iPads in Teacher Observations

Our district just purchased iPads for selected administrators to use and I am one of the fortunate ones. I'm wondering if anyone has used the devices in teacher observations, particularly in the state of North Carolina. We have a new evaluation tool and the rubric is contained in a PDF file. I'm wondering if anyone has either figured out a way to edit the PDF form so the check boxes can be filled in during an observation, or if anyone has the NC observation and evaluation forms in a format other than PDF that would allow for editing on the iPad.

Thanks!
Tom

Tags: Administrator, Observation, Principal, Teacher, iPad

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Permalink Reply by Robert Franklin on April 22, 2011 at 5:33pm

I aquired an ipad 2 as well with the intent of using in walkthroughs and observations. The observations/evaluations seem to be out of the window since the formatting doesn't remain. I purchased two apps in this attempt. Pages is a nice app to generate a document on the ipad and it has a few templates in it. However, does not keep the formatting of the assessment word documents that my district has generated for use. I tried several with the same loss of formatting. I also purchased the app Quick Office Connect Mobile with same issues (loss of formatting).

I even tried to use parallels and assess the documents through this format (basically using the ipad to connect to a mac laptop and accessing the XP operating system and opening the documents through Word. That process was to cumbersome.

I am looking for something quick and efficient. Click drop down menus and a typing area to document observation with highlights to get it done. Efficiently and effectively.

I also would like a copy of the google docs form to give that a try before I give it up. Thank you.

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Permalink Reply by Obe Hostetter on April 23, 2011 at 6:11am

I would love to have a copy of the form. My email address is ohostetter@gmail.com

Thanks for sharing.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Casal on November 7, 2011 at 7:01am

Either of these apps work - GoodReader or iAnnotate. They both let you annotate PDF files directly on the iPad. Import from Google or Dropbox.

All of our teachers have iPads to complete TC-based running records. Teachers download the running record PDFs directly in to GoodReader and can annotate using text typing, free-hand, shapes, highlights, etc.

When time to print they upload from within GoodReader to either their Dropbox or Google Apps account and print from there.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Pascoe on November 7, 2011 at 1:10pm

neu.Annotate is free - our principals are using it for many annotation activities. http://www.mbcurl.me/26W

After a pilot last year, this year our entire team of administrators (~65) started using iPad 2s.

Previously we had used Google Forms (which we still use for many purposes).

Justin Baeder has some great resources for tech lit principals - here's an article on Walkthroughs using Evernote, etc.:

But now the Principals in our district are all starting to use Power Walkthrough, which can connect overwireless or hold the data locally in case the wireless isn't there.

https://sites.google.com/a/eusd.org/eusd-moble/io/power-walkthrough

Brad

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Casal on November 7, 2011 at 2:10pm

I like GoodReader for its ability to not only annotate in various ways but its ability to sync with multiple cloud-based solutions (Dropbox, Google, Box.net, WebDAV, etc). It's also half the price of iAnnotate, and I'm ok with buying apps if they work as promised and they make my life easier - which GoodReader does (I also bought iAnnotate for testing purposes and I prefer the cleaner look of GoodReader).

We don't have eWalk so Power Walkthrough wont work for us.

I'll check out neu.Annotate.

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Permalink Reply by Kara Lee on November 7, 2011 at 8:40am

We are using it with Google Docs in Duplin County, seems to be going well!

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Permalink Reply by Bradley Dutchcot on November 10, 2011 at 7:28pm

You could probably import this form into a pages file then with the pages app on the iPad you should be able to open the file, do what you want with it and save it as a PDF file.