IPads and Duh Moments

Adobe flash and iPads don\'t mix...
I know this in my head, I know this in theory but keep messing this little tidbit of info up when I\'m making my lesson plans, for instance:

Every Sunday I used my laptop to do my lesson plans for the week. I find out what the classroom teachers are studying and I look at what I want to accomplish in the classroom and I create a lesson that meshes those two thoughts together. Honestly, for me, pretty much every year is like I\'m a first year teacher because I create new lesson plans each time.

The fourth graders have been studying "careers" lately and I decided it would be a great idea to let them create a voki (a cartoon avatar with voice capability) to introduce a career that they would be interested in. I\'ve used the voki website with students and they really enjoy the creativity and control over their end product that this gives them.

So, one Sunday I set up the whole fourth grade (took 2 1/2 hours to set up 60 students the first time since I had a migraine). I then decide I will make one to show them an end product and it dawns on me, "oops! Of course this uses Adobe flash software that isn\'t supported on Apple products!" At this point I\'m blaming this DUH moment on the fact that I had a migraine but I\'ve had a few issues since so I decided to do a USER BEWARE blog post on it here.

Things I\'m learning....
I\'ve now started using my Mac book air to look at my lesson plans each Sunday because often many websites targeting children use flash. Lesson learned the hard way!

At this point I am making sure I have access to the computer lab to do the things that require Flash. Using the desktop computers for Vokis solves this problem.

While I enjoy the iPads and the flexibility they bring, they do have limitations.