New Apple TV in Wizardgold Headquarters

I had hoped to to have got the Apple TV on Friday but the couriers service missed me. Today I have it in my grubby little hands and had a quick play with the Apple hobby product. You would think I was a proper Apple Fan Boy with getting one of these to go with all of the other Apple toys I have, I do have good reasons for getting one though. Not just because I want one or need for leisure purposes, but could even be a business purchase.

The Apple TV for education

Mirroring of the iPad to the Television via the new Apple TV is getting quite popular in schools. The wire is cut between the front of the classroom and the white or blackboard. No longer do teachers have to hope that the kids will behave when you turn around to write on the board. When you use the iPad as your whiteboard you can be standing at the back of the class with the numbskulls or the kids that want to hide and still be presenting to the whole class.

 

Teaching English as a foreign language with tech.

I have enrolled in a course to be able to do this. I was working in a school in Banyoles in April of this year and enjoyed it. I think it would be rear to get more of this work and maybe even set up my own English school. There are schools teaching English already but I.could be unique in have a distinctly tech approach. I like the idea of teaching in a 21st century way and use iPads with my students.

I can see me using Evernote for keeping track of my own notes and documents and to send out work to the students. The students can also use Evernote to keep there own digital learning record. Great to have a full set of notes that can be us for revision and learning later. The notes can even be collaborative in nature. No reason why some notes can’t have been worked on by a pair working together, a small group or team or even the whole classroom.

Web resources and iPad apps

I saw a cool web application that more than one person can work on at a time that would be great to use to conduct sentences. The white space has notes that can be put on and the moved to create sentences. You could even make it a competitive thing with the students have to try and see who completed the sentences and had the.m making sense first. Often it is good to make a game of things, learning while having some fun. So that is how I justified the iPad I have and also the Apple TV. In fact I also got the Airport Express product so that I could have a 802.n wifi that would work fast enough to do all those wireless things effortlessly.

Airport Express Setup

I set it up with the iPad and it was a piece if piss, as they would say on a building site. Really easy and gave me no problems. I just named the network I created new and Winterfell seemed like a great name for it. I gave it the eight digit password that was required and I was done. It took me no time at all to set up the Apple Wifi router. I did wonder if I needed the Airport Extreme, but it seems that the Express version was the right choice. I have a gigabit network and I was able to connect up to that. I now have my wife’s MacBook Pro connected as well as my iMac, two iPads and an iPhone. All working on the 802.n connecting to the dual band fast wifi.

Connecting the Apple TV to the wifi network.

Don’t know why but it took a couple of attempts to connect up to the wireless network with the new Apple TV. One I had it though, I was sending video and audio from both the iPad and the iMac to the TV. I will no longer need to have the Mac Mini under theTV, it was a G4 and really not up to the task. It was the first Mac I bought all those years ago, after all.

Up to date with Wizardgold

I will be quite pleased to web finished with the summer work so that I can get moving with the TEFL course. I am dying to bash on with the making of videos for YouTube and for embedding on my website. Nice to have some faster money though as the income is only a trickle from writing and the video so far.

I will be really busy when I have stopped working at the campsite for the summer. I will be able to make great use of the OmniFocus app for the iPad that I just bought. I like the way that it works and could get quite well organised with using the GTD process.

The Wizardgold day

I have a short break during work and today I used it to work with the iPad and the MiFi is super to connect to the Internet while sitting in my car. I did click on the button on the iPad to see if I could get a wifi hotspot going with it, but just got a message to connect to the mobile phone service provider. I doubt if I will be bothered to do that though, as I expect it would be a lot of hassle. It could even cost me more money too.

When I got home for my 2 hour lunch break that disappeared with opening up the boxes containing the Apple TV and the Airport Express and eating of course. Later when I got back home at 7pm I was just too cream crackered (knackered) to do much apart from lie on the sofa after connecting up the Apple TV with the HDMI cable I bought on the way home. It cost me €10 Euro and I could have got one cheaper probably wbut it was easy to buy in the supermarket along with some cheese. Wensleydale with cranberries embedded into it type of cheese.