2011 MACUL iPad Conference

This year the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) sponsored one of the nation's only educational technology conferences focused on the iPad. The limited number of registrations were quickly filled and many were place on a waiting list.

I was proud that my school was able to host the pre-conference workshops on the Thursday before the full conference. Our facilities held up well (as did our wireless network) and a lot of learning took place.

I led a 3-hour pre-conference session entitled "Google on the iPad." In this session I outlined which Google tools work brilliantly on the iPad and which ones I would not attempt in a classroom setting due to instability. Friday during the conference I led a 90 minute truncated version of my 3-hour workshop.

There are more and more schools rolling out 1:1 iPad programs or iPad carts throughout the country. Many of them, I fear, are doing so with out really thinking about what their teachers and students will actually do with them. Some things, the iPad does incredibly well (digital media creation). Other things, it is an absolute nightmare at (i.e. getting media off of the iPad to edit elsewhere).

If you are interested in learning more about integrating Google tools (search, docs, calendar, sites, moderator, etc) in an iPad environment, I would encourage you to explore the resources that I created for my presentation.