On Thursday, we will be returning your iPads. Before Thursday, please complete the following tasks. On Thursday, bring 1) your iPad, 2) its case, 3) the keyboard, 4) the USB cord, and 5) the connection piece to an outlet to class.

As we design websites and web pages, we want them to be accessible to as many visitors as possible. This means that we want to take into consideration blind readers, readers with poor sites, readers who may have slow Internet connections, and readers who may be deaf or hard of hearing. Some things you might consider as you create your e-portfolio include:

Hi everyone,

I hope you're having a wonderful break. I am writing because Apple released their ios 4.2 update for the iPad a few days ago. This new update allows for many new features, including multitasking, wireless printing, the use of folders, a new game system, a search for text feature in Safari, changing fonts in the Notes app, and many many other updates.

To install the update, you must first update your iTunes to the newest version, and then plug in and sync your iPad. It might ask you to update immediately, or you might have to go to the "search for updates" feature on the "summary" section of your iPad in iTunes. Installing the update will probably take about a half-hour.

This update is not required, so if your'e not interested or not comfortable, it's not necessary. However, a number of us have been frustrated with the lack of multitasking and some other features, and it might be useful to know how some of the features work if your'e writing about them in the iPad Report (or to continue to explore the device over the next two weeks).

NOTE: I was confused how to multitask after installing the update, so I'm going to explain it here. When you have an app open, you just double tap the home button, and a little menu at the bottom opens up. It shows the apps that you've opened recently and are still running in the background. This won't work with all apps (some don't support the feature yet), but should work with most.

Again, hope break is going well for y'all!

EDIT: This page currently discusses some of the features of the update.

For our last blog post this term, I'd like you to consider what type of blog post might be the most appropriate to be seen as the most recent blog post in your e-portfolio. Though you are free to keep blogging on your site after the term is over, I imagine many of you will not, so consider what type of blog post might be best to appear at the top of your blog when a potential employer visits your site.

For this week, instead of writing a new blog post, please comment on three classmates' blog posts. If you go to the course blog posts, aggregated by our tag Engl202c_ipad, you can see recent posts from the class. You might scroll through the last few weeks and find a few that are interesting.

As a receiver of comments, you will get email notifications letting you know that someone commented. You'll need to approve these comments, which you can do in your dashboard at blogs.psu.edu. Go to "Manage" --> "Comments," where you can select and approve comments. (Remember, if you get a malicious, off-topic, or spam comment from someone, you are free to delete it.) You need to approve classmates' comments so they can get credit for their work.

Here are some helpful links as you create and work on your e-portfolio:

In preparation for the final assignment, I'd like you to use this blog post to begin drafting the iPad Report. While the report isn't due for a few more weeks, this is a good opportunity to begin drafting and moving from the planning worksheet to some content.

In this post, include 1) a draft of at least one paragraph that might wind up in the final report, and 2) drafts of at least two sentence-level definitions that might wind up in the final report.

We will be reading about definitions and descriptions over the weekend. Refer to the textbook for sentence-level definitions, which generally follow the format: [term] is a [category] that [distinguishing characteristics].

For this post, I would suggest having a short introduction that is clear what the post is about (for readers who may visit your blog post but not be aware of the prompt).


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

In a post of roughly 300 words (or more), address one of the following questions. Use BlogPress to write and/or publish your post if possible. (You need only address one question.)

1. Now that you are over halfway through this pilot project, what stands out to you about your experience using the iPad?

2. Describe your writing practices with the iPad.

3. Describe your strategies for note taking on the iPad.

4. How has our textbook been adapted for the iPad environment? What do you like about the adaptation? What have you found challenging?

5. Describe and evaluate your experiences using the iPad for peer review.

As we've been using the iPad for over two months now, a number of us have had complaints about web browsing. The two major complaints that I've heard are the lack of tabs (though most of us can adapt easily to Safari's interface) and the fact that ANGEL doesn't work on the iPad. It doesn't scroll properly (though changing to PDA style fixes some of that) and you can't email through it.

I recently came across this blog post on Atomic Web, a web browser for the iPad. The post overviews some of the features, so I don't do that here, but it's a tab-based browser that lets you set it read websites like Safari for Mac, Safari for iPad, Firefox 3, and a few other browsers.

I bought it and used it briefly, and I'm pretty impressed with it so far. For instance, I tried out ANGEL. I still couldn't scroll, but when I hit the PDA button in the lower left-hand corner, the website worked pretty well. I could even go to a course page, select "quick message," and compose a message and select recipients. It takes a bit of finesse (the "send" button is only partially visible), but it seems to work.

If you're okay with spending 99 cents for an app you can only use for another month and a half, it might be worth the purchase. If you're reading this on your iPad, you can click here and go straight to the app in iTunes.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

For this blog post, find a set of instructions online (this could be for a task similar to the one you are writing about, or a completely different task), link to the instructions, explain what the instructions are for, and analyze how effective they are. These instructions could be on something that you are knowledgeable about (making you an authority on what's right or wrong), or something that you're new to (making you an authority on how helpful they might be). Consider concepts from class on writing instructions, on document design, and on coherent documents.

There are a variety of websites with instructional sets, including company's websites and online collections of instructions, such as WikiHow. Unlike the instructions we are writing for this class, which will be static pages, instructions online come in a variety of different forms: static pages, videos, wikis (where a variety of people edit and change the instructions), sites with user comments or other metadata (likes, favorites, hits, etc). Any set of instructions will do for this post. You might consider how the format of the instructions assists or harms the effectiveness of the instructions.

If you haven't yet used BlogPress to write a post, I encourage you to use this app for this post.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad