Category Archives: Admin

Which Stylus?

This year work gave some staff an iPad to trial.  I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the program.  Our brief is simple; Go and use the iPad as your device in the classroom.  One of the first things I did was to download a few notetaking apps.  I acquired Penultimate, Organizer HD and a few others along the way.  As soon as I started trialling these programs it was evident to me that I needed a stylus – my fingers just weren’t cutting the finer points of finger-writing.  I went out that weekend and got my hands on a Belkien stylus.  It’s a fairly generic type, however it does the job nicely, although the precision sometimes lacks .  I settled on NotesPlus, a really clever program that allows you to manage multiple folders and notes pages, while allowing for handwriting, typing, photos and PDFs.  The neat thing about NP is that it also allows for close up writing, where precision is pretty much guaranteed.

Cult of Mac just did a round up of styluses (or is that styli?) and I’m now thinking of updating the stylus to a Adonit Jot Pro.  Anybody got one?  Anybody recommend another?

You can find more about styluses with these articles;

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A New Start

Sunrise

Welcome to the first post (of many) here at iTech For Educators. For those of you who are new, welcome and thanks for coming. I hope you return and find this site a great resource for your classroom or even your own children. For those of you who have followed me across from The Teacher’s Hub, thanks for sticking with me.

This site is new in just about all aspects. For a number of reasons I’ve switched from a hosted service to take advantage of WordPress’ free platform. The only thing I have done is register the domain name to make a more direct point of contact. The first reason being that this blog has become somewhat more of backseat. Most of my interactions, sharings and conversations happen on Twitter or the Facebook page. I’m finding this to be of great value. Secondly, the money I was paying (just over $100 for the year) although isn’t much, isn’t easily justified when I don’t have to be spending it. Thirdly, the name The Teacher’s Hub was one that I wasn’t overly pleased with right from the start. It was made in haste and I felt it didn’t really convey the technology angle at all, which was the focus of what I wanted the site to be about.

This time round, I’m planning on maintaining the blog, but certainly at a less hectic pace. There was a time where I was working hard to try and put up fresh content on a daily basis, but the new resolution is no longer. Teaching full time, a growing family and widening commitments elsewhere have dictated that this needs to be a secondary focus. Currently, much of my attention (as alluded to previously), is with my PLN on Twitter and Facebook. I value those communities more than a webpage as they are places where there is often, real time interaction, faces and locations to names. By the way, The Teacher’s Hub Facebook page will eventually close as the new iTech4Ed Facebook page merges into its own.

Besides this site, I also have a sister site – iApps For The Educator – a site dedicated to reviewing and highlighting iPad / iPod apps. I am really enjoying this aspect, and I am slowly building up a new network on Facebook and Twitter revolving around apps in the classroom.

So what can you do? A few things; You can bookmark this site in your RSS reader. You could also join me on Facebook and Twitter or head over to the iApps4Ed site and join the community there. Wherever we met on the cyberpath, I hope it is profitable for us both.

Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1350909