Our first road block was the cart. We ordered the Bretford Power-Sync Cart which allows us to charge 40 iPod Touches and sync 20 touches at a time. Originally, Bretford said that we needed to use an Apple computer in order to sync the cart. We had several G4 iBooks that we could use, however, the system was now powerful enough for us to download the 10.4.9 OS so we were unable to download the iTunes that we needed to sync with the cart. Fortunately, we called Apple and they informed us that a PC would work with the cart, so we should be good to go from here on out.
Our next speed bump was syncing the iPod Touches. Before you are able to sync with the Bretford Cart, you must sync each individual iPod Touch to the computer that will be used with the cart. We needed to sync 28 iPod Touches, which took about an hour. During this process, you need to set up each iPod and name it. Again, this only needs to be done once, but it takes a little bit of time - so it's smart to plan ahead. Along with the set up of the iPod Touches, we had to also get them on our network at school. This only took a few seconds to do each iPod Touch, but needed to be done before the iPod Touches were launched in the classroom.
Stay tuned...the project has launched in Mrs. Stacey's Class. Video and updates will follow!
This is important information for anyone interested in pursuing the use of iTouches in the classroom, Dani and is an excellent example of the power of personal learning networks. Have you posted this to Twitter?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, Dani! As the bumps continue, I am posting them to Twitter as well.
ReplyDeleteAn important discovery was the importance of resetting the used ipod touches.
In addition, I posted our WiFi issue on Twitter hoping to find some kind of assistance.