Thing 3

I looked at 3 of the utility apps on my iPad and they were all amazing.   The first one I looked at was the free wifi app which locates the free wifi spots that are the closest to you.  This app will be helpful to me personally because I can locate a place that has free wifi so that I can find places where I can work online when I don't want to work at home.  Professionally it will help me tell the students where I work where they can go and get free access to wifi, because everyone doesn't have access to wifi at home.  

The other app that I looked at was RedLaser.  This app allowed me to located deals, stores, and coupons that were close to my location.  I like the fact that there was a spot to put my rewards cards so I wouldn't have to carry them with me all the time.  I will never use that function because I have an iPad and I don't carry it with me when I am out shopping, and I like carrying the cards.  But I can see how this would be helpful to people who have a smartphone.   Professionally I can use this to locate books and other supplies that I need.  I will be able to compare prices and find the best deal, and when working with a budget that is very important.

The last app I looked at was the StandApp.  This is great because I can set it up to remind me to take breaks at work more often and stay healthy.  Someday the time just flies by and I don't realize that it has been hours since I have moved.  The best part is that you set the alarm or intervals.  Tis will help both personally and professionally to get me to stand up and exercise more often.  I really want to stay healthy, and this app will help take that small baby step to getting there.

I had never heard of these apps and I wish I had earlier. They seem to be pretty great and I can't wait to use them more often, plus they are free so you don't have to spend big bucks to get them, which is always a plus!  

Thing 2

For this post I looked at The Best iPad Tips and Tricks (iOS 4 to 6) – for those of you who haven’t upgraded to iOS 7 (or can’t on your device) here are some tips for iOS 4 to 6.  I have not had a chance to upgrade my iPad mini to iOS 7 yet.  I have had my iPad for almost a year so I knew quite a few of the tips, but I did learn a few new handy tips.   One thing that I learned and will be happy to pass on to the students at the school where I work is how to type with special characters.   I never knew these existed and it will be helpful when the foreign language classes are using the iPads.

I also am glad to learn that you can undo deleting text by shaking the iPad, carefully without dropping it!  I wish I had know about this earlier when I had accidentally deleted some typing without knowing that I was deleting stuff.  I would have been able to retrieve what I lost had I known this trick.

The last one that I was grateful to learn and test was being able to locate my iPad.  There have been times when I accidentally left it at work and didn't realize until I got home.  If I had known how to do this I could have just logged onto my computer and located it using my apple id and the iCloud, which I had installed but didn't realize that was one of its features.

I am so glad that these help tips are out there because then people can learn all these tips.  It will also be helpful to those schools where they have one-to-one iPads.  If my school had 1-to-1 iPads I would definitely show this to the students.   I am going to bookmark this page for when I upgrade to iOS 7 so I will be able to learn the new tricks and be able to smoothly use the new iOS.

Thing 1

With this program I hope to gain more information about apps that I do not know much about and apps that would be helpful to use for students at the school where I work.  I am a fairly new iPad user and I don't know a whole lot bout the things that are out there.  I am hoping that I can find and learn more about apps that would be great for middle school age students and how they work.  

 I also hope that after completing this program I will be able to take what I have learned and share it with my colleagues at the school where I work.   I want to let them know that these tools are out there, how they work, and how they will help expand what they are teaching.  I can't wait to begin looking at these apps and figuring out how to use them.

End note, signing up for a blog was very interesting.  I have never done that before and it was quite a challenge, but I feel good having learned how to do it.