My biggest concern since I found out we were getting 1:1 iPads has been essay writing. I love the document sharing capabilities of Google Docs, but I knew the share feature didn't work on iPads. My mission became finding another way to do peer revision and essay grading electronically. 99% paperless is my goal since I am not yet using iPads for testing.
I've heard the quote about the student surpassing the teacher for years, and I am finally experiencing it with technology. Since I had no solution for document sharing for essay peer revision/editing purposes, I asked my students if they had any ideas. They didn't even hesitate so say, "Why don't we email it as a PDF, open it in Smartnote, revise and edit, and email it back?" Here is the process broken down:
1. Write essay using Pages app. MLA format can be used, we found double spacing, tab, etc.
2. Email to peer as a PDF
3. Student opens PDF document in mail, clicks the square with an arrow icon (does that have a name?), click "Open in Smartnote"
4. Smartnote app opens, students choose which notebook to open it in (they already have an English notebook)
5. Click the widgets icon (the duck), click "page tools," "insert PDF document," a box of document choices pops up and they click the correct one. They will get a notification that the document has been added to the next page of their notebook.
6. Students can now use a colored pen or highlighter to mark on their peer's essay and email the edited pages back to the author for final draft revisions.
It has worked like a charm. As a disclaimer, I have to say their science teachers are having them import a lot of PDFs into Smartnote so the students are familiar with the process. It definitely helps when multiple teachers use the same tools.
I did play with ios5 on the iPad yesterday and it looks like document sharing works in Google Docs. I'll check into it more after student iPads are updated. For now, this process is working for us.
