Devices everywhere!

Today I found myself using three devices to work on one presentation: my MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone. All. At. Once.

There will be a forthcoming post on reflecting about the process leading up my first presentation, but this is a step in that process.

I’ve decided to use Prezi as my presentation tool because I prefer the visual layout. As someone who needs the overall picture to understand the details, it helps me have a stage where everything is laid out and then zoom in to each element. But this isn’t a post about Prezi, it’s about multi-devicing.

So I found the Prezi app for iPhone and iPad and decided to explore. I found that while I don’t really like editing on them, using them to present is really helpful. Since we have Apple TVs in a few classrooms, I can actually connect to projectors with my iPhone to practice giving my presentation, which I did today with two colleagues. The interface on the phone is quite good and I was able to go straight to certain frames when I wanted and I was able to control the video playback. If I were actually using it for a formal presentation I would lock the orientation so that it doesn’t flip back in forth as I gesture.

But the true multi-devicing came today when I was working on typing out my presentation. I wanted to go from the presentation to a full write up in order to refine my explanations, especially about games, which I posted here. I set up with my iPad on the presentation and my laptop open to type in Pages. It was incredibly helpful to have the iPad presentation separate from my laptop screen. I thought immediately about this article that I read about The Avenues, a for-profit high school in New York that issues it’s students both a laptop AND an iPad because they are used differently for different purposes, they do different things and engage different skills.

Since we are currently exploring what device makes the most for our program, whether that means a combination of a couple devices or something other than a laptop, it was interesting to find myself in the shoes of a student using all three devices differently to work on one presentation.

What do you think about students having more than one device? Do you know of a program out there that has done this?