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Rabu, 12 Desember 2012

Day 8 – This Windows 8 Super Tablet is Great for Educational Use

A Windows 8 Tablet for Teaching and Learning - Day 8

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

What makes a great tablet for educational use? The Samsung Ativ 500T meets my list of desirable features for teachers and students.

The list of features that make this tablet desirable for educational use include:
Full-size USB port
MicroSD card slot
MicroHDMI output (VGA adapter sold separately to connect to a projector)
Wacom digitizer with S Pen Stylus for creating digital ink
720P (1366x768) wide-screen 16:9 format
Front and Rear Cameras
Built-in Microphone
Front Facing SpeakersHeadphone Jack
Bluetooth 4.0

Dual-Core Atom z2760 processor (x86 compatible – it can run millions of Windows x86 applications in addition to the 20,000 plus Windows 8 apps in the Windows Store)

10 hour + battery life

Instant on/off with connected standby
WiFi b/g/n
64GB SSD hard drive
2 GB RAM                                          

The engineers have done their jobs in creating a fast and responsive touchscreen device with expandable storage that provides more flexibility for educational use than any other tablet currently on the market. 

Forget about the technical specifications for a moment and ponder what they average teacher or student can do with such a device? 

This Super Tablet can run the full Office 2010/2013 Suite of programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) along with millions of other x86 compatible Windows applications not to mention the now 20,000 + apps available in the Windows 8 Store. 

Teachers/students can write papers using Word, create spreadsheets using Excel, and produce presentations using PowerPoint. You can easily connect a wireless keyboard if the onscreen keyboard is too confining. The OneNote application allows you to use the S Pen stylus to write handwritten notes. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are also Pen capable which means you can use digital ink to make notes on a Word document and save the file that includes the handwritten annotations. You can then email the document to the student so they can see your handwritten digital notes. This is an absolutely wonderful feature for teachers especially in higher education where more and more work is being turned in digitally. 

Once content is created on this device a teacher or student has many options for saving and sharing their work easily. The full-size USB port is extremely convenient and gives you the freedom to save documents and other files to a USB thumb drive. 

The two cameras allow for easy photo taking or creating videos on this device. Windows 8 comes with Live Movie Maker that is an easy to use program to create videos for educational school use.

The digital ink capabilities of this tablet can essentially replace an Interactive White Board as you can connect this tablet to a projector and project the screen to the entire class using a projector. You do have to buy the microHDMI to VGA adapter separately at a cost of approximately $40 or if you have an HDTV with HDMI input you can get microHDMI to HDMI cable for around $5.

With built-in WiFi you have complete access to the Internet (even Flash-based websites) using the Desktop browser. Imagine accessing the 3500 + videos available on the Khan Academy or listening to audio podcast or viewing educational video screencasts.

All in all a very flexible device with immense possibilities for educational use. What an amazing time to be a technology savvy educator!!!

Discovery of the Day – WiFi connections

The Samsung Ativ 500T Tablet comes with built-in WiFi and is working great. I take this tablet from home to work daily and it is really nice that the tablet automatically connects to my work network and automatically connects to my home network without any intervention from me. If there is a problem with the WiFi you can go to the Start screen, swipe in with your right thumb to bring up the Charms Screen select Settings and you will see the WiFi Bars symbol. You can click this symbol and it will display available WiFi networks in the immediate vicinity. I have read reports of problems with connection to WiFi but I have not experienced this. Best advice if you are experiencing WiFi problems is to make sure all the drivers are up-to-date as I have.

If you need to turn WiFi off and then back on to reconnect you can get there by selecting the Charms Menu > Settings > Change PC Settings > Wireless. You then have the option to turn Wireless on or off.

Keep on Learning,
Dr. Grissom

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