe our usage models are different, but I almost never plug in either my iPhone or my iPad into my computer. It's like a once-a-month thing. About the only issue that I have is that I buy my music through Amazon mostly and either Apple or Amazon (I'm going with Apple) have made it hard to buy music through Amazon and put it on an iPad/iPhone without sync'ing. But aside from buying music, and OS updates (but I skip those so for me they don't count) I do everything without plugging into my computer. I don't think I plug in either device more often than once every 3-4 weeks.