Ergotron Tablet Management Cart

When we first acquired a set of iPads for use in our program, we re-purposed a laptop cart to hold and charge the iPads. The cart was quite large and heavy. There were two built-in power bars, and a total of 28 outlets. Unfortunately, we had 30 iPads. To make matters worse, the iPads had to be individually unplugged and connected to a computer for syncing, then plugged back into a power bar for charging. I also had to make sure I unplugged or plugged in both power bar cords whenever I moved the cart. Charging and managing the iPads was very time consuming and needed to be done regularly.

I discovered Ergotron at a conference where they were demonstrating their tablet management cart. They described that the cart integrated a USB hub and could be used for charging and syncing.

We decided to order a 2-cabinet "ISI" model of the cart. There are a few different models of the cart. There are carts with either 2 or 3 cabinets, and each cabinet holds up to 16 tablets. The ISI models have individual status indicators; LEDs that show the status of each tablet. There is one LED per slot. The LED will be off if no tablet is plugged in, orange if the tablet is connected and charging, and green if the device is charged. This simple feature is very useful for making sure all tablets are charged and ready for the school day.

The cart is very compact considering the number of tablets it can hold. There is a shelf on the bottom (only on the 2-cabinet model), and the top is well suited for placing a laptop on. We secured a Macbook to the top that is both for syncing the iPads and for general classroom use. We use a rubber tub on the bottom for holding cables and other accessories like the hand straps for our iPad cases.

The slots that hold the iPads are large enough to accommodate the iPads in their cases, but not with the hand straps attached (we use the Sleeve360 iPad cases). The design is clearly meant for tablets, and will not hold larger devices like Chromebooks.

Prior to use, the cart needs to be "cabled up" with the syncing cables. This process was a bit of a hassle, but not difficult. Two screws secure each USB hub (one hub per cabinet) to the cabinet. You then pull the hub forward until you can disconnect the data and power plug from the back. The back of the hub has standard USB ports for the sync cables, and brackets for wrapping extra cord length around. There is a model that is pre-cabled with Lightning connectors that costs $400 extra. If you can use the cables that came with your iPads, save yourself the $400 and do the cabling yourself. If you need spare cables, $400 is actually a pretty good deal.

The USB hubs integrated in the cart provide enough power to charge all connected tablets. What is more impressive is that when the USB plug from the cart is connected to a computer, the hubs switch to sync mode allowing all connected iPads to sync with iTunes or Apple Configurator. The hubs work in tandem, so there is just a single USB plug from the cart to the the computer. This feature is what makes this a "management cart" rather than just a storage cart. It has made it significantly easier to manage the iPads, and has saved me a considerable amount of time.

There is no question that you will need something to store and transport your tablets in. If you have 10 or fewer tablets, it is worth looking at something like the Copernicus Tech Tub. If you are using a full class set of tablets, the Ergotron cart is a much better solution. The purchase price might initially seem high, but the cost per device is as low as $75 for the 32 tablet cart with ISI. When considering the value of the time the cart will save in deploying and managing iPads, the decision should be fairly easy to make. We purchased another Ergotron 32 tablet management cart to have one at both of our campuses.

Copernicus Dewey Document Camera Stand

Many people have learned how to use their tablet as a document camera in the classroom. In fact, there are many advantages to using a tablet rather than a dedicated document camera.

If you already have a laptop connected to a projector in your classroom, check out Reflector or Airserver. They will let you mirror your iPad screen to your computer wirelessly using AirPlay. To make it a document camera, just fire up the camera app. Better yet, use an app that lets you take a picture with the iPad's camera then mark it up with drawings and shapes. Document cameras often have SD card slots for transferring pictures to a computer, but if you use an iPad you can store pictures on it and share them in any number of ways. The only issue with using your iPad as a document camera is having to hold it.

The Copernicus Dewey document camera stand is designed to let you use your iPad as a document camera, hands-free. It is a metal stand with a fairly wide base, so it is very sturdy but light enough to move around a classroom easily. It has three adjustable height settings. I wish the height adjustment was more flexible and didn't require both hands, but that is a very minor complaint. The mount holding the iPad will hold an iPad with or without a case. The mount rotates and pivots, so it makes a great iPad stand to use for viewing notes or to use with Skype, Hangouts, or FaceTime. I took a quick video of it.

Perhaps the biggest drawback to the Dewey is that it is designed for the larger iPads. It will not hold smaller tablets like the iPad Mini.

The Dewey is less than $100, so if you already have an iPad 2 or newer, a stand like this makes more sense than a dedicated document camera.

Copernicus Tech Tub

Copernicus was kind enough to send me a Tech Tub to evaluate. I have liked the idea of the Tech Tub from the moment I first saw it. It is a basically an improved version of what some teachers have already done to manage small sets of devices. I have seen milk crates and dish drainers used in various combinations, and I'm sure there have been more unusual solutions too.

The Tech Tub keeps the spirit of these implementations, but improves on them in a few ways.

The Tech Tub is very light and easy to carry. I was actually a little surprised at how light it was when I first unpacked it and picked it up. Despite its light weight, it still feels durable. Obviously any tub or carrier is going to be heavier once loaded with devices, so there are cart options for the Tech Tub. The Tub has a lid that can be locked closed with a padlock, but it is well ventilated for devices that might get a little warm when charging. There is even a lockable metal bar that slides through the bottom of the tub. This is used either to secure the Tub to an optional cart, or to secure it to brackets on a table to prevent theft or accidents.

Overall, the Tech Tub is well designed, but I think there's still room for improvement.

I tested out the Tub with a set of iPads. There is plenty of room for the iPads, but it is almost too much room. They would "flop around" a little inside the Tub. Obviously the benefit to all that space is that the Tub is suitable for devices larger than iPads (such as Chromebooks). Not all sides that the devices come in contact with are padded, so there is a concern about impact damage if the Tub is dropped or roughly transported.

The Premium version of the tub comes with a power bar, but if you want to sync multiple devices via USB, you have to unplug them from the adapters and plug them into a USB hub (not included).

There are carts designed for 1, 2, or 4 Tubs. The Tubs open from the top, so the carts for multiple Tubs are all "double-wide". It is unfortunate that there isn't a single-wide, double-tall cart because storage space is often limited in schools with respect to square footage. I do understand the challenge in design here. The Tub opens from the top so you wouldn't be able to open the bottom Tub if stacked.

When it comes to price, I believe the Tech Tub is a pretty good deal for classrooms with 10 or fewer devices. When looking at the size and price of the 4 Tub cart ($1600), I think there are better options if all the devices are regularly used together as a class set. If sharing 20 devices among multiple classrooms, having four Tech Tubs on a cart is a good solution. The only downside is the inconvenience mentioned earlier about having to unplug the devices from power and into a USB hub to sync.

Tegra Note - Evernote

I am still searching for a good Android app that is comparable to the iOS-exclusive Notability. I would love to have such an app to use with the Tegra Note, a low cost Android tablet with a well implemented stylus.

Evernote is an extremely popular note-taking platform, with clients available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. In a recent update for the Android client, Evernote added handwriting support, including the ability to search handwritten text in documents. The following is taken from the Evernote blog entry.

"Our realization was that a fluid handwriting experience would be one that lets you easily move from writing to typing to taking photos and back all within a single note."

This description sounded like Evernote would be able to work much like Notability. I eagerly updated Evernote on the Tegra Note, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

In Notability, pages are very much like actual blank pages. I can add images, text, and written notes anywhere on a page. Once added, I can select and move any of those objects anywhere within the note. In Evernote, I can indeed add handwriting, but it is placed in vertical order with other "objects". So, I can type some text, then write notes beneath that text (not next to it, or over top of it). Once I had completed the handwriting, I could not find a way to move the writing "object" to another location in the note.

As for the handwriting itself, the Tegra Note worked well, but Evernote did not support the variable widths of the stylus. The pen thickness had to be manually selected from a menu. I was impressed with the text searching. It seemed to find my printed text easily, but did not find results in my cursive writing. That isn't much of a surprise. My cursive writing is quite bad, even on real paper.

Evernote is a platform and service. You can use some of the service for free, and your notes are synchronized to the Evernote cloud service. To get additional storage and features, Evernote is $5 per month or $45 per year. While not terribly expensive, it is not a cheap service, especially in light of Google's recent price changes for Drive ($2 per month for 100GB of storage). Notability is a one-time $3 purchase, and will sync with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and even WebDAV.

My search for a good alternative to Notability continues...

Tegra Note - iAnnotate PDF

A general note on stylus accuracy

While using various apps on the Tegra Note 7, I would try simple drawings (like a 3D box). I found it easy enough to place the pen tip at intended points while drawing. I am not an artist, but I at least know that a proper drawing app that lets you zoom in and out for fine detail is still going to be essential. When writing text, I had no trouble "dotting my 'i's and crossing my 't's". In both drawing and writing, I had far more success than I ever do when using a stylus with Notability on the iPad. I just wish Notability was available for Android.

iAnnotate PDF

If you work with PDF files regularly, iAnnotate PDF is a great app for marking up, highlighting, commenting, and bookmarking. The controls are very simple. Two pull-tab interfaces can be hidden and revealed from the left and right as needed. The left pull-tab exposes page controls, including PDF chapters/headings, user annotations, and searching.

The right pull-tab exposes the various annotation tools.

There is a pencil for free-hand marking up of the document. Unfortunately this tool does not support the stylus-width control of the Tegra Note. To be fair to the Note, iAnnotate doesn't seem to support pencil widths at all, so I doubt a tablet with an active stylus would have an advantage.

Next is the annotation button. Touch the button, then touch a point on the PDF document and you can type in an annotation. These are the annotations that can be navigated through using the tool in the left pull-tab.

There is a highlighter for highlighting text. Note that this will only highlight text and cannot be used freehand like the pencil tool. The advantage to this is it is very easy to accurately highlight text. The disadvantage is that some PDF files are scanned without the use of OCR, so the PDF is actually just a "picture" of text.

There are a couple of buttons for scroll-lock and fit-width, and the last button on the toolbar is a toolbox button. The toolbox button exposes even more tools. In the toolbox you will find strikeout and underline tools that operate much like the highlighter. There are tools for adding, and navigating through, bookmarks. It also has buttons for emailing the PDF, the PDF with annotations, or just the annotations.

If you regularly work with non-PDF documents, iAnnotate PDF won't be of much use. Also, you cannot use iAnnotate to add or remove pages within a PDF. The interface does require some accurate touches, so in this regard the Tegra Note was tremendously useful. The fine tip of the stylus made highlighting, drawing, and placing bookmarks and annotations much easier than depending on finger touches or constantly zooming in and out.

iAnnotate will stay installed on the Tegra Note for now, but I will keep looking for a good Notability alternative.

Tegra Note 7 - Android with a stylus

"It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it."
- Steve Jobs

While I can agree that a designer "blew it" if a touch screen interface requires the use of a stylus, there are some activities (writing and drawing) best suited for a stylus. One of my absolute favourite apps is Notability. In fact, it is the only app that keeps me going back to my otherwise neglected iPad. As much as I like Notability, I am frustrated that I have to use a stylus with a tip roughly the same size as my pinky finger.

Samsung capitalized on Apple's refusal to recognize stylus use-cases with their Note line of phones and tablets. The Note series have enjoyed great sales, but they are among the most expensive Android options available. In fact, most of the tablets that have good styli tend to be expensive, primarily because they use an active pen. Active pens allow for pressure sensitivity, detection of pen versus finger, and more.

Last year Nvidia released (through various manufacturers) the Tegra Note 7 (TN7), a 7-inch Android tablet utilizing a passive stylus. The use of a passive stylus, along with a mid-range screen and Nvidia's own Tegra 4 System-on-Chip (SoC), keeps the price of the TN7 to $200. Despite the use of a passive stylus, the TN7 distinguishes between stylus and finger touch, handles palm rejection, and while it doesn't support pressure sensitivity, it does recognize stroke size.

There are plenty of reviews of the TN7, so I won't go into detail about the specs and features. Nvidia is primarily known as a maker of video chips designed for PC gamers. I believe it is because of this heritage that the reviews of the TN7 are almost entirely from PC review web sites. Those reviews focus on specs, build quality, speed benchmarks, and games. In those areas, the reviews are quite positive.

I have stated that purchase price is only a small part of the story when it comes to tablets, so I think it's important to discuss some non-technical aspects of the TN7. For one, one of the manufacturers making the TN7 is EVGA. I have experience dealing with them from an RMA standpoint, and that experience was positive. As for the OS, Nvidia has included extras related to the stylus, but otherwise it appears to be stock Android. The TN7 shipped with Android 4.2, but received an update to 4.3 late last year. It isn't yet known if or when the TN7 will see an update to Android 4.4. By minimizing the changes to stock Android, it should be relatively easy for Nvidia to keep the tablet up to date. Unfortunately, only time will tell.

Note: So, I left that last bit intact, but Nvidia actually released Android 4.4.2 before I published this entry. This is the latest version of Android available. It is a good sign for future updates, but once again only time will tell for sure.

Right away, the TN7 is usable in the classroom. It can connect to a projector via HDMI, and it works very well with the Netgear PTV3000 for wireless video. This makes it a good option as a document camera. There is a very basic drawing app included with the TN7 that will take snapshots from the camera and let you draw on top of them. Having an accurate stylus, and one that can detect and draw in different pen widths, makes the experience better. The inclusion of a microSD slot makes sharing of photos easy, but you can also use Google Drive.

Android educational apps are continuing to improve, and I will be going back and re-testing some note-taking and drawing apps with the Tegra Note 7. Hopefully along the way I'll find a replacement for Notability and finally let my iPad go.

FETC 2014

Last week was FETC 2014 in Orlando, Florida. It was the second FETC for me. There are a few reasons I like FETC, other than the opportunity to escape the deep freeze of January in Ontario. It has a great mix of activities, workshops, receptions, and a great exhibit hall. All of that is rolled into an event that is far less overwhelming than ISTE.

While the exhibit hall can often be an area where you want to dodge aggressive company representatives, it's also a great place to get your hands on devices that you otherwise just see online.

I first saw Swivl at ECOO in the fall. There is a new Swivl coming out, and the new model was on display on the FETC exhibit floor. The Swivl has a rotating base and a microphone with an integrated tracker. The base will hold a tablet for you to record the video. The microphone connects to the tablet via bluetooth, and the base rotates to track the movement of the microphone. This is a great device for creating instructional videos. In our Teacher Education program, our students record micro-teaching lessons to review and learn how to improve their practice.

While I believe there are better choices in educational technology than interactive whiteboards, I was impressed with the simplicity and price of the IPEVO Interactive Whiteboard System. If you've always wanted an interactive board, and you already have a whiteboard and LCD projector, the IPEVO is $150.

The robotic devices zipping around the VGo booth made quite a few people turn their heads. I think it would be great for a district to acquire these robots to share among schools. These devices allow kids stuck at home (sick, broken leg, etc) to continue to participate in school. This goes beyond classroom participation. Kids can even hang out with their friends during breaks.

Although I saw much more at FETC, the last item I'll talk about is JAMF Casper Focus. This is a fantastic way to hand over some of the controls of Mobile Device Management (MDM) to the classroom teacher without having to grant complete administrative access. The teacher, using an iPad app, can lock iPads to an app, direct an iPad to connect to a specific AirPlay receiver (student must confirm), distribute content, and even remove a PIN from a locked iPad. It was great testing this out at the JAMF booth with a few iPads.