If you need information on how to recover your Mac OS X. This is a great how-to from Apple. We are in the process of creating our own Macintosh OS X mobile deployment management server.
Posted from Diigo.
I’m a Moodle using educator and for the last couple of years the idea of interacting with Moodle using both iPad and Android has provided me food for thought. Both Android and IPad using their native browsers can support forums, chats, & quizzes but when it comes to uploading files from mine or any other iPad I get stumped. One of my colleagues has used MoodlEZ to download Microsoft Word documents but is unable to edit them and then re-upload them. I’ve also done some searching on Google but without any real success. Since Safari and iOS are not open source there is really no way to address the issue. I’m interested in solutions if you have one.
There is no doubt that e-books have revolutionized my own reading experience. I own nearly forty e-books. Most are from Amazon, a few from Barnes & Noble, one from Google and although I own an iPad I don’t think I have ever purchased books from Apple. Apple made a major announcement today about their new textbooks for the iPad. I’m wondering how many schools are going to go out and purchase iPads to get books that are available elsewhere for a fraction of the total cost of ownership. My bet is that many schools will purchase iPads and get these new e-books but will save no money in the process and will instead waste thousands of dollars at a time when money is tight in education.
There is little doubt in my mind that e-books are here to stay but no one has come up with a really good way of disseminating them at a cost that rivals their paper predecessors. From what I read today on a couple of blogs Apple will sell your book as long as it’s less than $14.99 and they get 30% of the proceeds and you have to sign a fealty oath that you won’t sell the book anywhere else. That’s not really a good deal and especially for young publishers. I’m currently working with a small group of students to produce an e-book from our class. We don’t expect to make money. It’s primarily a keepsake and since it’s going to published in ePub format it will be viewable on the iPad or any other device that supports ePub.
Schools in New York State receive $43.25/per student/year for textbook aid. Refer to this link from the NYSED website. If you factor in New York State Aid for computer software you add about another $15/student. To make it easy let’s round that number to $60 per student for textbook and software aid. In a school with 1500 students that means you’d get about $90,000 in state aid. Assuming you need fifteen hundred iPads to make this work that will be another 1500 x $499 = $748,500.
This isn’t exactly a Gutenberg moment! I’m not anti-Apple. I purchased four iPads this year. I’m composing this post on a MacBook, but I am saying there are less expensive ways to get engaging text to students and even those using iPads.
