iPad Research = iPad Play

Over the last few weeks, I have been playing with the iPad 2 for my Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives project I’m involved with through the English department. The goal is to find an innovative way to record video using the iPad. My focus has mostly been on sound, as I attempt to get to know the iPad and its foreign (to me) software.

Last week, I played with a microphone called a snowball, which looks like this:

snowball

taken from amazon.com

The snowball is a pretty high quality microphone, which I have used to record videos in a booth for the American Literature Videos Project. The Snowball plugs right into a computer through a USB port, which is super cool because it doesn’t even need a separate power source. The unfortunate part is that the iPad does not have a USB port. So I need this adapter:

I want this adapter so bad.

taken from http://bluemic.com/blog/2011/03/snowballonipad/

And we don’t have any at the Exchange. And the Digital Aquarium doesn’t have any either. And no one I know with an iPad has one, with the exception of a friend I have who works a LOT with macs – in Flagstaff, Arizona.

And so I went back to the drawing board and decided to start from the beginning. I realized I really don’t know what a direct video using only the iPad sounds/looks like. I also discovered, during this journey, that the iPad has an app that allows the user to upload right to youtube, and even to edit right in the application.

Tuesday, I went to the Atlanta Collaborative Learning community Digital Pedagogy meetup, and I recorded some interviews with the presenters: one of those is Brennan Collins – so for your viewing pleasure, I give you the video I recorded with what I am referring to as “the naked iPad” (no external hardware helping out) – and with the youtube editing software/uploader:

Digital Pedagogy Meetup 1.0

This Monday was the first Digital Pedagogy Meetup of the school year. It was held at Manuel’s Tavern in the back room (though it’s really not as clandestine as it sounds), and is part of a larger atlanta studies community now called “Atlanta Connected Learning.

Nirmal speaks about Mahana - a part of Georgia Tech's first year experience.

Nirmal speaks about Mahana – a part of Georgia Tech’s first year experience.

Spearheaded by innovative faculty from several Georgia schools in the atlanta area, including but not limited to GSU, SPSU, Agnes Scott, and GTech, Atlanta Connected Learning is going to be an umbrella community that will eventually house several different educational and innovative meet ups designed to encourage the kind of innovation that is already happening in this community, but gather more followers and minds to take on all the projects to be tackled in the Georgia school systems.

Digital Pedagogy Meetups will continue to feature 2 sets of speakers who will talk, in a casual setting, about the projects they are working on to promote lifelong learning and a journey into the future of pedagogy.

Check out atlcl.org  for more developments, as the site will be developing and changing a lot over the coming semester.

Get on board, if you aren’t already.