Apps, Ideas, & Advice for Using Tablets (Android or iPad)

Our school will be experimenting with several Android tablets as well as the iPad this summer in hopes of starting a pilot program at some point next school year. Does anyone have any Apps, Ideas, or Advice they would like to share about using Android Tablets and/or iPads in the classroom?

Tags: 3.0, android, apps, classroom, honeycomb, motorola, samsung, tablet

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Permalink Reply by Jack Tovey on January 8, 2012 at 11:53am

I'm not sure what tablets you are using but the recording application requires that the device can use Flash. You may be able to see the interface but it won't work. Just like you can see a screen to show a movie but when you click on it to run it won't work because it needs the flash player to work.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Baird on January 8, 2012 at 11:56am

Thanks, Jack. Flash is supposed to be installed and enabled on these tablets. Maybe it is outdated. I will have the tech guys check it out. Fortunately the company that is providing the tablets will be in our building this week. I will make sure that they look at the issue.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Bury on January 8, 2012 at 12:10pm

Hi Julie,

If you can see the recording interface, then Flash player is installed and working.

What OS are you using? Are you getting the "Allow this application to access your microphone" message? Tablet OS' are still pretty basic and don't provide the sophisticated, tried and tested hardware driver support that desktop/laptop OS' do.

The mic recorder application itself is a "proof of concept" and pretty rudimentary. I'm still working on appropriate uses of it and how to design the user interface.

If you install the latest version of SWF Activity Module: http://code.google.com/p/swf-activity-module/, it includes the fully working service script (API) for saving the audio files in Moodle's course files directory and inserting a grade with a link into the grade book. The download also contains useful AS3 (Flash) code for communicating between Flash clients and Moodle.

If you need any help, let me know.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Baird on January 8, 2012 at 2:45pm

Hi Matt,

You've hit the nail on the head. We are not getting the message "Allow this application to access your microphone?" Since I teach a foreign language I want my kids to be able to use the tablet to record themselves. The frustrating thing is that there are other recording apps that work on these student tablet such as "Sound Recorder", "Wave Recorder", and "Recorder. However, we don't have an answer yet for to how to get their recordings off of their devices and to me or the other language teachers. The device is so locked down, that having a website that allows students to save their recording would be perfect for our situation. The Moodle Microphone you have works similar to a the MSU CLEAR app (designed for foreign languages). The recordings are saved to a server. Yet once again the tablets do not give us the message to access the microphone.

Thanks for your help. I really do appreciate it.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Bury on January 8, 2012 at 8:19pm

It sounds like Flash Player is having problems with the installed microphone driver. If your tablets support Java, then you could try the NanoGong Assignment type: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=2882 Java might have better luck accessing the microphone.

I think this is one of the reasons that Adobe decided to stop any new development for tablet and mobile versions of Flash Player. I think we'll find that different versions of tablet OS' and different hardware and drivers will give erratic results. Nothing's standard anymore and the OS developers and hardware manufacturers have to work together to get all the different permutations to function normally.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Baird on January 9, 2012 at 3:46am

Thanks. Matt. You've been very helpful. I'll check with our tech guru in charge of Moodle and see if we can get Nanogang to work with the tablets.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Bury on January 9, 2012 at 11:47am

You're welcome!

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Permalink Reply by Julie Baird on January 15, 2012 at 4:43am

I wanted to follow up and let you know that one of the developers/coders for the software on our devices is working on the problem. We has it narrowed down to a couple of possibilities.

Thanks again for the dialog and for pointing me in the right direction on what the problem was.

Julie

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Permalink Reply by Richard Wood on January 3, 2012 at 8:39am

If you started the pilot last year you may like to consider this new free digital teaching resource for english spelling practice. And students can also fundraidse for their school if they wish. Available for the iPad .

http://www.spellathon.net