Yay, iPad2. Have to give Scholastic Canada points for efficiency. I talked to the woman on the phone about mailing in my $500 in bonus coupons about nine days back, ordered the iPad2 from their website the same afternoon and put the coupons in the mail. Monday at lunch I came in from coaching Long Jump and found a Scholastic box on my desk! Impressively quick turn-around at four days!

So, yay, shiny new iPad2!!!! We continue to get acquainted and I've managed to puzzle out the basics like e-mail and surfing the web, looking through the app catalogue and the like.

Have bought a free version of "Sims- Freeplay" which is ridiculously addictive, though somewhat frustrating as it's the only version of The Sims that's played in real time :-/. Very hard to build up money playing the game that way, but I see that's the catch of "free". They want you to pay for Sims money to keep your game going more quickly. Ain't going to happen. I'll just keep playing the game slowly. Also downloaded free Solitaire and Crossword apps.

Downloaded a free manga reader called "Manga Storm", which is awesome. Though I still much prefer to read books on my Kindle when it comes to graphic novels I will never go back. The iPad is just made for such things.

Downloaded Phil's song storing app "AutoSongbook". Yeah, I know Steve recommended another one, but I like supporting a local filker and the app seems well-suited to my needs. My learning curve hasn't -quite- gotten to the point where I can load songs into the program, but John got home today from a video gig in Quebec City so tomorrow he's going to help me set up the scanner, convert file formats and figure out how to get my sheet music into my iPad. Hey, I may even have a bunch there before ConCertino.

Have also already gotten cautious about buying apps on a whim. It can get pricy! Have already seen one bill from Apple and it sobered me enough to be much more picky about what I buy.

Looking forward to learning more.

QUESTIONS:

To those of you who own an iPad-

What are the apps you find you can't live without or that you like very, very much?

What games have you tried on the iPad that you've really enjoyed a lot?

Any other advice about living with an iPad?

Well, I've had my Kindle e-reader for about a month now and I'm still completely enamoured of it. I carry it with me everywhere- John makes fun of me. Even in four weeks I can see how drastically it's adjusting my reading habits.

So I'm just curious...

Do you own an e-reader? Which one? How long have you had it? Are you happy with it? (it's interesting to me that more than one avid iPad user has told me they're rather heavy to use as e-readers, which steered me away from getting a tablet/ereader {though I wanted a Kindle Fire, and they aren't presently supported in Canada})

Where do you buy your e-books? Do you subscribe to e-magasines or e-newspapers? What proportion of e-books do you find you read now in comparison to paper books? Do you find yourself replacing the paper books you have with the same e-book?

Aside: I find it interesting that I read in an article recently that the two genres of books most-strongly resisting transfer to e-books are children's books and cookbooks. I can see that.

Are you as boggled as I still am that public domain books are legally free? I downloaded the complete Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes books a few weeks back from the Kindle store for 99 cents! (and knew with a bit more effort there are plenty of legal sites carrying them for free) How are publishing companies adjusting to this new reality?? I mean, before recently weren't classics a staple of bookstore sales?

Do you carry all your e-books on your reader all the time or just a selection you're interested in at any given time? My Kindle claims to hold 3500 books. I presently have 3-4 books and 1-2 manga series in my e-reader at any given time. Hard to imagine carrying 3500 :).

Though I could see a student carrying around a lot more e-books. Are e-readers as much a God-send to students as I think they must be? Man, as an English major in the "old days" I can just imagine what it would have been like to carry all my course books (often 10-12 books a course) in a single device.

Do you find it as weird as I do that the generation after ours may never known what having a physical library is like? (EDIT: Just to clarify- I mean a room in a home designated as a "library", not public libraries, which I believe will always be essential.)

It is kind of sad that despite being a teacher I've never become very good at putting together PowerPoint presentations. The reality is that in almost any group activity that I've ever been involved in that needed a PowerPoint show there's always been some other teacher in the group with more experience at doing such things than me and ends up being the one doing it. Even last year, though I collected student photos all year, it was my student teacher who ended up taking all those photos and putting them together into a presentation for parents.

Now next week I'm heading up north to stay at the cottage of a teacher friend and of the 5-6 of us who will be there several of us have taken interesting trips away in July (naturally, being teachers and all, July is the time to do such things). Our hostess was away in Australia, another teacher was in Spain, another was honeymooning in Italy and I was hiking in Banff, so one of the activities we have planned is to hook a laptop up to a TV and have people show us their vacation photos.

So I've decided it's time to brush up my Powerpoint skills again and try to put together a slideshow presentation of our trip to Banff. Now I've done single photo slide shows in the past, but I thought it would be worth some of my spare time to work on titles and photo collages and frames, etc. to see what I can come up with. At the same time I'm trying to keep an eye on what is sleek and easy to watch and not distracting, as I know too many tricks and bells and whistles can be the downfall of the amateur slideshow maker.

And so far, so good. Looks like I'll have something decent to show at the cottage. And I can hold onto it to show my family and maybe show my new class in September to introduce the summer poster project I have them do each year.

I'm always impressed by teachers and especially student teachers who use this kind of technology in their lessons all the time. Hook up their laptops to a projector and use pre-made slideshows or resources off the Internet or interactive boards in their lessons. I've always wanted to do that more, but I find it's difficult to manage the learning curve without having a projector full-time in your classroom. We have a couple in the school, but time always gets too busy to run around and find it, take the time after school to learn about it and explore it and then give it back again and then start the procedure again next time you think it might fit into a lesson.

For the last year or so I've been keeping an eye on the cost of projectors at places like Best Buy and The Future Shop, but even the very cheapest of them is above $500. I'm still watching, though, in the hopes that they'll eventually hit a range where I'll buy one of my own. Then I figure I will really have a chance of learning how to integrate it into my classroom lessons.