My iPad changed my life two years ago. I have all my notes, current books, research, magazines, newspapers, TED talks, emails, pictures, and movies in one space and searchable. That’s a fair stretch better than the bookshelf full of moleskin notebooks now standing in my study in which I couldn’t find a specific note with a magnifying glass and a few hours to kill. I know there are still iPad naysayers, but I’m certainly not one of them. It’s been a game changer for the way I do my work and organize my day.
Recently my school took its first step toward exploring the iPad impact on our own campus by giving faculty members, through an application process, a $250 grant toward purchasing an iPad or working further with a currently owned iPad to explore and imagine the impact a slew of them might have on the teaching and learning here. Over the next year more than 20 teachers will spend time sharing, formally and informally, online and face to face, their frustrations, successes, and big plans. I’m positively thrilled to dive in.
I’m going to start now with one of the most ubiquitous blog topics of recent history – must-have apps.
Here’s my essential app list – work and life – keep in mind that I’m a little nuts. Most of these are free or very cheap
• Open Table – restaurants
• Epicurious – cooking
• NYTimes crosswords
• JamBase – who’s playing in town – anywhere
• Pandora – internet radio
• NPR
• WSJ
• NYT – we have a weekend home subscription which gives me access online and on the ipad all the time
• Kindle
• Zite – personalized e-magazine pulled from your inputted interests
• Zinio – access to tons of online versions of magazines
• Apple Works Suite – pages, keynote, numbers
• flipboard – turns facebook, twitter, and blogs into a magazine format – really slick and nice
• skype
• ESPN
• Windfinder – good for tides and winds if you need to know them
• runner’s world smart coach – the free version does the trick for training plans
• TED – videos
• Rover – a browser that, for the moment, will let you view flash
• Diigo – stores webpages – connect to other groups
• dropbox – never carry a flashdrive again
• good reader and notability (both let you mark up pdfs and talk with evernote) GR is free, but I like notability better
• Khan Academy
• IA Writer – very cool word processing app that I like for writing – produces txt files and syncs with dropbox
• dragon dictation – I haven’t played with it enough yet, but I hear it’s magic
• wordpress – for managing a blog – which I don’t do very well at all – trying to get a rhythm going now!
awniblock 