I live on my iPad as we travel. I set up the Moodle accesses as favourites to log into courses I am taking and teaching. I use PDF Expert all the time for annotating PDFs (even for signing contracts) and Remarks for making notes (both from Readdle). Skype is great - with the headphones I also use it to make calls to landlines (can't beat 3 cents per minute). For news I like Zite and for traveling the Allstays Camp and RV app is awesome.
Yesterday's discovery is Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later, now free. Seems to hook into pretty much everything (Pulse, Flipboard, Safari, email, you name it) allowing you to save, annotate, share and, most signficantly, browse offline in a slick and searchable interface anything you find on the web, via RSS, sent via email, etc. Of course, Evernote also does most of that pretty well and for that matter even Safari can save pages for later, but Pocket seems to integrate more easily with almost everything and, neatly, can send stuff to EverNote so you can get the best of both tools. If I had to choose one tool to bind them all I'd still pick EverNote, but this is a very useful little app
DiskAid - essential to every idevice tool set for students and academic personnel:
https://landing.athabascau.ca/pg/bookmarks/read/111756/diskaid-5
It's been awhile since I used Firefox, but Flashgot was once a very useful extension for downloading Youtube videos: http://flashgot.net/. There's relatively-recent instructions here. If you're using Chrome, this looks like a similar extension, and the reviews seem to be positive.
Oh. I just parsed the bit about using a Mac. Maybe this is not so helpful.
@terrya: I tried Keepvid but it really doesn't want to work in Chrome on my Mac.
So I went with this, very like the Chrome extension Sarah suggests, but housed in the Chrome webstore: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aklcfcaipkcjkbclpomlfnnpjacdjlnh?hl=en-US
It's working out well.
Thanks for the tips, everyone!
The iPad gives the most immediate as well as long-term benefits as it:
I have both iPad and Android (eee) tablets. Much as I try to love the Android as it accords better with my desire for flexibility and diversity, it is not even close to the iPad in terms of friendliness and usability. Superficially similar but in another much lower league, despite superior hardware specs.
Might be worth waiting for the new OLPC tablet, if it ever becomes possible to get your hands on one: incredibly cheap, innovative and child-proof, though still an Android device with very low specs. See http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/01/olpc-tablet-finally-arrives/
I will agree with Eric - those devices typically are a distraction for kids. single-purpose tools. Our experience is that given the device that can do "many things" distracts child at that age and doesn't let them concentrate on one thing since [s]he knows - there are toys and other things available on that same device.
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