A high school teacher’s 12.9 iPad Pro setup
Hi all,
I work as a high school English / English as a second language teacher, and I thought I would share some workflows in case anything I’ve learned over the years might be useful to someone else.
While I think there’s a broad recognition that Google has really been owning the education space from the device management / cloud software / student side, I think there is a relatively untold story about how excellent the iPad is specifically as a teaching device.
Let’s start with some hardware thoughts, then enter the Dock, and finally dip into the folder on the side.
Hardware
The essential thing here is that the hardware actually fits the nature of my job better than any laptop does. The aspect ratio matches a projector (which will likely still be true in 20 years—VGA never dies); the flat, document-sized screen allows me to easily conference with students about their work, and perhaps most importantly, the pencil support allows me to use the screen as a true blackboard replacement. We have some special projectors in the school (so-called “SmartBoards”) that do the same thing, but those are rapidly becoming outdated, I can face students as I annotate and think aloud, and obviously the software driving all this is superior.
In terms of what I miss from a laptop setup, I am one who thinks that mouse/cursor support can only be a good thing. The obvious benefits of this include more comfortable text editing, better screen sharing support if I want to remote into a “desktop” for some “desktop-only” software (a rarity, but it happens), and a way to control the screen from across the room; since I am often circulating and all over the room, it would be great to have this access. Maybe, as a side benefit, the cursor control feature on my Logitech Spotlight remote would work. Further into speculation territory, It would be really great if the Smart Keyboard Folio was updated or if there was some new device that integrated trackpad support. If rumours are to be believed, we may be getting this tomorrow, so fingers crossed.
I would also be remiss not to mention the fact that the iPad’s keyboard is far and away more reliable than modern macOS laptops are right now. That shouldn’t be a point to make, but I think it’s true. Further, it’s obvious that the keyboard folio would be far easier to replace should it ever stop working.
Dock
It changes, but here’s my current dock:
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Timepage: Moleskine’s calendar is really nice. I wouldn’t recommend getting a subscription for it (as it is now), but I got it when it was a pay-once deal. I like the integration of weather and how fluid it is to manage views/information density. As I tend to favour block-scheduling when planning the days and weeks this works well for me.
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Messages: Not much to say here.
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Gmail: I’ve tried all of the email clients on iOS, and I go back to Gmail because our school board uses Google Apps for Education, the integrations with the rest of GSuite is important to me. Thankfully, I get a lot of email but not so much that I can’t be a completionist, so most of the time there’s nothing there. I will snooze emails if I know I won’t act on them until the work week. I think it’s important to keep margin in one’s life and snoozing is a cognitive trick that helps me do this.
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Safari: Again, not much to say here. I actually use Chrome for all of my work browsing, and that’s mostly for marks input and attendance. I like that I can easily silo and separate work and home this way. I use a web browser at home far more, so Safari goes in the dock.
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Tweetbot: Yup… I go back and forth on this, but on the balance I find that keeping a few private lists and only looking at these keeps things manageable. It’s incredibly helpful to see what other educators in my district (and beyond) are doing, and between this and local communities, like cycling, on the balance using Twitter regularly has been good for my professional practice, in addition to keeping up with the news. The private lists are the essential part here. There’s often an “end” so I can jump back out and get to work.
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Unread: This is the calmest RSS reader. Much like private lists on twitter, I keep it subscribed on a select few feeds to define a natural limit on use. I keep it connected to a Feedly account with a select few feeds so I can jump in, get my news, and jump out quickly. An important connection to my job is that I’ll find articles I’ll want to keep or read later, which I’ll save to Instapaper or Pocket. It might be a current article of relevance that I’ll assign to a class, for example. This helps me (1) prepare the text for a clean handout, and (2) save the piece in the first place so I can go back and integrate it in my planning.
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iA Writer: This might be more unusual. I don’t use it to write articles or the like per se; I actually use it for class exercises, agendas, board work, instructions, etc. The reasons for this are that Quattro is a highly legible font, there is no UI around the text, I can easily resize the text with keyboard shortcuts, and the syntax highlighting feature can be very helpful in English as a second language courses. Lastly, it’s very easy to add a new sheet and get writing right away with a keyboard shortcut. Sticking with one app for this purpose also keeps any writing-based process/board work in one place, in a timeline. I think more could be done. I would like the addition of a toggle to add or take away interpuncts showing the syllabic construction. Still, I’ve found this to be the simplest and best solution for this area of my work.
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GoodNotes 5: Unsurprisingly, this is the key app that makes it all worth it. I’ll import a handout from any source (a scan with Scanbot, from a Word file, anything) in GoodNotes and be able to present, discuss, and work with the material with 1:1 parity between myself and the students. At first I took pains to organize the files in folders, but I quickly realized a smarter way to manage this was to keep physical “model binders” for each class. This also allows students to easily check their own organization. Crucially, I also use GoodNotes for marking. I can import Google Docs or scan their work in, compile it in a folder, and mark it with a combination of ink and typed comments. Then I can print the whole thing out and hand it back. It allows me to more easily retain their marked work and provide more detailed and legible comments. I can even grab some encouraging “stickers” (images) online and paste them in, if I want. At the end of each year I do a mass export, but also keep everything in a single folder marked by year. Then I can search for something I might want to use again, duplicate it, and erase any marking on it since it’s vector-based / impermanent. The key question that GoodNotes 5 answers is how to manage a hybrid paper and digital system as we need to do in education, without introducing a prohibitive amount of busywork. I haven’t found a better answer to that question than GoodNotes 5, and how I use the iPad more broadly. As an aside, I print things directly for the Google Cloud Print printer at my school by using Print Central Pro. It’s a bit costly, but it’s actually (oddly) recommended by Google as the solution for more flexible printing from iOS devices, so at least it’s possible.
Folder
There’s a lot of single/occasional use apps in the folder, which I keep mostly on a “just in case” basis. However, I’ll quickly run through the first page (what can be seen):
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Numbers: I use this as a redundant / on the spot attendance and marks tracker.
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Google Classroom: My main communication system for students and parents.
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Chrome: A silo for work-based browsing (attendance, marks, etc.)
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Word: Our board still has a license for Office 365, so I still like to use Word on occasion to draft new handouts.
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Scanbot: Used mainly to collect pencil-based student work.
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Things: My task management system and link collector of choice.
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MindNode: Great as another presentation device in the classroom.
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Fantastical: Another great calendar app. I love having multiple views of my calendars… I know that’s a little odd, but variety is the spice of life?
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Ulysses: This is a big one. I write a weekly academic blog about trailer music and also do some occasional freelancing; there is also a lot of professional development sessions, days, conferences; misc writing such as this post; poetry; commonplace book notes… it all lives here. This is the archive, and the starting and ending place for writing of permanence.
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Bear: I use a separate app for one-off notes, bugeting, quick reference, receipts, and miscellany—I just find it’s a good divider for my brain, and Bear is better at these types of notes, in my experience.
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Day One: Yet another way to input text? Why? Well, yes and no—Day One has metadata categories galore; it’s a personal space; it’s one of the best ways to capture and organize audio notes such as musical ideas. It can be a visual journal.
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Notability: Notability houses my repository of PDF readings distinctly away from the day-to-day work in GoodNotes. To be honest, though, I know I don’t need it and it might be better to consolidate further in GoodNotes. I’m a sucker for kicking the tires on PDF apps—I also have PDF Expert and Liquid Text. I think they’re all good and have their own distinct pros and cons, just like Markdown editors—and I think that’s a wonderful thing.
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Infuse: I think that Infuse is the best video library application on iOS, bar none. It has a beautiful presentation and an embarassment of options for connecting to cloud storage, server, and local options for downloading or streaming video. It’s also a distinct haven, away from the busy-ness of the Apple TV app. It’s well worth it.
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Flipboard: On occasion I will want to just browse without particular purpose and hopefully make a serendipitous discovery or two. I find Flipboard is still the best application for that kind of experience.
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Books: I enjoy the experience in the first party Books app better than Kindle or the others. I think it’s cleaner, and I like the automatic highlighting with the pencil. I have quite a few books in here, with a mix of personal and professional reading (and some that overlap these areas).
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Music: I wish that I could sideload music and that there was a better Smart Playlists feature on the iOS side, but the Music app gets the job done. I’m hopeful that iOS 13 will move things forward.
Thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to what anyone—perhaps especially fellow educators—has to say about this little piece.